ABCA South Carolina high school teacher has sued (PDF) the school district that employed her after she was pushed to resign when a student grabbed racy pictures off her smartphone.
Leigh Anne Arthur resigned from her job earlier last month when she was told she would face disciplinary proceedings because a student grabbed photos off her phone while she was on a routine hall patrol.
At the time, Arthur complained that she, rather than the student, was the one being punished.
The student shared the racy pictures of Arthur with his friends as well.
Arthur said the pictures were a Valentine's Day gift for her husband, and she forgot to erase them from her phone. "He knows right from wrong," she said of the student in a TV interview shortly after the incident. "Where are you putting the moral of the student?" The 16-year-old student was hit with felony charges the following week. In Arthur's lawsuit, filed Friday, she described how she left her phone on her desk during a five-minute interval in between classes. Without her permission, the student opened her photo app, then took pictures of her pictures with his own phone and shared them via social media. “When you take a look at the policies that are in place for teachers, there was not a single policy that Leigh Anne violated,” Arthur's lawyer told local news station WSPA when she filed the suit. Despite that, the lawsuit describes how Arthur was removed from class while teaching several days later, told to resign within one day, and escorted from the school by a uniformed police officer. Arthur has sued the school district for breach of contract for firing her and for libel and slander for telling media outlets that she had broken various teaching standards when in fact she had not. She isn't asking for her job back.
In Arthur's absence, the mechatronics course she taught has been temporarily shut down. "I get really emotional when I think of the students in this program for the right reason," she told The Associated Press. "This is not my fault or the students’ fault."
The student shared the racy pictures of Arthur with his friends as well.
Arthur said the pictures were a Valentine's Day gift for her husband, and she forgot to erase them from her phone. "He knows right from wrong," she said of the student in a TV interview shortly after the incident. "Where are you putting the moral of the student?" The 16-year-old student was hit with felony charges the following week. In Arthur's lawsuit, filed Friday, she described how she left her phone on her desk during a five-minute interval in between classes. Without her permission, the student opened her photo app, then took pictures of her pictures with his own phone and shared them via social media. “When you take a look at the policies that are in place for teachers, there was not a single policy that Leigh Anne violated,” Arthur's lawyer told local news station WSPA when she filed the suit. Despite that, the lawsuit describes how Arthur was removed from class while teaching several days later, told to resign within one day, and escorted from the school by a uniformed police officer. Arthur has sued the school district for breach of contract for firing her and for libel and slander for telling media outlets that she had broken various teaching standards when in fact she had not. She isn't asking for her job back.
In Arthur's absence, the mechatronics course she taught has been temporarily shut down. "I get really emotional when I think of the students in this program for the right reason," she told The Associated Press. "This is not my fault or the students’ fault."