Interesting case in New York.  Two teachers caught having sex in a classroom – but after-hours and more or less away from students were fired.  The state’s supreme court just overturned that decision saying, among other  things, that the penalty was disproportionate to the offense and that teachers who have harmed children have not been fired so why should these two be?

In an informal survey of educators and analysts (meaning I emailed some colleagues) no one condoned it but views about appropriate action were all over the place. Some said that it’s definitely a fireable offense and that anything less is unacceptable. While others said based on the publicly known facts doesn’t seem worthy of immediate termination but rather some other action.  Others said that whatever they think is less important than what the district thought it should do and so they were opposed to the court action as a process issue. In the private sector this sort of thing is handled differently by different organizations, there are not hard and fast rules.

What do you think?