Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 23, 1995 TAG: 9502230054
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That assumption is debatable - so debatable, in fact, that it was debated for seven hours Monday night. With dramatic testimony, the teacher, Rhonda Welch, appealed to the School Board to reverse the county school administrator's decision to suspend her without pay for 10 days and put her on probation for a year.
One point seems safely beyond debate. Without question, the hotel incident could hardly have been as ridiculous, could hardly have been as embarrassing to the school district, as the legal brouhaha it has touched off.
Pardon us, but isn't it reality-check time? This is not the O.J. trial. It's a doughnut dispute.
Welch, appropriately a drama teacher at Pulaski County High School, admits she lost her temper during a December field trip with students. She says the breakfast manager at a hotel in Colonial Heights was chintzy with doughnuts that comprised, in the main, a promised continental breakfast.
According to a parent chaperone, the breakfast manager tried to ration the doughnuts, one per student, and the kids were left hungry. When Welch protested, a tug of war over a box of doughnuts ensued - until a hotel security guard was called to the scene.
But the chaperone and others told the School Board that Welch had not thrown doughnuts on the floor or anywhere else within her aim, and when the melee ended there was not the mess all over the restaurant that the breakfast manager accused Welch and the students of making.
Well, which version should the School Board believe?
We prefer to leave that to the empaneled members to decide. But as they weigh the evidence, the jurors might ponder: Were they jelly doughnuts? Was a cream-covered glove found at the scene? Did anyone videotape the incident?
Even with documentary footage, the School Board would presumably want to take into account the suggestion that this apparently is the teacher's first such breach of decorum.
Too, that she acted on behalf of her students. The doughnuts were not for her, but for the hungry youngsters in her charge.
School Board members might also search their souls for traces of double standards. If a basketball coach lost his cool and had a fit, arguing over a bad call in front of hundreds of impressionable students, would he be suspended for 10 days without pay and placed on a year's probation?
Wouldn't a reprimand suffice?
It certainly would be cheaper presumably than what the attorneys will be charging both Welch and the school district to go at each other in this slow-motion doughnut donnybrook. There may not have been enough glazed or cinnamon at the continental breakfast, but there's no shortage of lawyers at a feeding frenzy.
If a reprimand isn't tough enough, maybe the board could make Welch write on a blackboard 100 times: I will not have temper tantrums, I will not get into food fights . ...
Memo: ***CORRECTION***