Dive Brief:
- Ohio's Fairfield Board of Education fired Fairfield Freshman School science teacher Gil Voigt in a 4-0 vote Thursday night after years of alleged inappropriate remarks to students.
- The latest incident involved Voigt reportedly saying that the U.S. doesn't need another black president after a black student said he'd like to one day win the presidency.
- Voigt claims that he was misquoted and that several students were conspiring against him, but accusations against him date at least back to 2008 and his explanations weren't satisfactory to the state referee investigating him.
Dive Insight:
The most recent accusation against Voigt was probably enough to merit his termination, but his history was particularly damning. Bringing personal politics into the classroom is bad enough, but allegedly bringing racial bias is exponentially worse. Voigt had previously been accused of pointing a laser pointer at a black student's nose and saying he looked like "an African-American Rudolph," as well as implying that a student and other classmates were gay after calling the student stupid.
To call this sort of behavior unbecoming of a teacher doesn't go far enough, and if Voigt truly did act in the manner he's accused of in any of these situations, his students and Ohio's schools are probably better off without him.
