PHILADELPHIA — The Coatesville Area School District has fired a middle school teacher who put a piece of tape reading “I have nothing nice to say” on a student’s face last month — an action the district described as humiliating to the child, but that the teacher defended as an ill-conceived joke.
At a meeting Tuesday night, the district’s school board voted 7-1 to dismiss Audra Ritter, a special education and English language arts teacher at North Brandywine Middle School. Board members did not discuss the dismissal.
According to the district, Ritter — who is also president of the district’s teachers union — placed a piece of duct tape on the nose of an agitated student on May 4 with the message: “I have nothing nice to say.”
The student was “humiliated and offended,” according to a statement of charges prepared by the district, and asked the principal to be excused from Ritter’s class — but was later tracked down by Ritter, who “began threatening retaliation” against the student.
The district accused Ritter of racially discriminating against the student, who is Black; Ritter is white. Ritter also violated the student’s individualized education program for disabilities, the district’s code of employee conduct, and state law around schools’ use of behavioral interventions, according to the district, about 40 miles west of Philadelphia.
Ritter, a teacher of 28 years, said she was trying to defuse a situation with humor, and that the student in question was yelling at a classmate ahead of taking the PSSA standardized tests. She said she had a good relationship with the student, and said the student was laughing and calm in her class after the tape — which Ritter described as art tape, rather than duct tape — was placed on her nose.
“I admit to the tape — I admit to all of that,” Ritter said Wednesday. But she felt the district had ignored her side of the story, and was “disappointed and disheartened” by the board’s vote.
“Where are the people speaking with the evidence of all the other charges?” said Ritter, who has denied any discrimination against the student, and said the district didn’t let her apologize to the family after she learned the child had been upset.
Two teachers who spoke during Tuesday’s board meeting defended Ritter, and accused the district of trying to punish her for her advocacy as the union president.
Ritter — who had faced termination from the district in 2019 over what she said was her handling of a reading diagnostic test — has filed a grievance through the union over the district’s response to the tape incident. She said Wednesday that an arbitrator will decide whether the discipline she received and termination was appropriate.
In the meantime, she will be looking for another job.
“I have to find employment somewhere,” she said.
