Arbitrator rules on Albair case

    A Massachusettes arbitrator has reduced the dismissal of Caribou High School teacher Kirsten Albair to one-year suspension without pay. She will be suspended for the entire 2008-2009 school year and will be permitted to return to her former teaching position for the 2009-2010 year.      The Caribou School Committee had dismissed Ms. Albair from her teaching position based on findings of misconduct that included her telling extremely offensive jokes to students about the Holocaust, and making offensive remarks about gay students and ethnic minorities. The School Committee also found that Ms. Albair had in previous years been warned or disciplined for making mean and sarcastic remarks to students and for addressing obscenities toward students.
    A key finding made by arbitrator Mark Irvings was that the testimony by several students that the teacher had told the Holocaust jokes was not sufficiently reliable to justify dismissal because their memories differed with regard to the time and place of her remarks. He explained: “None of this is to say the students were lying. Given the amount of discussion about the entire topic, it is not surprising that memories changed. This is also not to say the students did not collectively relate essential truths. It is simply that their testimony and interview answers are not sufficiently reliable to support a finding that Albair told the jokes.”
    “Clearly, we disagree with the arbitrator’s conclusion about the reliability of the students’ testimony. We believed and still believe that the students were telling the truth, and that differences in details were not important. Nevertheless, we will respect the arbitrator’s decision and we will move forward accordingly,” said Superintendent of Caribou Schools Frank McElwain.
    “While the arbitrator overturned the dismissal, it must be noted that the suspension of a full year without pay is very severe discipline, and is essentially unheard of in public education,” accaording to McElwaiin.
    The arbitrator summed up his decision. “In light of Albair’s history of counseling and progressive discipline and the proof that she made a number of inappropriate remarks to classes in the spring of 2008, there was just cause to suspend Albair for the duration of the 2008-09 school year. The protracted time away from school will allow her to reflect deeply on what is expected of a teacher in a classroom in Caribou, more deeply than she did as part of her action plan following her one day suspension in 2007,” he said.
    Nancy Hudak, UNISERV director for the Maine Education Association, of which the Caribou Teachers Association is an affiliate, represented Albair and the CTA in the arbitration process, “The Caribou Teachers Association, which was the group that supported Kirsten during the arbitration , was very pleased with the results, although we thought the one-year suspension was too long. But we accept the arbitrator’s decision and are very pleased she will be going back to school in 2009,” she said.
    Albair was relieved of her teaching position at Caribou High School in July of 2008, the result of the Caribou Board of Education, following two public hearing involving 13 hours of testimony from staff, administrators, students and friends, voting unanimously to dismiss the English teacher after approximately two hours’ of deliberations.