
Jemal Murph talks to supporters during the Portland school board’s public firing hearing at Casco Bay High School on Tuesday night. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald
School district officials, union leaders, parents, students and attorneys are eagerly awaiting the Portland school board’s vote on the fate of Jemal Murph’s job.
Murph, the athletic director at Lincoln Middle School, hit a student from another school at a soccer game in October. His attorneys say he acted out of self-defense, but the school administration says he should have deescalated the situation.
The board gathered at Casco Bay High School Tuesday night for a public termination hearing at Murph’s request, which stretched over eight hours into Wednesday morning. Just before 1 a.m., the board said it was too late to have a lengthy, thoughtful deliberation and delayed its decision until Friday.
Maza Mohamed, a parent of a Lincoln student who has had Murph as a teacher for years, said she was upset and felt hopeless after the hearing and suspected the board would vote to fire him. She said she’s worried it will send the message to teachers that the district doesn’t protect them when they’re assaulted by students and shows students that they’re free to hit teachers.
“We are setting our kids up to fail,” Mohamed said.
Board members aren’t allowed to hear any more evidence or discuss the case among themselves before the final vote at 6 p.m. Friday.
Jon Goodman, Murph’s attorney, said in a phone interview Wednesday that he’s disappointed the vote was delayed because Murph, a member of the teachers union, has been waiting three months to know his job status. He said the school board should have enough evidence to decide in Murph’s favor.
“I believe that if they follow the law and they apply the evidence, that Jemal should win,” Goodman said. “He absolutely had a right to defend himself.”
Melissa Hewey, who is representing Superintendent Ryan Scallon in the case, declined to discuss the hearing, saying in an email Wednesday that even though the hearing was public, it is still a personnel matter and she couldn’t comment. Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Scallon also declined to speak about how the hearing went.
According to Tuesday’s testimony, Murph was supervising a soccer game at Dougherty Field when the athletic director from King Middle School pointed to a group of middle school students and said they shouldn’t be there. At least one of the students was not allowed to be at athletic events because of past behavior, including harassing coaches and rifling through other students’ backpacks.
Murph approached the students to ask them to leave. Much of the following interaction was documented on three student-filmed videos, which the attorneys collectively played dozens of times during the hearing.
Warning: The following video contains explicit language.
In one of the videos, Murph is seen hitting one student who comes at him and pushing him to the ground before saying, “You wanna do this?” In a video of the aftermath, he tells the students, “Hit me again and I will knock you out.”
District administrators said Murph should have used deescalation tactics or stepped away to call other adults or the police. Murph testified that there were as many at 15 students in the group that surrounded him, and that one student chest-bumped him and punched him in moments that are not fully captured in the videos. His attorney described the situation as assault and Murph’s response as self-defense.
After the incident, the district’s executive director for human resources, Jennifer Slabbinck, conducted an investigation that included interviewing Murph, talking to student witnesses and reviewing the videos. She ended her investigation with a recommendation for termination, which all four administrators called to testify — Slabbinck, Scallon, Assistant Superintendent Abdullahi Ahmed and Lincoln Middle Principal Aris Ayala — said they agreed with.
District employees are allowed to request a public firing hearing, and though school leaders say that happens rarely, Murph chose to do so.
Goodman said Maine law allows a person to defend themself when being assaulted.
“The school’s attorney said during her closing argument that teachers should be held to a higher standard. And that may be her opinion, that may be how the superintendent feels, but that’s not the law,” Goodman said.
He said if the board doesn’t decide in Murph’s favor, the collective bargaining agreement allows him to make his case in front of a neutral arbitrator, where he is optimistic Murph would prevail.
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