Thankfully, here in Whitest Whitesylvania, the administrators stand for education. Dover was too expensive not too.

The school district is telling a different story about the firing, for whatever that’s worth.

Brooklynite,

This sounds like the classic coverup attempts by the administration from what I’ve witnessed as a public school student and heard from college classmates who are/were teachers.

My inclination as a result is to be wary of whatever the school district says unless they actually trot out documentary evidence this teacher could then defend against….especially when it seems they didn’t take the time to complain about his performance in writing right after the incident in question so he had a chance to correct his behavior and the district has the documentation that they did so.

Moreover, few supervisors in either the public or private sectors would be dumb enough to openly acknowledge arbitrary petty political and/or personal issues as the reason(s) why an individual’s employment is terminated.

As Mandy Rice-Davies once said, they would, wouldn’t they?

Unless they have the rest of those items well-documented, including documenting the disciplining of other teachers for similar offenses, they got nothing. Also note that a magic trick shouldn’t be “far down the list” of reasons for firing someone, it shouldn’t be on it at all.

Which is also sad, because school officials, much like members of the Executive Branch, should not have established a track record such that our first assumption is that they’re lying.

From a UPI article:

Assistant Superintendent Renalia DuBose denied the district ever used the word “wizardry” in its dealings with Piculas and said the magic trick was far down the list of reasons the sub is not being asked back.

The district said in a letter to Piculas that he was being let go because he did not follow lesson plans, allowed students to use computers despite being told not to by another teacher, and he left a student in charge during his fifth-period class.

Of course they believe Harry Potter is true.

Of course they believe disappearing toothpicks are wizardry.

You see these little learning machines in kindergarten and it makes you weep to know that evil parents will literally tell their kid to be stoopid. So, by age 15 you have a child who has a much diminished future to placate the biological progenitor(s).

But I already knew that one…

BTW, Happy Mother’s Day!