Teacher involved in Charles City Middle School inappropriate language incident resigns

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Board of Education used a seven-minute-long special meeting held at noon Monday to deal with a personnel issue that has caused controversy in the school district for more than a week.

As part of the meeting consent agenda, the board voted 5-0 to accept the resignation of Alecia Feckers, an eighth-grade reading teacher at the Charles City Middle School, along with a few other unrelated personnel changes.

Nothing on the agenda or that was said during the meeting referred to the controversy of two middle school teachers being placed on leave for allegedly using vulgar and inappropriate language in classes while reading aloud a story from a book.

After the meeting, board President Josh Mack said he couldn’t comment on the reason for Feckers’ resignation, but later in the afternoon, the district issued a statement substantially confirming Feckers’ involvement in the incident.

“This matter has been fully investigated in accordance with District policy. At a meeting on Monday, the Charles City Board of Education approved a mutually beneficial resignation agreement with Alecia Feckers, an 8th grade teacher at the District,” said the statement sent to the Press by Justin DeVore, school district director of communications.

“In the spirit of full transparency, the District has released as much information as it can and any other actions or information related to this matter are considered confidential under applicable laws. With this matter now resolved, the District has returned its focus back to its mission and vision of teaching and student learning,” the statement concluded.

Various other sources, including parents who said their children were in the classes where the story was read, confirmed that Feckers was the eighth-grade reading teacher involved.

The district had released information about the incident last week. Middle School Principal Joe Taylor said that some students and parents complained that the reading, of the story “Catch, Pull, Drive,” by Schuyler Bailer, involved inappropriate language.

The story is part of an anthology called “Fresh Ink,” and is a first-person account of a transgender male’s experience on the first day after he announced on social media to the swim teams that he was transgender.

A reading of the story by the Press shows it contains several swear words, some vulgar words, and several transphobic and homophobic slurs.

Taylor emphasized that the book was not part of the curriculum selected by the district, and although the class unit on social issues was part of the selected curriculum, the teachers had brought this particular book in on their own.

Taylor said the teachers, who he described as an eighth-grade reading teacher and a special education teacher, had immediately been placed on leave while the incident was being investigated, and that the parents of all the children who had been affected were personally called by district administrators, told what had happened, and received apologies that it had occurred.

Use of such language is a violation of district policy, both Taylor and DeVore said.

When asked Monday afternoon if the other teacher allegedly involved, the special education teacher, had received any disciplinary action, DeVore said the district had released as much information as it can.

The district has not identified that teacher.

DeVore also would not answer specifically whether some students had requested that they be allowed to leave the room after they began hearing the language in the story, but were not allowed to leave, as some parents have claimed.

He again said the district had released as much information as it can.

On the original agenda for Monday’s special school board meeting, posted Thursday afternoon, there had been an agenda item listed as “Discussion of personnel matter” with a notice that that part of the meeting might be closed to the public if the person involved requested it.

At that time there was no mention on the agenda of a resignation by Feckers.

When the agenda was revised Friday afternoon, it no longer included the item on discussion of personnel matter, but now did include the item, “Approval of Personnel Resignation Agreement with a Teacher” for Alecia Feckers as part of the consent agenda.

A handful of persons other than school personnel and board members attended the meeting Monday, held in the cafeteria at the 500 North Grand building.

One person, who identified herself as transgender, was the only person who spoke during the public comment part of the meeting, saying she was born in Charles City, is a current resident and a CCHS graduate.

“I though it imperative and my moral responsibility to stand up here, just be present, as a person of the community,” she said, although she did not mention the controversy, other than to say she had not read the book in question.

A few of the people said after the meeting that they had expected the vulgar language issue to have been addressed during the meeting, and were disappointed that it had not been. None of the people talked to by the Press said they had children who were in the classes where the story was read.

A couple of them said they had not been aware they could make a public statement at the beginning of the meeting, and had not been prepared to say anything.

Later Monday afternoon, school district Superintendent Mike Fisher sent the Press a statement, saying he “wanted to address some concerns and questions that had come to me through the community and social media.”

“Many of our teachers have recently felt their motives and intentions being questioned and I want to clarify the great work they do each day under huge stress and strain,” Fisher said.

“There is a myth being spread around the community of some sort of secret negative curriculum that is being taught to our kids. This is absolutely false. The truth is, besides our main business of teaching and learning our core academics, we are focused on helping our kids becoming better human beings,” he said.

“We teach our kids to live compassion and empathy because we know there’s no greater love than serving your fellow human beings. We do this by teaching integrity which is how to stand up for what you believe in with grace and humility to others. We teach kids the value of hard work and selflessly serving others as leaders and problem solvers,” he said.

“In short, we teach our kids to be compassionate service oriented people that make our world better. And I think this is something we can all believe in. While some might not agree with me and these values, I firmly believe they are what make our community and country so unique and beautiful,” Fisher said.

Also at the special meeting Monday, the Board of Education approved a bid of $318,420 from Midwest Roofing for the North Grand roofing project. Midwest was the only bidder, which school district Director of Operations Jerry Mitchell said might have been due to the tight schedule, which calls for work to be started almost immediately after the bid was approved.

Also as part of the consent agenda, the board approved the resignation of custodian/bus driver Jeff Gelner, approved the transfer of Dave Bahe from Washington custodian to middle school custodian, and approved the appointment of Mike Cranshaw as a middle school paraeducator.