Appeals court: Broward teacher wrongly fired

The Broward County School District wrongly fired a controversial teacher at Boyd Anderson High and must now reinstate him with three years of back pay, a state court has ruled.

Veteran math teacher Steven Yerks, 57, who had numerous disputes with district administrators, was fired in 2014 following a poor evaluation. But on Wednesday, the 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that school administrators botched the evaluation, and then unfairly used the results to fire him.

It’s the same conclusion reached by an administrative law judge in 2015. But the School Board rejected that judge’s recommendation and refused to rehire Yerks, prompting the appeal.

“I think it sends a clear message to the administration and the School Board that if you’re going to terminate someone, make sure you have your reasons,” said Yerks’ lawyer, Mark Kelly. “Don’t try to contrive some flimsy excuse to run a teacher out of the system just because you don’t like the teacher’s attitude.”

Yerks on Wednesday said, “I’ll let the court case speak for itself.”

The case will likely cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay, benefits and lawyers fees. Yerks made $75,000 when he was fired three years ago.

“The district is evaluating its options for appeal,” district spokeswoman Cathleen Brennan said.

Yerks’ teaching history was detailed in a Sun Sentinel article in August 2014. District officials accused him of making racially insensitive comments in class, calling students names such as moron, stupid and idiot, yelling at reading coaches in front of students and locking students out of class.

District officials say Yerks belittled coaches and administrators who tried to help him improve. When he taught at Cooper City High School in 2000, Yerks had been placed on probation and recommended to be fired, but was transferred to Boyd Anderson after he filed a grievance.

But he received good evaluations most years. Robert Meale, the administrative law judge who reviewed the case, praised Yerks, saying he worked “faithfully and diligently for his students,” and improved student achievement.

“Among the first teachers to arrive at school each day, always wearing a tie, (Yerks) typically reported for duty ... between 6:15 a.m. and 6:30 a.m., which was 30 to 45 minutes before teachers were required to report,” Meale wrote. “When necessary, he stayed late and made himself available to meet with students during lunch.”

Meale accused Boyd Anderson administrators of misusing a complicated classroom observation tool in a way that was unfair to Yerks on his evaluation. As an example, the judge wrote that Yerks was penalized for not having a bulletin board decorated with students’ work, even though the evaluation doesn’t require that.

“The deployment of such a powerful, flawed tool by observers who are careless, incompetent and biased yields lots of useless data,” the judge wrote.

School Board member Rosalind Osgood, one of Yerks’ strongest critics, said she understands there may have been concerns about the way the evaluation tool was used. But she said her main reason for supporting his termination was his rocky history in the district.

“For years, there had been disciplinary things that happened at one school or another,” Osgood said. “Some of his issues were his inability to follow the principal’s direction and just go along with the culture of the school, and I know that from personally being in the school.”