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Fired Principal Lacey

Fired Principal Amy Lacey

File this account under “You’re much better off not working there.” From Townhall.com: 

On November 12, 2013, Amy Lacey, the principal of Texas’ Hempstead Middle School, was placed on administrative leave and subsequently fired when she made a simple request to students: speak English.

Now that the gag order has expired, Lacey is speaking out about what happened that day, dispelling rumors that she banned Spanish from the school’s campus.

‘I informed students it would be best to speak English in the classrooms to the extent possible, in order to help prepare them for [state] tests,’ she wrote in a letter to the Houston Chronicle explaining her side of the story. ‘It is important to note that I did not ban the use of Spanish anywhere in the school or at any time, even though teachers had reported to me that they had experienced instances in which students had been asked to stop talking during instruction, and they responded that it was their right to speak Spanish — ignoring the fact that they shouldn’t have been speaking [in any language] during class without permission. The perception of the teachers was that students were being disrespectful and disrupting learning, and they believed they could get away with it by claiming racism.

The Texas education bureaucracy is vast and powerful, and an enormous amount of money flows through it. Based in Austin, a radical liberal island surrounded by sea of solidly middle class values unconcerned with political correctness, there is often friction between schools, communities, and the Texas Education Agency.

English as a Second Language–ESL–is a substantial part of the TEA bureaucracy. Not unreasonably, Spanish-speaking students are required to learn to speak and write in English, and are tracked and tested throughout their school years. They are regularly rated in their English reading, writing and speaking abilities.

As a border state, these issues are of concern to all Texans, and particularly to Texas teachers who must every day deal with students with few or no English schools. While the larger cities in Texas, such as Houston and Dallas, tend to have a more liberal bent, this particularly case sounds like political correctness run amok. It is not at all unusual for teachers and principals to remind Spanish-speaking kids of the importance of English immersion. At the same time, few, if any teachers try to prevent kids from ever speaking Spanish, unless they are using it as a means of defiance or to misbehave.

By telling students to speak English, Lacey was not being racist, she was merely pointing out that the academic language in Texas is, by law, English.

‘Even so, I did not suggest that there would be any adverse consequences for any student speaking Spanish at any time. I merely encouraged students to speak English in classrooms by advising them that it would be to their advantage to do so especially with regard to state testing,’ she continued. “’English language immersion is an accepted best-practice teaching strategy, and Hempstead ISD board policy provides for its practice.’

She ended the letter thanking those who supported her ‘even when true facts were never given to the media’ because she and others were not allowed to publicly defend her position.

‘I think the public needs to know that in public education there are only one or two district personnel designated to talk to media,’ she wrote in closing, ‘so any teachers that would have liked to speak on my behalf were not allowed without risking their job status.

Another possibility is internal school district politics. School administration officials may simply have had animosity toward Lacey for any number of reasons, and seeing an opportunity to do away with her, took it.

There are, of course, deeper issues and implications. There are powerful forces that resist any requirement that Hispanic immigrants assimilate into American culture. This obviously involves refusing to learn English, or demanding that they deal with it on their terms, in effect, that Americans assimilate to them. It is hardly surprising that most that hold these views are illegal immigrants.

Legal immigrants from any nation tend to come to America with the goal of becoming Americans. It is part of the greatness of America that Americans do not demand anyone abandon their cultural heritage or their native language, however, they do not expect to have to learn hundreds of languages to accommodate immigrants, or to have to adopt their cultural norms.

One of my colleagues is Armenian. She does not speak her first language at school, and her colleagues and the kids find her Eastern European accent charming. Her example is catching and inspiring.

I love my Hispanic students no less than any others. Among them are always some of our hardest-working, brightest most accomplished students. They know that they are not to speak Spanish in class, if for no reason other than it’s not polite to speak a language others can’t understand. They may speak Spanish at home, and when conversing person to person, but even they know that they must learn English, and I regularly see kids more proficient in English helping their less proficient peers. Many of them quickly develop the ability to speak English without an accent, such is the flexibility of youth–if they’re motivated to use it.

Left to their own devices, teachers and students will quickly settle into a rhythm and routine that works for them. Hispanic kids learn to read, write and speak English. This is as it should be.

When political correctness and racial politics interfere the education process is sidetracked, and the kids most benefited by education are harmed. Such appears to be what happened to Ms. Lacey.

Fortunately, there are a great many schools, even in Texas, that are looking for good principals that obey the law. Ms. Lacey is better off having nothing to do with the Houston schools. And so, it appears, might be Houston students.