When art teacher Aurora Berger disappeared from the Newton School in Strafford in the waning days of last school year, students, parents and teachers alike knew little about what had happened, and no grades or comments appeared on report cards from her art classes.
Now, the Strafford School Board has said Berger will not return to the K-8 school because she did not complete her licensing requirements.
Much of the community, however, believes the cloudy circumstances have more to do with nude self-portraits on Berger’s artist website than the bureaucracy of licensing. And more than 550 people have signed a petition calling for the school to reinstate the beloved part-time art teacher.
Public anger came to a head at a Strafford School Board meeting Tuesday that stretched on for more than four hours and included extended periods of executive session and public comment.
“There has never been any finding of misconduct regarding Aurora,” the school board said in a statement at Tuesday’s meeting, reiterating that Berger’s departure was due to a failure to submit licensing requirements on time. “We find ourselves with two entirely different sets of circumstances that may have correlated in time but are distinct and separate and unfortunately overlapped.”
Despite Tuesday’s lengthy meeting, a number of questions went unanswered for parents regarding Berger’s initial leave and the connections it may have had to her no longer working at the Strafford school. How could the school lose a popular teacher, especially in the midst of a nationwide teacher shortage?
Berger, a Newton School graduate herself who identifies as queer and disabled, declined to comment for this story. She has had her art — including nude self-portraits — shown at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the United Nations. She maintains a personal artist’s website where she displays her photography.
According to Strafford parents, many of whom say they have spoken to Berger about her situation with the Newton School, Berger was first terminated from her other part-time job as an art teacher at The Mountain School, a private school in Vershire, as the White River Valley Herald first reported. That termination came after an anonymous parent complained about Berger’s website, parents allege.
A Mountain School representative confirmed that Berger’s employment ended June 12, but did not comment on the circumstances leading up to Berger’s departure, citing school policy.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the Strafford board said a complaint about Berger had been brought to the district’s attention by the Agency of Education and did not come from anyone in Strafford.
The board, in its statement, outlined a timeline of events leading to Berger’s departure.
Berger had worked the past two years under a provisional license set to expire June 30, which could have extended to three years with Agency of Education approval, according to the board.
The collective bargaining agreement between the Newton School and the teachers’ union dictates that teachers working under provisional licenses who have yet to receive licensure must provide proof they’ve satisfied licensing requirements by May 1, the board said. Berger was granted an extension after meeting with the superintendent to fulfill her license requirement by June 1, and Berger met with the district superintendent, Jamie Kinnarney, on June 22 to discuss the fact that she had not yet received her license and couldn’t teach without it.
On June 27, the superintendent informed Berger that her contract would become null and void due to her inability to fulfill her licensing requirements and the requirements of the collective bargaining agreement, according to the school board.
“We understand that the series of events as they have unfolded, have caused harm to the community and we will continue to work toward rebuilding trust,” the board said in its statement.
The Newton School had “secured a full time arts and music educator,” the board said, but later clarified that an offer had been made to a teacher who had not yet signed a contract.
In the statement, the board did not directly address Berger being placed on paid leave in the final days of the previous school year, though its members later answered questions about the administrative leave during public comment.
“What it looks like from the outside is discrimination against a disabled person. Because if you have a disabled employee, and they have a hard time completing their licensure, then maybe a person needs help and accommodation,” Emily Orling, a Strafford parent, said during the meeting. “We should have been able to support her; we as parents would have liked to support her. And why isn’t the school supporting her, she’s a beloved teacher?”
Parents alleged that when Berger was placed on administrative leave, she no longer had access to the files she needed to submit to fulfill her licensing requirements.
At Tuesday’s meeting, a letter signed by 12 staff members of the Newton School was presented to the district’s superintendent, requesting Berger’s reinstatement.
Kinnarney, the superintendent, initially agreed to a phone interview with VTDigger for Wednesday morning. But Wednesday morning, Kinnarney wrote in an email that he would refer questions to the board’s statement. He did not respond to subsequent emails and a voicemail.
César Alvarez, an artist and Strafford parent who attended the meeting, said in an interview that their children have excelled at art in Berger’s classroom.
“It’s a high-level artistic environment. And that’s attributed to the fact that Aurora’s a real artist,” Alvarez said.
In a rural town like Strafford, having a teacher that is queer, disabled and home-grown provides a rare diversity, Alvarez argued, one that benefits the school’s students. Plus, the district was in “a crisis of understaffed schools,” they said, counting six staff members who had recently left. “Why are we not bending over backwards to keep Aurora in the school?”
Erin MacPhail, a Newton School parent who attended Tuesday’s meeting, has worked this summer organizing with other parents, trying to get Berger reinstated.
“Aurora was just like such a safe space for our kids,” MacPhail said in an interview. Her 7-year-old, who hasn’t displayed any particular interest in art, even called Berger his “favorite teacher,” MacPhail said.
Collaborating with other concerned parents, MacPhail said the group didn’t want to point fingers at the school or board, but instead find a way to bring Berger back.
That remained true on Wednesday, when the group planned to meet again to discuss any last-ditch ways to get Berger back into the school.
Still, MacPhail said the way the art teacher had been pushed out of the Newton School raised alarms.
“It’s something that scares us parents, more rigid or conservative ideas,” she said. “It’s confusing why we are even having this conversation in Vermont.”
