Palmview High School teacher fired for filming student in class

The La Joya ISD Board of Managers upheld the administration’s decision to terminate Pedro Zurita’s contract because he “exercised poor judgement” in an interaction with a student.

The decision came at the April 8 school board meeting, following an open session hearing at Zurita’s request. Typically, the board proceeds with personnel matters in closed session unless the employee in question requests otherwise.

During the hearing, the board of managers and the public heard oral arguments from Zurita’s attorney and the LJISD attorney, detailing the evidence gathered from Independent Hearing Examiner (IHE) Javier Gonzalez.

​The IHE spent months reviewing all the evidence, listening to five witness testimonies and ultimately found that the administration had good cause to terminate Zurita’s contract.

​THE EVIDENCE

On Sept. 15, 2025, Zurita, a math teacher at Palmview High School, recorded a female student with his cell phone while she struggled to solve a math problem in his general math class.

According to Celena Vinson, the attorney from Thompson & Horton representing La Joya ISD, the math problem could be classified as “very simple.”

“It is clear in the video that she’s very uncomfortable trying to solve the math problem,” Vinson said.

The attorney continued with her oral argument, explaining the contents of the video.

“You can hear Mr. Zurita saying, ‘Come on, come on, you can do it, you can do it, come on. You don’t know what that is? You don’t know what that is?’ And he talks in English and Spanish,” Vinson explained. “And in Spanish he says to her, ‘I’m not recording you.’ And she hears that and believes him because he is her teacher. And you can tell she’s saying, ‘I’m not good at math. My math is not mathing [sic] today, I can’t do it.’ [Zurita] kind of chuckles a little bit and she finally does it, and he says, ‘See, there you go, you got it.’”

Then on Sept. 16, 2025, Zurita showed the video to his advanced placement (AP) math class and allegedly warned his students, ‘Don’t be like this,’ referring to the student in the video. Zurita later testified that he didn’t remember using those words.

In his testimony, Zurita stated that he showed the video to his AP students because he noticed they were copying each other’s work and sharing information. The teacher said he was trying to make the point that the students need to take responsibility for their own learning.

“My intention always was try to motivate the kids, never to…try to get [sic] fun of anyone,” Zurita said in his testimony.

According to the evidence documentation, Zurita said he wanted to show his students that “they don’t have to copy…they need to try to learn on their own.”

Zurita also testified that he didn’t think anybody would be able to recognize the student from the video. There was a lot of noise in his AP math class at the time, and hardly anyone was paying attention, he said.

Although the footage doesn’t show the subject’s face, pupils in Zurita’s AP class still identified the student in the video.

Eventually, others learned of the video, and the high schoolers proceeded to personally mock the student in question.

Additionally, the student from the video has said that, while passing Zurita’s classroom later that day, he told her she was “going to be TikTok famous.”

After learning Zurita had displayed the video to her peers, the student involved her mother, who demanded to speak to the math teacher. Campus administration refused the request, but later sent Zurita home.

The teacher did not return to campus, and the student from the video proceeded to be absent from school for a few days.

On Nov. 19, 2025, the board of managers originally approved the proposed termination of Zurita’s contract. However, the teacher requested that the Texas Education Agency assign an Independent Hearing Examiner to conduct a hearing regarding his proposed termination.

Zurita later executed a letter of resignation through his attorney, but the school district refused to accept it, thereby proceeding with the termination process.

​THE FINDINGS

IHE Javier Gonzalez presided over evidentiary hearings on Jan. 16 and Feb. 24, and identified that Zurita committed four legal violations, both from the Texas Education Code and the LJISD Employee Handbook. The violations include:

• not getting parental approval before making a video of a student
• not respecting a student’s rights
• recklessly treating a student in a manner that adversely affects their mental health
• failing to maintain an appropriate relationship with a student

After reviewing the findings, the hearing examiner recommended that the LJISD Board of Managers terminate Zurita’s Chapter 21 term contract. He also recommended that the district implement progressive measures to avoid resorting to termination.

Zurita’s attorney, Carlos Garcia, reminded the board of managers that they do not have to follow the recommendation of the hearing examiner.

Garcia argued that terminating an employee for “embarrassing” a student is a low bar.

He argued that Zurita, who has been with La Joya ISD for 20 years and has a glowing resume, deserves an opportunity for corrective action before termination.

“Do 20 years not matter? One lapse in judgement over 48 hours is cause for termination? I submit to you that it’s not,” Garcia said during his oral argument.

However, Vinson, the attorney representing LJISD, clarified that the hearing examiner took all of Garcia’s arguments into consideration and still recommended termination of the contract.

“The IHE also says, ‘It has nothing to do with competence and need for keeping such a strong teacher as seen in [Zurita]. Contriteness would go a long way and may have an inviting possible remediation and progressive discipline by the district, short of proposing termination,’” Vinson said in her rebuttal.

She continued, reading the words of the hearing examiner.

​“‘The IHE finds, based on the record before him, there is a serious failing on the part of Mr. Zurita. The ordinary, prudent employee would have avoided doing what Zurita did with no consent from [the] parent,’” Vinson said. “‘IHE is unmoved by [Zurita’s] suggestion that lesser remediate measures should have been taken. Precedent supports the premise. There is no right to remediation. The average employee would not have made the serious mistake made here.’”

Following the oral arguments, the board had the opportunity to ask clarifying questions, which they didn’t.

They deliberated in closed session, returned to vote in open session and unanimously approved the adoption of the hearing examiner’s findings that good cause exists to terminate Pedro Zurita’s contract with the district. The board members provided no further discussion.