By Susan Redden
sredden@joplinglobe.com
CARTHAGE, Mo. — Efforts to challenge her dismissal from the Carthage School District are not over, Lynda Homa, a former longtime Carthage teacher, said Tuesday.
A ruling Tuesday in Jasper County Circuit Court upheld action by the Carthage School Board ending Homa’s employment.
The decision was entered after Charles Curless, a Barton County associate circuit judge, on Monday heard arguments by attorneys for Homa and the school district. Curless was appointed to preside in the case by the Missouri Supreme Court.
“I was very disappointed in the decision, and I will appeal. I want to clear my name,” Homa said Tuesday.
Jeff Jones, school board president, said Tuesday that he and other district officials are “encouraged by the decision.”
Jones said there would be no comment on the ruling beyond that because he understood that Homa would have further opportunities for appeal.
Homa, who had been with the district for 20 years and supervised the Parents as Teachers program, was dismissed Aug. 27 after a long hearing before the school board.
The board, in a unanimous decision, cited Homa’s involvement in parent-educator Laura Davenport’s visit to a Guatemalan woman who was jailed after being arrested by immigration officials. The board fired Homa for what it called “immoral conduct.”
School officials argued that the reason for the visit by Davenport, who was dismissed earlier by the district, was to urge the incarcerated woman to give up her biological child for adoption. Homa has said she allowed the visit so the parent-educator could deliver forms the mother needed to sign so the child could get state services.
Homa on Tuesday repeated that argument, saying the purpose of the Parents as Teachers program “is to advocate for the child and the family.”
A separate court decision that came later, terminating the Guatemalan woman’s parental rights, is being challenged in a lawsuit that has drawn the support of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a national group that advocates for the rights of Latinos in the United States.
A brief filed by the group in January argued that the court order terminating parental rights cited the mother’s lifestyle of smuggling herself into the country illegally as “not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child.”
MALDEF contends that if the mother’s immigration status was a factor in her parental rights being terminated, she was denied the right to equal protection under the law. The brief asks the Missouri Supreme Court to review the record and make that determination. The group says that if immigration status played a part in the ruling, the decision should be reversed and the case remanded to a lower court.
Another challenge
Christopher Huck, an attorney in Seattle, Wash., is representing the Guatemalan mother in the lawsuit challenging the decision that terminated her parental rights. Huck could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
