Draft policy tells Wake teachers not to share their personal political views in class
A proposed Wake County school policy tells teachers not to share their personal political views with students in their classes.
Wake Count school administrators presented Tuesday a draft policy on employee political activities that says teachers can have “impartial study and discussion of political or other controversial issues in the classroom” if it’s part of the “approved curriculum.”
But the policy also says employees “must be mindful of their responsibility to refrain from presenting their personal political views to students in the classroom.”
“We always encourage our teachers to be able to facilitate conversations with our students and let our students talk about and weigh issues and consider issues,” said Kendra Hill, senior director for employee relations. “But we also don’t want our employees placing their own political views or other views onto students in the classroom when they’re engaged in instruction.”
The policy comes during a time when the role of teachers in classrooms has come under scrutiny.
A task force formed by North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, charged that some teachers were politically indoctrinating their students.
In May, a Wake County pre-kindergarten teacher resigned after using LGBTQ-themed flash cards in her class. The district said the flash cards were not part of an approved pre-kindergarten curriculum and called them an “inappropriate instructional resource found in a preschool classroom.”
Some parents have spoken out at school board meetings to defend the teacher, accusing Wake of not doing enough to protect her from the backlash from critics.
Limits on free speech in class
AJ Muttillo, assistant superintendent for human resources, said Wake has multiple policies that touch on political activities. But he said the draft policy addresses how the school system doesn’t have a specific policy on employee political activity.
The policy’s wording comes from the North Carolina School Boards Association with changes from Wake school administrators and attorneys.
Members of the school board’s policy committee had questions about multiple parts of the policy, including how it deals with classroom instruction.
Neal Ramee, an attorney for the school board, said that employees don’t have absolute free speech rights when it comes to curricular content.
Ramee said the policy was worded so that a supervisor, principal or the superintendent can tell an employee that an activity isn’t appropriate for their students.
“We want to be flexible enough to preserve the district’s authority to step in on a case-by-case basis and say ‘I know you’re speaking from your heart here and you feel very strongly about this political issue, but that’s not appropriate for the classroom,’” Ramee told the board members.
Election year concerns
Other parts of the policy include:
▪ Employees can participate in political activities, such as registering and voting, campaigning for or against particular candidates or issues, opposing or endorsing a referendum, running for or serving in public office, attending political events and contributing funds to partisan groups or candidates.
▪ But those activities must not take place during work hours or involve expenditure of school system funds or public resources.
▪ Employees must also not make use of an official school position to encourage or to coerce students, employees or others to support or oppose a political party, candidate or issue.
“Employees, when exercising their rights as citizens, should take reasonable steps to ensure that their personal political activities or opinions are not erroneously attributed to the Board or the school system,” according to the policy.
The policy also talks about employees being role models and how their conduct should protect the integrity of the district.
The policy comes months ahead of this November’s mid-term elections, which will be full of national, state, county and municipal races. School board elections and a school construction bond referendum are also on the ballot.
Board members said Tuesday they wanted more time before sending the policy to the full board.
“When you’re talking about political activities, particularly in an election year, I think it’s something we have to be very mindful of because you are talking about fundamental First Amendment rights,” said board vice chairman Chris Heagarty.
“Anything you do that could be seen to be restricting or constraining some of those rights while an election is going on could be viewed as biased or could be viewed as like an intent by the board to either come down on one side of the issue.”
This story was originally published August 31, 2022 at 8:30 AM.
