A federal judge has ruled that a Staten Island teacher was wrongfully suspended for allowing students to use sexually explicit language in a class on HIV/AIDS.
Faith Kramer's lawsuit against the Department of Education can proceed, Judge Jack Weinstein ruled Thursday.
The 48-year-old Kramer was suspended for eight months in 2008 and placed in a rubber rooom. She was a tenured teacher at I.S. 72 in Staten Island when she gave a city-approved lesson plan on HIV and AIDS. The city-approved lesson plan said it was okay for the teacher to let the students describe biological terms in "their own language."
And so they did -- using slang and even Yiddishisms to describe sex organs. Parents complained and Kramer was suspended.
In his decision, the judge included the students' lists of words slang terms , expletives and all. The city's lawyers argued they were inappropriate for the classroom.
"If the Board of Education wants its teachers to instruct adolescents about HIV using Latinism of the academy, excluding vulgarism of the street, it should tell them so, plainly," 89-year-old judge Judge Jack Weinstein said, according to the New York Post.
