Teacher's lack of rights? - Part Deux

As I first noted in this post....

and in this second post....

Teachers have no rights, and it's a low, down, dirty shame. Seriously...oy!

Example Here: Headline: Port St. Lucie teacher gets fired for having breasts...okay, not quite, but close.

30 year old, H. School Biology Teacher, and mother of 3 young boys, Tiffany Sheperd, recently got a d-i-v-o-r-c-e. Three weeks ago she got a second job, which I SHOULD note many of our young teacher's do even though they have no kids because a beginning teacher's salary isn't exactly winning the lottery (which, I am okay with as I'm not in this for the money, but we all have to pay bills). Shockingly, this responsible woman realized she didn't have the money to support these boys, so she found a way to supplement her income. She supplemented it to the tune of making $600 in two days. This is roughly equivalent to what she makes in a week.

How'd she supplement her income? Become an escort? Become a stripper? Neither of those.

She basically got a job as a bar maid on a beach. That wasn't exactly her job, but her job was to go out dishing with dudes, fetch them sandwiches when they were hungry, and a beer when they were thirsty. Oh yeah, and wear a bikini that many young women would wear on a typical beach.

Okay, okay...that's not the full story. All disclosure, it sounds like she's missed a ridiculous number of days, 20 it says in the story (she must have built up sick and/or personal days from previous years of employment), and I'm not buying her migraine story. If she has migraines, I don't think she'd be out in the bright sun on a fishing boat, so let's hope she wasn't out fishing on one of those "migraine" sick days.

But, look, if she's earned the days...they should give them to her. If her son is legitimately sick, then they would have no reason to fire her...that'd be partly a discrimination thing I believe.

I think it's telling that they are not letting her finish the year...if it was strictly an issue where they wanted to move on because they didn't like the job she was doing, they wouldn't finish paying her salary and hire a long-term substitute. Moreover, if they didn't like how she was teaching...they would let her know and try to correct the problem, and that would be an indictment on the administration if they let her continue teaching for two years, while they thought was doing a bad job at teaching a subject, thus jeopardizing the education of their students. So, I don't fully by that this was an issue of the quality of her work, it may have been an issue on the quality of her breast cup size.

Yes, she teaches in a high school. Yes, it's possible she would end up taking out a dad of one of her students on one of these fishing days. Yes, there are apparently pictures of her on this fishing companies website, but the pictures are no worse than that same high schooler going to his local beach, seeing his teacher in a hot bikini and snapping a picture. Are we going to stop allowing teachers to wear bikini's on beaches now?

Clearly, she's not a candidate for Florida's "Teacher of the Year" Program. But, she needed to take care of her family when she got the d-i-v-o-r-c-e and she took steps to ensure their financial viability. I think this is a responsible thing for a parent to do. And the school should be more supportive because I'm certain she no longer has health insurance coverage for her boys, which makes things only worse. They should have tried to work with her more.