Mississippi appeals court reinstates educator fired for reading ‘I Need a New Butt!’

The Mississippi Court of Appeals on Tuesday overturned the 2022 dismissal of Toby Price, a former assistant principal at Gary Road Elementary School in Byram, Miss., who had been fired after reading Dawn McMillan’s book “I Need A New Butt!” to second-grade students, ruling the firing was “arbitrary and capricious.” Mr.

Price was filling in last minute for an administrator during Read Across America Week and chose the book to read to roughly 240 second-graders over Zoom. The publisher’s website describes the illustrated tale as following a boy who thinks his butt is broken after finding a crack and who dreams of replacing it with options such as a robot butt, a rocket butt or an armored butt, before learning that butts are meant to have cracks.

On March 2, 2022, the district superintendent, Delesicia Martin, called Mr. Price into her office and placed him on administrative leave; he was fired two days later and accused of violating the Mississippi Educator Code of Ethics, court filings say. During a district due process hearing Ms.

Martin said he had violated several standards and acted unprofessionally, citing a student who had previously been disciplined for pulling down their pants and who, she said, stood outside an office repeating the word “butt” several times after the reading. Ms.

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