Phoebe Hearst parents, staff continue to protest reassignment of Sacramento teacher
Mark Henrikson is planning Thursday to make his voice heard once more to the board of the Sacramento City Unified School District.
Henrikson teaches sixth grade at Phoebe A. Hearst Elementary School in east Sacramento. Recently, the school made national headlines because Henrikson’s former partner-teacher Jeanine Rupert was reassigned to a different school after she removed a piece of carpet in her classroom near the end of the last school year.
Rupert had distinguished herself teaching in the Gifted and Talented Education, or GATE program at Phoebe Hearst, particularly known for her ability to teach language arts. In Rupert’s absence, Henrikson said, a dozen substitutes have cycled through.
Henrikson’s still hopeful for what parents and students might be able to accomplish. So Henrikson and others will be on-hand at SCUSD’s next board meeting, to be held 6-8 p.m. Thursday at the Serna Center Community Room.
It will be the third time Henrikson and others have been to the board since learning of Rupert’s reassignment shortly before the Sept. 4 board meeting. Parents and sixth-grade students also staged a walk-out at the school in recent weeks.
“These students are losing the best GATE teacher in Sacramento city, so the number one objective is to get her back into Room 7,” Henrikson said.
SCUSD Superintendent Lisa Allen didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Phoebe Hearst Principal Brooke Fahey referred comment to the district’s chief communications officer Brian Heap, who replied via email, “We have said all we are going to say about this situation.”
Rupert didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, with Henrikson saying she is under a confidentiality agreement.
‘You don’t know what today brings’
Brenda Buford’s daughter, who is a current sixth grader at Phoebe Hearst, had been elated to learn just before the start of the school year that they had landed Rupert as their teacher. “The GATE kids… they’re eager to learn and Mrs. Rupert was going to give them that,” Buford said.
Amidst the barrage of substitute teachers in Room 7, Buford’s daughter has missed school a couple of times and was out Thursday with a headache.
“I know for a lot of the other kids, it’s tough,” Buford said. “You walk in, you don’t know what today brings and you hear the comments about, ‘Oh, this teacher wouldn’t let so and so go to the bathroom.’ There’s just no consistency.”
Melissa Relles has two children attending Phoebe Hearst, including a son in sixth grade who was supposed to have Rupert as his teacher. Her cousin also teaches kindergarten at the school.
Relles said although the children just completed their seventh week of school, her son only started receiving homework about a week and a half ago. “I feel like this is COVID all over again, when we were trying to learn from being on a Zoom and not getting the instruction that the kids deserved,” Relles said.
Rupert began teaching at Phoebe Hearst in 2000 according to her staff biography, which is still active on the school’s website.
Caitlin Beckett is active in fundraising work for Phoebe Hearst’s parent-teacher organization (PTO.) Two of Beckett’s children currently attend the school and two others graduated from it. Beckett recalled Rupert’s teaching methods for writing, which included calling kids one-on-one in the classroom, having parents go over assignments and finding ways to make things more creative.
“My son, especially, hated writing,” Beckett said. “She’s like, ‘Okay, let’s talk. Let’s write about tennis,’ because he’s obsessed with tennis and wants to be a professional tennis player and just… brought that out of him.”
Amanda Panton, who does communications work for the PTO at Phoebe Hearst, has a daughter who is now in ninth grade and formerly had Rupert as a teacher.
Panton recalled her daughter enjoying a class project where students dressed up as wax figures of Greek gods. Students from other classrooms could push a button on their hands, whereupon they’d come to life and tell the story of which Greek god they were.
Panton also has two children currently at Phoebe Hearst, including a fifth grader who was looking forward to having Rupert as a teacher.
“Having Mrs. Rupert is kind of a rite of passage almost at Phoebe,” Panton said.
Grime and punishment
Problems for Rupert started after Phoebe Hearst suffered a flea infestation last year. Henrikson said that other children referred to the school as “Fleabe Hearst.” Beckett said the situation lasted for six weeks and got to a point that she wouldn’t let her kids bring their backpacks into the house.
Henrikson said that Rupert requested to have a strip of carpet removed in her class, as two other teachers had done. Eventually, Rupert got frustrated, Henrikson said, and opted to remove the carpet herself, getting help from children.
Part of the controversy appears to have related to the fact that the carpet covered tile that, if disturbed, could expose children to asbestos. Henrikson said the district has found there was no asbestos exposure.
Still, the district pushed on with assigning Rupert to a different school. A staff directory lists Rupert as teaching at Isador Cohen Elementary School, with Beckett saying that Rupert is teaching fifth grade there.
In a statement provided to ABC10, a representative for the district wrote, “There are times that after a lapse in judgment has occurred, what is best for both the teacher and the impacted school community is a separation and fresh start.”
The statement added, “Good teachers — just like all good people — can experience lapses in judgment and deserve a fair opportunity to atone, start over, and thrive in a new setting.”
Henrikson questions the severity of Rupert’s punishment. He noted that the situation has taken a toll on Rupert, who is his friend. “I don’t think there’s any precedent for basically destroying a teacher’s life for that action of pulling up some carpet that two other classrooms had already had done,” Henrikson said.
Panton, for her part, also intends to be at the SCUSD board meeting this coming Thursday and wants the district to know that her group isn’t going away.
“I think they’re hoping they can wait us out,” Panton said. “It’s just not going to happen. We’re not giving up. We’re not letting this go.”
