Teacher claims school board bias

PALMER -- A non-retention hearing in front of the Mat-Su School Board Thursday found that Colony High School principal Cyd Duffin was justified in her decision to not retain non-tenure teacher Laura Bruck for the upcoming school year. While the decision favored the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, human resource and labor relations director Paula Harrison, who conducted the district's side of the hearing, said that in this kind of situation, no one wins.

"Everybody loses when you go this far," Harrison said. "We do care about our employees, and nobody is trying to say that [Bruck] isn't a good person. But she has to realize that things just weren't working out."

Bruck requested the hearing after receiving a letter from the district informing her of her non-retention status. Bruck said she was surprised by the decision because her first evaluation was fine. She said she had no indication that she was having problems until she was told she was not welcome to return to Colony during her final evaluation at the end of April.

Bruck and her National Education Association representative, Vince Speranza, argued that inconsistent descriptions of Bruck's work on her evaluation and her letter of termination went against board policy and warranted that Bruck should be able to return to work to try to better her teaching skills through a plan of improvement.

The district argued that since Bruck was non-tenured, any reason the district deemed applicable could be grounds for Bruck's non-retention status. In her testimony, Duffin described those reasons; such as Bruck being reactive, defensive, creating an unproductive and sometimes questionable atmosphere for her students, and an all-around negative attitude toward constructive criticism and self-improvement.

After the decision was made, both Speranza and Mat-Su Education Association Vice Chair Joe Doyle said they felt Bruck had received an unfair hearing. Speranza said he thought the board had not been impartial.

"We're just disappointed in the attitude that the board expressed," Speranza said. "The signal sent is that non-tenured teachers are a different class."

Bruck, who has taught in five school districts in as many years years of teaching, said she also feels she was treated unfairly.

"I was given an unfair hearing, what Mrs. Duffin said was inconsistent with the truth," Bruck said. "If I was so bad, why didn't she take me out of the classroom right away? Why did she wait till the end of the school year?"

Mike Chimielewski, school board president, defended both the board's decision and the board's integrity.

"We don't go into this lightly, we were there for six hours," said Chimielewski. "I believe quite clearly that we did what we were supposed to do."

Chimielewski, Dan Contini, Sarah Welton and Robert Wells made up the quorum for the hearing last week. Theresa Henneman, an attorney retained by the school district, facilitated the hearing. When she first requested the hearing, Bruck was given the option to present her case in front of a non-partial hearing officer, whom the board would delegate its authority to and would uphold any decision the officer made.