Hays drops teacher over assignment involving puppets, murder
A substitute teacher at Hays Consolidated Independent School District was removed from campus last week after reportedly asking students to re-create a murder scene with puppets.
He was placed on suspension status Friday afternoon after Johnson High School students in a theater arts class at the school in Buda expressed concerns about an in-class assignment, according to a statement provided by the district.
“Students report that the substitute assigned them to perform a puppet show in which at least one puppet had to be murdered,” the statement said.
The district said allowing this type of performance would “be disturbing and unacceptable conduct” for an educator in its schools and apologized to students and parents for any distress it caused.
One group of students told staff that performance they planned would have involved a mass shooting, but the district said it was “not clear if that was the specific assignment or a scene created to meet the parameters of the assignment.”
In an update provided Monday, the Hays district said it met with the teacher and still hadn’t clarified exactly what the assignment entailed.
“The investigation has not been able to determine which of the conflicting accounts of the assignment is correct, whether it was for puppets to be murdered or be part of a death scene similar to a Shakespearean play,” the update said.
“One group of students did perform a brief scene involving a mass shooting.
“While the district has determined there was no nefarious intent on the part of the substitute; not providing proper parameters, correcting, intervening to prevent or interrupting that performance was improper and not acceptable,” the statement said.
The substitute had been hired in January. The district did not identify him by name, but it said he will not be invited back to work there.