California H.S. Cheer Coach Fired Apparently for Posing for Playboy

Community debates: Invasion of privacy or setting a bad example?

ByABC News via GMA logo
April 22, 2009, 6:34 PM

April 23, 2009 — -- Carlie Beck does not know why she was fired from her job as a high school cheerleading coach, but she has a sneaking suspicion it's because some parents do not like that she is also known as Carlie Christine, a Playboy model.

Beck posed nude for Playboy.com in October as one of the adult site's "Cyber Girls of the Week." Before the pictures went online, she was offered a coaching job in December at Casa Roble High School in Orangevale, Calif., the school where she was a cheerleader growing up.

A few weeks after the 20-year-old's nude photos splashed across Playboy's Web site in February, Beck was called into the school's principal's office to discuss them, but she said the principal "didn't have a problem with it" at the time as long as she didn't advertise it in front of the cheerleaders.

Last week, however, San Juan Unified School District unceremoniously fired Beck just days after the disgruntled parents of a would-be cheerleader printed out some of the Playboy pictures and brought them to a meeting with the principal, Beck said. The parents' child had not been allowed to try out for the cheerleading squad due to school absences.

"I didn't know I was fired until I was sitting at home and started getting texts. The media was at the school wanting to know how I felt about getting fired," Beck told "Good Morning America." "Later, someone from the school district called and said, 'You've been fired. Your services are no longer needed.'"

Beck said the school district never told her why she was fired, but "there is a strong correlation with the timing of when the parents brought the pictures in and when I was released."

Beck said she talked to the principal again the day after she was fired. During that discussion, Beck said, the principal apologized for not telling her she was being fired first but "didn't go into any details" about why it was done.

Trent Allen, a spokesman for the school district, told "GMA" in a statement he could not supply more information because "it is a personnel issue."

Now the community is up in arms on both sides of the issue.