Campaign Buttons Lead to Teachers’ Suspension

Simi Valley school district officials said Monday they will punish seven teachers for wearing campaign buttons to school by suspending them for 2 days without pay.

District Supt. John W. Duncan said the teachers ignored warnings last week that the campaign buttons violated a little-used, 20-year-old district rule that prohibits “partisan politics in our classrooms.”

But officials of the Simi Valley Educators Assn., the union that represents the district’s 800 teachers, say they will challenge the suspensions because the district rule violates the teachers’ constitutional right to free speech. Students in the eastern Ventura County school district are permitted to wear political campaign buttons at school, district officials said.

“The district policy says that teachers cannot actively campaign or promote candidates for office in the classroom,” said Hal Vick, the union’s executive director. “But courts have ruled that the wearing of buttons or armbands are not considered active campaign activities.”

Vick said the teachers will appeal the suspensions and will, if necessary, challenge the constitutionality of the district ban in a lawsuit.

Teachers who received the letters of suspension Monday afternoon said that in previous years they have worn campaign buttons, such as those advocating the defeat of Proposition 13, without interference from the district. They speculated that the district action came because some teachers wore buttons supporting challengers to the school board in today’s election.

Four of the five seats on the Simi Valley school board are being contested today, with two incumbents seeking reelection. At a meeting a week ago, the board unanimously approved Duncan’s request to enforce the district rule against campaigning by teachers.

“I’m sure that this is politically motivated,” said Terry Eggers, a science teacher at Royal High School for 23 years and one of the teachers who received a notice of suspension.

Five of the teachers are from Valley View Junior High School, and two are from Royal.

Larry B. Trygstad, an attorney who represents teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that he does not believe the Simi Valley rule is enforceable.

“It seems to me that teachers would be allowed to do that as long as the district could not show that the buttons are creating a disturbance,” he said.

Incumbent Ken Ashton, who has served 17 1/2 years on the board and is seeking reelection to a fifth term, said the district rule should be enforced because “it’s inappropriate to be politicizing on school grounds.”

Ashton said he would not comment on the charges by teachers that he and other board members ordered the enforcement of the district rule because they were angry that some teachers wore buttons supporting challengers.

“I think you would have to draw your own conclusions,” Ashton said.

Walt Noisette, a Royal High School biology teacher, said he refused to remove his “Yes on 98” button, urging support for the state education funding initiative because he does not believe the district’s rule is fair.

“I’ve never been suspended, never had a reprimand; I’m a clean-cut guy,” said Noisette, who has taught in the district for 15 years. “But I refuse to have any administrator take away my constitutional rights.”