Who Is Georgia Clark? New Details On The Texas Teacher Fired For Racist Tweets About Her Students
A Texas teacher asked Donald Trump to help her remove undocumented students from her school.
Getty A Texas teacher is unemployed today after sending a series of anti-immigrant tweets to Donald Trump last month. While it’s not unusual for Trump and his supporters to exchange racist social media messages about their disdain for people born outside the United States, it’s not typical for a teacher to do what Georgia Clark did: publicly request that Trump personally remove undocumented students from the high school where she works.
Clark sent a series of tweets to the president on May 17th asking him to take action on the matter of undocumented students in her school. She tweeted her support for a border wall to keep immigrants out and she complained: “The Mexicans refuse to honor our flag.” She even shared her personal contact information — and she did it on her public timeline.
Now Clark has been fired for cause but she claims she should be able to keep her job because she didn’t know she was posting for all the world to see — she thought she was engaging in a private conversation with Donald Trump and that her identity would be protected. Public or private, Clark missed a major point: the law protects students from being denied an eductaion based on immigration status and schools are not permitted to ask about immigration status. Her requests if fulfilled, would have violated the law.
Who is Georgia Clark and why did she lose her job? Read on for all the details.
1. Tweets
On May 17th, Clark took to Twitter and sent a series of tweets to the president asking that he remove undocumented students from the school where she works in Texas. Her account is now deleted but screen shots preserved the sentiments in her posts. She said things like “Mr President, Fort Worth Independent School District is loaded with illegal students from Mexico.” and “Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated.” She even went so far as to share her phone number with the president and asked him to call her personally to address this problem. She also made it clear that she needed her identity protected because she feared retaliation if the school realized what she was requesting.
Clark tweeted racist remarks on her public timeline.
2. Not DMs
If Clark truly had not wanted her identity revealed, she should have learned more about how Twitter works before using it as a way to directly address a public figure. What she thought would be messages visible only to the president were posted to her timeline for anyone to see. In a review of the incident, the Washington Post reports the district found that: “Ms. Clark stated she did not realize the tweets were public.” She attempted to remove the evidence by deleting her account but enough people had seen and preserved the messages that she couldn’t hide her racist posts from her supervisors.
Clark was placed on leave prior to a hearing.
3. What the law says
It’s important to note that not only is Clark revealing a staggering level of bias based on where her students were born, she is also in direct violation of the law; schools cannot deny students an education based on their immigration status and school personnel cannot make inquiries about immigration status. The Washington Post writes: “The Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that public schools are required to provide schooling for children regardless of their immigration status. Schools cannot ask students about their immigration status or report them or family members to federal immigration authorities.” Clark tweeted that “Texas will not protect whistle blowers,” but that is because there is no whistle to blow. Texas schools are operating within the bounds of the law by allowing students to attend class regardless of immigration status. Clark is the one attempting to violate official policy in this case.
Her tweets, which were public, suggest removing students for immigration status. That would violate US law.
4. Prior record
Clark has not had a spotless record as a teacher before this. She is currently being investigated for asking a student to show their immigration papers before she would allow the teen to go to the restroom. That incident happened the same day she went on her tweetstorm to the president. In 2007, she was found to have kicked a student, although the Washington Post reports that the investigation found that she did the kicking “without malice.” In other incidents, she called a group os students “little Mexico” and referred to another student as "white bread.”
Clark has been investigated for racist behavior at work before.
5. Fired
Thought Clark defends herself by saying that she never intended the tweets to be public, The Heavy reports that wasn’t a good enough excuse for the school board. She was placed on indefinite leave with pay as of May 29th. After further review, the board voted to remove Clark form her position at the school. The vote was unanimous to fire her and the board tweeted their decision saying: “Board has voted to terminate contract of teacher Georgia Clark for good cause. Motion made by Trustee Paz. Second by Norman Robbins. Motion passes 8-0.” Clark says she intends to request a hearing to contest her firing.
Clark was terminated. She can appeal the decision.
A graduate of the school returned to the district for the hearing and supported the motion to to fire Clark in light of her history. He said: “Why did we wait until now? We need to fire this teacher, and we need to prevent her from ever teaching again.”
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.