Last May, students at Osborne High School drew up a petition criticizing the school's leadership.
The rebellious display led to the firing of a teacher and to a federal lawsuit over the right to remain silent.
Francina Skipper, an English Language Arts teacher at the Cobb County school, was accused of inflaming her students and keeping a messy classroom, among other things. The evidence included her own handwriting on a student's paper -- the school system called it a petition -- recommending new phrasing. Officials investigated and moved to fire her, but a school system tribunal held her blameless on the early complaints.
Skipper still lost her job because she would not answer questions during the investigation.
Skipper claims she had several reasons to fear jail time were she to talk and that she therefore had a right under the U.S. Constitution to keep quiet. It's a crime to cause a disruption on school property, said her attorney, Stephen Katz of Marietta. He said it's also illegal to disclose a report of child abuse to all but authorized personnel, and he said both of those issues were at play in this case.
"She was cleared of everything," Katz said, "and they said we're firing you for not answering those questions."
Skipper wants her job back, with back pay and remuneration for pain and suffering. Her lawsuit, filed in January in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, could have implications for other government employees who face interrogations by their bosses. In addition to her claim to a right of silence, Skipper maintains she had a constitutional right to have a lawyer by her side during questioning. The court could answer a fundamental question, Katz said: "When a public employee goes in, do they get to have a lawyer there?"
A Cobb schools spokesman said officials would not comment about ongoing litigation. But the record of Skipper's disciplinary hearing said she deserved to be fired, and the school system's court brief in response to the lawsuit said her claims were groundless.
Skipper was told during the investigation that she'd be dismissed if she didn't talk, Cobb's lawyer, Charles Bachman, wrote in a motion to dismiss the suit. She was not being prosecuted for a crime, so constitutional rights against self-incrimination and to legal counsel did not apply, he wrote.
Skipper's attorney, Katz, said his client was in a tough spot: to answer her interrogators' questions she would have had to disclose details of a child abuse report that she had filed.
The school system's investigative file says a student accused Skipper of offering good grades to protesting students. Katz explained that the student had an "agenda" but that Skipper could not legally disclose that to the human resources officials confronting her because they lacked authority to hear child abuse reports.
Skipper's lawsuit discloses that the student, identified in the court file only by initials, was previously involved in a child abuse case reported by Skipper. The girl had allegedly showed Skipper a picture of her little brother, with his jaw wired shut and his body bruised. She told Skipper that "the family got together and decided that a ‘ghost' must have come in and knocked out two of his teeth because it could not have been anyone in her family," the lawsuit says.
Teachers, by law, must report suspected child abuse to certain authorized school authorities. Skipper did, but it would have been illegal for her to talk about it afterward to the investigators, so she didn't and was fired for it, Katz said.
Dismissal for refusing to answer questions isn't that unusual.
Tim Callahan, spokesman for the state's largest teacher organization, the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, said his organization's lawyers have seen a growing trend of firings for refusing to cooperate with investigators, especially in Atlanta in connection with the test-cheating scandal there.
But Callahan said what makes this case unusual is that it's rare for a teacher to fight such a firing in court.
It's too early to say what, if any, effect Skipper's case will have on investigative procedures. Katz, her lawyer, said it could take months for any resolution in the case.
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