Update: New Tennessean Story here.
Unnamed Rutherford County school officials tried to throw the spotlight off of their own system and on to Metro Schools. They got help from Clay Carey, a Tennessean reporter, and the editor decided it was worth a front page headline on Saturday, January 21, 2006. What are the "facts" as known to a reader in the public? Anderson was accused of "inappropriate socialization" with a student in 2003. The police investigated and wrote a letter to the school system saying the charges were without foundation. For unknown reasons--because non-tenured teachers were not given reasons in 2003--Anderson's contract was not renewed in Metro. Now 2½ years later, Anderson is in trouble in another county. The implication in the Tennessean is that somehow Metro did something wrong.
What kind of world would we have, if Metro did something wrong in this case? First, it would be a world where any parent complaint, no matter how unfounded, would be recorded in a personnel file and reported to any potential employer. Second, any police or other investigating report which showed the report was unfounded would have no effect on future job prospects. Third, there would be no limit to what a teacher could do to be accused of "inappropriate socializing." One teacher was so accused for giving a student of the opposite sex a ride home from school in his car.
Text messages are more permanent than phone calls, but what could be labeled--for newspaper readers--sexually explicit? Perfectly legal advice about safe sex or Planned Parenthood could be labeled as sexually explicit. "Romantic and occasionally racy messages" are obviously another matter. The good news is that these messages are recorded and sober judges can decide if and how much they might be over the line.
[Reserve space to research if text messages can come from one phone but appear to come from another.]
Witch hunting became much more organized in 2003 so that if a teacher resigned during the process of an investigation, his/her name had to be reported to the State of Tennessee and the license to teach would be revoked. This would not apply to Anderson's case since he did not resign. Further, if a teacher were investigated and found to have actually committed some kind of sexual offense against a student, this also had to be reported to the state, and the license to teach would be removed, as well as notifying a central data base for all other states. No thoughtful person wants to remove any reasonable protection that we have in place for students. On the contrary, to punish a teacher, or to criticize Metro for failing to punish a teacher, who has been investigated and found to be not guilty, takes us into some frightening new directions.
Again, on Tuesday, January 24, 2006, the Tennessean editor saw this story as worthy of the top headline on page one. Additional facts were listed.
1. With the picture, showing Anderson to be African-American, the question was put to rest as to whether he was the son of Kenneth Anderson and Senator Mary Anderson of Nashville.
2. The charge of inappropriate socialization was really a charge of statutory rape since a young woman accused him of being the father of her child. DNA tests showed that this charge was false. It is hard to have more conclusive proof of a lie. Overheated journalistic rhetoric on page one of "serious allegations of misconduct" still did not change the fact that the charge was false.
3. Claudette Riley did far more than the dueling quotes typical of other Tennessean reporters. She gave an exhaustive chronology of Anderson's personnel file along with quotes from spokespersons from each system. The spokespersons essentially said that a person was innocent until proven guilty--as mentioned above.
4. Bob Wilson and Alvin Jones were mentioned. Wilson apparently gave a verbal recommendation not to hire--disputed by the Rutherford County people. Jones, not ever a Hillsboro principal, gave a positive verbal recommendation to Williamson County, and no record exists of problems there.
5. Educators are generally suspicious of teachers who move school systems often. However, this is not unusual for those who do not have a full license to teach. Reading between the lines, we can suspect that--without better pay and working conditions--this kind of problem will recur as we see more itinerate teachers.