A French teacher at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Florida, will serve a five day suspension without pay for referring to a Muslim student multiple times as "The Taliban" in school. Cypress Bay HS in Broward County (Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood, Forida), is the 6th largest school district in the United States. The modern school is the county's largest, and most prestigious one, with a talented faculty. It also is located in the home town of Democratic National Committee Director, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and is an exceptionally wealthy community, on par with Boca Raton, Florida, or the Coral Gables neighborhood in Miami where UM is located. The school also is noted for having a large Hispanic population - legal immigrants, from wealthy South American families who come to America and settle in Weston. The Broward County School Board approved the suspension without discussion on Tuesday, despite ongoing protests from the student's father and other community members who wanted tougher disciplinary measures. Youssef Wardani, father of the 14-year old student called the decision 'disgusting.' He said he was working with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to pursue some sort of legal action against the school district. "I'll keep sitting in their face until they recognize what they've done," said Wardani, an engineer in Weston. As part of the discipline, teacher Maria Valdes will also undergo diversity training. ??? This in a school swarming with wealthy children of South American immigrants and hasn't given diversity training? Bureaucracy always drops the ball. Valdes, who has been working in the district since 2004 can appeal the decision. Superintendent Robert Runcie apologized to the Wardani family and said he understood the sting of discrimination. He shared stories of having racial slurs aimed at him during morning jogs and struggling to hail cabs while working in Chicago. Runcie is Black. "I hope you can understand, given my life-experiences, why I took this situation seriously," Runcie said, maintaining the case was handled appropriately. "Any situation involving wrongful treatment of our students is something we absolutely don't tolerate." But Wardani, 46 remained frustrated by the decision. "You have failed every teacher, parent and child in this district," he said. Wardani said during the week of February 2nd, his son walked into French class wearing a hoodie because he wasn't feeling well that day. His teacher then allegedly said in front of the entire class: "Here comes the rag-head Taliban." A district complaint said Valdes referred to 9th grader Deyab-Houssein as "lets just ask the Taliban" on several occasions. For a high school teacher to bully and discriminate against a 14-year old Freshman student, no matter what their religious or national origin is, violates the anti-bullying policy of Broward County - and probably violates it in every school district in America. The family wanted the teacher suspended for a year, but, Cypress Bay being the prestigious HS held up as the shining example of American education in South Florida, along with being the richest one in the district, lets this teacher off with a five day suspension, just before Spring Break anyways. It opens the door for every student at the high traffic school to bully younger students, particularly Islamic ones, of which there are more and more in our schools daily, and humiliates a 14-year old Freshman boy - for wearing a hoodie to class. I have lived in Broward County for 18-years, and watched as the School District and its school's have gone through a major decline year after year, and maintained a steadfast policy of paying the lowest wages imaginable to their teacher's. The Broward County voters last November passed an $800 million dollar bond issue for facility fixes at the county's crumbling schools - in one of America's top tourist attraction cities, with beautiful beaches and major cruise ship line access. The county is multicultural to the max, and a five day suspension by a teacher, from its top school, is about as serious as giving a student a 1-day Internal Suspension for discipline problems in class. The kid apparently had no record whatsoever, of disruption or poor grades, but this idiot teacher decides to bully and belittle him in front of his classmates. What kind of lesson does that send to the student body from the faculty? Not only should the teacher have been suspended, but. having worked in the district for eight years, and not undergone, or ignored diversity training, IMO, the school principal should be gone also. We apparently just get uglier and uglier in our personal and professional relationships, no wonder our political system is a mess, when we allow our teacher's to bully our students like this, what type of citizens are they going to grow up to be?........
The teacher, who makes in the $40,000 a year range, was fined about $1,000 dollars by being suspended without pay for 5 days. I think that's sufficient for a first offense. A week's pay would hurt me. Also what evidence do you have that diversity training is a job requirement for teachers in Broward County?
She should lose 40 grand plus benes. They should fire the (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) and I use the word in illustration, what would happen to a student who called a teacher that? This wasn't a one time thing or a joke that went bad. According to the article it was a repeated campaign by this teacher to bully this student entirely because of his ethnicity. Again, what would happen to a student who did that to a teacher, or even another student? Were I a parent there I would pull my kid out until the school fired the teacher and urge other parents to do the same. I wouldn't want my kid around somebody so flagrantly bigoted, nor in a school that tolerates that kind of person. Teachers, after all, are supposed to know better.
Broward County, Florida's schools has full and detailed diversity training required for all of their teachers, and employees, instructional and non-instructional, and their students, which also extends into social media regulations regarding diversity and bullying. I agree the teacher should have got at least a one year suspension, let her reapply in 6-months, and get her out of Cypress Bay HS. The principal also should be reprimanded for allowing this to go unnoticed for so long. Had it occurred in any other high school other than Cypress Bay, Broward County's flagship school, with their "allegedly" best principal, that teacher would have been gone. Money talks, Weston is super wealthy, and Cypress Bay gets anything and everything it wants from the School Board immediately, despite desperate needs in many of their other schools. At the School Board meeting where this was decided, the boys father was allowed to speak, but numerous community leaders, and PTA members from that school were silenced with an immediate threat to clear the committee room by the School Board when they tried to support the boy's father and speak their mind. Politics and crooked, that is the history of Broward County's School Board in the time I have lived here. All that being said, what about the student? Just seven months out of the 8th grade and he has to tolerate this type of bullying from a teacher? We are not talking about some Harvard professor here who thinks he was discriminated against to such an extent that the President of the United States stepped in and ran a beer bash on the South Lawn of the White House to let the dust settle. We are talking about a kid........White; Black; Hispanic; Catholic; Islamic; Jewish or Mormon, a teacher decides to criticize the boy, and that opens up an entire "can-of-worms" as students and other faculty see the slap on the hand she got for bullying, a policy our schools work non-stop to eliminate through education, communication and diversity training. Every other profession, the perpetrator of discriminatory language, threats, and touching gets fired - here - a week off in the sun. And people wonder why kids sometimes walk into schools with automatic rifles and murder their fellow students and teachers? Who knows - they just may have been bullied to such an extent they snap and can no longer take the abuse. Lets hope that isn't the case here, but it wouldn't be the first time a student committed such an act. Fourteen year old boys and girls are certainly not mature enough to remember most days to bring pens and pencils to school (they won't ever forget that cellphone however), and shouldn't be subject to abuse in the workplace or school by person(s) in authority over them, particularly teachers.........
Based on my observation, a student would either have their wrist slapped (aka scolded by the principal), or maybe a day's suspension for cursing at a teacher. And when did the student report these? If they were reported, you might have a point, but there is no evidence that this was reported before the incident that got her suspended. It may have occurred multiple times, but how many times had it occurred before it was reported? We don't have enough info to say she deserves to be fired. We do have enough evidence that suggests she should be fined $1000 (aka a week's suspension without pay). I do agree, that the student should be able to have his schedule changed.
What evidence is there that this has happened? I haven't seen enough information to say that this lady should be fired. If there is corroboration of the statements from other students, maybe, but until that point, it's just "he said, she said"
