DALLAS _ A Fort Worth ISD teacher fired this year after she tweeted anti-immigrant sentiments to President Donald Trump should be allowed to have her job back, the state's education commissioner ruled Monday.
Mike Morath, commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, said that Georgia Clark should be reinstated, with back pay and benefits, or be paid one year of salary instead.
Morath wrote that Clark did not sign away her free-speech rights in her contract with the Fort Worth ISD, and that the district failed to properly challenge the findings of an independent examiner who said Clark should not be fired.
The district has the ability to request another hearing on the matter.
"It appears the commissioner ruled the way he did based on a technicality and we are exploring all of our options," Barbara Griffith, a Fort Worth ISD spokeswoman, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, adding that the district had not yet been able to fully review and analyze the commissioner's decision.
The school district's board voted unanimously in June to fire Clark, an English language-arts teacher at Carter-Riverside High School, "for good cause" after learning about the tweets.
The since-deleted Twitter account, @Rebecca1939, sent a flurry of messages at Trump this spring.
One of the messages claims that the Fort Worth district is "loaded" with students illegally in the country from Mexico and that "Carter-Riverside High School has been taken over by them." (About 62% of the Fort Worth district's students were Hispanic in 2018, according to the TEA.)
A follow-up tweet asked the president to help "remove the illegals from Fort Worth," included two phone numbers and said "Georgia Clark is my real name."
Clark reportedly told an investigator that she thought the tweets were direct messages to Trump and not publicly visible.
She was placed on paid administrative leave May 29, and the board voted to terminate her contract six days later.
Superintendent Kent P. Scribner said in a statement that other allegations had come to light after the tweets were discovered and that "the totality of the behavior warranted the recommendation for termination."
Clark had been the subject of multiple previous complaints, KXAS-TV (NBC5) reported.
In 2013, she was suspended after being accused of calling a group of students "Little Mexico" and another student "white bread." A more-recent complaint alleged that after a student asked her permission to go to the restroom, she replied, "Show me your papers saying you are illegal."
Clark appealed the firing, and a state-appointed examiner held a hearing in August.
In his recommendation, Robert C. Prather Sr. said the Fort Worth ISD board's decision to fire Clark was not backed by the evidence. He wrote that the tweets did not violate district policy and that the district was violating her free-speech rights.
Prather recommended that the district decline to fire Clark and that she be reinstated.
The trustees, however, decided in September to uphold the termination, and Clark then appealed her case to the commissioner.
Students and residents who spoke at a Fort Worth ISD board meeting days before the decision to uphold Clark's firing said the teacher's comments were contrary to federal law that says all students, regardless of immigration status, have a right to public education.
A 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, ruled that a Texas law violated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment by withholding state funds from school districts for the education of children not "legally admitted" to the U.S. and letting school districts deny enrollment to those children.
Miracle Slover, a senior at Carter-Riverside who previously had class with Clark, said she had heard the teacher make derogatory comments toward her black and Hispanic classmates and felt bullied by her.
"Teachers are built to protect us and make us feel safe _ not feel intimidated," Slover said.
An attorney for Clark could not be reached for comment Monday evening.
Clark told WFAA-TV (Channel 8) in September that she had no regrets about her social-media posts.
"Frankly, God was saying, 'It's time you need to do this now,'" she said.
She also told the station that Prather's findings exonerated her and she was ready to get back to work.
"I need my job back and those kids need me too," Clark told the station. "I believe that there are earth angels and I believe that I am one."
