Support rally for Joshua resigned teachers scheduled for Thursday
Apr. 6—Joshua resident and mother of a Joshua ISD student Chelsea Brashear said she, other parents and community members will be on hand at Thursday's meeting of the JISD board of trustees to express their disagreement over the recent resignations of several North Joshua Elementary School teachers, departures she and others characterize as "forced resignations."
"Our voice is silenced and censored over and over again," Brashear wrote on We Stand With JISD Teachers and Students, a Facebook group Brashear started over the weekend.
That group had attracted almost 750 members as of Wednesday afternoon while a petition started by Brashear titled "Support JISD Teachers" had garnered close to 1,000 signatures.
The petition, among other requests, calls for JISD Superintendent Fran Marek's contract not to be renewed in June and/or for her immediate termination.
The petition goes on to read that the signers are "prepared not to support any JISD upcoming bonds, fundraisers, donations, events, volunteers or volunteer substitutes until a reasonable solution is made," and that, "as a community we are prepared to actively look for other board members to fill positions this year and next to enact a permanent and stable change."
The controversy revolves around the resignations of four North Joshua Elementary School teachers on Thursday in connection with free school lunches.
Many parents have posted on social media claiming a fifth resignation, but multiple attempts to verify that with the school district were not returned.
District officials, through a Friday release, said the teachers in question asked students to get them a free lunch. Those being cases where the students brought lunches from home and did not take advantage of the free lunch available to them.
While all students are eligible to receive free lunches under the National School Lunch program, teachers are not, district officials said.
Instances of the teachers doing so, however, "occurred consistently throughout the school year and was captured on district security cameras," according JISD's release.
Such actions, according to the release, constitute fraudulent behavior, abuse of official capacity and theft of federal funds that could result in criminal sanctions and possible withdrawal of federal funding to the district.
That the teachers in question accepted the lunches no one denies. Rather the accusation by several parents and community members is that teachers and staff were never informed of or trained on the rules prohibiting acceptance of free lunches and would never have accepted them, or requested students to procure them for them had they been.
The practice was common, open and known, Brashear and others said.
"They had even been told the year before to take these snacks and extra food because everything that doesn't get eaten is just going to be thrown away," Brashear said. "There wasn't any dark plot by teachers to steal these cheap lunches for the district or federal government."
District officials stress that the four teachers were not fired but rather resigned.
Brashear and others counter that they were strong armed and/or blindsided and forced to resign behind closed doors without being given opportunity to seek representation.
"Considering there are teachers that lacked the knowledge of any lunch rule would indicate that there was a lack of training on an administrative level," Brashear said. "I confidently and wholeheartedly could say if these teachers knew this was a true federal crime there would never have been an issue.
"The community would like to know what other options the district had besides terminating these teachers with full transparency."
Brashear urged those planning to Thursday's 5:30 p.m. JISD board meeting to remain peaceful and respectful while airing their views.
