Teacher at Imagine Prep charter in Arizona fired for bumper stickers

by David Safier

I've written a lot about Imagine charter schools in Arizona and across the country. Their CEO is an amazingly rich guy, also very conservative, also deeply Christian, who keeps a tight rein on the schools. Imagine Schools has been the subject of all kinds of negative press across the country (and almost no attention in Arizona) for slighting education, bankrupting individual schools by charging huge management fees and exorbitant rent on buildings, and on and on. The one thing you rarely hear about Imagine Schools is that they are superior educationally.

A Channel 12 Phoenix news story covers the firing of Tarah Ausburn, a high school English teacher at Imagine Prep high school in the Phoenix area (I think in Surprise) with nine years experience who was let go for the bumper stickers on her car. If you watch the video, you'll see she has lots of them, and they are on the left side of the political spectrum.

According to the video, some parents complained about the bumper stickers, and her principal backed her up. But when the parents complained to higher ups, she was fired. Imagine Schools has a centralized headquarters in Phoenix and overlapping boards for its schools — nothing even vaguely resembling local control.

I would like to know if other teachers have gotten in trouble for anything they have stuck on their cars (or on their classroom walls) which is right of center or Christian oriented. What a teacher puts on her car seems to be her own business, unless, of course, it has the wrong — i.e., progressive — message.

NOTE: I know I can't back this up, but I can tell Ausburn is a high quality teacher by her speech patterns, her poise and her intelligence. She is the kind of teacher who can bring warmth and depth to her classroom. How do I know? Let's say, hanging around a high school for 30-plus years gives you a sense of who has the right stuff. My guess is, Ausburn does, and the school is losing a good teacher.

(h/t to Todd for emailing me the story.)