PADUCAH, KY — Tericka Dye was a science teacher and volleyball coach in good standing at the Reidland High School in Paducah, KY — until a dark secret from her past was uncovered and used against her. Once revealed, Dye was suspended from work, banned from school property, her contract not renewed once it expired, and she was never given a public hearing because she was paid through the end of her contract.Why?

Dye had never robbed, killed, or sexually molested anyone. She’d never been busted for drug or alcohol offenses. In fact, she’d not done anything illegal at all, yet she was deemed a danger to her students and a risk to the high school.

“I didn’t do anything criminal. I did something stupid. But I didn’t hurt anybody except myself. They treated me like a criminal,” Dye told the press.

Why?

In April of 2006 school officials heard rumors that under-age students had somehow gotten access to copies of an explicit adult video shot more than a decade ago — in which Dye was a performer. Instead of finding out why the students had violated the law and who had helped them do it, a resource officer at the school tracked down a copy, watched it, confirmed the students’ claims, and contacted the superintendent to share the buzz. Dye was then effectively alienated and sacked.

In an era where diversity training and racial/religious/sexual minority tolerance is increasingly on the agenda for educational institutions, Reidland High School decided that gossip concerning Dye’s past might make things too disruptive in her classroom. Instead of discouraging the whispers and encouraging responsible student behavior and respect for privacy, school officials opted to reinforce the power of prattle and social pressure.

According to Dye’s attorney, Mark Blankenship, the reasons for his client’s dismissal may have had little to do with actual student behavior, however. “The school claimed that students would be too disrupted by the knowledge of her past and that her classroom would be unmanageable, but all that is speculation,” he pointed out. “We think there were students who knew about the tape as early as December and she wasn’t having any problems.”

Blankenship, who praises Dye as a success story for having risen above a troubled childhood with an alcoholic father, thinks the school district should “at least give her a chance,” and he has recommended that she re-apply for her job.

Assistant superintendent Nancy Waldrop claimed to the Associated Press that Dye’s history will be of no concern to the school if she decides to re-apply for yet job. Yet at the same time she also repeated the district’s insistence that “we can’t have our schools disrupted now.”

Dye doesn’t believe that disruption would be the result and, in fact, insists that during her time as an instructor for the high school, many students looked up to her for overcoming obstacles, including bipolar disorder. “Students know that I was one of them, as opposed to a lot of teachers who come across as holier-than-thou. I can be a shining example to kids of someone who overcame their mistakes,” she insisted.

In spite of the school’s decision, Dye received strong parental, religious, and student support. On December 6th, she appeared on the Dr. Phil show, where the anti-porn host, Phil McGraw, described it as the “sleaziest, worst industry,” but also asked viewers if one of the things that make the United States great is its belief that “‘If you fall down, get up. Dust yourself off. Make better choices. Do a better job and make something out of yourself to become a contributing member of society?”

When the audience was asked if it would be comfortable with Dye as a teacher, more than half stood up.

Appearing under the stage name of Nikki Anderson, single-mother Dye appeared in several videos in her early 20s, before joining the Army and using the GI Bill to attend college, where she graduated at the top of her class.