Franklin Special Considers Firing Tenured Elementary Teacher

by Emily West, Franklin Home Page

In a special-called Franklin Special School District board meeting, members voted to support the superintendent’s recommendation to fire one of the district’s tenured teachers.

Superintendent David Snowden provided the charges of dismissal before the board on Monday night. Inside the 12 page document, Snowden spelled out the reasons for the dismissal for Poplar Grove Elementary teacher Lynne Campbell. The board voted unanimously to take action recommended by Snowden.

According to the document, administrators placed the second-grade teacher on an intensive assistance plan, where Campbell never met the goals and guidelines spelled out for her progress.

“Over the course of the school years 2013-2016, Ms. Campbell demonstrated multiple incidents of unprofessional conduct and neglect of duty including displaying a lack of support for administrative decisions at the school and the school district,” the document stated. “As a result, her teaching abilities are called into serious question, resolution in the belief that another placement in a classroom would work significant harm to the child who she is to serve.”

During this last school year, the document said Campbell was late to school, continually disorganized in the classroom, didn’t keep up with the other second grade curricula and administrated tests for some students that had potentially inflated results.

Campbell also didn’t have everything prepared for substitute teachers on multiple occasions, along with not turning in grades for students’ report cards on time.

At the end of the year, administrators found her classroom in “complete disarray.” Chairs had been thrown into a pile with the desks stacked on top of each other. All electronic equipment and cables were tossed into a cardboard box.

“As the Director of Schools for the FSSD, I have no alternative but to recommend the dismissal of Ms. Campbell as a tenured teacher in the school system for the charges and causes herein stated,” Snowden wrote.

Following the board’s decision, Campbell would had the option to have a hearing regarding her potential dismissal.

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