09 July 2010

Texas Education Agency and Chris Comer, Part 40

When last we left, Chris Comer had filed an appeal on her lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency.

Denied.

The National Center for Science Education reported reported on this last week. (Man, am I out of the loop.)

The fact that Comer and other TEA employees cannot speak out for or against possible subjects to be included in the curriculum ... does not primarily advance religion, but rather, serves to preserve TEA’s administrative role in facilitating the curriculum review process for the Board.

As I mentioned before, I think the lawsuit aimed for too big a claim. If anyone has a legal background, I’d love to know why forwarding an email with “FYI” would be considered a violation of neutrality, which always seemed to me to be the strange thing about this situation.

2 comments:

paprgl said...

If you requested her personnel file, you would see a long history of problems with her supervisors at TEA, although they never had the guts to rate her as anything other than acceptable.. which only muddied the waters in this case.

Comer wanted to be a renegade, out with the science peeps, never in her office in Austin. Her colleagues would have preferred Comer to be in the office, doing her job, rather than being a hot dog.

That might work as a lobbyist. Not as a state agency official who was expected to toe the line.

Comer took off.. I think.. 80 days in her last year.. It eventually led to a complete breakdown in morale in the entire division... which led to stifling top-down policies on leaving the office and being on-task, which appeared to apply to everyone but... Comer.

Not to mention her alleged desire to badmouth her boss to large groups and rather questionable side business deals with a close friend at UTSA that the agency failed to property investigate.

If you intend to broach a subject this big... your record really needs to be spotless. That's not Comer.

She choked an entire division in the agency.. sorta equal parts her and poor supervision.

In case you really wanted to know the truth.

Zen Faulkes said...

I've heard very similar things before. I am fairly sure I've mentioned such points in previous posts, though my recollection was that only the forwarded email was given as the reason for demanding her resignation.

The TEA was (perhaps understandably) tight-lipped about reasons for dismissal. If there was a pattern of misconduct, then that, not a forwarded email with "FYI", should have been given as the reason for asking for resignation.