That's from last July -- almost a year ago.

That's also in a letter to the teacher's attorney which presumably he has released to the press, not in a statement from the administration to the press.

What a mess. Why is it the school's business when they conceived?

What if this school receives federal funding? I know that some private and parochial schools receive school lunches and special ed teachers from the government. Would that impact anything?

It could but it's questionable, and it depends on whether the funding for those programs comes with the strings attached or not.

I teach at a private Christian school.
We sign a contract that says we will live according to Christian principles - I'll try to find my contract (!) and quote the exact language, but it is vague.

eta - "The letter killeth."

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act covers you once you become pregnant regardless of whether or not it is before or after marriage.

:(

Yes, but their argument is that they wouldn't fire any pregnant woman, they'd fire any woman who had sex before marriage and her queries around maternity leave was only the way they found out about her "inappropriate" behavior.

A coworker of mine (in the public school system) wouldn't even go to a liquor store to buy wine or what-have-you to COOK with because she didn't want someone from church or a parent to SEE her there.

NOW, I teach at a Catholic school and it's a whole different ballgame! Us Catholics, we're such lushes..lol

I just signed my contract for next year a couple of weeks ago...

"PARISH may, at its opinion, immediately terminate this agreement ... for any of the following reasons:
1. Personal conduct or lifestyle contrary to moral or religious doctrines or teachings of the Catholic Church or the Norms of the Diocese
2. Being guilty or engaging in any acts of immorality, intemperance, insubordination, unprofessional conduct..."

When was she judged? The school didn't pass judgement on her character (or slander her, label her with a scarlet letter, etc) they just expressed that she wasn't following the guidelines of her (extremely vague) contract and said she could not work there on those grounds. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying I don't see a judgement in that.
This.
Absolutely. This is the answer that would have been best, though they asked her so out of the blue, I don't blame her for giving an automatic reaction.

This made me lol. :o

Honestly, I think the whole thing is totally effed up but it all boils down to the contract. I hate to say it but, if it was on paper, then there's really nothing to be done, she knew what would happen. If it's not then sue away!!

They told the entire school that she got fired for fornication.

Which would technically be true. However there's not much detail about how that was done at this point and whether it itself is inappropriate and something she could win a suit over.

Anyone else wonder if maybe there were questions about her relationship before the baby was conceived?

I wonder if perhaps there were some scandalous rumors and the conception date confirmed them.

Sometimes, when it appears that one course of action is just so much more reasonable, here just not asking about conception date, it makes me wonder what factors drove the decision. Sure, it could be wanting to avoid the cost of her leave; it could be that they are a certain kind of no one gets any privacy kind of Christians; but I also wonder if there's more to the story of her own behavior.

Public teachers in Georgia lose their certificates for crimes of moral turpitude, and that's about as specific as it gets. It sort of sets up the subjectivity you see here, but I think it's rarely used.

That's not a judgement, it's a fact. It'd be different if they told the school "You're teacher's gone because she's a filthy whore," but they didn't. Again, I don't agree in the least with how they violated her privacy but there's a difference between passing judgement and stating a fact is all I'm trying to say.

If you think there wasn't any judgment being thrown around here, you're naive.

I still think this would've been a good opportunity for the school to show an example of the great Christian concept of forgiveness.

You assume they didn't forgive her. Forgiveness doesn't mean no consequences. Also you usually have to apologize, and I don't think she was inclined to. (Not saying she should have) It's only little kids who think you just get to say "Sorry" and we all pretend it never happened.

The thing that gets me is the time period. For three weeks, it wouldn't be as noticeable. Why make a big deal about it? They could have even terminated her without making an announcement that she was a fornicator.

You have to look at it through their lens. It's not whether the transgression is an obvious one or not. It's whether the transgression was made. It violated her agreement and the trust the school and the parents put in her to be a moral example for their children. The fact that the school didn't sweep it under the rug because it could have been hidden actually reinforces the honesty of their opinions. Unless they've colluded to hide similar transgressions in the past they appear to be fairly straightforward on the matter.

I don't know how the announcement was made, it could have been making an example of her, it could have been an announcement, answering a question, or a statement at a PTA/school board meeting that got filtered down to other parents and students, I don't know. So while it sounds like something went wrong there, I don't know what it was or whether I think it was so far out of line that I'd be suing too.

Far point. But depending on how it was done, it seems to me to be a case of casting stones.

Yes, I'm reserving judgment on that point until I find out more.

I do hope it's clear that I don't agree with the school, I just try to understand it from their perspective.

I know some have applauded the school for not appearing to draw a distinction between her transgression with her fiance and some slut puppy/whore dog who was sleeping with anything that moved, but I think the fact that she was in a committed relationship which lead to marriage should have been a consideration - "Go forth and sin no more", as Jesus said. She MARRIED the man, and is hardly what I would consider a bad role model. How many of those on the school board were virgins when they married? Can we check and see the birth dates and weights of their children and do the math? So if she had snuck off and had an abortion that would've been okay, because no one would have had to know? I totally understand the need to model a Christian life - but that should also include the acknowledgement that it is possible to make a mistake and reform yourself, as she apparently did. What, they didn't give her a scarlet "F"? I'm far too familiar with this type of sanctimonious holier-than-thou Christianity - and it stinks.

Eh, I'm kind of over the slut shaming myself. "At least she wasn't a slut" perpetuates a negative attitude towards women and sex.

If you agree to a set of rules, it's not really any more OK to break them just because. Forgiveness requires penitence, and I don't think she was particularly sorry, nor IMO should she have been. But she shouldn't have worked for that school if she was going to violate the rules and/or was going to fess up to it.

There's breaking the rules and there's getting caught. If you're going to break the rules, then don't get caught. There's nothing more OK about having an abortion (in their minds) and that's a misleading road to go down. She's probably not the only one who's violated the code but she got caught. Just like how "everyone" speeds but only a few people get caught. If the people enforcing this rule are hypocrites and have violated it themselves or allowed others to skate, that's one thing, but you don't really know that one way or the other.

Why is there an assumption that she wants to "reform?" I get the whole forgiveness aspect but if she's not sorry for what she did then she's not really going to go "sin no more" is she?

I hate this aspect of religious schooling and think it should be handled differently, but I think some of the arguments are ridiculous too. I'm basing my opinions on the understanding that she signed a contract. If that's wrong, I'll re-evaluate. But assuming she did, the school had every right to fire her, even if that makes them asshats. And telling them they should have forgiven her instead is trying to tell them what they should believe which is a road that I think we would prefer not to go down ourselves.

I never said there wasn't ANY judgement present, I said the isolated act of admitting why the teacher was fired was not a judgement in itself. If you think it was, you're wrong.

I second what DF said about forgiveness. It would involve expressing remorse and it seems she hasn't (and no one here is saying she should have). Her personal life was her own business and the school shouldn't have asked or told others once they found out IMO. However, they did ask if she'd fornicated and she admitted she had. Presuming there's a clause in this mythical contract that she signed about fornication being an offense worthy of dismissal, she either shouldn't have done it or refused to answer the question based on its impropriety. She instead confessed to breaking a rule, unashamedly and unapologetically. Depending on how the rest of the school found out, her best bet is to sue for a violation of privacy I would think.

Honestly, I think this whole thing is despicable. I grew up in schools like this and I still think it's awful. The school was way out of line in probing into her sex life then discussing it with others after (both of those have some big "ifs" as we don't know the whole story). I don't agree with firing someone whose "questionable morals" have not caused harm to others or themselves, but that's just me. If it's in the paperwork, she had no choice but to comply or receive the sanction she was warned of, as much as that sucks.

Exactly. I personally intend to NEVER work at a place that requires me to give up autonomy of my body, my mind or my beliefs. I may not always have that luxury, a lot of people don't. Food and shelter trump a lot of principles. But that's where I've drawn my line in the sand, hopefully I never have to cross it. But if I signed up for it I'd lie as necessary and hide how I felt, but I wouldn't be shocked if I'd gotten fired either.

I said the school could use this as an example of being able to show the Christian principle of forgiveness. According to Jesus, whether she "expresses remorse" is neither here nor there when it comes to loving others as you would love yourself. If he'd been so cutthroat it's unlikely he would have such a huge following today. Of course, most people aren't going to be able to REALLY forgive every time they should, but trying is better than nothing.

Nothing's gonna change my mind on that. I've spent years dealing with the "do as I say not as I do" approach to Christianity and it irks me for the people that really do try their hardest to remember what Jesus had to say about how to treat others.

Like the snake said to the man he bit, "You knew what I was when you first picked me up." Don't go to/be employed by a school that espouses certain beliefs with a degree of rigidity and expect to get a pass if you get busted.

I don't think this kind of Christianity is very Christian either, but I'm guessing at some point the school's policies threw someone else under the bus for this or that and this teacher didn't say squat.

There's nothing that says they don't "love" her, but Jesus did say "go and sin no more" not "go and sin more if you feel like it." Pretty much every concept of forgiveness whether personal or religious requires the expression of remorse. I would be more inclined to agree with you if she said not "Please let me keep my job" but "I'm sorry I sinned." She might have said the former but we have no indication that she said the latter. And even then, transgressions have consequences. "I'm sorry I broke the lamp" leads to "I forgive you, but you will need to pay from your allowance until you replace it."

Assuming that the school board/officials don't practice what they preach is your own bias. That's fine, just realize that there's no evidence of that either way at this point. We don't know if they looked at her aghast and yelled "SINNER! SHUN THE SINNER!" or said "I'm very sorry but you know that this was against your contract and we have to let you go."

As to the question of whether or not she felt the need to "reform" - she's married. To the man in question. So if the question is what kind of example she is, I'd argue that she is a good example of how to live a good, not perfect, life. The students are watching and learning - but what is it they are learning?

Again, the school may have been following the letter of the "law" as in contract, but not the spirit. It seems to be another example of a zero tolerance type of rule, which have always struck me as a cop-out. Life is difficult, and messy, and requires discernment. Every situation is different, and should be dealt with individually.

I couldn't resist
 

I agree, I just think we're assuming that it wasn't dealt with individually because we don't like the outcome. We don't know how she reacted, we don't know if there was another option presented. We really just don't know.

The only thing I've seen on the news that perhaps provided new information is that she may have been pressured to resign rather than actually being fired (although she would have been had she not resigned) and I can't confirm that as I only caught the tail end of the report.

The other suggestion I've seen is that the school/principal didn't like having to cover maternity leave and used this as a pretense to fire her rather than cover her leave. That one suggests there was no contract.

If the latter was the case, than the school's a bunch of hypocritical liars and should be sued to the ground. But if they truly acted in good faith (ha) then they're within their rights to do even if we would never do that ourselves.

(And as for reform, she did marry him, but we have no idea whether she's actually "sorry" for her actions or not. If she's not, then just because she happened to be getting married to him anyway, it's not really "reforming." I tend to fall back mentally to the Catholic sacrament of Confession here but i think it's a good standard, you say sorry, you do something to make up for it or show your contrition, that's how you're forgiven. It typically requires both, not one or the other and we have no idea whether she's sorry she did it, sorry she got caught, or unapologetic.)

Well, she's "reformed" in the sense that she is no longer fornicating. :rolleyes:

Or she's learned better than to tell other people ;)

IMHO, they fired her because they just realized her husband was white. BEFORE I GET FLAMED, remember, Liberty University just changed that law about dating outside one's race. She will probably lose, the right to free assembly is stated in the constituion (boy scout lawsuit anyone....)

What does Liberty University have to do with anything? This school is not affiliated with it. And LU can't change any laws. I think the word you're looking for is "policy."

Thanks for bringing a shining ray of stupidity to this thread.

Free assembly =/= employment.

She's been married to her husband for 8 months, odds are they've seen him possibly even at the wedding.

Liberty University is not relevant to the conversation. The school might object to interracial marriage but there's no evidence to indicate that besides your assumptions and bad understanding of the constitution.