COCAINE-USING TEACHER SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED

The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville, on a cocaine-using teacher:

A second chance is a nice concept, but an arbitrator carried it too far
when he ordered the reinstatement of a Florida teacher who reported to work
with 50 times the amount of cocaine in his system that would register a
positive result.

The Pensacola middle school teacher was fired.

The arbitrator, however, ruled this spring that the penalty was too harsh
for the offense, particularly since the teacher hadn't been in trouble
before and many of his relatives also were teachers.

He ordered the man returned to the classroom or to some other school job
with full salary.

Surprisingly, a circuit judge upheld that ruling.

If you can show up at school stoned out of your mind, what exactly are
valid grounds for termination in Pensacola?

Teachers are role models, and people who use cocaine often have erratic
behavior, which conceivably could endanger children.

As the superintendent complained to the Pensacola News Journal, "We are
expelling kids for taking aspirin or No-Doz. Now we are talking about
someone taking cocaine, and that's OK."

It should be the other way around -- zero tolerance on cocaine, not aspirin.