Lake County school district upholds firing of teacher over crude TikTok videos
(AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)UMATILLA, Fla. โ A Central Florida school district will not reinstate a middle school teacher who lost his job last year after making โlewd and offensiveโ TikTok videos that were seen by his students. The Lake County School Board agreed last month to uphold the termination of Todd Erdman's teaching contract, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Telfer heard two days of testimony and then ruled in November that the school district had just cause to fire Erdman, the newspaper reported. โThose TikTok videos contain lewd and offensive material,โ he wrote in his Nov. 6 order. โThose TikTok videos made their way into the public sphere, and were viewed by students and parents in the school district, as well as school district personnel.โErdman was overseeing the middle schoolโs in-school suspension program when he was removed from his post in 2019.
Judge backs Lake County teacherโs firing over โlewdโ TikTok posts
An administrative law judge has backed a decision by the Lake County superintendent of schools to fire a teacher who posted what the judge described as โlewd and offensive materialโ on the TikTok social-media network. Judge Robert Telfer III on Friday issued a 26-page order recommending that the Lake County School Board terminate the employment of Todd Erdman, who was a faculty member at Umatilla Middle School. โDuring the summer of 2019, and prior to the start of the school year in August 2019, Mr. Erdman created videos with his smart phone using TikTok. According to the document, Erdman lip synced to audio that was sexual in nature in the TikTok posts. โFurther, the TikTok videos โฆ ultimately made their way into the public sphere, and students, parents, and school district personnel viewed and became aware of them,โ the judge wrote.