Vernon teacher fired for allowing student to cheat loses appeal

A Vernon high school teacher fired for allowing a vulnerable student to cheat on a literacy assessment has failed in her attempt to get her job back.

According to a June 11 Labour Arbitration decision, the teachers’ union argued that former W.L. Seaton Secondary School teacher Tasha Whitney should be reinstated in her position teaching students with behavioural concerns, after being fired for allowing a Grade 12 student to take an assessment for another student she believed wouldn’t otherwise graduate.

Whitney admitted she’d made an “enormous error in judgment,” and the BC Teachers Federation went to bat for her, arguing that her dismissal was too harsh a penalty. It proposed a five-day unpaid suspension instead.

However, the Arbitrator didn’t buy it.

“It is not a momentary lapse of judgement or misconduct committed in a state of panic as the Whitney knew the students were contemplating cheating and joked about it with them on two occasions,” the Arbitrator said. “She actively participated in the cheating and attempted to hide it from her co-worker while it was happening.”

The case dates back to spring 2024, when Whitney was teaching in a unit for vulnerable pupils. While she’d been teaching for 18 years, this was her first time teaching high school-age students.

The student in question was working full-time to help his family with living expenses but had to come into school to sit one assessment to graduate.

The student said they needed to give their employer two weeks’ notice, and joked that instead they’d get a friend to do the assessment for them. Whitney joked along with it.

When the student didn’t come to school, Whitney slid a piece of paper with the student’s login code written on it to another student. The other student logged in under their classmate’s name and completed the assessment.

The 26-page decision goes through a play-by-play account of what took place, and how a colleague questioned what was going on and why the student was using two computers.

It didn’t take long to work out what had taken place, and by the end of the day, principal Mike Grace was aware.

Following an investigation, she was fired a few months later.

Earlier this year, the teaching regulator suspended her licence for five days over the matter.

In appealing her dismissal, the Arbitrator found that Whitney consistently contradicted herself when questioned immediately afterwards and throughout the ongoing investigation.

“If (Whitney) had been honest in her initial conversations with the Principal and during the investigation, her motivation to assist a vulnerable student combined with her understanding that the literacy 12 assessment was just a ‘hoop to jump through’ would have mitigated against the seriousness of the misconduct… it would have been an enormous error in judgment made with good intentions during a time when (Whitney) was experiencing stress and anxiety followed by a timely admission of wrongdoing,” the Arbitrator said.

However, the Arbitrator said the teacher didn’t do that.

“Instead, she did not disclose her active participation in the cheating to the Principal… when he was first trying to understand what happened, during the investigation interview… or in her written statement provided after the interview,” the Arbitrator said.

Whitney said she felt pressure to make sure the student graduated.

An earlier violent incident with a student had left her experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and a clinical counsellor submitted that it had left her with “people pleasing behaviours.”

However, another psychiatric report found there was no connection between any medical diagnosis and her behaviour.

The decision said she apologized during the hearing, but the Arbitrator wasn’t convinced.

“She also repeatedly apologized while being untruthful about her conduct during her conversations with the Principal and in the investigation… the critical time to make an apology is during the investigation, rather than just before cross-examination during testimony at the arbitration,” the Arbitrator said.

“Actively participating in cheating on a provincial assessment and instilling in the students involved that it is okay to cheat (is) contrary to her fiduciary duty as a teacher,” the Arbitrator said.

The decision said both students involved resat the assessment and both graduated.