Education

Teacher Who Speaks No Spanish Sues Because She Didn’t Get A Job TEACHING SPANISH

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A Florida elementary school teacher has filed a federal employment discrimination lawsuit against her employer because she didn’t get a job which requires her to teach Spanish.

The teacher, Tracy Rosner, doesn’t speak Spanish.

Rosner, who is currently a teacher at Coral Reef Elementary School in the quiet Miami suburb of Palmetto Bay, filed her lawsuit against the Miami-Dade County School Board last week, reports the Miami New Times.

According to the third-grade teacher’s lawsuit, Coral Reef Elementary offers its students a trio of tracks: extended foreign language, college preparatory and gifted.

In May 2015, Rosner applied for an assignment in the extended foreign language program, which provides students with an hour of instruction in Spanish each day.

The principal at Coral Reef Elementary rejected Rosner’s application because she doesn’t speak Spanish.

The school’s policy is to accept teachers for the extended foreign language only if they actually speak the language which they must speak for an hour each day.

Through her attorneys, Rosner argues that the rejection of her application was unreasonable because she is “otherwise fully qualified” for the job. She could teach for the better part of the day, she argues, and another teacher could drop in every single day to teach for the one hour of Spanish.

Rosner’s federal employment discrimination lawsuit is based on race. She is white.

People who don’t speak Spanish represent a minority population in Miami-Dade County, the suit claims. Thus, a Spanish-speaking requirement “disproportionately affects” Rosner and the rest of the local population which does not speak Spanish.

“Ms. Rosner was provided a less desirable position and has damages including emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish” and “loss of enjoyment of life,” the lawsuit claims, according to the New Times.

The suit also claims that the Coral Reef Elementary principal — one “Mrs. Guerra,” according to the school’s website — retaliated against Rosner by increasing her workload and making her teach additional subjects.

Coral Reef Elementary is 51 percent Hispanic, according to the education website GreatSchools.org.

The taxpayer-funded school requires students to wear uniforms, the school website says.

Extracurricular activities at the grade school include an art club, a robotics club, an origami club, cheerleading and Youth Crime Watch.

The 23,140-person village of Palmetto Bay is a “family-friendly community” which “features top private and public schools as well as shopping and dining venues,” according to EWM Realty International.

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