Schools

District Out of Touch with Technology, Fired Teacher Says

Some students wrote letters of apology to former Land O' Lakes High teacher Angelica Cruikshank for the things they said on Facebook.

She was asked by an administrator to get "concrete" evidence of misbehavior on a Facebook page. When she did, Land O' Lakes High Spanish teacher Angelica Cruikshank lost her job.

And in the process, she was dragged through the mud by both local and global media before the board made its decision, Cruikshank said. The Tampa Bay Times called her actions a "witch hunt." The UK's Daily Mail snagged photos from Cruikshank's own Facebook page without her permission, she said.

The frenzy started with a student's confession: A student approached Cruikshank on Jan. 16 with concerns about a Facebook group page created by LOLHS Class of 2015 students, according to public record documents obtained from the school district.

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The page contained libelous statements about Cruikshank, other teachers and students, the student told her. The girl had been bullied in the past, Cruikshank said, which caused the teacher some concern.

But the student did not want to take her concerns about the page to school administration at the time, according to documents submitted to the district by Cruikshank's attorney. 

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That changed a little more than a week later.

On Jan. 27, Cruikshank and the student went to assistant principal Amy Riddle to report the page, "because the Facebook page and the behavior of the students was out of control and (the student) wanted to report it," according to Cruikshank's appeal hearing documents. 

Riddle told them there was nothing she could do without "concrete evidence," the document states.

The following week, Cruikshank had students access the group page so she could see the statements. Her access to the page was the beginning of the end of Cruikshank's career in the district.

By Friday, Feb. 3, following a slew of complaints from students and parents, Cruikshank was removed from her classroom during second period and put on unpaid leave. She was removed with 20 minutes left in the period in front of the students, even though the following period was her planning period—a time when she could have been removed without the students witnessing it, she said.

The following Monday, Cruikshank said she received a phone call from Supervisor of Employee Relations Tom Neesham. He told her the whole thing had snowballed, and he didn't know why it had become such a big deal, Cruikshank said.

Would she need to get an attorney? She asked him. Neesham didn't think that would be necessary, Cruikshank said he told her.

In a letter dated Feb. 17, she was notified by the Pasco school district that Superintendent Heather Fiorentino intended to recommend Cruikshank's termination.

It was the start of a process that would take more than seven months to culminate in Cruikshank's eventual firing over her access to that group page. Students testified that she called them out in class, "embarrassing" them, according to an investigator's notes. They also accused her of withholding field trip permission slips from those she believed had made derogatory comments about her on the page, a "secret group" that can only be accessed by invited members.

In the investigator's notes, a student said that Cruikshank told her second period class that she knew about the page, that "slander was wrong," and that "she wanted the page down."

The next day, according to the investigator's notes, she said there would be consequences because the page wasn't down. That consequence: not being allowed on an upcoming field trip to the Salvador Dali Museum.

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The district's finding of fact in the case, which recommended the school board uphold the superintendent's recommendation for termination, paints a picture of fear and intimidation by Cruikshank, based on the students' testimony before the board.

"These high-achieving students were not only embarrassed by being singled out, they were upset about the missed educational opportunity," the district's proposed final order states.

Cruikshank said she was concerned about foul language and negative statements about her and others on the page because her classes used a lot of technology, and corresponded regularly with international students online.

"My intention was never to not let them go. My intention was to make them think," Cruikshank told Patch after her recent firing. 

By the time she was removed from her classroom that Friday, she had permission slips from everyone except two girls, "because they said they weren't going to go," Cruikshank said.

Cruikshank said that in addition to the libelous statements on the LOLHS Class of 2015 page, she also had been made aware of students cheating on other Facebook pages in the past, something that the student page administrator denied during her testimony, according to the district's attorney's finding of fact in the case.

An email from a student to Cruikshank dated May 11 contained a screenshot of an "IB Freshman Peeps" page, on which students were sharing information on upcoming exam questions. "I don't like to rat, but this is just a stupid thing to do," the student said in the email.

Cruikshank says the district is out of touch with technology, and that by firing her over her access to the group page, it is giving students license to cheat and bully and libel each other—and teachers—in an unmoderated forum.

Students can access Facebook from their phones on campus, so the activity that occurs on the pages is school business if the well-being of students and teachers is affected, Cruikshank said she believes.

Some students wrote to Cruikshank after she was suspended to let her know they were sorry for the words that eventually brought the page to her attention.

"The page was completely out of line," one student wrote.

"I would just like to let you know that for what I did at the beginning of the year, I am extremely sorry for. ... I realize that venting my anger via Facebook was the wrong thing to do," another student wrote.

The district's attorney's finding of fact in the case stated that Cruikshank often "changed her story" during her appeal testimony, but noted that the students were consistent in their testimonies.

The school board's vote to uphold the superintendent's recommendation for Cruikshank's termination was unanimous.

Should Students' Facebook Activity Always Be Off Limits to School Personnel? Take our poll. 

See also: Land O' Lakes High Teacher Fired for Looking at Students' Group Facebook Page


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