From the AP (via CNN):
WOODBURN, Indiana (AP) — A high school teacher who faced losing her job after a student newspaper published an editorial advocating tolerance of gays can continue teaching at another school.
Amy Sorrell, 30, reached an agreement that allows her to be transferred to another high school to teach English, said her attorney, Patrick Proctor.
"The school administration has said in no uncertain terms that she's not going to be given a journalism position," Proctor said.
Sorrell, who had been an English and journalism instructor at Woodlan Junior-Senior High School, was placed on paid leave March 19, two months after an editorial advocating tolerance of homosexuals ran in Woodlan's student newspaper, The Tomahawk. Sorrell had been the newspaper's adviser.
School officials in the conservative northern Indiana community about 10 miles east of Fort Wayne said Sorrell did not comply with an agreement to alert the principal about controversial articles.
The agreement she signed includes a written reprimand that says she neglected her duties as a teacher and was insubordinate in refusing to obey school officials' orders.
Sorrell said she is "very proud" of Megan Chase, the student who wrote the editorial calling for tolerance and acceptance of gays, and the Tomahawk's other writers and editors. But she said she could not financially afford to fight the school district over her discipline.
Of course, in true clueless mainstream media fashion, the AP titles this piece "school paper flap." So, actively preventing our kids from expressing their tolerance of others is merely "a flap"? And yet, when a kid goes nuts and kills 33 people because he hates everybody the same mainstream media gets busy expressing how inexplicable and incomprehensible it all is… uhm, no. The homophobic and intolerant attitude displayed by the administrators at Woodlan Junior-Senior High School helps facilitate this kind of atrocity and this, too: that's what will happen when kids already challenged by a woefully inadequate diet of biblethump and Fox News are given the impression that there really is no place in civilized society for tolerance towards gays, that's what happens when they are led to believe that their prejudices are condoned by society, when those who speak out in favor of tolerance are silenced.
More coverage of the "flap" can be found here and here. The local superintendent's response to the "matter" can be found here (and a copy is preserved here for posterity, just in case she realizes how incredibly embarrasing it is and yanks it), and it really is just mindboggling in its narrowmindedness. Her response is so bad, in fact, that it really deserves a response, so, in the spirit of the ultimate authority on matters of authoritarian bigotry, self-righteous bureaucrats and willfull ignorance I give you:
Dear Superintendent Dr. M. Kay Novotny (knovotny@eacs.k12.in.us),
Thank you for clarifying the muddled mess that has marred your otherwise perfect school district of delightsome straight, God-fearing children and righteous educators. I don't know what that child of an editor was thinking when she wrote
