Athletic Director Jemal Murph Will Keep His Job — Good
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why educators should be able to defend themselves and their students without losing their jobs.
Key Takeaways
- Educators shouldn't be fired for self-defense - Jemal Murph kept his position after defending himself, setting an important precedent
- Schools place inappropriate expectations on staff - Educators are often expected to act as quasi-law enforcement without the training or legal protections
- Staff safety must be a priority - Educators deserve the right to protect themselves and their students from physical harm
Transcript
Teachers should be able to defend themselves against attacks from students.
So I was very glad to see today that Jamal Murph, the athletic director in Portland, Maine, is not being fired.
His union backed him up and he reached an agreement with the district today that he will not be fired.
He had requested a school board hearing over his termination.
And if you hear the details of this situation, it's just ridiculous.
So he was a teacher, he was an athletic director, And he was asked to attend soccer games for student safety to help supervise because kids from other schools had been coming and starting trouble and stealing stuff and attacking people.
So these are students from other schools in the district.
So he helped.
He helped out.
He showed up.
And I think we have to be very, very careful about the positions that we put teachers in.
And I think especially with black male teachers, sometimes they are asked to be kind of like...
magical police officers in a way that people just really did not think through.
Like, what do you think is going to happen if you put someone in harm's way?
Where you know there are students who are going to come and commit crimes, who are going to commit acts of violence, who are going to attack people.
Well, that's precisely what happened And of course he defended himself.
He was surrounded by like 8, 10, 12, 15 teenagers and one of them hit him and he hit back and defended himself and said, look, like if you want to do this, we're, you know, he was not going to let himself get beat up and I don't blame him.
Should any teacher or athletic director or administrator or any educator be put in a position where they have to tolerate a criminal assault just like from being at their job?
Like what job other than an actual police officer Should you expect that that is what you're going to have to deal with?
So I think you know this idea that we can just kind of put teachers in harm's way and especially black male teachers you can just put them in harm's way and that'll just solve a Violence problem and you don't you won't have to worry about it like this was not an appropriate situation To put staff members in and the district's claim this whole time was that they had provided de-escalation training Oh, there's a one-hour presentation that he attended and that should have enabled him to drop the rope and avoid this tug of war with the students.
But he was asked to supervise.
He was asked to keep the other students safe.
He was asked to make these other students leave.
I think if we're going to use educators in a quasi law enforcement role, We've got to back them up.
And, you know, I think nobody wants to see more police involvement.
Nobody wants to see things getting escalated in that way.
But if there's violence, if there's physical danger, if you have actual crimes occurring at your school events, like that is a district responsibility and that is a district liability.
So I'm really glad to see that Mr.
Murph is keeping his job.
I think he was in the right here.
And I'm glad that his union backed him up.
I think unions don't always do the right thing.
But this is a case where it seems like their advocacy was essential.
Let me know what you think.