Anoka-Hennepin School District / Teachers accused of slurs side...

Villaume sounds like as big of a jerk as his client. She should "move on" as the taxpayers are asking her to do. Comptemplating legal action; what a joke! "people should move on" take your own cheap advise there chief. Take Ms. Clevage by the hand and help her find her way out of "teaching", the Laugh Factory is always looking for new comedians.

If I were the student. I would personally release the names of the teachers, to any newspaper that would print my statement and let the teachers TRY to prosecute me.

Fire them both! School is hard enough without teachers getting onvolved in the crap that kids have to deal with. These teachers helped create an ugly/hostile environment for Alex Merritt to learn in.

I am glad his mother made the complaint and hope these 2 are fired!

These people are educators, o hold on there not educators there biggots and harmed a student thats a crime and harrasememt also , ok we trust these things are delt with in a swift and well for all way teachers like this need to have a life of other than a class room, as should cops and electied persons banned form this kind of , thing ever happening ever again this witch needs to burn ok not a fare thing to say ,yes it is she needs to be put on a list of incompatant persons and go work at the county dog pound cleaning kennels for 3to 5 years ....

I'm SHOCKED that 2 teachers could behave so childishly. They should absolutely be fired. The one contemplating "legal action" just prooves how childish she is...if you can't handle the flak from your comments, honey, maybe you shouldn't have made them.

If the teachers union protects these pigs, there is definetly somthing wrong with them, i remeber in school the ridicule because i didnt score high on american hist test the as-hole made me sit in the back of the class with 6 empty desks in front of me. thank god these people are few.

The real problem here is that in the year 2009 many find it still acceptable to practice discrimination against homosexuality. It's the last socially acceptable form of discrimination. Would it even be an issue for these teachers to keep their jobs had they used racial slurs? The suicide rate among gay, lesbian and transgender youth is among the highest of any group and to have someone who is supposed to provide education of a beneficial nature abuse their power to foster hate is beyond deplorable. This story could have had a much more tragic ending. Williams's lawyer suggests that "people need to move on," but I suggest people stop dead in their tracks and really think about this. Both of these teachers should be fired for their actions and I would go further to argue they should be made examples of. The school board paid for the settlement, but where did that money come from? Was it tax payer dollars that ultimately footed the bill? People should be upset about that. The teacher's should be forced to pay that money back and have their teacher's licenses permanently revoked and never be allowed back in any classroom.

Doesn't Anoka-Hennepin have a zero tolerance policy on bullying?. Isn't that the ultimate in bullying. A teacher in an authorative position making those sorts of threats is much worse than one kid bullying another!! Wake up school board-

It is no small thing to destroy the career of a professional, nobody likes to see years of education and graduate studies go down the tubes, and people do make mistakes. However, C&F's continuing failure to apologize and take public responsibility for the wrongs they committed -- probably on the advice of their lawyers -- are making this inevitable. The unions hurt them by protecting them from sanctions that would have satisfied the public, and the district hurt them by paying Mr. Merritt too little money for the damages he sufferred.

Further, Ms. Cleveland should have gone to that diversity class with a 104 degree temp, an IV pole and pain meds. She compounded her mistakes by blowing off the too-mild punishement she did receive.

Hey, they could employ these two to do the Education Minnesota spots for the teachers unions which boast about educators professionalism, how little money there is for kids and how victimized the union is.

I believe we will hear from the teachers soon. Accused and guilty are very different. Before we ask that they be hung, we should trust the investigation did not prove much, or else they would have been fired. This happened in January of 2008! Everyone loves to find a "cause" but I do not believe this is it. Maybe this kid made it up and is the real jerk.

"Daily taunting"? I suppose this means the other children kept up the taunting which made the school so uncomfortable for the student.
Obviously the teachers are being dealt with. I would be more concerned about the rest of this school's student population that continued with this bigotry.
There are things that make us all different and by not addressing the rest of the people that kept up the "daily taunting" those students will end up being the leaders of our communities with bigotry in their hearts.

Oh, come on. These two teachers were just doing their jobs.
They were teaching the other students how to be narrow minded, discriminatory, homophobic bullies.
If they don't learn how in school, where will they learn such behavior?

newsmom wrote:

I believe we will hear from the teachers soon. Accused and guilty are very different. Before we ask that they be hung, we should trust the investigation did not prove much, or else they would have been fired. This happened in January of 2008! Everyone loves to find a "cause" but I do not believe this is it. Maybe this kid made it up and is the real jerk.

I can't imagine transferring to a new school the year before graduating something a "jerk" would do just to get a teacher fired. Sounds ridiculous to me. As somebody who gets teased on a daily basis for acting too gay (whatever that means), I can only imagine the horror of teachers inspiring and instigating the behavior.

As it is, teachers turn a blind eye when students are bullied and taunted for being, or in this case appearing to be gay.

"He also said it's questionable whether the human rights department violated the data practices act by releasing the names of the teachers. Villaume said they are contemplating taking legal action."

Did anyone else catch this? The HUMAN RIGHTS department? Perhaps Nancy Ngo failed to realize HR typically means human resources?

So the real problem appears to be the family took the "hush money" and still will not let this go away. The teachers should have just been terminated, that is what would have happened in a private business.

Bown out of proportion? I don't believe so. Icannot begin to imagine the damage these two Neanderthals have done. Maybe they can find another type of employment in which their gutter speak is not so destructive.

Too bad when teacher's are more immature than their students. If the allegations are true, they should be fired.

Fire them Both.End of story.

They behavior was totally unacceptable and inappropriate they should have had there homophobic butts fired!