Union victory: Porn-watching Wisconsin teacher awarded new job, backpay

Here's what Wisconsin's legal system and its teachers unions have just taught the nation: If you're a teacher and you get fired for looking at porn at work, you'll get your job back.

Such is the case of Andrew Harris, former seventh-grade science teacher at Glacier Creek Middle School in the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District.

The district's school board Monday voted in a special closed session to comply with an arbitrator's 60-page order that demands Harris be reinstated. He was fired in 2010 after receiving and viewing multiple pornographic and sexually inappropriate images and videos, according to a complaint.

To add insult to the district's injury, taxpayers will have to pay Harris nearly $200,000 in back pay. In total the district will spend nearly $1 million on the case, the brunt of which went to legally defending its position that the firing was fair.

The board opted to end its legal challenge and "move on" after the state Supreme Court last week declined to take up the district's appeal of the arbitrator's decision.

"We were disappointed they did not decide to hear the case, and we are disappointed the legal system played out the way it did," district spokesman Perry Hibner told Wisconsin Reporter on Tuesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, the district announced it has has offered Harris a position teaching the same subject and grade at Kromrey Middle School.

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