A phone call is costing a New Jersey teacher $5,500 a minute.
Desley Getty was fined $22,000 for making a four-minute cell phone call from a classroom, according to The Press of Atlantic City. The school district says she not only violated school policy, she embarrassed the entire district when a kid in the class posted the evidence on YouTube.
Getty, a performing arts teacher at Asbury Park High School, was sitting in for another teacher when she made the call. Two students got up and started dancing while she was on the phone. A third student videotaped it all and posted the clip online that night.
When Getty found out about the video the next day, she went back to the class and started questioning the students, disrupting the class, reports the paper.
The teacher admits she made a mistake. After a reprimand by her principal, the school board tried to remover her from her job. But the state Education Commissioner agreed this week with an administrative law judge who recommended that Getty keep her job. He said other than this incident, her record was clean.
The judge said Getty's behavior was "less than what was expected from an experienced, tenured teacher," according to the paper. However, he felt the cell phone call (to another educator about a juvenile case) didn' t warrant Getty losing her job.
Getty does have to forfeit 120 days of her $70,000 annual salary.
