Constitutional Law

N.J. district punishes teacher for comments on secret recording

By By The Associated Press

PASSAIC, N.J. ? A New Jersey special education teacher was suspended for nine days and docked a pay raise for comments that were caught on a secretly recorded video.

Alissa Ploshnick was due to return to work today after being punished over comments that appeared in an online video dubbed "Teachers Unions Gone Wild." The undercover footage was shot at a New Jersey Education Association leadership conference last summer and was released by self-styled muckraker James O?Keefe.

Ploshnick is heard on the tape saying how hard it is to fire tenured teachers and telling a story about a teacher who had used the "N'' word to a student and was not fired.

Passaic Superintendent Robert Holster told The Star-Ledger of Newark that he considered bringing a harsher punishment of tenure charges. Holster said Ploshnick's comments were "professionally insulting" and not "the responsible behavior of a professional person employed by the Passaic Board of Education."

"The character of an educator has to be beyond the school bell. It doesn?t take place only in school," Holster was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

The superintendent said the incident that Holster described did not occur in Passaic.

"Passaic is multicultural and everyone has to be extremely sensitive in their thinking if they're on our payroll," he told the newspaper.

An New Jersey Education Association spokesman told the newspaper that Ploshnick, who once was named "Teacher of the Year," deeply regrets what she said. Steve Wollmer said an "operative" bought Ploshnick drinks and secretly recorded her at the bar, engaging her in what she thought was a "social" conversation.

Ploshnick did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment.

A message left for Ploshnick on her Facebook page was not immediately returned and the superintendent could not be reached in time for this story. The district was closed for Veterans Day.

Full post as published by First Amendment Center on November 11, 2010 (boomark / email).