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Here’s official word from Ann Forte of the Department of Education on teachers wearing political buttons while at work:

Schools are not a place for politics and not a place for staff to wear political buttons. During school hours, DOE staff must maintain a posture of neutrality with respect to all candidates in an election. This is a longstanding Chancellor’s regulation that predates the current administration. We don’t want a school or school staff advocating for any political position or candidate to students, and we don’t want students feeling intimidated because they might hold a different belief or support a different candidate than their teachers. The courts have agreed, ruling in several decisions that teachers do not have an unfettered right to express their personal views in school.

A reminder went out in this week’s Principal’s Weekly newsletter, Forte said.

As I noted on Tuesday, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) contests this policy, also citing court cases that back up their view. According to today’s article in the Post, union leaders don’t know of any specific instances this year of teachers being told to remove campaign buttons. The UFT has been distributing Obama-Biden buttons to its members.

Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported yesterday that teachers in a California school agreed to stop wearing “Educators for Obama” buttons in the classroom after a student reported them to her father, who complained to the school. The 16-year-old student said that if the buttons had been pro-McCain, the candidate whom she and her family support, she would have thought it was wrong but probably wouldn’t have mentioned it to her father.

Educators, take note: Chancellor’s Regulation D-130, issued in 2004, requires that you “while on duty or in contact with students… maintain a posture of complete neutrality with respect to all candidates.” And New York is not the only place where schools and universities are limiting how teachers can express their political views, according to PREA Prez Fred Klonsky.

But the United Federation of Teachers objects to some of the limits on teachers’ freedom of speech, according to an email Jonathan received from UFT Director of Staff LeRoy Barr:

The DOE is disputing the right of our members to wear political buttons in schools. Our view is that there is a long line of First Amendment cases that hold that as long as individuals (including public employees) are not causing disruption or engaged in active electioneering or proselytizing, they have a right to exercise their freedom of speech at work, which includes wearing political buttons.

Wearing an Obama or McCain button in class certainly wouldn’t convey a neutral posture, but what about a button on one’s jacket, worn only outside of school, if a student happened to ride the same bus? And is the Chancellor’s Regulation legal, or, as the UFT asserts, would case law support a teacher’s right to freedom of speech in the workplace, as long as it doesn’t disrupt teaching and learning?

The Washington State ACLU doesn’t provide a clear answer in an overview of teachers’ free speech rights:

A court ruled that a New York teacher could not be fired for wearing a black armband in protest of the Vietnam War because the armband had caused no classroom disruption, was not perceived as an official statement of the school, did not interfere with instruction, and did not coerce or “arbitrarily inculcate doctrinaire views in the minds of the students.” On the other hand, in another case a court upheld a dress code that prevented teachers from wearing political buttons in the classroom because school districts have legitimate authority to “dissociate themselves from matters of political controversy.”

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