career advice

Lisa Reimer Isn’t Gonna Fight Her Catholic School Dismissal

Lisa Reimer may have been booted from her Catholic school music teaching job because she’s a lesbian mommy, but she’s not about to become to your cause célèbre.

Reimer isn’t filing a human rights complaint with Canadian authorities. And she’s not going to violate the Little Flower Academy’s decision to nix her. Even though administrators there have concocted a ridiculous storyline to explain her ouster.

Celso Boscariol, chairman of the school’s board of directors, said the school has no issue with Reimer’s sexual orientation, just that she breached the contract by communicating her lifestyle to students. “After she and her partner had this child she wanted to make that a part of the school life and we weren’t inclined to agree to that,” he said. “It was made clear to her that ‘Look, this is not on’ and we had a discussion with her that the best thing to do under the circumstances was that she could complete her assignments from home and we would pay her out to the end of the year because we didn’t want to put her in a situation of financial hardship.”

Reimer said she didn’t mention anything about her personal life in class, adding families at the school probably heard about the birth of her son from other people in the music community because she also teaches elsewhere. Boscariol said Reimer was hired to replace a teacher on maternity leave and her contract wouldn’t have been renewed anyway. He said none of the parents complained about Reimer working at the school.

Reimer said Wednesday that school administrators told her they had no problem with her sexual orientation but that parents would not accept it.

“I really didn’t deal with any parent concerns and we’re not really responding to parent concerns,” Boscariol said. “It’s not like a mob of people showed up demanding things be done. We’re just conducting ourselves within the tenets of the Catholic faith.”

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