Outspoken Teacher Wins the Right to Return to Gompers

In a stinging rebuke to Gompers Secondary School Principal Marie Thornton and to San Diego city schools administrators, an arbitrator ruled this week that teacher Rhoenna Armster was wrongly transferred to another school last year because she spoke out publicly, and often, about changes at the controversial campus.

The arbitrator, in an 80-page ruling, rejected Thornton’s assertion in February, 1990, that Armster, a business education teacher, was transferred because her conduct was disruptive to the school, and he labeled the action a violation of her constitutional right to free speech.

“The district violated the contractual prohibition of ‘arbitrary or capricious’ administrative transfers when it transferred Rhoenna Armster,” arbitrator Edgar Jones concluded.

Jones, a neutral arbitrator accepted by both sides in the case, ordered the district to allow Armster’s return to Gompers next September from her current position at Lincoln High School, and to “expunge” from all school system files any reference to her forced transfer from the well-known Southeast San Diego school.

In particular, Jones criticized Thornton for inconsistency in her evaluations of Armster.

The arbitrator pointed out that, in 1987, Thornton profusely praised Armster’s instructional abilities in an evaluation--before the districtwide furor erupted over how to change curriculum at the special science-math-computer magnet school--but then found in February, 1989, “nothing positive” in Armster’s seven years at Gompers, even though Armster had been named district “teacher of the year” in 1988.

Yet, barely four months later, in April, 1989, she signed another “laudatory evaluation” of Armster’s work that was monitored by then Vice Principal Robert Stein (now principal at O’Farrell Middle School).

“How could there occur this drastic, even startling reversal . . . in such a short span of time, from a pinnacle of praise to the status of an unwanted pariah?” the arbitrator asked, concluding that the teacher was punished for her opposition to district plans for Gompers.

Armster said Friday that she is pleased, not only for herself but for the hope that her case gives any teacher “who has been done in” by an administrator.

Thornton did not return phone calls Friday from a reporter. District Supt. Tom Payzant said Friday that the district “wins some and loses some” in arbitration cases, and that he will make sure the ruling is carried out.

“My expectation is that people involved will do it in the spirit of what the arbitrator called for and will not create another set of issues around the implementation,” Payzant said. “That is my intent, although often there are forces out there beyond the control of any single person.”

Armster was among many Gompers instructors--almost all of whom have now voluntarily left for other schools--objecting to a requirement that high school-level teachers, who formerly taught only students in specialized magnet classes, also teach at the junior-high level at the school. The requirement was part of a plan to extend the special magnet curriculum to all of the school’s predominantly black neighborhood students after years of restricting participation to a small, equal number of neighborhood students and white students who were voluntarily bused to Gompers under integration programs.

Armster was particularly vocal in arguing repeatedly to the Board of Education that many nonwhite students were not adequately prepared for the advanced curriculum, and that tutoring, counseling and other academic support plans for students had been poorly carried out or not at all. The fact that Armster herself is black made her criticism particularly nettlesome to Thornton, her immediate supervisor Al Cook and now-deceased assistant Supt. George Frey, also all African-Americans.

Cook approved Thornton’s recommendation for the transfer in February, 1989, which resulted in more than 300 students demonstrating in support of Armster and a near-riot after 40 San Diego city police stormed the campus perimeter in an action for which commanders later apologized. Armster appealed her transfer through the San Diego Teachers Assn., the union which represents teachers and which has a binding arbitration agreement with the district in case of personnel disputes.

Cook, who is retiring later this spring, said on Friday that he hoped the entire matter can now “be put behind us.”

In his decision, the arbitrator wrote, “There is only one reason of any substance that one could reasonably infer that prompted such a Draconian response (the transfer) several weeks into the semester. . . . That is the discursive and acerbic letter that Dr. Armster sent to the Board of Education and others on Dec. 28, 1989.

“However, one may view (the letter) as a model of succinct, factual reporting and persuasive argumentation. . . . It had obviously not been authored by some crank. . . . It should have prompted a high-level investigation of her observations and criticisms . . . that did not occur, but instead (there was) an involuntary transfer.”

School district attorneys asked the arbitrator not to order Armster’s return to Gompers even if he ruled in her favor, pleading that “the school has begun to run smoothly and staff is able to sit down in harmony to plan Gompers’ future . . . and her return would only disrupt that harmony.”

But, according to the arbitrator, “If indeed there is harmony presently among Gompers administration and staff in planning the school’s future, the reason could well be the inhibiting effect on other teachers of seeing what outspokenness has cost Dr. Armster, who was the victim of retaliation.

“If there is indeed complete harmony over such inevitably controversial issues as student discipline, teaching rigor and participatory planning, one has cause to be skeptical about the realism of the planning and about the extent of real participation in it by staff.”

Concluded Jones, “What finally emerges from all of this is the realization that the precipitating cause was conduct that itself was constitutionally protected.”

Although Gompers Principal Thornton testified to the Board of Education in November, 1990, that the school’s learning environment is vastly improved, the numbers of non-neighborhood students has dropped from 325 to 204, standardized test scores have dropped over the same period, and dropout rates have increased. The school receives $1.3 million in special integration funding above that allocated to all schools and has 25 teachers above what it normally would be allowed under regular district funding, despite the large drop in student busing.