Seven teachers resign after colleague fired for helping girl

EAST LYNNE, Mo. -- Seven of the 10 classroom teachers in a tiny school district just south of Kansas City have decided that if Christa Price isn't good enough to teach there, neither are they.

However, the East Lynne School District in Cass County has already filled most of the jobs left vacant because of the teachers' resignations, superintendent Dan Doerhoff said Wednesday.

Doerhoff fired Price for insubordination after the four-year teacher helped a fourth-grade girl who was being disciplined by having to pick up rocks from a playground near the road in front of the school.

The 11-year-girl was being punished for refusing to do her schoolwork, but Price thought the penalty was a bit extreme -- even dangerous -- for her.

When she saw the unsupervised girl picking up rocks last September, Price went to Doerhoff's office to say she was concerned for the girl's safety and that the punishment might reflect badly on the school. Doerhoff, who is also the principal, shrugged off Price's concerns.

So on her free period, Price went out and helped the girl pick up rocks. The next day, other teachers went out, some grading papers while the girl worked.

At contract time in March, Doerhoff recommended firing Price, who until then had glowing performance evaluations and who was liked by parents and praised by colleagues. He said contracts were issued then to the other teachers, who had two weeks to return them. Seven of the teachers chose not to return their contracts.

Doerhoff, who would not identify the girl, said she was inside a fence that separates the school property from the highway, which he said had low traffic volume. He also said she was being monitored by a TV camera while she was working.

But one of the teachers who resigned, Jenny Neemann, said having a television monitor on the area where the girl worked wasn't enough.

"Somebody could have nabbed her in 10 seconds," she said.

Doerhoff estimated the rocks ranged in size from a little smaller than a baseball to about the size of a golfball, and that the girl was assigned to put them in a five-gallon bucket and dump them on the edge of the school property in an abandoned railroad line area.

The girl, whose name was not released, told The Kansas City Star that the assignment "made me feel like a slave."

The rocks were left in the area by a company that drilled wells for a ground-source heating and cooling system last summer. The area was graded after the work was done, but a number of rocks remained -- more than should be in a playground area, Doerhoff said.

The superintendent said other students had been assigned to gather rocks, but he won't use the disciplinary technique again because of the uproar.

"That would probably be ill-advised," he said.

Doerhoff also refused to sign the certification renewal that Price needs to get another teaching job. He said Tuesday that signing the renewal would not be consistent and "could put me in a pickle."

Jim Morris, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the department's Kansas City-area supervisor has offered to speak to certification officials on Price's behalf.

The fourth-grader's mother acknowledged that she and her husband had agreed to the rock-gathering punishment, which was the only alternative Doerhoff gave them to suspension.

"I love this woman," the mother said of Price. "What happened to Christa is beyond belief."

In a statement issued Tuesday, the teachers who resigned said, "If a teacher who advocates on behalf of safety of a student is not fit to be a teacher at East Lynne or anywhere in Missouri according to this administration, then none of us are fit to teach at East Lynne."

Doerhoff said Wednesday the district has offered contracts for all the vacant positions in the 163-student elementary school "and most of them have been filled."

"We're fortunate to be able to attract qualified applicants," he said. "Our salaries and benefits are like those in the Kansas City schools."

Price said she does not regret challenging Doerhoff for the sake of a girl she taught in second grade and who still shares a hallway hug with her every now and then.

"The first thing I told her when I went out there was, 'Don't fill the bucket so full,"' Price said.

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Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com