Teacher wrongly fired for calling kids ‘brat’ and ‘dummy,’ judge says
A Broward high school teacher accused of calling kids the names “brat,” “idiot” and “dummy” and telling a student he should be in handcuffs was wrongly fired, a judge ruled this week.
The school district alleged that Eric Delucia, 46, who was a language arts and technology teacher at Piper High in Sunrise, had “a history of inappropriate conduct and verbally abusive interactions with his students.” The School Board fired him in May.
Delucia, a district teacher since 2006, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel last year that the accusations were outright false in some cases and misconstrued in others. John Van Laningham, an administrative law judge who heard the appeal, sided with Delucia in a March 29 decision. The judge said Delucia should be rehired and given back pay. He made about $52,000 last school year.
“The School Board ... failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Delucia behaved as alleged,” Van Laningham wrote.
The judge found that while Delucia did call a student “dummy,” it came after the student threatened violence against the teacher.
The judge said the district not only accepted the student’s testimony at face value, “but also cleaned him up as a witness, omitting the undisputed fact that [the student] threatened (in more violent language than his statement admits) to hit Delucia in the face.”
The judge said Delucia did make a comment about wanting to see another student arrested but said it was hard to understand “why the School Board would regard Delucia’s justifiable desire to see [the student]. brought to justice as grounds for disciplining the teacher.”
Several other comments attributed to Delucia made could not be proven or were not likely said in the context alleged by the students, the judge determined.
Delucia could not be reached for comment about the decision. The office of Kathy Koch, chief communications officer for Broward Schools, acknowledged a request for comment Thursday but did not provide one.
The School Board will have to vote on whether to accept the judge’s ruling or continue to fight it, which would likely send the case into circuit court.