TEACHER FIRED IN HEMP CONTROVERSY WINS FEDERAL APPEAL TO REINSTATE SUIT

LEXINGTON, Ky ­ Donna Cockrel, the fifth-grade teacher whose pupils actor
Woody Harrelson taught about the merits of industrial hemp, will have her
day in court to argue that she was fired from Simpsonville Elementary
School because of her controversial choice of guests.

In a vehement opinion issued yesterday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that a lower court had erred when it threw out
Cockrel's lawsuit against the Shelby County Public School District before
the case went to trial.

Although neither the Kentucky Education Association nor any other teachers'
group joined in Cockrel's appeal, the case could have implications for many
teachers. The appellate court's three-member panel unanimously said
schoolteachers retain the right to free speech not just in the schoolhouse
but also in the classroom.

"Teachers don't lose their First Amendment rights because they're
teachers," said Cockrel's attorney, Eugene Mooney. "There's not a special
rule for teachers ­ not even fifth-grade ones.

"The most terrifying aspects of the lower court's ruling and of the school
board's argument was that they seemed to assert that school officials have
complete control over classroom teachers' every utterance and that they
could take retaliatory action if, as in this case, what the teacher said
upset the community."

Cockrel was at the center of a publicity maelstrom in 1996 and 1997, when
Harrelson, an outspoken advocate of industrial hemp, made two trips to here
classroom and planned a third. Each time he was accompanied by a large
media entourage, bearing cameras and other tools of the news trade. News of
at least one classroom visit was broadcast worldwide on CNN, inspiring
letter to Cockrel from as far away as Brazil.

Each of Harrelson's visits was approved by school leaders in advance, but
the backlash from parents was severe.

Appeals Judge Eugene Siler, Jr., writing in a concurring opinion issued
with the unanimous majority ruling yesterday, took issue with the Shelby
County school system.

"On the face of it, it appears inappropriate for a fifth-grade class to
have a celebrity speaker on a matter as complicated as legalizing
industrial hemp," Siler wrote. "However, the school approved in advance the
subject matter and the speaker. It must now pay the penalty for giving
prior approval, because it cannot now be heard that such conduct by Cockrel
was disruptive."

After the media blitz on Harrelson's visit, several parents wrote
complaining about Cockrel and the message from Harrelson that she was
helping spread among her young students. Harrelson has been a staunch
advocate of hemp as an alternative crop to tobacco. The crop is illegal in
Kentucky because it is the same plant as marijuana, although it lacks
sufficient narcotic ingredients to have the same drug-related effect on people.

In July 1997, Cockrel was fired. The school district detailed 17 reasons
for her termination, including insubordination, her disparagement of the
school's "Just Think" curriculum, her derisive comments about Simpsonville
Elementary principal Harry Slate and other teachers and incompetency.

The appellate court noted that some of the misconduct allegations by the
school predated Harrelson's visits and were egregious enough to merit
Cockrel's termination. However, not once before Harrelson's visits did the
school reprimand Cockrel.

"Cockrel's conduct toward the principal and other teachers my very well
have supported a dismissal of cause," Siler wrote, "but the school took no
action until after the community became agitated following Harrelson's visit."

Matthew Moony, another of Cockrel's attorneys, said that school had praised
Cockrel before Harrelson's visits got administrators dunked into a hot
water bath of public opinion. "Not only was she not reprimanded, she was a
stellar teacher," he said. "She got awards."

The school district's attorney could not be reached for comment.

Cockrel brought hemp into her curriculum as part of an agricultural class
about alternative crops that could help save trees and the environment. In
addition to classes about hemp, she taught about flax and other fibrous
crops, none of which raised a ruckus, or "hemp hoopla" as Cockrel calls it.

In addition to attacking the U.S. District Court's dismissal of Cockrel's
case and ordering it to trial, yesterday's appellate ruling challenged the
opinions of two other appeals court circuits. The other two circuits have
ruled that a teacher speaks as an employee on a private matter ­ not as a
citizen ­ and therefore has no free-speech rights.

"This essentially gives a teacher no right to freedom of speech when
teaching students in a classroom, for the very act of teaching is what the
employee is paid to do," Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote in yesterday's
unanimous opinion. "Thus, when teaching, even if about an upcoming
presidential election or the importance of our Bill of Rights, the Fourth
and Fifth Circuits' reasoning would leave such speech without
constitutional protection."

Since she was fired in Shelby County, Cockrel has moved to Detroit, where
she is teaching elementary school and putting her twin daughters through
college. Yesterday, she was visiting her parents in the Eastern Kentucky
town of Lynch.

"I feel great," she said. "This is long overdue. But I have gone on as life
presented itself. We exist to give glory to God and I have just gone on
teaching."

And filming: On Nov. 17, a documentary about Cockrel's legal wrangle and
industrial hemp is to debut at a Dallas film festival.