Gilroy
– The school board voted to suspend for three days without pay
the Brownell Academy teacher who read two questionable narratives
aloud to her sixth-grade social studies class.
Gilroy – The school board voted to suspend for three days without pay the Brownell Academy teacher who read two questionable narratives aloud to her sixth-grade social studies class.
The decision – arrived at during a closed session Thursday night – was unanimous, with Trustee David McRae absent from the meeting due to a recent surgery.
Joanne Lewis, in her fifth year of teaching at Brownell, read the sexually-charged poems to her class several weeks ago. Both narratives, intended to be humorous, were tongue-in-cheek stories with obvious sexual references.
Board president TJ Owens said Lewis also will receive a letter of reprimand from Superintendent Edwin Diaz instructing her not to use inappropriate supplemental instructional materials in the classroom again. Owens said the district will make sure Lewis’ performance is evaluated for the 2004-05 school year and will work “to communicate with parents and address parents’ concerns,” Owens said.
Diaz said the district has a responsibility to ensure its staff performs in accordance with state teaching standards.
“The issue of using inappropriate supplemental instructional materials has been an issue we’ve dealt with at this level for a number of years,” he said. “This … is an example of why we need to take more measures to ensure these kinds of materials are not used in our classrooms.”
Diaz recently sent a memo to all certificated staff in the district regarding the use of inappropriate materials. In January, Diaz said, all staff will receive a copy of the board’s policies addressing supplemental instructional materials.
“The bottom line for us is that the type of materials used in the classroom were inappropriate for those children,” he said. “This is an issue that will come back to the board in the future.”
Following the board’s announcement, Trustee Tom Bundros said he learned a few lessons from the California School Boards Association conference that he thought were relevant Lewis’ situation. All board members recently attended the conference. Among those lessons was the need for a “widely shared vision of what quality teaching is,” Bundros said.
Including Thursday night’s meeting, the board has met in three closed sessions with the district’s attorney to discuss possible disciplinary action and review the legal ramifications of the case. Lewis is a tenured teacher who also was placed on paid administrative leave for three days following the incident, just before Thanksgiving.
Near the beginning of the month, district staff met with a handful of concerned Brownell parents and Brownell principal Suzanne Damm to discuss the issue. Many of the parents said they walked from that meeting feeling nothing had been accomplished, including one parent who distributed roughly 50 copies of the poems to other parents in an effort to raise awareness of the incident and encourage accountability, she said.
