The Texas Education Agency is recommending that a Fort Worth teacher fired after tweeting to President Donald Trump and asking him to remove illegal aliens from her home city be reinstated.
High school English teacher Georgia Clark was fired by Fort Worth ISD last June for what was alleged to be “racially insensitive and discriminatory” comments she made on Twitter.
But a review of Clark’s social media activity shows she was largely asking the president to enforce the law.
“Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated,” she said in one of the tweets.
“Mr. President, Fort Worth Independent School District is loaded with illegal students from Mexico. Carter-Riverside High School has been taken over by them,” she said in another.
After Clark was fired, she appealed to the TEA, which last week found the school did not show “good cause” for dismissing her and that firing employees for contacting their lawmakers would have a “chilling” effect.
Indeed, the examiner assigned by TEA to investigate the case wrote in August that Fort Worth ISD violated Clark’s First Amendment rights by moving to fire her and that the tweets were not “racially insensitive and/or discriminatory.”
Fort Worth ISD dismissed Morath’s ruling as a “technicality.”
“It appears the commissioner ruled the way he did based on a technicality, and we are exploring all of our options,” said Barbara Griffith, a spokeswoman for the school district. “This is all we are going to say right now, as we have not yet had a chance to review and analyze the entire decision.”
Fort Worth ISD officials said they would appeal Morath’s decision, adding they believe they had good cause to fire Clark.
“We stand by our decision because we firmly believe this is in the best interest of all students,” Superintendent Kent P. Scribner said in a statement.
