School board declines to renew teacher’s contract

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In his presentation to the School Board, school district attorney Bruce Zagar said, following the investigation, Cook was issued a reprimand in November and presented four directives by Ontario School District Superintendent Dennis Carter. The directive guidance from Carter included a stipulation that he not contact, directly or indirectly, students through texting, e-mailing or personal pages on the Internet, and to honor the appropriate teacher boundaries with students in conduct and conversation at all times by not demonstrating or expressing a professionally inappropriate interest in a student’s personal life. Zagar said, furthermore, another investigation earlier this year revealed Cook continued to maintain a MySpace page that had several students listed as friends, and, when confronted about it, Cook denied that he had until shown the proof. After he was shown the proof, district officials assert, he admitted there were students whom he had forgotten to take off. Zagar said, after further questioning, it became apparent Cook had not forgotten to take the students off, but left them on because he felt he needed to communicate with them that way.

“I was really concerned that he continued to have contact with those students in violation of what he was told earlier,” Carter said when asked by Zagar what his concerns were.

In addition, Zagar asserted, transcripts of conversation between Cook and those students that were voluntarily provided by MySpace show the communications were not incidental as Cook had previously claimed. Zagar read a specific communication with a student about the counseling the student was receiving for smoking marijuana, in which the student said he did not want to talk to a counselor, and Cook empathized and agreed he didn’t understand the point of paying somebody to talk to him.

Cook and his union representative Sandra Dvergsdal responded to the district’s presentation with Dvergsdal focused on the grievance points that emphasized violations of Cook’s rights during the investigation, including comments by Ontario School District Personnel Director Carole Kitamura referencing Cook’s age, family and religion.

Cook, however, addressed his communication with youth and said they were all done out of concern for his students, some of whom were seriously troubled and some who were suicidal.

He said, in such circumstances he directed the students to the high school counselor and filed reports with the Oregon Department of Health & Human Services per regulation, but did not let his communication stop there because he felt some of those students needed daily contact with someone they felt comfortable talking with. He explained his initial MySpace contact with students started as an experiment to see how many teenagers would sign up to a MySpace account to somebody who was a stranger to them.

After awhile, some of his students realized whose account it was, and then communicated with him pertaining to school. Then, some of the troubled students began communicating with him regularly about personal problems, he said.

Cook said he never meant to undermine the school district’s integrity or intentionally disobey orders. He said he never contacted any of the students directly after he was told not to, but left the MySpace page there for them to contact him if they wanted or needed to because he did not think it was fair to suddenly stop communication with those students and feared what would happen if he did.

Two school district staff, OHS counselor Jennifer Suzuki and another teacher, vouched for Cook’s concern for his students and character as a person and teacher, and requested the board renew Cook’s contract. Suzuki expressed concern about her ability to help students in need without a teacher like Cook to reach out to students and direct them to her when necessary.

In his closing argument to the School Board, however, Zagar reiterated Cook had disobeyed directives and failed to maintain appropriate boundaries with students. He also said, while Cook’s concern may have been legitimate about students, his continued interest was not, especially because Cook is licensed to be a teacher and not a counselor or psychologist.

After the hearing, Cook said he was a bit surprised about the outcome.

“I expected (the School Board members) to care more about the students than they did about Dr. Carter’s directives,” Cook said. He also said he never violated the directive to contact them. He said he never contacted them directly, but only responded to them when they wrote. Cook said Carter didn’t make it clear when issuing the directives he was not allowed to respond to students when they contacted him on MySpace,  so he didn’t feel he was being insubordinate. Instead, he was only reaffirming the safety and well-being of his students through that contact. Zagar said, following the meeting, the directives Cook was issued were more than specific about what he was allowed to do or not, especially the directive about contact with students.

“That was not an equivocal directive,” he said. “That was unequivocal.”

Although Cook said after the meeting he didn’t know what he would do next, Dvergsdal said they would take the matter, and the grievances, to arbitration if approved to do so by the Oregon Education Association board. Zagar said the district would defend itself against the grievance charges if necessary in arbitration proceedings, but considered them without merit.

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