The DeKalb County School District is trying to sanction a teacher who has drawn numerous complaints over time.
William W. Burks, Jr.’s is challenging the district’s decision against renewing his contract as a physical eduction teacher at Cross Keys High School. Among the charges against him: incompetency, insubordination, willful neglect of duties and violation of the ethics and conduct policies.
His tribunal started Tuesday with testimony from officials who investigated the latest round of student complaints.
“He referred to the students as ‘dumb asses’ and ‘stupid asses,’” said Feleccia Kendrick, a school police officer who witnessed student interviews.
Marcus Searcy, the assistant principal over discipline at Cross Keys, said he’d investigated more than 300 cases in the past six years, most aimed at students and “very few” involving teachers. Typically, the teachers who were investigated were accused of cursing at a student, he said. “This is the first time I’ve had to investigate an entire class because the teacher made them feel uncomfortable.”
Burks contends the students gave false accounts because they didn’t like the grades he was issuing. His attorney, Quinton Washington, said students contributed to a combustible situation and his client may have spoken “roughly” to them “but it was not out of ill will, it was not out of malice.”
The district has tried previously to suspend Burks, but he has contested those decisions and won. He only accepted a one-day suspension during the 2004-05 school year when he allegedly told students to bend over and grab their ankles so he could give them “a swift kick to the butt.” When one threatened to tell her mother, he allegedly replied, “I’ll kick her, too.”
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