Support for Fired Teacher Neace Remains Strong in Georgia

Fired Dacula, Georgia, high school physics teacher Larry Neace, whose case will be heard by the Georgia Board of Education on July 26, continues to enjoy widespread support and sympathy in metro Atlanta, at least according to the education blog of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The comments tend to center on two aspects of the story: the role of the teacher in leading students to understand not only the academic subject at hand, but larger lessons for life in the world, including self-discipline and high expectations; and the lamentable atmosphere cultivated by Dacula High principal Donnie Nutt, who, many claim, has allowed the school's football program to run roughshod over its academic program.

Karen Armsby, whose daughter, a Georgia Tech graduate now studying architecture in graduate school at Rice, wrote me last month to express her outrage at the firing of Larry Neace. She opens her long commentary from yesterday by praising Neace:

Larry ‘Doc’ Neace is a special person that makes a positive impression on everyone who meets him, and an outstanding educator who has positively influenced and motivated so many students, regardless of whether or not they ended up with a good grade in his classes. He is a quiet and intelligent man. He listens when you speak and responds thoughtfully. He has the ability to transmit a great deal of complicated information in a simple, direct, and easy to understand way. He invites questions and discussion without showcasing his own superior knowledge. He seems comfortable in his skin as a scientist and a teacher, and has been a backbone of integrity and teaching discipline at Dacula High School for 23 years. Doc Neace has a policy that has been approved for ten years that requires that students develop a discipline of learning in his classes that includes paying attention and participating in classes.

Gwinnett county's school board forbids allowing disciplinary issues to influence a student's grade, but Ms. Armsby believes that this case clearly involved academics, since the student whose grade was lowered slept through much of the class in question. She then gets to what she sees as the heart of the problem. Her comment here is long, but I think it's worth quoting in full.

The Dacula High School principal has systematically moved the best and the brightest teachers out of our school. A principal should be a good people manager, and good managers don’t have to know how to do all of the jobs or have all of the knowledge of those they manage. But they should be responsible at the minimum for communicating with teachers under their direction, for sitting down as a fellow professional when a problem arises, and investigating what happened, identifying the conflicts, and working with the teacher to resolve the problem.

The principal here failed on all counts; he talked to and met with a complaining parent without talking to the teacher before a parent-teacher meeting. He allowed the parent to rant and curse at the teacher, then put his teacher on the spot and demanded he make a change right there in front of the parent. He gave an ultimatum that same day, repeating it three time in succession to satisfy the rule that the teacher be told ‘repeatedly’ to change his actions. And then the paperwork was kicked upstairs to the county office level to so-called ‘human’ resouces [sic], where the administrators also failed professionally to do their own inquiry to verify the facts, where they refused to address the concerns Mr. Neace had about his teaching certificate, and where they summarily branded him a rogue teacher who enjoyed flaunting the rules. They fired him after 23 unblemished years of dedicated service, and then the School Board rubber stamped the firing. The lone voice of reason on the School Board, Carol Boyce, whose kids have all attended Dacula schools was unable to sway the Board in their decision to ratify the superintendent’s decision to terminate Mr. Neace.

What happened here is the Peter Principle in action, a bunch of administrative rule focused educators who have risen to the level of their incompetence.

Doc Neace doesn’t fit in their agenda as he is focused on learning.

Here are a few snippets from other comments:

Amy: I spoke with my school board representative, Louise Radloff, after the board’s decision to register my disgust with their ruling. She said that it made her ‘sick to her stomach’ to have to vote to fire him. My thought is that if a vote makes you sick to your stomach that’s your body’s way of telling you it’s the WRONG decision. If the school board is only going to rubber stamp the superintendent’s decisions then why do we need a school board?

Ron: Isn’t this whole mess just ridiculous? A child sleeps in class but now we’re splitting hairs over academic versus behavioral consequences. God forbid we teach children what it’s like in the real world! I THOUGHT that was part of what we were supposed to do as teachers. I am so, so, very sick of parents complaining and blaming the teacher when Jr. can’t keep his head up in class. Perhaps if he slept at home instead of playing his X-box, talking on the cell phone, or watching TV half the night, then he wouldn’t sleep at school. I hope Doc Neace gets a fair hearing from the state, but I wouldn’t count on it. We used to work with parents to teach kids, but more and more often we’re working against them. When did we become the enemy?

Jake: Ron, you became the enemy when the national ethic changed from the golden rule to gold rules. . . . So any teacher that even looks like they’re a threat to Janie getting into Harvard or Johnny qualifying for the Hope is the enemy. Ironically, public schools deserve some of the blame. The PC environment that teaches everyone is okay, they’re just different, and Johnny isn’t a poorly- raised, ill-mannered brat that isn’t fit for decent society, he just has ADHD, encourages this behavior.

Steve: I have several friends and former colleagues who work or have worked under Donnie Nutt at Dacula and they all assert that there is virtually no emphasis placed on teaching and learing by the administration. In fact, most people who have only a cursory knowledge of Dacula High will tell you that the REAL principal is not Nutt, but the athletic director and head football coach Maloof. Does anyone think it odd that Maloof, not department heads, performs interviews of prospective teachers? Is it a mere coincedence [sic] that Nease’s student was a star football player? Why was Maloof even involved at all and present at the initial meetings regarding the sleeping student? I think the citizens of Dacula and Gwinnett deserve some straight answers to those questions as well as the one posed by Amy above.

Lynne: The administrators are supposed to read and approve each and every syllabus that their teachers submit for approval. Are these administrators losing their jobs as well - for approving a syllabus that they deemed “wrong” for 10 years?

This is one of the many reasons why Gwinnett County is losing some great teachers, and why the kids and their parents think that they run the schools - especially athletes.