Up In Smoke

"Somebody should have gotten in touch with me and said, 'What happened?'" Hearn told the board. "'Let's sit down and talk about this and see exactly what happened and exactly what we feel like we're going to need to do here.'"

Russo recommended termination without talking to her once, Hearn said, even though he knew her and had worked with her as Teacher of the Year. "I really would have believed that Dr. Russo would have just picked up the phone and called me and said, 'Sherry, what is going on? Why are you doing this? Are you crazy?'"

In his closing arguments, Leamon Holliday, the attorney for the board, dismissed as inconsequential most of Hearn's objections. The test that she took on April 5 was meaningless, he said. Drugs could have washed clean of her system by then. And besides, she had signed a contract in which she agreed to abide by district policies. Her refusal to take the drug test was "naked insubordination," he said. "You can gloss over it with all these things about 'I believe this' and 'I can't face my students,' but that's what...