The Amsterdam primary school teacher who went to the Efteling on her own with her students and was fired for it, is appealing. The court in Amsterdam ruled yesterday that the woman was rightly dismissed. She disagrees.
“It was a great outing,” her lawyer Diederik van Tellingen told Omroep Brabant. “Her intentions were good. Apart from that, there are also a few untruths in how the story has been presented,” says Van Tellingen. According to the lawyer, the teacher had discussed the outing with the director. “He thought both trips, to Space Expo and the Efteling, were a good idea.” The director would only have had a preference for the Space Expo because the Efteling became too expensive, the lawyer says.
The teacher at the Professor Dumont School therefore decided to arrange the trip to the Efteling herself and to conceal it. In a newsletter to colleagues she then wrote how much fun the outing to Space Expo had been. “She shouldn’t have done that,” the lawyer said. “But she has apologized for that.”
Part of what the teacher wrote in the newsletter:
The special education students were transported to Efteling in two vans. Parents did not know where their children were and there was only one supervisor besides the teacher. The deception about the outing only came to light when a fine was received for speeding on the A2 from North Brabant to Amsterdam. The teacher then admitted the outing to the school’s HR department. Then she was fired.
The woman wants to appeal to “correct the untruths”. “Her good intentions are now completely disappearing into the background,” said Van Tellingen. “And that is very difficult for her.”
- Primary school teacher rightly fired after lying about a day at Efteling
