Terry Weeks, the National Teacher of the Year for 1988, last week accepted a teaching and training position with Middle Tennessee State University.
Mr. Weeks, 38, said that he left his job in the Rutherford County, Tenn., school system in order to accommodate the many offers of speaking engagements that continue to “pour in.”
His frantic schedule as a spokesman for educational excellence, he said, allowed him to teach only one hour last year--for the benefit of Japanese television news cameras.
Mr. Weeks has taught 7th-grade social studies in Murfreesboro for the past 15 years.
The winner of the 1989 Teacher of the Year competition is scheduled to be announced next week.
The Chicago Board of Education has voted to extend the contract of Superintendent Manford Byrd Jr. for one year.
The terms of Mr. Byrd’s contract also allow him to be replaced, however, if a new superintendent is found during that period, school officials said.
Mr. Byrd, whose contract was due to expire last Friday, will thus lead the school system during at least the first part of its transition to the school-based governance model mandated by the legislature last fall.
Both Mr. Byrd and the board of education drew heavy criticism from backers of the landmark school-reform bill. The new law, which takes effect July 1, calls for the dissolution of the current panel and for a nationwide search for a new superintendent.
Although Mr. Byrd received no salary increase, he will automatically be a finalist in the new board’s superintendent search, under the resolution approved by the board. He would continue to receive his salary and serve as a consultant if a new superintendent is hired before next March, officials said.
Sharon L. Rogers, the wife of Capt. Will Rogers 3rd of the U.S. Navy, has left her 4th-grade teaching job at a private school near San Diego because of the safety concerns that were aroused by a bombing attempt on her life.
Ms. Rogers’s husband is skipper of the U.S.S. Vincennes, which last summer mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf.
Her departure followed an emergency meeting of the La Jolla Country Day School’s board of trustees, held two days after a bomb threat was called in to the school and six days after she narrowly escaped harm when a pipe bomb exploded under her van.
A school spokesman said Ms. Rogers and the board reached “a mutual decision” that she would not return to class “to ensure the safety of the children, the confidence of the parents, and the integrity of the educational environment of La Jolla Country Day School.”
But local newspaper reports say Ms. Rogers told sources she wanted to continue teaching and was forced to give up her job. She was not available for comment last week.
Principal Joe Clark last week announced that he would go on sabbatical for a year beginning in September. According to an aide, “he may never come back” to Eastside High School in Paterson, N.J..
Vincent Fusco, Mr. Clark’s manager, said the controversial principal is considering several options for his future, including moving to Washington to work for the new national drug czar, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. A spokesman for Mr. Bennett, however, said that no job offer has been made.
The city council has twice asked the school board to fire Mr. Clark. But as of last week the board had not done so.
