The insane double standard over irresponsible Garfield HS choir director

The choir director at Seattle’s Garfield High School, Carol Burton, is speaking out for the first time in defense of both her job and her conduct during a school field trip, arguing she shouldn’t be fired, even though she broke school policies. She should absolutely be fired.

In March, Garfield High students traveled to New Orleans as part of a school choir trip. The school policies clearly state that she wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol, but she did. And she wasn’t alone. Parent chaperones were also drinking, according to a district investigation. This included an incident where a drunk parent had to be helped back to a hotel room.

But this isn’t even the worst violation; something terrible happened under her watch. During the trip, a teenage boy allegedly groped teen girls in one of their hotel rooms.

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Now, the boys and girls are not supposed to be in each others’ hotel rooms. That’s the rule. Even though I don’t think it’s fair to say Carol Burton should be held responsible for every case where some teen breaks a rule (teens break rules and it’s not always easy to catch), Burton admits she didn’t explicitly tell the kids the rule and according to a district investigation, she “permitted male and female students to be in each others’ rooms before curfew.”

Speaking to KING 5 she said she didn’t tell the kids of the rule, nor did she enforce it. And she admits enforcing the rules “…would have kept the girls safe. I’m not innocent. I did some wrongdoings and part of that is what’s at stake here, too, and I’m willing to own up for those things and take my punishment where I need to be taking it.”

Well, her punishment should be her firing and she appears to be fighting it, indicating she’s not willing to take her punishment. She admits that her inability to enforce the rules led to an environment where the girls who were molested weren’t kept safe; so why would she not voluntarily resign for her egregious lack of supervision?

Instead, she appears to defend her behavior when she’s not claiming to want to take responsibility for it. She told KING 5, of her drinking, that she has “two alcoholic beverages in five days.” I don’t care if she had a thimble size shot of wine. The policy says you don’t drink any alcohol. How many you had is irrelevant. That you had the drinks is what matters.

Related: Where are all the parents?

What is more shocking is how some people are defending her conduct.

“This is a bit of an injustice,” Garfield High School PTSA Co-President Kirk Wohlers said. “Because no teachers are going to want to take a field trip again and the kids are going to be suffering, again, from what’s happening at the district level. We live in a litigious society and that’s a problem, but getting rid of a teacher is not going to solve this problem.”

The injustice is that a couple of girls were inappropriately groped on a school field trip, not that a teacher is suffering the consequences of not following school policy and doing the bare minimum to protect her students. She literally didn’t do the bare minimum, which is simply to tell the kids the policy is to stay out of each others’ rooms.

I’m supposed to be moved that by enforcing the rules and telling teachers they can’t drink on field trips or allow students to be groped, that somehow that is going to stop a teacher from wanting to take kids on field trips? You mean to tell me, Garfield High School teachers won’t take kids on field trips because they think they should be allowed to drink and allow boys and girls to hang out in each others’ rooms? If that’s the case, then not only should they not take kids on field trips at all, they probably aren’t fit to teach. Are they willing to stop themselves from drinking a glass of wine during the school day? Let’s hope so.

We live in a world where we will suspend a 10-year-old for using his finger to simulate a gun, or a 13-year-old doodling a gun. But it’s somehow wrong to fire a teacher who drank on the job and who chose not to enforce a policy that could have prevented her students from being groped.