SC teachers who resigned due to COVID-19 are having their licenses suspended
Elton Vrede cherished being able to share his information technology and networking expertise with students at Heyward Career and Technology Center.
The 70-year-old began teaching in Richland 1 school district in 2005, a few years after retiring from the U.S. Army as a first sergeant, and felt called to the work.
Despite his age, he hadn’t given a thought to leaving — until COVID-19 intervened.
Vrede had reservations about returning to the classroom this past fall, given his age and his disabled wife’s fragile health, but reported anyway, determined to give it his best shot. After a staff member in his building tested positive for the virus during the first week of classes, however, he decided to put in his two weeks’ notice.
“I said, it’s just too risky with the interaction level and someone bringing it to the school already,” he said. “I went in and explained to the principal that, unfortunately, I’m going to have to resign.”
Just as continuing to teach posed a potential risk to Vrede and his wife’s health, quitting mid-year also came with consequences. Richland 1 reported the veteran teacher’s contract breach to the state Board of Education, which last month suspended his educator certificate for one year.
Vrede is one of at least six teachers statewide whose COVID-related resignations resulted in action being taken against their license, according to a review of the state board’s disciplinary orders. The state Board of Education ruled on two such cases in January and four more in February, choosing to suspend five of the teachers’ licenses and publicly reprimand a sixth.
Additional COVID-related breach of contract cases are pending before the state board, although how many is unclear.
The disciplinary actions come at a time when tensions are high between educators and state leaders who have disagreed on when to resume in-person classes five days a week. Gov. Henry McMaster has been pushing districts to offer parents some form of in-person instruction since last July, when the state discovered it had lost touch with thousands of children after the pandemic forced many districts to transition to virtual instruction.
With the potential health risks of returning to the classroom still unclear in the fall, state teachers and their advocates objected to pleas to return to the classroom, citing concerns for their own health and that of their families.
More recently, teachers have expressed frustration with McMaster and the state for not prioritizing them for COVID-19 vaccines, which arrived in the state starting in mid-December, after the resignations occurred. This week, McMaster announced that teachers would become eligible for the vaccine Monday, joining a group of 2.7 million South Carolinians who will be vying for a growing but still limited number of doses available to the state each week.
A choice ‘between lives and livelihoods’
It’s not uncommon for teachers to face discipline for breaking their employment contracts — dozens of teachers resign mid-contract each year and dozens have their licenses suspended as a result — but cases typically involve teachers who stopped showing up for work, moved out of state or simply left the profession.
By contrast, many teachers who quit in the past year resigned solely out of concern for their own health and well-being, or that of their families.
Some sought accommodations, but were rebuffed, while others just didn’t feel comfortable with how their districts were handling the reopening process.
“I felt frustrated and misled by the reopening plan,” said Ashley Walker, a Richland 2 teacher who resigned her job teaching English at Blythewood High School shortly before winter break.
Walker, who is in her late 20s but feared the potential long-term health consequences that even mild coronavirus cases can sometimes cause, said she felt the district, which started the year fully virtual, moved to a hybrid model before the area’s infection rate warranted it.
“I think that lots of teachers and lots of families as well did not realize that the plan only moved in one direction,” she said.
While many school districts opened the year fully virtual, all were required to submit reopening plans with in-person options and encouraged to offer face-to-face instruction five days a week.
As of Monday, 773 of the state’s 1,261 non-virtual schools offered in-person classroom learning five days a week, 476 had blended models and only 12 schools were entirely remote, according to a state Department of Education spokesman.
Both McMaster and state schools chief Molly Spearman have urged districts that remain virtual to bring students back to the classroom, citing U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and studies, including one in Charleston County, that found COVID-19 transmission in schools was minimal.
At the time classes started in the fall, however, the risk of coronavirus transmission in schools was still largely unknown and many teachers balked at returning to the classroom.
Walker said district officials initially told her they planned to report her resignation to the state board and seek the suspension of her credentials, but ended up releasing her from her contract after finding a replacement.
Others who quit due to coronavirus concerns haven’t been as fortunate, and are now left to job hunt with a permanent black mark on their record.
“Any time you apply for a job teaching or apply for a license in a different state, there is a question on the application, has your license ever been suspended or revoked?” said Mary Ashley Lozano, a former special education teacher at Fort Mill High School who resigned over the summer due to COVID-19 concerns.
Some districts allow you to explain the circumstances of your suspension, she said, but many will automatically disqualify an applicant who answers “Yes.”
“Why take a chance on me when they have other applicants?” said Lozano, who last month was issued a public reprimand for “unprofessional conduct.”
With South Carolina already struggling to attract and retain educators — vacancies were up 26% in the fall compared to last school year — teacher advocates say it’s short sighted to punish dedicated employees who quit out of concern for a virus that has killed more than 7,600 South Carolinians in the last year.
“Our state is in a teaching shortage crisis, in part, because our professional educators are too often treated in a less than professional manner,” said Kathy Maness, executive director of the Palmetto State Teachers Association. “Attempts by districts to suspend the license of teachers that resign due to COVID will only serve to exacerbate the teaching shortage in South Carolina.”
Maness, who has repeatedly asked the state Board of Education not to penalize teachers who resign mid-year due to documented coronavirus fears, said South Carolina educators are too often being forced to choose between their lives and their livelihoods, between the well-being of their loved ones and the careers they love.
“There are issues where the state board should step in and suspend a license, if it’s related to the health and safety of students,” said Patrick Kelly, PSTA’s director of governmental affairs. “But by and large, we think that it should make judicious use of that power. Right now, we can’t find enough teachers for our classrooms, as it is. We don’t need to be suspending licenses on technicalities and procedural issues if we can avoid it.”
Teachers who quit out of fear of COVID-19 and had action taken against their license said the punishment does not fit the infraction.
A sampling of other South Carolina educators who, like those who resigned over coronavirus concerns, have received suspensions from the state board this year include a Charleston County teacher who was found passed out in a bathroom stall with methamphetamine, a Greenville County teacher who engaged in an “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a staff member at the residential group home where she taught and a Charleston County guidance counselor who inappropriately changed the grades of her school’s top three graduating seniors.
“I don’t see that what I have done is even close to what others were accused of doing,” Lozano said in the days leading up to her disciplinary hearing.
The exact number of South Carolina educators who have resigned in the past year due to COVID-19 concerns is not known, but teacher advocates believe it’s significant.
South Carolina districts reported 699 teaching and service position vacancies as of early this school year compared to 555 at the beginning of last school year, according to the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement’s annual educator supply and demand report released in December.
A follow-up report released last month found an additional 677 teachers had resigned since October, although their reasons for doing so were not tracked and it’s unclear how that compares to years past because mid-year resignations have not previously been measured, said Jennifer Garrett, CERRA’s coordinator of research and program evaluation.
According to CERRA’s recent report, the number of teaching and service position vacancies has decreased from 699 to 515 since October, but again, researchers don’t know the significance of the decline since that data has never before been tracked.
“You can kind of spin it any way you want,” Garrett said.
Some teachers in the dark about binding contracts
Teachers in South Carolina work under annual contracts, and the stakes are high when they quit early.
Most districts distribute contracts to teachers for the coming school year in late March or April, and give them until early May to sign and return them.
Once they sign, teachers are locked in for the next 12 months and run the risk of having their educator certificate suspended for up to one year if they leave prematurely.
“Teachers don’t resign lightly,” said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association. “And when it happens, it’s horrible.”
Districts have the discretion to release a teacher from their contract, and many do, if they’re able to find a replacement before the departing teacher resigns. But they also may report the contract breach to the state Board of Education, which is required to take up such cases.
“I think it has a lot to do with the rationale for why that person is choosing to not be in their contract and how that’s communicated,” state Department of Education spokesman Ryan Brown said. “When you have decisions that are going to impact children’s education that have been budgeted and planned for, and have someone signing a contract and they then quit, that’s when they’ll pursue this breach of contract.”
While an increasing number of districts have worked with educators concerned about teaching in person this school year, others have been less willing to meet requests for accommodation, said Kelly, a Richland 2 teacher.
When a district reports a teacher’s contract breach, an administrative hearing officer, who acts as a judge, hears the case and makes disciplinary recommendations to the state board. The board ultimately decides what action, if any, should be taken against the teacher.
The majority of teachers waive their right to a hearing and simply accept the punishment, often a one-year suspension, state board records show.
A teacher whose license has been suspended is prohibited from teaching in South Carolina schools for the duration of the suspension and the black mark against them is entered into a national educator clearinghouse accessible to districts across the country.
As a result, license suspensions follow teachers for the rest of their careers and can make it difficult to find future classroom work.
East, who believes educators should be permitted to resign mid-contract with 30 to 60 days advance notice, said many teachers don’t realize the potential long-term career consequences of breaking their contract.
Lozano, the former occupational studies teacher at Fort Mill High School, said when she asked the district to rescind her contract last summer she had no idea it could lead to the suspension of her license.
Lozano, who is in her 30s but has health complications and a husband and young son who are also high risk, had COVID-related reservations going into the school year, but said she signed her contract in May after being given assurances the district would work with her.
“I signed it the day it was due, but I was never told if you sign it you can’t ever leave,” she said.
Lozano said she spent months going back and forth with the district trying to secure permission to work from home so she could care for her 5-year-old son, whose school was fully virtual, but ultimately was denied any accommodations.
A Fort Mill School District spokesman declined comment on her case and on another case involving a teacher the district reported for a COVID-related breach of contract, citing an inability to discuss personnel matters.
Lozano said she loved her job and didn’t want to resign, but told the district at the end of July that she would have to rescind her contract if it wasn’t willing to work with her.
“My hope was when I said I’d have to rescind my contract that they’d take me more seriously,” she said. “I was not expecting an email thanking me for my service.”
Lozano said the district posted her job the next day. When she tried to reach out to administrators to clear up her intentions, no one would take her calls, she said. Her work ID and email address were deactivated and her colleagues were told she was no longer an employee.
“I had to sign in as a visitor to clear out my classroom,” Lozano said.
She said she didn’t learn the district was going after her license until about six weeks later when she received a certified letter informing her she had 15 days to request a hearing on the matter.
Unlike many of the teachers in her situation, Lozano lawyered up and demanded a hearing.
Despite finding the circumstances of her breach of contract “sufficiently mitigating,” and calling her testimony “compelling,” a hearing officer found Lozano had nonetheless violated district policy.
The hearing officer recommended she receive a public reprimand for “unprofessional conduct,” and in February, the state board agreed. Lozano is the only South Carolina teacher the board hasn’t suspended for a COVID-related breach of contract, although, like a suspension, a public reprimand becomes part of a teacher’s permanent record.
“It’s been reported to all districts in South Carolina, and when teachers apply for jobs and they check your background through the clearinghouse, my name will always be flagged,” Lozano said. “I can describe it and explain what happened, but it’ll always be there. It’s better than a suspension, but it hurts.”
While technically able to continue teaching in South Carolina, she said she no longer wants to after everything she’s been through. Lozano recently accepted a position teaching special education in North Carolina, where she’s able to teach remotely, and said she feels supported in her new district.
“I’m happy that I’m still able to be a teacher. I just hate that this is a situation that so many other teachers in the state of South Carolina are having to deal with and don’t have other options,” she said. “I have another option to go to a different state because I’m on the border. So many other people don’t have that option.”
Teachers’ fate depends on district’s policy
At least nine South Carolina teachers from six districts who resigned due to coronavirus concerns have been reported to the state for disciplinary action.
Richland 1, Richland 2 and Fort Mill school districts have each reported two such cases, and Greenville County, Clover and Renaissance Academy, an Anderson County charter school, have each reported one, according to an analysis by The State.
Because the cases do not become public record until the state board takes action against a teacher’s license, it’s hard to determine how many are currently in the pipeline.
In some instances, districts have reported teachers to the state, but later dropped the cases for one reason or another. Other times, teachers whose districts initially threatened to report them were able to negotiate releases from their contracts with the help of education organizations like the South Carolina Education Association and the Palmetto State Teachers Association.
“We’ve encouraged districts to work with people with extenuating circumstances, so you don’t lose good employees,” said East, the SCEA president.
Most of the districts that reported teachers who resigned due to COVID-19 were unwilling to discuss specific cases because they involved personnel decisions.
A Richland 1 spokeswoman said the district seeks to suspend the credentials of any teacher who leaves before they’re officially released from their contract, regardless of the reason.
Richland 2 spokeswoman Libby Roof said the district, which has had 24 COVID-related resignations since last March, makes an effort to work with employees who have concerns about returning to work amid the pandemic.
“The district’s decisions have considered each individual case while at the same time recognizing and assessing the overall impact that each decision will have on our ability to safely, efficiently, and responsibly reopen our schools,” she said in a statement.
A spokesman with Clover School District in York County said officials report all breach of contract cases to the state Board of Education, but will release teachers from their contract once a suitable replacement is found.
Greenville County schools spokesman Tim Waller said the district considers contract release requests on an individual basis, but that after July 1, the district will only approve them for reasons of sickness, change of spouse’s residence out of the district, maternity or other “exceptional” circumstances. No employee is released from their contract until a satisfactory replacement has been found or the superintendent determines a replacement is not necessary, he said.
“Any professional employee who fails to comply with the provisions of his contract without having been duly released from his contract shall be deemed guilty of unprofessional conduct and will not be eligible for re-employment in the district,” Waller said in a statement. “In addition, a formal complaint may be filed with the State Board of Education requesting revocation or suspension of the employee’s certification.”
He said the lone COVID-related breach of contract case the district has reported this school year involved a middle school teacher who resigned shortly before winter break citing concern for the virus, but without a specific health diagnosis.
Tripp Bouknight, Renaissance Academy’s board chairman, said the charter school reported a teacher who failed to show up on the first day of school without giving any notice. When contacted by the school’s director, the teacher reportedly said he disagreed with the governor’s stance on reopening schools and would not be returning, Bouknight said.
According to a letter the school’s attorneys sent the state Board of Education, the teacher said he “did not agree with the Academy’s decision to provide ‘in-person instruction’ to its students.”
School officials said they didn’t know if the teacher had any specific health issues that made him high risk or just was opposed to reopening schools due to general concern about coronavirus exposure.
Of the cases that already have gone before the state board, only Lozano has sought a hearing.
Four of the cases were defaults, meaning the teacher was notified of pending action against their certificate but did not request a hearing, and Vrede waived his right to a hearing even though he said he thought he had legitimate reasons for resigning.
The veteran Richland 1 teacher said with only a short time to appeal and without a lawyer to represent him, he didn’t feel like his case was winnable and decided not to push it any further.
“I signed a letter saying I accept the penalty and then I got the notice that said you’re suspended as of February,” Vrede said. “I didn’t think it was right, I didn’t think it was fair, I had good grounds for leaving.”
He said he knew when he resigned there was a possibility his license would be suspended and doesn’t begrudge the district for reporting him, but he still feels disappointed that his specific situation wasn’t taken into consideration.
“I just think it’s unfortunate as far as teachers making the decision to leave that their circumstances can’t be evaluated sufficiently to see if they’re justified in their decision,” Vrede said. “It’s just flat cut and dried — you have a contract, you’re committed to it.”
Lozano was able to hire a lawyer to appeal her breach of contract case, but said she knows not all educators can afford to, or feel it’s worth the effort.
“When you talk to people, they tell you that you’re going to get suspended anyways, so why waste the time and money to find a lawyer?” she said. “You’re just kind of told, and you have that feeling: it’s the district. You’re not going to win against the big district.”
Despite what she was told were long odds, Lozano said she went through with an appeal because she felt like the facts were in her favor.
“I could have saved a lot of time, money and energy, but I truly didn’t think doing what I did was worth someone suspending my license,” she said.
“I didn’t quit my students,” Lozano added. “I had to take care of my family.”
Kristi Woodall, state Board of Education chair, said she couldn’t comment on the board’s decisions to approve disciplinary action against specific teachers beyond the rationale cited in their administrative orders, but said its members carefully weigh the facts of each case.
“Please rest assured that we consider the merit of each case brought before us independently,” she said in a statement. “As a fellow teacher and administrator, I consider each case through both lenses.”
What’s next for teachers who resigned?
With his credentials suspended through early February 2022, Vrede will be 71 by the time he’s eligible for reinstatement and will have missed out on nearly two years of teaching.
But the difficulties he might face securing employment as a septuagenarian with a recent suspension for “unprofessional conduct, breach of contract, willful neglect of duty and failure to comply with the provisions of a contract without the written consent of the local school board” haven’t kept the Columbia resident from plotting his return to the classroom.
“I’m still watching closely how things are developing, and going into the new school year I’m thinking that maybe, at some point, I’d be able to still get in and do substitute teaching,” said Vrede, who recently got his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. “When my credentials come back in place (next February), I may be in a position to take a (full-time) teaching position, if I want to.”
The retired military man said he doesn’t need the money, but he misses teaching and working with students.
Since resigning in September, he said he’s spent most of his time at home, supporting his wife and shuttling her to and from doctor’s appointments.
Vrede said he’s comfortable returning to work as soon as both he and his wife are fully vaccinated, but expressed frustration that his suspension will keep him from returning to the classroom sooner.
“I kind of feel like my inability to have that option is denying me the opportunity to play a role in the process of getting kids back in school and back on track,” he said.