Legal experts yesterday said the Taipei City Government should rescind a punishment former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) handed Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Junior High School music teacher Hsiao Hsiao-ling (蕭曉玲), who said she was set up by education officials and fired as a result of “persecution” by Hau.
At a hearing held by the city’s Clean Government Committee yesterday, Hsiao said she was subjected to a series of witch hunts allegedly perpetrated by former principal Tseng Mei-hui (曾美惠) and Taipei Department of Education officials, which she said was prompted by a lawsuit she filed in 2007 against Hau over the former mayor’s “one curriculum, one textbook” policy.
She said the policy ran counter to the Ministry of Education policy giving publishers the freedom to create textbooks as long as they do not deviate from ministry-approved curriculum guidelines, she said.
Hsiao said the trouble she encountered included unfounded, anonymous complaints filed with the school’s administrators, close scrutiny of her teaching conducted jointly by Tseng and education officials, surveys conducted among her students designed to prove that she was unfit for her job, and a high concentration of teachers’ evaluation meetings targeting her, which led to her dismissal three months after she sued Hau.
The punishment was based on a conclusion reached during the meetings and approved by the department, which said Hsiao had “demonstrated unethical behavior and dishonored her position as a teacher.”
Tseng’s lawyer, Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智), said the punishment put her on the ministry’s List of Unfit Teachers Query System and has left her unemployed for nine years.
Chiu said the punishment was excessive, as it normally applies to teachers who committed sexual harassment or sexual assault, but Hsiao had committed neither.
Citing a corrective report filed by the Control Yuan against the department, Chiu said Tseng illegally influenced the decision made during the teaching evaluation meetings by presiding over investigative panel meetings that tied Hsiao to her alleged wrongdoing, even though Tseng was not a member of the panel.
Chiu said that although Hsiao unsuccessfully appealed the punishment with the Taipei High Administrative Court and the Supreme Administrative Court, the Taipei City Government should follow Article 117 of the Administrative Procedure Act (行政程序法) and reinstate Hsiao’s position by admitting to flaws in its administrative procedure.
Former Control Yuan member Chien Lin Hui-chun (錢林慧君), who investigated the case, questioned the veracity of survey results targeting Hsiao’s performance, saying they contradicted greatly with teacher evaluation results produced from 2002 to 2006, during which Hsiao consistently received an “A” for her performance.
Chien Lin said that all members on the investigative panel and teachers’ evaluation panel were selected by Tseng, which was in violation of the administrative neutrality principle stipulated in the Teachers’ Act (教師法).
National Taipei University professor of public administration and policy professor Chen Yaw-shyang (陳耀祥) said that under the nation’s system, the Control Yuan not only can impeach officials, but also judges.
He said that if an administrative body finds itself at fault for a punishment it handed, the punishment should be rescinded.
The opinions registered during yesterday’s hearing are to be presented to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who has the final say on whether to overrule the punishment.
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