INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A former Storm Grove Middle School teacher will not get a hearing before the Florida Department of Administrative Hearings. Instead, his employment fate — whether or not he will be fired from the Indian River County School District — will be decided by the School Board on Nov. 26.
At Tuesday evening’s School Board meeting, the board voted to conduct its own hearing over whether or not to fire without pay Storm Grove Middle School Teacher Alan Seiden, for allegedly being unnecessarily aggressive with an autistic child in October 2011.
Seiden’s attorney, Thomas Johnson, of Brandon, Fla., asked that the School Board, instead of holding a hearing, have an intermediary hearing with an officer from the Florida Department of Administrative Hearings, who would then make a recommendation to the School Board.
But after about 20 minutes of discussion, with Board Chairman Jeff Pegler and board member Claudia Jimenez in strong support of foregoing the intermediary hearing, the board voted 3-1 to hold its own termination hearing. Vice Chair Carol Johnson was not at the meeting.
Board member Matt McCain was the lone hold-out in favor of the intermediary hearing because, he said, he believed the officer at that administrative hearing would have more experience in such matters than he did.
The board voted in favor of Schools Superintendent Fran Adam’s recommendation to suspend Johnson without pay until the termination hearing which it scheduled for the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Between Sept. 25 and Oct. 9, Seiden, a special needs teacher, was reassigned to the Purchasing Department while waiting to see if the board would suspend him without pay and while waiting for the hearing on whether or not to terminate him.
According to a School District letter sent to Seiden, the alleged misconduct occurred when he accompanied students in the autistic program at Storm Grove Middle School on a field trip to LaPorte Farms on Oct. 11. During that trip, says the School District charging letter, Seiden “inappropriately handled (a student’s) behavior, which caused a significant escalation” of an incident. Seiden’s handling of the incident was characterized in the letter as “improper and aggressive physical and verbal actions” that exposed “the student to unnecessary embarrassment or disparagement.”
At the time of the incident, Seiden had been a teacher in Indian River County for more than 10 years. But it was the second time in a year that his actions were brought to the board for disciplinary consideration.
In February 2012, he was accused of hitting another student in his charge and eight days of suspension were recommended by the superintendent.
The language in the charging letter over that incident was very similar to that in the letter concerning the incident at the LaPorte Farms field trip.
