Posted on 02/22/2005 7:44:22 AM PST by The Great Yazoo
Harvey's teaching certificate suspended By RAY PARKER, brparker@naplesnews.com February 22, 2005
Ian Harvey's Florida teaching certificate, No. 653427, has been suspended for a year.
The former Lely High English and media teacher has maintained he's a scapegoat, a lone voice for peace in a wilderness of warmongers.
But the Florida Education Practices Commission met earlier this month, and in the settlement, Harvey signed off on the suspension.
Commissioner of Education Jim Horne cited Harvey in violating nine teaching standards, including failing to take reasonable precautions to distinguish between his personal views and those of the school system in his classroom.
"The misogynistic, homophobic, racist warmongerers in the classroom there in Collier County—and there are plenty—have nothing to worry about because the School Board shares their views," Harvey wrote Friday in an e-mail to the Daily News.
After Sept. 11, 2001, things were never the same for Harvey.
He taught in Collier County schools for 10 years with good evaluations. Then after 9/11, Harvey entered the media spotlight after participating in an anti-war rally with a couple of his students.
In February 2002, the Collier School District investigator found Harvey's teaching practices violated district and state teaching standards.
And later that month, he was suspended without pay for three days and reassigned to an Immokalee adult education position.
In the next year, the teacher made a couple of court appearances.
In July 2003, he agreed to a plea agreement, pleading no contest and paying court costs of $160, after being charged with resisting arrest during a March anti-war demonstration in Fort Myers.
Then in August 2003, police arrested the teacher on driving under the influence and drug charges. He later pleaded no contest — his driver license suspended for six months and agreed to participate in the diversion program, similar to probation, involving counseling.
School District officials fired Harvey in December 2003.
Now, two years after district officials sent their findings to Tallahassee, Commissioner of Education Horne has settled the teaching allegations against Harvey by suspending his Florida teaching certificate for one year.
District internal investigator Peter DeBaun found Harvey engaged in the following inappropriate conduct between August and December 2001.
— Used his mass media class as a forum to express his hostility toward the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, American business practices, social policy, mainstream media, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization
— Criticized and belittled students for disagreeing with his personal political views in class and caused them to feel their grade would be lowered if they continued
— Gave extra credit to students who sent e-mail supporting him after his appearance on the Fox television show "The O'Reilly Factor," but failed to give any credit to students who sent e-mails supporting the show's host
— Used curse words in class
— Encouraged students to attend anti-war rallies and failed to warn them that he had been threatened with physical violence
"They were going to suspend it (my teaching certificate) for one year for teaching peace before my August 2003 arrest, and since they are still going to suspend it for the same amount of time even after I broke the law, it's even clearer that my greatest 'crime' to the folks in charge of running the indoctrination, not education, system there in that balmy, polluted 'paradise,' is having pro-peace, pro-worker, pro-environment views, period," Harvey wrote.
Copyright 2005, Naples Daily News. All Rights Reserved.
I've heard Florida's public schools are awful.
At least they have the sense to suspend this lousy excuse for a teacher.
I heard the same thing; Florida public schools were awful - and from numerous sources. I also heard their state child protective service are one of the worst as well.
I am "pro-peace, pro-worker, pro-environment"
I want the US to kick ass on the bad guys so my kids can live in peace.
I want the US economy to rock so the businesses I am invested in can give lots of good jobs to the workers who merit them.
I love the woods, especially when I am flying through them at 100 mph on my 2-stroke snowmobiles.
The guy in the article is a watermelon, though. Green on the outside, but red communist in the middle.
He's trying to get in touch with Ward Churchill's speech booker...Get out there and spread anti American hate and many Universities will clamor for his services.
Someone should forward this to that teacher in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
If only because he was foolish enough to get noticed....
What a f***-up.
You are correct. I spent a few years living down there and my parents currently reside down there. What distinguishes Florida from other places is that even the affluent districts are AWFUL.
Maybe he can get Tenure at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Thats what my friends say. Even areas where they have money, the public schools still stink.
I'm around classrooms all day and teachers offices. I'm a media specialist at a FL CC. Everywhere I go all I see is buckets full of condoms in the hallways and offices. Or I'll hear teachers spewing, angry political rants in their classes. We also host a high school on our campus. Nobody cares. This guy had to be really over the top gonzo to actually be sanctioned in FL's permissive, highly politicized education environment.
Regardless, this piece of hate-America filth should have been fired. Public "skools" are no place to be continuing the work of Baldur von Schirach.
ping
This clown can go to Brooklyn and get a job at JHS 51 where his anti-American, anti-military views would be mainstream and where Principal Savier Castelli would defend his right to involve his students in his anti-Americanism.
Florida's public schools are not awful, they are not good enough to be awful.
Seriously, Colier County is opposite Broward and Dade. It is on the west side. It is a red county where much single home developement has occured.
Yes, my wife and I (and later, our kids) used to go to Collier County (Marco Island) every Spring, in late April.
I'd never move there. Well, maybe to retire.
Notwithstanding Collier being a distinctly "red" county and despite one crusading school board member, the local education establishment has the same ideology here as elsewhere.
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