I remember how it was -- JR
Monday, October 25, 2021
Fired Louisiana teacher Jonathan Koeppel is suing his former school board and superintendent on grounds of unlawful termination
Koeppel was fired in August, he says, for his conservative political activism and for refusing to wear a mask, even though he had received a medical exemption.
“I was told [by school leadership] that my political commentary and free speech on social media was unprofessional,” Koeppel said in a Sunday email to The Daily Signal. “Considering everything that I post online or say in real life, in regard to political commentary, is rooted in conservative values, one could argue that one reason I was fired was for being openly conservative.”
The teacher and his attorney, Kevin Vogeltanz, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana against the St. Tammany Parish School Board and Superintendent Frank Jabbia on Oct. 4.
“I lost my job and career in education because the [St. Tammany Parish School Board], my former principal, the assistant superintendent, and superintendent do not believe that I have a right to the First Amendment,” Koeppel said.
Koeppel has been a vocal advocate against mask mandates and against the teaching of critical race theory and gender identity ideology in the classroom.
“We’re very pleased with the federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Mr. Koeppel, and we look forward to proving the St. Tammany Parish School Board and its management unlawfully terminated Jonathan, not for any legitimate reason, but because of his protected speech, politics, and his medical disability,” Vogeltanz told The Daily Signal in an email Friday.
Koeppel, 26, began teaching high school Spanish in 2020 at Fontainebleau High School in Mandeville, Louisiana, about 40 miles north of New Orleans.
The now-former Spanish teacher gained national attention in April when a video of him speaking at a school board meeting went viral.
In his remarks to the school board, Koeppel played two audio clips from an education application the St. Tammany Parish school district has utilized, called “BrainPOP.” The first clip discussed “structural racism,” which Koeppel said is telling “our black children that they are oppressed by white people.”
Koeppel played a second audio clip for school board members in which students are instructed in the app’s lesson to use “gender-neutral” pronouns, such as “they,” if an individual’s “preferred” pronouns are unknown.
“We’ve got kids that can’t read and write, and then we are going to teach them incorrect grammar?” Koeppel asked the school board at the meeting.
Koeppel is active on social media and has used Twitter to voice his opposition to critical race theory and gender identity ideology. “CRITICAL RACE THEORY and the promotion of GENDER DYSPHORIA have NO place in Louisiana PUBLIC SCHOOLS,” he wrote on Twitter on April 10.
The high school teacher spoke again at a school board meeting in May raising concerns over teachers “indoctrinating kids in [the] classroom and discriminating based on political affiliation,” he said in a call with The Daily Signal in August.
Koeppel’s activism on education issues continued throughout the summer with speaking engagements at conservative gatherings.
When Koeppel returned to work at Fontainebleau High School on Aug. 3, the school’s principal, Johnny Vitrano, immediately asked him to leave because he was not wearing a mask.
Koeppel is a vocal opponent of mask mandates, but received a medical exemption from the school not to wear one prior to Aug. 3.
On Aug. 5, Koeppel was called to a hearing with the principal and was told he had to wear a mask or he could lose his job. Koeppel reminded the principal of his exemption he had previously received due to a boxing injury, and the hearing ended shortly thereafter.
Koeppel was called to a second hearing Aug. 10 with the principal and the assistant superintendent, Michael Cossé. He said he was told the school leadership was concerned over his “social media, the things I do in public, shooting guns and having videos of that—all kinds of free speech issues,” Koeppel said in the August interview with The Daily Signal.
Three days later, Koeppel received a termination letter signed by Jabbia, the St. Tammany Parish Public Schools superintendent. Koeppel says the letter did not specify a reason for his dismissal.
Neither the St. Tammany Parish School Board nor Jabbia responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment, but Meredith Mendez, St. Tammany Parish Public Schools director of communications, told The Daily Signal in an email Monday, “We cannot comment because of the ongoing litigation.”
Koeppel is asking the court for relief, including “lost back wages, lost future wages, compensatory damages, statutory damages, punitive damages … litigation costs, reasonable attorney’s fees, and legal interest from the date of demand, and for all other general and equitable relief to which plaintiff is entitled,” according to the complaint.
Koeppel says his termination has cost him his “reputation as a successful teacher in the local education community,” and added that some people in his community are “starting to slander me as if I am making all of this up and nothing ever happened to me.”
But he said he made the decision to file the suit because “I want to expose the corruption in my local school system so that they are held accountable.” The legal action may serve to “give hope to other employees that are scared to voice their concerns at school board meetings or with their supervisors,” Koeppel said.
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Reining in rogue educators
To ensure transparency, all classroom lessons should be recorded.
Over the past year, there have been many suggestions as to how concerned parents could deal with the “woke” agenda that has become all too prevalent in our nation’s classrooms. Most recently, a new group, Parents Unite, held a conference in which several fight-back strategies for parents were put forth – common sense stuff, like becoming more active in their kids’ school lives and getting involved with the myriad groups that have arisen to fight Critical Race Theory.
The one recommendation that really jumps out is “demand transparency.” The organization justly insists that parents have a right to know what schools are teaching, and that if a school is withholding, parents should file a public records request.
In the same vein, the American Enterprise Institute’s Max Eden writes that parents need a clear and direct window into school curriculum. He cites the Goldwater Institute’s Matt Beienburg who proposes that schools should “publicly post all materials used in the classroom so parents can see – at a glance online – what is being taught.”
While this strategy certainly should be employed, it does not go far enough. Schools can post all sorts of materials, rules, etc., but when the kids are in a classroom with a teacher, and the lesson is conducted behind closed doors, school rules don’t mean much if a teacher decides not to follow them.
A good case in point is Gabriel Gipe, a teacher at Inderkum High School in Natomas, CA. In a video that he did not know was being recorded by Project Veritas, he explains that he wants to turn his students into “revolutionaries,” and gives extra credit to those who attend left-wing protests. An admitted member of the Sacramento branch of Antifa, Gipe told Project Veritas he wants to “scare the f—” out of students in an effort to sway them toward his far-left political philosophy.
The way to eradicate this type of indoctrination is to record all lessons and make them available to parents in real time. Just a year ago, I wrote that capturing live police activity had become very popular. In fact, a July 2020 poll from the University of Maryland shows that nearly 90 percent of respondents support body cameras, including 85 percent of Republicans, 86 percent of independents and 94 percent of Democrats. This is consistent with a 2016 Cato Institute poll which revealed that 89 percent of Americans support “requiring police officers to wear body cameras to record their on-duty interactions.”
The benefits of cop-cams are many – for all concerned. They provide transparency for interactions with the public, faster resolution of citizen complaints, corroborating evidence in arrests, and training opportunities for rookies. It is even popular with cop unions. Sean Smoot, a police union attorney, writes, “Though unions have concerns regarding BWCs (body worn cameras), most unions also recognize that BWCs provide added layers of protection and accountability for officers. They protect officers from false claims when the alleged behavior is captured (or, more frequently, its absence is captured) by BWC video.” A study conducted on the Rialto, CA police department in 2013 bolsters Smoot’s statement, showing an 87.5 percent decline in citizen complaints against officers who wore the cameras.
But there are parents who object to having their kids appear in a live video stream. For example, Joel Withers, a father of two young children in Virginia, told the Washington Examiner he’s “not comfortable with complete strangers watching [my children’s] every move.” So instead of employing video, I propose having all lessons recorded and streamed using just a microphone – no visuals whatsoever. That way, teachers’ lessons will come through loud and clear for parents and concerned taxpayers to hear, while children are mostly left out of the process.
Needless to say, there will be pushback from all the usual suspects. Indeed, recording teachers’ lessons became an issue for the California Teachers Association when, due to the Covid-related shutdowns, online learning became the norm in the spring of 2020. At the time, the union argued that “school districts lack the authority to force teachers to do live online instruction or to record lessons for later use.” CTA pointed to Education Code 51512, a 1976 law that provides privacy protections for teachers. “It prevents unauthorized recording in a classroom and requires a teacher’s and a principal’s consent for the use of any ‘listening or recording device.’” Hence, in California, each teacher has to okay any recordings. (If they have nothing to hide, why would any teacher be uncomfortable being recorded?)
Teachers are entrusted with our children, and at the same time are paid by taxpayers to do their important work. Requiring these public servants to be transparent is not asking very much. California and anywhere else that has faux “privacy protections for teachers,” must eliminate them. We have no interest in recording teachers’ “private” lives, only when they interact with our children, and are using our taxpayer dollars to do so. As public servants, they owe us nothing less.
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University of North Carolina defeats challenge to race-based admissions policies
A federal judge on Monday ruled the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill did not discriminate against white and Asian American applicants in a closely watched case challenging the consideration of race in undergraduate student admissions.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs in Winston-Salem came in a lawsuit by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by conservative anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum that is pursuing a similar case against Harvard University.
SFFA is appealing its loss in the Harvard case to the U.S. Supreme Court, potentially giving its conservative majority a chance to end affirmative action policies used to increase the number of Black and Hispanic students on American campuses.
In the UNC case, SFFA accused the school of violating the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act by making race the predominant factor in its admissions process to favor Black and Hispanic applicants to the detriment of white and Asian American candidates.
But Biggs said UNC's consideration of race was narrowly tailored, constitutionally permissible and furthered a "compelling and substantial interest in pursuing and attaining the educational benefits of diversity."
In a 161-page ruling, she said that while no student should be admitted solely based on race, ignoring it "misses important context to include obscuring racial barriers and obstacles that have been faced, overcome and are yet to be overcome."
Beth Keith, a UNC spokesperson, said the ruling "makes clear the university's holistic admissions approach is lawful."
Blum in a statement vowed to appeal the ruling to a federal appeals court and potentially to the Supreme Court, saying documents and data presented at trial "revealed UNC's systematic discrimination against non-minority applicants."
His group similarly accused Harvard of discriminating against Asian Americans and engaging in impermissible "racial balancing." But a federal appeals court last year upheld the school's policies.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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