Teacher Fakes Illness, Takes Year Vacation

A first grade teacher faked a terminal illness in order to get out of going to school.

Yep, for almost a year, Ashley Barker, a first grade teacher at Laurel Elementary School Florida, lied to her boss about having a terminal illness in order to skip class.

According to the Daily Mail, Barker sent over 120 letters to the principle during her absence explaining that she and her father were dying from an unnamed terminal illness. WFTV reports that the school eventually grew suspicious and pressured Barker into giving them some actual proof that she was sick.

Since Barker wasn’t sick, and had just been sitting on her couch at home, she didn’t have any evidence and decided to confess.

One parent said: “Wow. That’s kind of scary. Because if she lies about that, she can lie about anything.”

The school district did not say how many sick days Barker took but it was obviously more than they allow.

And here’s where things get really strange.

The school wants to fire Barker (why on earth would they want to get rid of this teacher?) but Barker says that they have no grounds to let her go. Barker is taking the school to court in order to keep her job.

Now, Barker hasn’t given her side of the story yet so maybe she has a legitimate reason for faking an illness for an entire school year. Maybe…

But it isn’t all bad news in the land of education today. A 5-year-old girl stunned just about everybody by reading 875 books in a year and forced her school to update their library.