This is my first time on Teachers.Net. I
read with interest Tom's letter regarding
certification and ethics, and Tom Lucey's
article concerning administrators' affect
on student achievement. I have been
fighting for teachers' Constitutional
rights, and fighting against power-hungry
administrators for the past year. I taught
English and U.S. History at Los Lunas High
School in Los Lunas, New Mexico for
thirteen years. I have spent most of my
fourteenth year on administrative leave.
This is a long, frightening story, but I
have learned that it is not unusual in the
business/political mess that education has
become. For three years the Los Lunas
district has been under the reign of
superintendent Danny Burnett. The high
school has been the domain of principal Rex
Henington. Henington had a reputation for
violence before he was hired by the
district, once knocking down, then kicking,
a student when he was a teacher. Our weak
and ineffective state NEA attempted to
discourage the board from hiring Henington,
but he is Burnett's close friend, and
Burnett controls the board. Henington's
abuse of power began soon after he started
working at LLHS. It was clear that he
enjoyed picking on female staff and
faculty. He especially liked to make
females cry. He is a loud, 6'2", 235 pound
ex-coach. He once said that our pesky
First Amendment makes his job difficult, so
he ignores it most of the time. Female
security guards were his first two
victims. One he locked in his office while
he verbally assaulted her, standing against
the door so that she could not get away.
She literally had to fight with him to get
the door open to leave. She filed an
assault charge with the police, and a
complaint with EEOC. She was fired, and
shortly afterward, her husband was fired
too. It is a favorite ploy of this
administration, assuring them that victims
can't afford an attorney. Another female
security guard nearly went through the same
ordeal, but she knew what had happened
previously, and fought with Henington when
he tried to lock her in his office, She
got away, but suffered retaliation. A
principal from the middle school asked her
to transfer to the middle school, which she
did. Now we know that it was just one of
many, many timss another administrator or
board member has had to step in to protect
Henington. I tried to stay out of his way,
having only one minor run-in with him in
January of 2000. I had not attended an in-
service on January 8th, and he caught me on
the sidewalk on the 10th, yelling at me
about not attending. He said he knew I was
on campus that day, and had office
personnel look for me. I had a personal day
off on the 8th, but went to school anyway,
to work on a computer project for my
students. I assume he forgot that he signed
the permission form. There was no sense in
attempting to explain to him, so I went
into the school, leaving him on the
sidewalk yelling. On March 7, 2001, I
desperately needed to get to the bank
before 3:00. For the third or fourth time
in 13 years I signed out to leave at 2:30,
just as the bell rings. If teachers need to
leave when the students do, yet beat
student traffic, we leave the classroom
about five minutes before the bell rings.
I asked the teacher across the hall from me
(he was on prep, and about six feet from my
room) to keep an eye on my 11th-grade
students. I got into my car and started
backing out slowly. Out of the corner of
my eye I saw Henington rushing toward my
car, flapping his arms like a child
pretending to fly, his face red and
contorted. He started screaming at the top
of his lungs,"Where are you going? You
didn't sign out. There's no one watching
your students!" I rolled down my window,
and explained that I had signed out, and
that someone was watching my kids. He
screeched into his walkie-talkie to the
secretary, telling her to look at the
signout sheet. Of course my name was
there. He yelled at me that I had not told
the secretary I was leaving. I said that I
was sorry, but that after 13 years there, I
had never been told that I had to tell her,
as long as we signed out, and had our class
watched. He went bonkers, lunging toward
my car, screaming that I was out of control
just because I was nearing retirement, that
all of the administrators had been
discussing my out-of-control behavior! He
yelled that I had better not send him any
more nasty memos. I had never sent him a
nasty memo! As I looked at the rage and
hatred on his face, I knew that he was
capable of hurting one of us or one of the
students. There had been rumors about his
violence toward Mexican National students,
and there were female members of the staff
or faculty in the hall in tears far too
often. Complaints to the board and the
superintendent were unheeded. I decided
that enough was enough. I parked my car
and went to the NEA rep to file a
grievance. It is hard to believe now that
I was naive enough to think that I could
help force him stop harassing people. That
was the beginning of a year of sheer Hell.
As it turned out, there had been witnesses,
who assured me they would testify at the
grievance. Retaliation against me and two
of the union reps was swift and harsh. I
was followed by a vice-principal for one
entire day. I was written up for being in
the halls. I was sent harassing letters
during class time, which interrupted
lectures. My request for a pre-grievance
hearing was at first denied, giving
Henington time to get to the witnesses. By
the time we finally got to pre-grievance,
he had terrified the witnesses. One had
already told several people that she had
never seen anyone scream at and threaten
another person like he had me. Now she
said that everyone she told the story to
was lying, that she had never seen
anything, or talked to anyone! She quit a
few months afterward. I am sure that the
pressure from administrators, and her
conscience bothering her, got to be too
much. All that I asked for at the pre-
grievance to resolve the situation was an
apology from Henington, a promise that he
would let me alone, and a guarantee that
he, the board, and Burnett would admit his
problem with violence toward women, and a
third (yes, taxpayers had already paid to
send him to anger-management classes twice)
course in anger-management. He refused.
The success that he, the board, and Burnett
had in avoiding publicity about the many
problems between faculty and administrators
made them more and more arrogant, cruel,
and abusive. I decided to file assault
charges against Henington with the
citypolice, in a last-ditch effort to get
him, the board, and Burnett to acknowledge
Henington's problem, and to get help for
him. In the meantime, two other teachers
(and union reps) angered administrators,
and were put on administrative leave. The
stress caused my blood pressure to zoom out
of control. I fainted in the halls one
day, and had to be taken to the hopital in
an ambulance. Three teachers have been
taken from school in ambulances this past
year. Two have fainted from stress and
harassment. Teachers began to quit,
transfer, or retire. We lost 23 teachers
between April 2001 and this month. By
April, I was calling the national NEA, the
state department of education, the attorney
general, and anyone else i could think of.
Two of us went to the media. Then harssment
escalated to the point that I suffered a
flare-up of the autoimmune disease from
which I suffer, and I missed over my
alloted sick days. When I applied to the
sick bank, of which I am a member, Burnett
denied them to me. Teachers took up a
collection to help me with my bills, but
Henington ordered them to stop,saying "This
isn't a charitable organization." Students
had a car wash for me. Some of them, but
not all, were members of SADD (Students
Against Dangerous Decisions).
Administrators accused the teacher who was
the SADD sponsor, of stealing SADD funds,
and forced me to give the money to SADD.
That teacher was also put on administrative
leave. I tried to contact board members,
which was useless, since teachers had been
warned often by Burnett and Henington not
to speak to board members. By now, there
were classes being taught by people without
certification, and often classes went all
day without being covered by any adult.
When State Department and North Central
Accreditation members were scheduled to
evaluate the school district in September,
I and others called and wrote to them,
pleading for assitance, begging them to
speak to teachers when they visited te high
school. They didn't, giving the school
glowing evaluations. I called the State
Superintendent, who had his secretary tell
me that he would never be available to
speak to any teacher from the high school.
By May of 2001 the situation was dangerous,
and all of us speaking against the
adminstration began to fear for our safety,
and several of us had lawyers. That is all
for tonight. Believe it or not, things got
worse in May, and have worsened steadily
since then. I will try to add more
tomorrow. I want to know if any of you
have been in this situation. This year I
have learned that education is one of the
most corrupt businesses in our contry, and
that the education of our students ranks
very low with far too many administrators
and parents. Teachers serve as scapegoats
for problems caused by apathy,
incompetence, and greed. If we don't grow
backbones, and stand up for ourselves, our
students, and our Constitutional rights,
our country is doomed. Without educated
citizens, who know their rights, and
realize their responsiblity to fight for
those rights, there can be no America.

Darlene Goodman, mcdarlene@abq.com,
2/16/02

This month's letters: