An Iowa substitute teacher was fired after offering students extra credit in exchange for donations to her personal GoFundMe — hitting up the kids in her classroom to bankroll a trip to Ecuador and then fighting for unemployment benefits when she got caught.
This is the government school establishment in miniature: employees who see your children as revenue streams. While the education cartel demands ever-more taxpayer funding year after year, some teachers are going straight to the source — shaking down teenagers for cash.
Stephanie Mullaley, a full-time, long-term substitute at Clinton Community School District, promised high school students extra credit toward their grade if they donated to her GoFundMe page, according to Administrative Law Judge Duane Golden. Students felt pressured to hand over money. The fundraiser was designed to send Mullaley and her husband, Nick, to Ecuador in July for what she called a "medical mission" trip.
Mullaley set an $1,800 fundraising goal. She scraped together just $140 from six donations ranging from $5 to $50, the New York Post reported. The money would have covered transportation, food, and hotels — the standard costs of a personal vacation.
On Facebook, Mullaley framed the trip as divine calling. "God put this in place for us, and we're answering it," she wrote alongside the since-deleted fundraiser link. She told students the experience would "pay for her education" because it was a "unique opportunity to travel" where she would interpret for the mission group, while her husband would be "assisting the team in any way he can."
The school district canned Mullaley on May 29 for violating its ethics policy. Judge Golden denied her unemployment benefits, finding she had demonstrated a "willful or wanton disregard" of her employer's interests — meaning she knew exactly what she was doing.
No word on whether any administrator flagged the shakedown before students reported feeling pressured, or how long this arrangement operated before someone blew the whistle.
The education industry insists it needs more money, more respect, more everything. Meanwhile, a substitute teacher with a captive audience of teenagers figured her personal travel plans were their problem to fund — and expected the system to pay her unemployment on the way out. The question isn't whether Mullaley is an outlier. It's what else is happening in classrooms where no judge is watching.
