Tecumseh Middle School teacher, Ernie Palmer wins grievance case

By DEB WUETHRICH

Tecumseh Public Schools will have to remove a letter of reprimand from Tecumseh Middle School (TMS) teacher Ernie Palmer’s file now that a decision has been handed down from the American Arbitration Association. The fifth grade teacher had received a written reprimand from TMS Principal Rick Hilderley over an incident that took place in a classroom last October.

Palmer had been accused of using “fear and intimidation” to control an unruly classroom on October 9 when he reportedly rapped a large yardstick on a printer and the stick broke. A student in the class, who later admitted that he had lied, told several other students in the lunch room that he had been struck by Mr. Palmer. The district’s investigations into the allegations resulted in Hilderley’s writing of the reprimand.

Various details of the incident were revealed through a process that included a public grievance proceeding before the Tecumseh Board of Education in November, with a decision to deny Palmer’s request to have the letter removed from the file in December. The matter was then sent to the arbitrator. Both parties gave testimony earlier this summer.

“Clearly, I don’t look at these things as win/lose situations,” said MEA Uniserve Director, Jim Berryman, who represented Palmer throughout the grievance process and said that he had just received a copy of the arbitrator’s decision on Tuesday afternoon. “But from the very beginning we knew this all started because of the lies of one student and that nothing would have happened were it not for the lying.”

Berryman said that the decision did include a statement from the arbitrator that would allow the district to “counsel” Palmer as to what might be expected of or acceptable for a teacher to do in order to regain control of a classroom. “But that will be up to the district,” he said. Berryman said that documentation of such a session could be placed in the file, however, he said it was made clear to the district that any such memo could not make reference to the arbitration or to the letter of reprimand.

“There is to be no reference to this whole issue,” he said. “As far as the arbitrator is concerned, it never happened and all that documentation is to be destroyed.” Berryman said he feels that the most important thing is that the arbitrator saw that there was no fear or intimidation involved and that the situation had escalated because of the student’s lies, which spawned more rumors to the extent that other students who weren’t even in the classroom claimed to have also been struck. “The arbitrator agreed that the action was excessive for the offense,” he said.

“I know that Mr. Palmer feels very relieved at the decision,” said Berryman. “He does feel vindicated. He never threatened kids like that, and he didn’t want that blemish on his record.”