Fort Worth to appeal decision to rehire teacher who tweeted Trump on ‘illegal students’
Fort Worth school officials are appealing a ruling that reinstated an English teacher who was fired after she asked President Donald Trump on Twitter to crack down on immigration at Carter-Riverside High School.
At a Fort Worth Independent School District meeting Tuesday night, the school board voted unanimously to appeal the Texas Education Agency decision to district court.
In May, former teacher Georgia Clark’s tweets ignited a national backlash.
In June, Superintendent Kent P. Scribner recommended Clark be terminated for using racially insensitive language and abusing social media. The school board unanimously agreed and she was placed on leave. On Sept. 26, Clark’s contract was officially terminated.
However, Clark appealed her termination. On Nov. 25, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath ruled she is entitled to get her job back, along with back pay and employment benefits from the time her contract was not renewed. If she is not reinstated, the school district may pay her one year of salary.
On Nov. 26, the school board announced it would appeal that decision.
At Tuesday’s school board meeting, several speakers spoke out against Clark and encouraged officials not to rehire her.
“I just want her gone,” said Jessica Ramirez, who has two children in FWISD schools.
After the meeting, Ramirez said Clark’s behavior in the classroom was oppressive. She mentioned a complaint against Clark where students said she segregated them by race, and said Clark’s tweets were racist.
“The fact that she went out of her way to tweet directly to Trump to tell him, ‘Hey, there are these kids at my school,’ tells you she didn’t care about those kids,” she said. “She didn’t care about their safety. And any teacher who doesn’t care about their kids’ safety, their kids in the classroom, should not be a teacher.”
Clark’s tweets
Earlier this year, Clark sent several tweets asking Trump to crack down on immigration at Carter-Riverside High School. One tweet asked the president to help remove “illegals from Fort Worth.”
“Mr. President, Fort Worth Independent School District is loaded with illegal students from Mexico,” one of the posts linked to her account stated. “Carter-Riverside High School has been taken over by them.”
The Twitter account the tweets were sent from, @Rebecca1939, has been deleted.
Clark told a district investigator she thought the messages were private direct messages to Trump, not public posts.
Clark was put on administrative leave in May after the school district was alerted to her Twitter posts to Trump. She argued that the First Amendment protected her ability to tweet the president.
In August, an independent hearing examiner said Clark’s termination was not justified and recommended that the Fort Worth school board reinstate her.
The school board in September rejected that recommendation and instead upheld the earlier decision to terminate Clark’s continuing teacher contract. Clark appealed that decision to Morath, who sided with Clark.
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 9:35 PM.
