Lizzette Strikes Again!
December 14th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Chris Comer, the Texas Education Agency’s science director, was forced out of her job last month for promoting a talk by a critic of intelligent design. Now, it appears that TEA employees can also jeopardize their jobs for not having a sufficiently sunny attitude about the current education scheme in Texas. In October, Lizzette Reynolds - the same person who called for Comer to be fired - found a “fire-able offense” in an email sent by Cami Jones, TEA’s director of early childhood development, according to copies of agency e-mails obtained by the Observer.
This revelation comes as Reynolds, a TEA deputy commissioner, tried today in the Statesman to distance herself from the Chris Comer firing.
The offending line came at the end of a long e-mail Jones sent to Pam Schiller, a freelance early childhood consultant and author, answering a question about upcoming revisions to the Pre-K curriculum. “I long for the good ole’ days when we were making good things happen for young children. Those were the days….take care….” [See the emails here, here, and here.]
Someone forwarded this email to Reynolds who, clearly outraged at this display of bitter nostalgia, emailed Jones’ supervisors later that day with a short message: “Unbelievable!! That last line is a fire-able offense. I want this documented. Let’s talk.”
Jones’ immediate supervisor, Monica Martinez, had already spoken with Jones about her email “a few minutes before [Martinez] saw the email from Lizzette.” Nonetheless, Martinez suggested that someone “may need to follow up and tell [Jones] that I am not the only one who has concerns,” ostensibly referring to Reynolds. The records trail peters out at this point.
However, TEA spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe confirmed that Jones is still working at the agency and evidently has not been fired. Ratcliffe wouldn’t comment further and suggested that the Observer file an open records request for Jones’ personnel file to learn more.
When contacted yesterday, Chris Comer, the former science director and Jones colleague, said her attorney had advised her not to speak to the media. However, in previous on-the-record comments to the Observer, Comer recalled that Reynolds had warned Jones not to write or say anything negative about TEA again.
Pam Schiller, who has known Jones for over 20 years, said Jones is “very much admired and loved by the early childhood community.” As far as the offending line in the email, Schiller believes Jones was specifically referring to a program the two worked on in the late 80s and early 90s called transitional first grade, a sort of extra year between kindergarten and first grade for struggling kids.
“I read nothing into that [line],” Schiller said. “That would be something I would say too. This is not the easiest time in life for children. They are under incredible pressure and so are the teachers.” Schiller and Jones are both at odds philosophically with the No Child Left Behind, high stakes testing regime that is increasingly imposed even on young children.
Schiller said Jones has butted heads with the No Child Left Behind partisans who run the show at TEA. “I think Cami has a difficult time there,” Schiller said. “She is kind of Don Quixote. She fights for the rights of children in a sturdy way. She is firm in her philosophical foundation of what she thinks is appropriate for small children … I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t looking for a way to make her quiet.”
In the interview with the Statesman published today, Reynolds baldly asserted that she “doesn’t think there is a muzzle on anyone [at TEA]. Everyone can express their opinions — goodness knows I have many — but we are a state agency and must respect the beliefs of Catholics, atheists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone.”
