Former student ashamed of Caribou school board

To the editor:
    After reading the article by the Caribou Board of Education in this week’s paper, I am absolutely appalled. They have painted quite the portrait of an unfit teacher. They try to portray Ms. Albair as a discriminative and degrading teacher by evidencing a few bad comments over a course of more than seven years.     After going through the Caribou school system, I have heard many off-hand comments, jokes, cuss words, and inappropriate language by the school faculty, not to mention the numerous affairs that went on between faculty members. Hitting a student, sleeping with a student, molesting a student — these are reasons for dismissal. Telling a few off-hand jokes and letting a couple of swear words out over the course of years and years of teaching is definitely not.
    I can assure you that any other teacher in the Caribou school system or administration could be made to look just as bad if not worse when you take a few mistakes over their career and magnify them. I am ashamed of the school system for dragging one of their employees through this messy ordeal; for wasting taxpayers’ money over a situation that could have been handled easily, given competent supervisors; for trying to justify their actions by putting Kirsten’s mistakes under a magnifying glass in front of the public; and by taking the words of a few bitter students over those of fellow teachers and other students.
    For those parents of high school students, take a moment to think of any mistaken words you let slip out in front of your children over the past eight years — if you can count the times that you swore, said something rude or hurtful, or made a joke in front of your child on one hand, than you have made the same mistakes as Kirsten Albair. Perhaps you should consider this before you start to point the finger at a high school English teacher for being a poor role model.
Amy Green
Brunswick