UPDATE: It was reported on Channel 7 news tonight that the principal, Dr. Karen Spillman has resigned her position with Stafford County Schools. That should not come as a surprise. We can assume the resignation was a forced resignation. 9/27/11 11:30
There is a little more to the Banana Man story. After Banana Man was cuffed and headed toward a 10 day suspension, the student body at Colonial Forge came to his defense. Many T-shirts were made up saying FREE Banana Man. The administration at the high school forbid the students to wear the shirts and even confiscated some of them. The ACLU has now come in on behalf of the students of Colonial Forge High School in Stafford and has told administrators in Stafford County that they must allow students to wear their Free Banana Man T-shirts. The students had been forbidden to wear Free Banana Man T-shirts prior to ACLU intervention.
Of course, the school system can choose to ignore the ACLU, if they choose. The principal is Dr. Karen Spillman, former principal in Prince William County. She certainly is not getting community support or the support of her boss, as we shall learn later. In fact, Dr. Spillman has quite a record for stirring things up and turning a 1 into a 10 when there is no need for a 10.
Leaving My Marc Blog tells quite the story. Apparently this isn’t Dr. Spillman’s first brush with controversy. Remember the reporter who was arrested over the ducks at Woodbridge High School a number of years ago? It seems that one Dr. Karen Spillman was involved in that debacle also. Leaving My Marc reports the following from Freedomforum.org: [Editor’s note- the Kelly Campbell story is a number of years old.]
Reporter Kelly Campbell went to school last week to finish up a feature on baby ducks and wound up in handcuffs and cooling her heels at a police station.
Students no doubt will be heartened to see someone besides themselves suffer under “zero-tolerance” policies afflicting the nation’s schools these days. But the reporter’s arrest raises legitimate questions about the ability of the press to perform its constitutional role and about the dismissive attitude of many government officials toward public accountability.
It all started when a photographer for the Potomac News in Prince William County, Va., saw a young person with a duckling at a baseball game last week and took a photo. She found out that the duck was part of a class assignment at Woodbridge High School.
In reporting a story to go with the photo, Campbell learned that biology teacher Douglas Pinion had 100 students take home two-day-old ducklings in an experiment about how they might “imprint” on the humans. She also encountered wildlife experts and some students and parents who expressed concerns about the welfare of the ducks. Her calls to the school to get further information were not returned. So she went to the school, where Principal Karen Spillman invited her into her office for an interview.
