In a unanimous vote on Tuesday by the El Paso ISD school board, Amber Parker, a former English teacher at Franklin High School, was terminated after an 18-second video was posted online in August, KFOXT14 reported.
“Stop calling them that. You’re not allowed to label people like that. Stop it, Diego,” the teacher can be heard saying in the video. “We are not going to call them that. We’re going to call them MAPs. Minor Attracted Persons. So don’t judge people just because they want to have sex with a 5-year-old.”
A student who was in Parker’s English class at the time of the recording told the outlet that her words were taken out of context and that it was part of a discussion exercise related to the class reading of “The Crucible.”
“She was expressing how it was ridiculous how we might not be able to call people pedophiles. That we will probably have to start calling them MAPs because it can be offensive to them. The class agreed,” Ryann Ruvalcaba, a junior at Franklin High School, told KFOXTV.
Parents have also expressed their concerns over the video, some saying they want a full investigation on the matter.
“You wanna see the full video and get context and everything but … that statement in itself is very concerning,” parent, Thomas Deason told KFOXTV.
“It’s not a good 18 seconds but I think that I need context and to know what the whole conversation was before I’d be able to weigh in on to see what’s going on but I do see a lot of students have come to her defense,” parent Laurie Edwards told the outlet.
According to the local news outlet, the school board voted unanimously on Tuesday after an investigation of the incident to move forward in terminating Parker, who was on administrative leave.
“This is the beginning of a process, and we’re going to move forward with it, and we await to see the outcome of the process,”
Al Velarde the El Paso ISD board president, told KFOXTV. “The investigation has been completed, but there is a process defined by TEA that we must follow when it comes to a termination of an employee.”
While the board has voted to terminate Parker from her position, she still has the ability to appeal the decision, according to KFOX14.
“The process is just beginning. There are going to be hearings and so forth that become available to the teacher, and so we just await the process,” Velarde told the outlet.
According to KFOX14, Daniel Call, a member of the board trustee, who once defended Parker, changed his mind after the investigation was concluded.
“She should not have strayed as far as she did,” Daniel Call, a member of the board trustee, told KFOX14. “Hypothetically, I could have the best lesson plan in the world. But if I don’t follow the lesson plan and I deviate into some areas, I shouldn’t be teaching about or talking about the lesson plan is kind of pointless.”
“Personal opinions on really sensitive matters don’t belong in the classroom,” Call told KFOX14. “It’s up to the families to provide education on some of these really sensitive issues. It is not the role of the school district to do that.”
Last year, Allyn Walker, an assistant professor at Old Dominion University, resigned after they received backlash on their research on minor-attracted people in a book titled “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity,” NBC reports.
In an interview with the Protasia Foundation, Walker defended their research by saying that they use the term “minor-attracted person” because of the negative stigma associated with the phrase”pedophile.”
“I think we have a tendency to want to categorize people with these attractions as evil or morally corrupt. But when we’re talking about non-offending MAPS, these are people who have an attraction that they didn’t ask for. And one that frequently they would do anything to change. But they find that they’re unable to change those attractions. And most importantly, the people in my study did not act on them,” Walker told the Foundation.