The New York City Department of Education has, it seems to me, a habit of dumping anyone cited for anything into a "rubber room" somewhere, and, often forgetting about this person.

That seems what happened to Cheryl Wilson. The Department forgot that her extension of probation ran out September 2, 2015, then placed her back in a teaching position on March 7, 2016. She went on leave until the end of the school year in April 2016 and was terminated from employment on June 15, 2016. She had, by then, received tenure by estoppel. All tenured teachers must have a 3020-a hearing in order for the DOE to make any changes to their terms of employment.

Congratulations, Attorney Stewart Karlin!

Betsy Combier

betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

In the Matter of the Application of CHERYL WILSON, Petitioner,

For a Judgment Pursuant to Article 78 of the Civil Practice Law and Rules,

v.

THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, Respondent.

Docket No. 158592/2017, Motion Seq. No. 001.2017 NY Slip Op 31273(U), Supreme Court, New York County. June 12, 2017.

DECISION, ORDER & JUDGMENT

ARLENE P. BLUTH, Judge.

Petitioner's petition to inter alia reinstate petitioner to a position as a tenured teacher with back pay is granted in part and denied in part.

Background

Petitioner was a teacher for respondent. Petitioner contends that her most recent assignment was as a special education teacher from 2011 through June 2016 as a probationary employee. Petitioner acknowledges that she was reassigned to a "rubber room" pending an investigation in March 2015 due to an incident involving a group of students; that investigation lasted about a year. Petitioner claims that although some of the allegations against her were substantiated, she was placed back in a teaching position on March 7, 2016. Petitioner argues that she went on leave until the end of the school year in April 2016 and was terminated from employment on June 15, 2016.

Petitioner insists that her employment probationary period was for three years and that the probationary period should have ended on or about September 2, 2014, but that she continued to be employed until about July 15, 2016. Petitioner maintains that she was asked to sign an extension of probation but does not believe the extension was accepted—petitioner observes that even if it was accepted, the probationary period would have expired on September 2, 2015 (while she was in the rubber room). Petitioner argues that she is entitled to tenure by estoppel and, therefore, is entitled to a hearing before she can be terminated.

In opposition, respondent observes that petitioner received ineffective ratings after supervisors conducted observations of her teaching abilities. Respondent also notes that petitioner violated school policies on March 18, 2015 when she allegedly failed to follow proper protocol during post-lunch student collection, supervision, and escort duty. Respondent claims that as a result of petitioner's' failure to collect students and to notify the office that the students were missing, some eighth grade students prompted first grade students to fight each other.

On March 20, 2015, respondent reassigned petitioner from her teaching position to an administrative assignment (the rubber room) where she did not perform any teaching duties.

Respondent claims that petitioner is not entitled to tenure by estoppel. Respondent argues that petitioner's absence from her teaching duties from March 2015 through March 2016 tolls the completion of her probationary period. Respondent also relies on petitioner's medical leave from April 12, 2016 through the end of the year to reduce her probationary period. Respondent argues that petitioner was not performing teaching duties, so she cannot acquire tenure by estoppel.

Discussion

In an article 78 proceeding, "the issue is whether the action taken had a rational basis and was not arbitrary and capricious" (Ward v City of Long Beach, 20 NY3d 1042, 1043, 962 NYS2d 587 [2013] [internal quotations and citation omitted]). "An action is arbitrary and capricious when it is taken without sound basis in reason or regard to the facts" (id.). "If the determination has a rational basis, it will be sustained, even if a different result would not be unreasonable" (id.). "Arbitrary action is without sound basis in reason and is generally taken without regard to the facts" (Matter of Pell v Board of Educ. of Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 1 of Towns of Scarsdale & Mamaroneck, Westchester County, 34 NY2d 222, 231, 356 NYS2d 833 [1974]).

"A board of education has the right to terminate the employment of a probationary teacher or principal at any time and for any reason, unless the teacher or principal `establishes that the termination was for a constitutionally impermissible purpose, violative of a statute, or done in bad faith'" (Palmore v Bd. of Educ. of Hempstead Union Free Sch. Dist., 145 AD3d 1072, 1074, 44 NYS3d 509 [2d Dept 2016] quoting Matter of Frasier v Bd. of Educ. of City Sch. Dist. of City of N.Y., 71 NY2d 763, 765 [1988]).

"Tenure by estoppel results when a school board accepts the continued services of a teacher or administrator, but fails to take the action required by law to either grant or deny tenure prior to the expiration of the teacher's probationary term" (Speichler v Brd. of Co-Op Educ. Servs., Second Supervisory Dist., 90 NY2d 110, 114, 659 NYS2d 199 [1997] [internal quotations and citation omitted]).

The key issue in this proceeding is whether petitioner acquired tenure by estoppel. If petitioner was probationary, then respondent was entitled to fire respondent for nearly any reason. Therefore, the Court must first look to the extension of petitioner's probation. Although petitioner denies that her extension was accepted, both petitioner and respondent signed the extension (verified answer, exh 2). The extension states that petitioner's probationary period was extended for one additional year — to September 8, 2015 (id.). Specifically, the extension provides that "The parties agree that the decision to either grant completion of probation, deny completion of probation, or grant an additional extension of probation to Cheryl Wilson at a date no later than September 8, 2015" (id.¶ 3).

It also provides that "This written agreement contains all the terms and conditions agreed upon by the parties hereto in regard to the extension of probation for Cheryl Wilson. No other agreement, oral or otherwise, regarding this matter shall be deemed to exist or to bind the parties hereto, or to vary any of the terms contained herein" (id.¶ 9).

Respondent does not deny that no action was taken regarding the expiration of petitioner's probationary period. There was no effort to further extend petitioner's probationary period another year (to September 2016) before the deadline or to deny (or grant) petitioner tenure. Instead, respondent attempts to gloss over this failure to act by focusing on petitioner's reassignment to the rubber room from March 2015 to March 2016.

Respondent's argument is that since petitioner was not performing teaching activities during this time period she cannot gain tenure by estoppel. This claim fails. The agreement extending petitioner's probationary period clearly states that respondent had to choose between three options before September 8, 2015—whether to keep her on, fire her, or grant another year of probation. This was not done. Instead, petitioner was permitted to resume her teaching duties and was fired at the end of the 2016 school year. This may have been an oversight but the Court cannot simply ignore the valid agreement entered into between petitioner and respondent.

The Court does not make this decision lightly. The allegations that led to petitioner's reassignment to non-teaching duties are serious and the Court has no interest in help a sub-standard teacher retain her position. But, for some reason, respondent did not fire petitioner for her alleged transgressions despite the fact that she was a probationary employee. Respondent could have fired petitioner, by all accounts a probationary employee, at any time before September 8, 2015 — it could have fired her due to lousy evaluations, it could have fired her due to the incident which caused her to be sent to the rubber room, it could have fired her during her time in the rubber room. Instead, respondent continued to keep petitioner on, paying her, and then, after the investigation concluded (after a year in the rubber room), respondent saw fit to return her to the classroom. Obviously, her missteps could not have been as serious as respondent now contends because respondent allowed petitioner to start teaching again.

Respondent had multiple opportunities to terminate petitioner for a variety of permissible reasons including, but not limited to, her poor observation reports throughout the 2014-2015 school year and her ineffective APPR in 2014-2015 and her dereliction of duty regarding the failure to pick up the students. Not only did respondent fail to fire petitioner, it put her back in the classroom. Respondent's actions make its current argument that she was so terrible ring hollow.

Besides, the argument that petitioner's pedagogy failed to meet the minimum standards for obtaining a tenure recommendation misses the point. Respondent entered into an agreement where a specific date was set for a tenure determination for petitioner and respondent did nothing. Petitioner consented to another year of probation in exchange for a determination about her tenure. Respondent failed to fire her during that year (although it had ample opportunity and reasons to do so) and therefore she obtained tenure by estoppel. Accordingly, respondent's decision to terminate petitioner without a hearing (the procedure afforded to a tenured teacher) was arbitrary and capricious.

Attorneys' Fees

The Court finds that petitioner is not entitled to attorneys' fees because respondent has demonstrated that its position was substantially justified (see CPLR 8601 [a]). "The phrase substantially justified has been interpreted by the [U.S.] Supreme Court as meaning justified to a degree that could satisfy a reasonable person, or having a reasonable basis in both law and fact . . . The test of whether or not a government action is substantially justified is essentially one of reasonableness. Where the government can show that its case had a reasonable basis both in law and fact, no award will be made" (New York State Clinical Lab. Assn., Inc. v Kaladjian, 85 NY2d 346, 356, 625 NYS2d 463 [1995] [internal quotations and citations omitted]).

Although it may seem that because this Court has granted petitioner's application to get her job back, with tenure, respondent's argument cannot be substantially justified. Here, however, the record before respondent prior to this proceeding demonstrated that petitioner did not immediately contend that she was entitled to tenure after she was fired. Although she later raised the tenure by estoppel argument, respondent reasonably opposed the instant petition on the ground that petitioner was a probationary employee who could be fired for any permissible reason. So even though petitioner wins this proceeding, the Court finds that respondent's position was reasonable under the circumstances.

Summary

Petitioner is entitled to a position as a tenured teacher and to back pay starting from the date of her termination (July 15, 2016).

Accordingly, it is hereby

ORDERED and ADJUDGED that the petition is granted to the extent that petitioner Cheryl Wilson is entitled to a position as a tenured teacher and to back pay starting from July 15, 2016 to the present; and it is further

ORDERED and ADJUDGED that petitioner is not entitled to attorneys' fees.

This is the Decision, Order and Judgment of the Court.

The current administration of NYC, and I mean the Mayor, Deputy Mayors, Chancellor of the NYC Department of Education, and all other agencies, work under the umbrella policy of secrecy - i.e. hide everything you can't change and deny everything you did change - lie, destroy and undermine. ...stomp on anyone who gets in your way, they say, because you may have an arbitrator/judge/big media publisher who is paid to believe you rather than any tenured teacher/Guidance Counselor/other.

Kind of frightening when you work on finding out what is really going on, as I do at 3020-a Arbitration. At 3020-a, the Department of Education Attorneys argue that no one can argue WHY the charges were filed or HOW the charges were processed, or WHAT the investigator did not do right. All these issues are "not relevant". Of course we argue for transparency and factual evidence (which 3020-a hearings severely lack) because everything we - the lawyers I work with and myself - bring up is put onto the record for the case before the arbitrator as well as any Appeal or lawsuit brought later to State or Federal Court. We always try to cover all future actions, should they be necessary.

And the Respondent is always informed about everything, including getting all the transcripts the minute they are available on TEACH, the electronic filing system for all 3020-a cases.

I dislike people who lie to harm someone else but at least the people who come in and lie at 3020-a to save their jobs are not very good at lying. If you read the entire testimony of a person who lies, you can see such extreme inconsistencies that the person made under oath which, when pointed out in closing argument, should persuade the arbitrator to find the person not credible.

This is important, because no Court will vacate a determination of credibility unless there are extra-ordinary circumstances.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

De Blasio’s real homeless policy: Hide the bad news

By Post Editorial Board

, July 5, 2017

With its belated posting of the grim results of this year’s street-homelessness census, City Hall just exposed Mayor de Blasio’s real homelessness policy: Hide the bad news.

The count was done back in February, but didn’t get posted until Wednesday — after Politico had published it.

It’s obvious why Team de Blasio didn’t want you to see the numbers: They show 3,892 people living on the streets, up 40 percent from last year and the highest rate since 2005.

The mayor’s minions were quick to note how misleading that may be: The night of the count was unseasonably warm, so fewer folks felt compelled to find shelter, and so were easier for census-takers to find.

Then again, the shelter homeless population is also at a high under de Blasio, having crossed the 60,000 mark last October.

Plus, the mayor himself once made a big deal of the street-census figures — during the summer of 2015, when he was citing them as “proof” that The Post’s reporting on soaring homelessness simply wasn’t true.

And never mind the photographic evidence, or the metastasizing encampments that the NYPD was belatedly taking down nearly as fast as The Post was pointing them out.

It wasn’t ’til that fall that de Blasio finally began admitting the truth, and months later that the public learned City Hall had been holding emergency meetings on the homeless crisis all year.

Eventually, the mayor announced “new” policies that amounted to more of the same: more spending on services, more plans to build new shelters, more promises to bring the homeless population down . . . eventually.

The only change has been to put lifelong activist Steven Banks officially in charge of homeless policy, though he’d plainly been calling the shots from the start.

Clearly, though, the overall de Blasio strategy is still to keep the public in the dark.

Number of homeless people in city up by 39% in just one year

City Councilman Ruben Wills was indicted by the attorney general’s office in 2014 for pocketing
$33,000 in grant money

If you believe the newspapers, and think that the money that is unaccounted for or in the wrong place due to Councilman Ruben Wills is due to his "carelessness", then I have a bridge to sell you.

And, Mr. Wills gave alot of money to MS 226 Principal Rushell White. What is the full story there?

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, The NYC Public Voice

Defense claims Queens Councilman Ruben Wills was not stealing government money — he was just 'careless'

A city councilman was careless with his bookkeeping - not stealing over $30,000 in taxpayer funds and grant money for two non-profits, according to his defense attorney.

"Carelessness is all this is - carelessness," said attorney Kevin O'Donnell during opening statements in Queens Supreme Court on Wednesday for Councilman Ruben Wills.

Wills was indicted by the attorney general's office in 2014 for pocketing $19,000 in grant money - approved by former state Senator Shirley Huntley in 2008 - from the state's Office of Children Family Services for his non-profit NY 4 Life.

A jury of five women and seven men will determine if Wills schemed to defraud the government, committed grand larceny and falsified business documents to hide the scheme.

Ohio pol suggests EMS stop responding to overdoses to save money

If convicted, Wills faces up to seven years in prison for the top charge.

"No one will say $33,000 of services weren't given for New York 4 Life. Not everyone looks at their accountant's work ... if you can't find receipts that's not a crime, it's not a crime to be careless," said O'Donnell.

NY 4 Life was created in 2006 to provide services for single parent homes in Southeast Queens. O'Donnell argued that Wills didn't receive the grant until 2010 and the organization still conducted breakfasts, luncheons and anti-childhood obesity campaigns.

"They aren't free," said O'Donnell.

Assistant Attorney General Travis Hill said he intends to prove that Wills not only spent the funds at department stores Macy's, Toys 'R Us, Century 21 and Nordstrom, he paid a campaign worker with the grant money.

"Michelle Davis will testify that she was paid by checks from New York 4 Life's bank account. Ruben Wills used checks for New York 4 Life and in the memo wrote it was for data entry for an obesity campaign. Davis will testify she didn't know what New York 4 Life even was," said Hill during opening statements.

Prosecutors called three witnesses from Macy's, Nordstrom's and Home Depot to comb through the receipts allegedly associated with Wills' purchases.

Purchases made at Macy's didn't detail the purchase for $749.51. Wills's Nordstrom bill, meanwhile, was for a men's dress shirt, cufflinks, two women's and boy's shirt.

Wills is also accused of taking $19,000 of the $30,000 in grant money and $11,500 in campaign matching funds during his first City Council race in 2009 for services with Micro Targeting, for translating and distributing campaign literature.

Prosecutors charge that Wills had an associate redirect the funds for Micro Targeting to NY 4 Life.

“Elected office doesn’t give anyone license to break the law, or avoid the consequences. With trust in government falling, it's all the more vital to send a clear message: public corruption will not be tolerated in New York,” said Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General’s Office.

MS 226 Principal Rushell White Key Words: Checks From Ruben Wills

Under the business model for education, Rushell White, Principal of MS 226, can take all the money she wants from Ruben Wills, and do whatever she wants with it.

There is no Board of Directors to oversee what happens right, or wrong. That is the mistake that has changed the face of education in America, and certainly New York City.

Principals have too much unchecked power. The Principal's Union, CSA, defends the rights of their members to have total power over their school.

When I reported the $225,000 missing grant money at PS 6 (Carmen Farina was Principal) from the Annenberg Challenge For the Arts, to Annenberg in or about 2001, their final conclusion after all the grants had been assessed, was that the money should not have been given to principals without safeguards for its' use. Without safeguards in place, too many principals did not use the money correctly, as the grant required.

That's the problem. Principals have unilateral power. And, without the necessary safeguards for using money within the school, the possibility that nefarious actions may occur is unsurprisingly high.

In 2004, I published the letters from the UFT on the Special Education Mess, with children not getting the services they needed. Special education remains a mess, and I keep publishing the missing services and money on my blogs and website Parentadvocates.org. I still represent children and their parents at Impartial Hearings. No one at the DOE is fixing anything, and special education teachers are getting hit with 3020-a. Alot of them.

Ruben Wills and Rushell White

The job of a principal in New York City is to be a CEO, a Chief Executive Officer. Unfortunately, there is no Board of Directors to oversee what happens right, or wrong. That is the mistake that has changed the face of education in America, and certainly New York City.

Principals have too much unchecked power. The Principal's Union, CSA, defends the rights of their members to have total power over their school.

The Checks

A picture is worth a thousand words.

When you enter MS 226, you quickly see huge pictures of checks on the wall. The checks - the representations of checks - are from District #28 City Council Member Ruben Wills, to MS 226 (the school is in District 27). The checks add up to $500,000, but the real amount given last year was more than $1 million.

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF NEW YORK: IAS PART 16 ------ X

EILEEN SMITH,

Petitioner,

- against - Index No. 118947/06

Motion Seq. No. 001

BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT

OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK and JOEL KLEIN, as the Chancellor

of City School District of the City of New York,

Respondents.

SCHLESINGER, J.:

On October 21, 2003, the first day of the implementation of a new policy at Far Rockaway High School where petitioner Eileen Smith was a tenured Social Studies teacher, an incident occurred which led to an unsatisfactory rating for Ms. Smith dated June 24, 2004, for the 2003-2004 school year. It is this rating that petitioner is challenging by way of this Article 78 proceeding.

The new policy consisted of periodic sweeps by the school administrators as a means of forcing students to get to their classrooms on time. One minute after the late bell had rung signaling that classes had changed, teachers were required to lock their classroom doors. The locked-out students would then have to report to an assigned place to get a special pass to be admitted to their classrooms. The students, not unexpectedly, were hostile to this new procedure, and in the petitioner's class, the ones locked out banged on her door to compel the teacher to let them in. Ms. Smith then attempted to leave the room to get help, but two students in the classroom barred her way by holding the door closed. She became desperate.^{^[1]}

Ms. Smith sought help, which finally came when the Assistant Principal appeared. By that time, things had quieted down. However, at her hearing Ms. Smith acknowledged having used inappropriate language during the chaotic time. Her UFT adviser, who was present and represented her at her hearing, said that Ms. Smith had said: “This ‘fucking’ language has to stop. I do not want abusive or profane talk in the class." Ms. Smith had also reportedly said: “I will not continue until the stupids stop," and then presumably in an effort to clarify added: “I mean the stupid remarks. I am not calling anyone stupid.”

After the incident, an investigation was conducted by the principal, Cheryll Jones (later retired and thus unavailable to testify at the hearing). This investigation included a review of statements by members of the class, as well as a meeting with Ms. Smith. It was concluded by a November 12, 2003 letter to Ms. Smith from Principal Jones finding that petitioner had “committed acts which are prohibited by the Chancellor’s Regulation A-420 Corporal Punishment and Chancellor’s Regulation A-420 Verbal Abuse which constitutes unacceptable teacher deportment.” The letter concluded that the finding “may lead to disciplinary action, including an Unsatisfactory rating and termination.”

Petitioner filed a grievance challenging this letter, one at which she prevailed after a hearing held on December 7, 2005. The arbitrator, Martin F. Scheinman, Esq., ruled in a decision dated January 3, 2006, that:

The letter of November 12, 2003 shall be deleted from Eileen Smith’s file because it is unfair and inaccurate as these terms have been defined by the parties.

Mr. Scheinman, however, limited the effect of his ruling to the discrete issue before him, stating that:

This decision shall not be cited by either party as a determination of the underlying facts nor shall it preclude either party from relitigating the underlying facts.

Before this January 3, 2006, determination of the grievance challenging the November 2003 letter, Ms. Smith had been given a copy of the June 15, 2004 “Unsatisfactory" rating at issue herein. Ms. Smith had signed to acknowledge receipt of the "U-Rating” on June 24 and had immediately appealed it. However, she had also asked to postpone the appeal until she had received a final decision on her grievance challenging the letter. Thus, after Arbitrator Scheinman had ruled in Ms. Smith’s favor regarding the letter in January 2006, Ms. Smith’s union representative informed the Department’s Office of Appeals that she wished to expedite her appeal of the U-Rating.

That hearing was held on May 31, 2006 before the Chancellor’s designated Chairperson, Leila G. Zuckerman. Ms. Smith was accompanied by her union representative, Michael Gotlieb. Denise Hallett, the current principal of the Far Rockaway school, was there, and the Assistant Principal Jocelyn Badette appeared by telephone.

In the “Background Data” section of her decision, Chairperson Zuckerman stated that: “The basis of this ‘Unsatisfactory’ rating was a substantiated A-420." This remark had been taken directly from the U-Rating which Principal Jones had prepared where the comment appears under "Additional Remarks." The A-420 itself had been prepared by

Assistant Principal Badette. This document, which was used at the hearing over the

petitioner’s objection because she had not been given a copy of it until a few minutes

before the hearing, was largely relied upon by the Chairperson in sustaining the U-rating.

That,togetherwith Mr. Gotlieb’s acknowledgment that Ms. Smith had made the statements

quoted earlier, formed the basis for the decision denying Ms. Smith’s appeal. Specifically,

Chairperson Zuckerman made the following findings:

The Chairperson carefully considered the facts and various arguments presented by the Appellant and the Administration.

The documentation, although substantial in part, leaves many questions about the hostile environment which escalated into an incident. Ms. Smith called for help three times. When the A.P. arrived, she found the class to be quiet.

Unfortunately it has been clearly acknowledged that inappropriate language was used by the Appellant. This may also have motivated some of the hostility in the class. The A- 420 does acknowledge that inappropriate language constitutes verbal abuse.

It is recommended that the appeal be denied and rating of “Unsatisfactory" be sustained.

Discussion

Both sides here agree that teacher evaluations and appeals of Unsatisfactory Ratings must be conducted in compliance with the formal procedures promulgated pursuant to Section 102.2(o)(a) of the New York State Commission of Education Regulations. In the City of New York, those procedures are set forth primarily in two Handbooks prepared by the Division of Human Resources; namely, “Rating Pedagogical Staff Members” and “The Appeal Process." The “Rating” Handbook emphasizes the importance of completing evaluations based on documents in the teacher’s file. “The

Appeal Process” requires, among other things, that before the hearing, the teacher/appellant "be furnished with a complete set of the documentation used by the Rating Officer to support the reason(s) for the adverse rating" (Section A2).

In the case at bar, petitioner Smith asserts that the decision denying her appeal of the Unsatisfactory Rating was arbitrary and capricious and made in violation of lawful procedures. Specifically, petitioner asserts that Chairperson Zuckerman erred in relying on (1) various student statements which had been excluded from the file; and (2) the A-420 Report which had not been provided in advance. Had those documents been excluded as they should have been, no rational basis would exist for the decision, petitioner asserts. Respondent counters that Chairperson Zuckerman properly considered the A-420 and made a rational decision based on the evidence.

Turning first to the student statements, the record is clear that petitioner prevailed at her grievance challenging the November 12, 2003 letter from Principal Jones, and that Arbitrator Scheinman directed that the letter be deleted from Eileen Smith’s file as "unfair and inaccurate.” Chairperson Zuckerman properly sustained petitioner’s objection to the admission of the letter at the appeal of the U-Rating on this ground. Those student statements referred to in the letter and attached to it should also have been excluded. To the extent the Board offered additional student statements at the appeal which may not have been attached to the letter, those statements should have been excluded because they had not been shown to petitioner before the hearing as required by the above-quoted Section A2 of the Appeals Process.

The A-420 should have been excluded as well. The Chairperson erred in overruling petitioner’s objection to the inclusion of the A-420, stating that: "It’s not given to the teachers.” (Transcript, p. 5). Respondent contends that petitioner’s objection had no basis in the rules. However, as noted above, Section A2 of The Appeals Process Handbook expressly entitles the teacher to "a complete set of the used and expressly referred to the A-420 documentation used by the Rating Officer”, and the Rating Officer in this case (Principal Jones) in the U-Rating at issue. Neither the Chairperson, nor the Respondent Board, has pointed to any specific rule or regulation which would override Section A2 and entitle the Board to withhold the A-420 from petitioner while still relying on it at the hearing.

The Commissioner and the courts have held that a U-Rating cannot be sustained where, as here, the Chairperson improperly relies on documents which should have been excluded from consideration at the teacher’s appeal. Thus, for example, in The Appeal of

Naomi Dowrie, 45 Ed. Dept. Rep. ________ , Decision No. 15,506 (Dec. 22, 2006), the

Commissioner reversed the decision by the Chancellor’s designee to sustain a U-Rating because the decision relied on documents which had not been included in the teacher’s file and shown to the teacher in advance. Citing to various provisions in the “Rating" Handbook, the Chancellor’s designee emphasized the importance of including relevant documents in the file in advance of the hearing so the teacher could grieve them and seek their removal. If it fails to provide the teacher with that opportunity, the Board may not consider the documents at the appeal of the U-Rating.

Wholly unavailing is respondent's attempt to distinguish Dowrie on the ground that the excluded documents were the only documents relied upon by the Chancellor in that case. Respondent does not, and cannot, challenge the principle in Dowrie that a U-Rating cannot be sustained based pn documents which the Board failed to give the teacher in advance.

This same principle was recently applied by Justice Lewis Bart Stone in Mangone v. Board of Education, Index No. 117353/06, Aug. 3, 2007, (Sup. Ct., NY Co). In Mangone, the Court denied the Board’s motion to dismiss the teacher’s petition which challenged, among other things, an unsatisfactory rating. Citing to Dowrie, the court reiterated the rule that a U-Rating cannot be sustained based solely on documents which had not been provided to the teacher in advance of the hearing as part of the file.

Respondent nevertheless argues that the U-Rating was properly sustained based

on the A-420. As discussed above, this Court disagrees based on the requirement in “The

Appeals Process" Handbook that the teacher be shown all documents in advance of the

appeal hearing. But even if the A-420 were properly relied upon by Chairperson

Zuckerman at the hearing, it does not suffice to support the determination. The A-420 is

a pre-printed form with a box checked that merely indicates “The allegations were

substantiated.” The allegations are those in the November 12, 2003 letter from Principal

Jones and the various student statements, both of which were referenced and made a part

of the A-420.^{^[2]} The A-420 also contains a typewritten "description of incident” which simply

paraphrases the student statements and reads as follows:

Student [name redacted] alleges that Ms. Smith grabbed a statement that student wrote complaining about the teacher, “pushed it into her pocket and then pushed her into the door”.

Another student [name redacted] alleges that Ms. Smith called the class "stupid” and said that the “fucking has to stop”. [Name redacted] also alleges that while she was trying to help [name redacted] Ms. Smith pushed her breaking her nail against the board.

Lastly, the A-420 contains the typewritten conclusion of the Assistant Principal which reads as follows:

The teacher committed acts which are prohibited by the Chancellor’s Regulation A-420 Corporal Punishment and Chancellor’s Regulation A-420 Verbal Abuse which constitutes unacceptable teacher deportment.

Significantly, as Chairperson Zuckerman indicated in her decision quoted above (at p. 4), when the Assistant Principal finally responded to Ms. Smith’s three calls for help, she found the room quiet. Therefore, the description of the incident and the conclusion stated in the A-420 are not based on any personal observation by any administrator; instead, they are based solely on the hearsay statements written by the students. Thus, the A-420, by itself, cannot support the U-Rating.

Without the various documents, the only evidence left is the undisputed fact that Ms. Smith made the above-quoted statements in the midst of an extremely difficult time in class. Presumably recognizing this point, Chairperson Zuckerman in her decision did not find that Ms. Smith had engaged in prohibited corporal punishment. Rather, she made a finding - somewhat reluctantly - of prohibited verbal abuse based on the statement by petitioner’s union representative that the language Ms. Smith used was "inappropriate”. The Chairperson’s reluctance is revealed by her finding that the evidence “leaves many questions," by her emphasis on Ms. Smith’s repeated calls for help, by her confirmation that the Assistant Principal found the room quiet when she finally responded, and by her statement that Ms. Smith “unfortunately" acknowledged using “inappropriate” language at the hearing.

But even an acknowledgment of “inappropriate” language does not support a finding of prohibited verbal abuse. The Chancellor’s Regulation A-421 defines verbal abuse as:

• Language that tends to cause fear or physical or mental distress;

• Language that includes words denoting racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual orientation which tends to cause fear or physical or mental distress;

• Language that tends to threaten physical harm; or

• Language that tends to belittle or subject students to ridicule.

Respondent cannot reasonably claim that the language falls into any of the first three categories since no evidence exists of any words which caused fear or threatened harm. At most, the Board can claim that the language “tends to belittle or subject students to ridicule." But when Ms. Smith’s words are examined in context, they fail to meet that standard. Clearly, Ms. Smith was attempting to gain control of the students in a chaotic situation and to compel them to stop using inappropriate language and making inappropriate remarks. She made clear that she herself was not cursing at the students or calling them stupid. Ultimately, Ms. Smith achieved her goal because the class was quiet when the Assistant Principal arrived. Thus, while it may well be that Ms. Smith could have achieved her goal by using different language, it cannot reasonably be said that the language she used qualifies as prohibited verbal abuse as defined in the Regulations sufficient to support an Unsatisfactory Rating.

Accordingly, it is hereby

ADJUDGED that the petition is granted, the denial of petitioner’s appeal of the Unsatisfactory Rating is annulled, and the Unsatisfactory Rating shall be removed from the file.

This constitutes the decision and judgment of this Court.

The facts related here are taken from the decision by Committee Chairperson Leila G. Zuckerman, which denied Ms. Smith’s appeal of the unsatisfactory rating after a hearing on May 31, 2006. The denial was upheld by the Chancellor on August 28, 2006. The petition timely challenges that denial. In the background data of Ms. Zuckemnan’s decision, she states (referring to Ms. Smith): “It was clear that she became desperate”.

^{^[2]} As noted above, Chairperson Zuckerman properly excluded the letter, and the student statements were, or should have been, excluded as well.

The only thing that I think anyone can say right now about the ATR situation is that the NYC Department of Education is finally seeing the mess they have made.

And what a mess it is.

For many years, teachers who worked at a school that was closed, became "excessed", and became Absent Teacher Reservists (my name for ATRs), "absent" meaning not in a permanent position. This nomad status lent itself to a myriad of problems, especially in the area of evaluations. How does a substitute teacher know the students well enough for anyone to say the students have learned something, if the substitute is in the classroom for a day, a week, a couple of weeks? Impossible. Yet, a peer validator, field supervisor or other agent of make-it-up evaluators come in, observe and rate as if there was a standard for S/U that applied to these tenured substitutes.

There is no contract to cover rating tenured substitutes. The UFT has a contract for Substitute teachers, but these are people who can be fired, not hired again, etc. That is their rating, if they are not good in the classroom or Guidance Office.

These tenured teachers, ATRs, cannot be fired suddenly and are not covered by the Collective Bargaining Agreement which covers Substitute Teachers, because although most of the excessed-by-school-closing-employees (not only teachers, but other staff such as Assistant Principals, Guidance Counselors, etc) and others with the title ATR are substitutes, they have tenure.

You'd think that the easy solution would be to create a contract that had appropriate evaluation and rating standards for tenured substitutes -like, for example, you cannot rate the performance of a substitute tenured employee if they have not been teaching the class you want to observe for at least a month - or two.

However, there are only two limited options, a buyout and the 2017 ATR Agreement, both shockingly negotiated without an ATR Chapter or ATR Representatives in existence. I don't get it.

So, the NYC DOE are going to try to give year-long jobs left vacant after October 15 to ATRs. In my opinion, this will be a problem, when the only positions left open at that time are the ones that no one wants. No one will be happy. At most, a small percentage may be, but certainly not when all the year-longs are given year-end ratings under the HEDI rating scale used in Danielson.

I betcha a tiny amount of ATRs - if any at all - will be rated Effective/Highly Effective.

Then the s___t will hit the fan.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, The NYC Public Voice

New York City plans more aggressive steps to move hundreds of unassigned teachers out of Absent Teacher Reserve

BY CHRISTINA VEIGA, MONICA DISARE

Schools that still have vacancies by October will be sent staffers from the city’s Absent Teacher Reserve, a move that may shrink the costly pool but could also rankle principals.

The policy, first reported by the New York Daily News and confirmed by the education department Monday, marks the city’s latest attempt to reach its goal of cutting the pool in half from its current 822 teachers.

The Absent Teacher Reserve is a group of teachers collecting salaries and benefits without holding full-time positions. Teachers can be placed into the ATR either because their jobs were eliminated or for disciplinary reasons.

Under the new policy, principals have until around October 15 — six months from when hiring begins — to fill their vacancies. After that, city officials say they will make placements from the ATR, even potentially over principals’ objections.

“We will work to find the right fit, and hear and work through concerns that they might have,” education department spokesman Will Mantell said. “But ultimately, we do have discretion to place an educator in a vacancy that exists, and it kind of makes sense.”

The placements will be for one year, rather than a monthly rotation. Mantell said that would allow teachers to participate in training and receive guidance from principals. Teachers who score “Highly Effective” or “Effective” on the observation portion of their evaluation when there is a remaining vacancy will be permanently hired.

Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña promised in 2014 that she would not endorse “forced placement of staff” as a strategy for shrinking the pool. Though the new policy may require principals to take on teachers, Mantell said it is not an example of forced placement because it only applied to vacancies and will not allow ATR teachers to bump existing teachers from their jobs.

Still, the change could prove unpopular with principals. Under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, principals were given more power to run their schools and make hiring decisions. The de Blasio administration has, to a certain extent, reined in this power — which has drawn some criticism.

The ATR pool swelled under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who aggressively closed struggling schools, and cost the city an estimated $105 million in 2013. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to shrink the pool in half.

Measuring the ATR pool can be tricky, since it represents only a snapshot in time and fluctuates throughout the year. Still, city officials argue that, in the aggregate, it has steadily decreased under de Blasio.

The city has undertaken a number of initiatives toward that end, including hiring the former principal of Brooklyn Technical High School to lead efforts to shrink the pool, offering $50,000 severance payments and subsidizing the salaries of teachers hired from the ATR.

Still, at the end of the 2016-17 school year, 822 teachers remained in the pool, according to numbers provided by the education department. This new policy will mark a more aggressive approach to reducing that number. In addition to the placements, teachers in the pool can now be hired across school district lines within their borough.

In an emailed statement, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew praised the plan.

“These changes reflect the UFT’s conviction that members of the ATR pool provide needed services to schools and that their work should be respected,” Mulgrew said in an emailed statement.

But critics argue that if principals had wanted to hire these teachers, they would have already done so. The result, they say, will put poor quality teachers into New York’s neediest classrooms.

“It is shockingly irresponsible for the city to force place hundreds of teachers of dubious quality into the classrooms of our most vulnerable students,” said StudentsFirstNY Executive Director Jenny Sedlis in a statement. “There are reasons why no principal has chosen to hire them and this policy is bad for kids, plain and simple.”

Charlotte Danielson

We know that the UFT is not including ATRs in any negotiating. ATRs, Absent Teacher Reservists (my word) are not being protected from abuse and wrongful ratings by Field Supervisors, Peer Validators, and Principals who just want to get rid of tenured employees tainted by 3020-a charges or a school's closing.

As I said in my previous post, the 2017-2018 school year promises to be a big mess for ATRs, who may be assigned to a position which has not been filled ( because no one wants it) by October 15, 2017. Then these tenured substitutes will be rated under the Danielson Rubric, where anyone, even the most brilliant of employees, can be rated "Developing" or "Ineffective" without any evidence proving their incompetence. As Charlotte Danielson says herself, the Danielson rubric was never supposed to be used for rating senior teachers, only to give new teachers some guidelines on good teaching techniques:

Prohibit The Department of Education Lawyers From Using The Danielson Rubric For Observation Reports and 3020-a Arbitration

So, an ATR in a year-long position can now be rated pursuant to the Danielson rubric and given a bad rating, and zoom! Before you know it, this ATR will be in a 3012-c hearing where termination is always the end result.

That is how the NYC DOE solves problems they have created. Fire everybody, start over.

Anyway, see below the webpage for substitute teachers on the DOE site. This page is for non-tenured substitutes, not tenured employees, but employees may want to check this page out after they are terminated as ATRs.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Human Resources

Substitute/Per Diem Teachers

Currently Employed Substitutes

Click to log into SubCentral, and to access the following resources for SubCentral users:
SubCentral 2.0 Instruction for Substitute Teachers
SubCentral Quick Reference Card
SubCentral Fact Sheet
Click to access the Substitute Teachers Handbook.

Substitute Teacher Renewal Requirements for 2017-18.

Substitute Teacher Nominations are Closed

The Nomination Process

Applications for Substitute Teaching positions are only made available to individuals who have been nominated by a school principal, using our online process. Each school may nominate candidates for the position based upon the prevailing or projected vacancies (i.e., number, location, schedule, etc.) and the special requirements for some positions (e.g., foreign language proficiency, math, science, certification in physical education, etc.). If you are interested in becoming a Substitute Teacher, contact the school(s) of your choice directly.

Responsibilities of the Substitute Teacher

Substitute Teachers are utilized by the New York City Public Schools, on an as-needed basis, to cover the classroom in the absence of the regular (fulltime) Teachers. The primary role of the Substitute Teacher is to continue student learning along the continuum, established by the absent full-time teacher. The responsibilities of the Substitute Teacher in the classroom may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Planning lessons
• Teaching students
• Managing the classroom
• Performing administrative tasks
• Promoting positive student behavior
• Ensuring the safety and security of the students

Pay Rate

Substitute Teachers, providing day-to-day service, are paid at the per diem contractual rate of $176.21 (as of May 2017), for the actual days worked; they do not receive any benefits. Click, for more information about the Per Diem Payroll Frequently Asked Questions.

Substitute Teachers are represented by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

Eligibility Requirements

The minimum eligibility requirements to apply for a Substitute Teacher position are the following:

• Online Nomination by a school Principal
• A Bachelor's Degree
• Proficiency in reading, writing and speaking the English language
• Authorization to work in the USA

The Hiring Process

After a principal has completed the online nomination, an email will be sent to the nominee with instructions on accessing and completing the online application for the Substitute Teacher position. Once the nominee submits the application, an email will be sent to the candidate listing the next steps necessary to work as a substitute teacher in New York City public schools. The first of these steps is to complete the mandatory Employment Forms, and any follow up requirements shown therein (e.g., fingerprinting). The subsequent steps to be followed will differ, based upon the nominee’s New York State teacher certification status.

I. If the nominee holds a valid New York State teaching certificate, he/she will be invited to attend an expedited processing event. At this Fast-Track processing event, the teacher nominee must present a valid government photo identification (i.e. passport, current non-expired driver’s license or state ID) and is required to submit the following:

• Original copy of a valid NYS teaching certificate (or a print-out from TEACH Online)
• $70 Money Order payable to the NYC Department of Education (processing fee)

II. If the nominee does not possess New York State certification as a teacher, he/she will be invited to attend a Combined Assessment & Processing event consisting of written & oral assessments to determine English language proficiency, and submission of required forms and documents.

At the nominee's scheduled event, he/she must present a valid government photo identification (i.e. passport, current non-expired driver’s license or state ID) and will be required to submit the following:

• Bachelor’s Degree diploma or official transcript indicating Bachelor’s Degree conferral date
• $100 Money Order payable to the NYC Department of Education (processing fee)
• Proof of completion for the NYSED approved workshop on Child Abuse Identification.
• Proof of completion for the NYSED approved workshop on School Violence Prevention.
• Proof of completion for the NYSED approved workshop on the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA).
• Proof of completing the NYCDOE supported and authorized online training program for Substitute Teachers. There is no additional fee for this online training program. Information on this online training program will be disseminated at a later stage.
• Proof of creating an online profile with the New York State Education Department, Office of Teaching Initiatives. There is no additional fee for creating the online profile.

Upon successful completion of all the above requirements, the substitute teacher nominees, certified and uncertified, will receive information on the following, to be reviewed prior to their first teaching assignment:

• Handling Blood Borne Pathogens
• The NYCDOE’s absence management system (SubCentral) for Substitute Teachers

Staffing

Subject to receiving clearance (fingerprint & appraisal of record) from the New York City Department of Education’s Office of Personnel Investigations, the nominee will be staffed as a Substitute Teacher and approved to serve throughout the New York City Public Schools, for the current school year.

Continuation of Substitute Status

To continue substitute status for the next school year, the substitute is required to fulfill the renewal requirements, which are updated annually, and can be accessed via the following link: Substitute Teacher Renewal Requirements

The renewal requirements include the following:

• Provide at least 20 days of service as a substitute teacher during the school year.
• Maintain a record of “Satisfactory” ratings from the schools worked in and be in good standing (as determined by the Office of Personnel Investigations).
• Substitute teachers who work in excess of 40 days and do not hold valid NYS Teacher certification, must also complete the following:

Proof of Professional Teacher Education courses totaling at least 6 credits
during that year or meet the maximum requirement of 21 credits.

For additional information, write to subteacherjobs@schools.nyc.gov or visit NYC Department of Education, Office of HR School Support, 65 Court Street, Room 504, Brooklyn, NY 11201.

Click for information about Substitute Paraprofessionals.

Click for information about Full Time Teachers.

The article in the esteemed Wall Street Journal re-posted below is an opinion piece of the worst kind. The Editorial Board threw facts out of the window in order to attack the Absent Teacher Reservists (ATRs) who are, supposedly, NYC's "worst" teachers, and "ATR" is the new name for the miscreants who sat in the rubber rooms.

Wrong, ugly wrong.

- first of all, it is very easy with the new set of arbitrators on the NYC permanent panel in NYC (and nowhere else is there a permanent panel) to fire anyone. If you do not know (as most private attorneys don't, especially if they are on their first 3020-a, or second-third) all the ins and outs of the UFT contract, the ATR agreement, buyout, Fair Student Funding, senior transfers and exactly how the Danielson rating system and HEDI fail, anyone can be fired at any time. 3020-a hearings are a minefield, even for my legal team after 14 years of observing and working on 3020-a cases. Every case has a WHAT???!!! moment that makes it unique and unforgettable. The charged Respondent can win, if the representative - the legal team - is experienced enough to know the minefield and how to defuse it.
Very unfortunately, however, sometimes the charged employee is the person who loses the case, by having a prior set of charges, admitting wrongdoing and making deals when the misconduct never occurred (NYSUT's fault) and testifying poorly (not answering the question, being arrogant, etc). There is a way to testify that works, and I think it is absolutely crucial to give pointers on how to testify before the charged employee goes on record. Notice that I don't say WHAT to testify about, that would be coaching testimony. But a guide to HOW to testify is what we do. As I have previously written on this blog, do not think that by not testifying you will not be terminated. If you do not put your side of what happened into the record, you will be terminated. Sometimes the Respondent won't listen, or the arbitrator is hell-bent on termination from day 1 (yes, I will tell you more about the bad ones on the panel on this blog and my website Parentadvocates.org, soon).

-secondly, many (not all, true) ATRs are senior teachers at the 20+ years into teaching, usually with all S ratings until the Danielson rubric raised its horrible head, Fair Student Funding put the budget of the school squarely in the hands of the principal and the principal decided the staff member was too expensive to keep on the school budget. Without senior transfers, the only way a principal can get an expensive employee out of the school is to charge that employee with anything, i.e., sharpening a pencil too long, if that's what kind of 3020-a charge which must be made up.

- third, the rubber room folk waited for 2-15 years to have their days in arbitration, and that was the fault of over-anxious principals dumping anyone who would not do something or, who would. Mayor Bloomberg woke up one day and realized that there were not enough hearings and too many people in the temporary re-assignment centers ("TRCs") . He did what all politicians do when confronted with a mistake they made: first, try to hide the facts from the newspapers (that did not work, I made sure of it when I used to work for the UFT), then, try to make the mistake go away (not necessarily fix it, because then it will look like you are admitting the mistake). But the rubber roomers are almost always folk who had not had a hearing yet. ATRs are employees who have been excessed after a school was closed, or who won the 3020-a and did not get fired. There is a reason why the tenured employee did not get fired!!!! Principals lie under oath, and tell their AP, parents, students, staff to lie as well. Everyone follows a script. In my opinion, most people are bad liars. You can spot a lie immediately, because the person who does not tell the truth gets confused, and loses track of what they said, and change their story. When I read the transcripts to prepare for closing arguments, the lies stand out as if there were red highlights.

- fourth, the Editorial Board did the easiest thing for people who have made their minds up and refuse to see anything different (which is surprising, considering that the Wall Street journal is widely respected): go with the prevailing theory. The Board is misinformed, but probably could not look at any other versions than what their funders wanted, which is disappointing.

- fifth, many ATRs that I know are the best in the business. They are intelligent, hard-working, terrific individuals who asked the right question (why do I have to change the grades? Where's the money?) to the wrong person, and before they can blink are being accused of harming a student, having sex with a child in the classroom, saying something that "upset" someone, etc. But, when you look deeper into the situation, you find out it never happened.

Anyway, articles like the one below are extremely harmful to all the wonderful ATRs out there, and I apologize for re-posting such an ugly piece of someone's miniature brain. But I could not resist the urge to tell the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board that their opinion post below is just, plain, stupid.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina, NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio

The Teachers No One Wants

New York forces its worst teachers back into classrooms

The Editorial Board

July 13, 2017 7:36 p.m. ET

136 COMMENTS

For decades the United Federation of Teachers has protected perverts, drunkards and other classroom miscreants from being fired. Now the union’s allies plan to put some of these teachers back in New York City schools.

On Monday the city’s Department of Education said it will require city schools to fill between 300 and 400 vacancies from the Absent Teacher Reserve, or ATR. This is the politically sanitized name for the “rubber rooms” where teachers who couldn’t be fired but no one wanted would sit from 8:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. collecting a paycheck as they napped or played cards. After a horrified public learned of the practice, the city abolished rubber rooms in 2010.

But many of those same teachers are now in ATR, which is no longer a physical room but remains a form of employment limbo. Some teachers are there because their last school closed. But trained, licensed teachers in ATR can apply for vacant positions in 1,700 other public schools. If a teacher can’t find another job in such a large system, there’s probably a good reason principals don’t want him.

Three years ago schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña vowed “there will be no forced placement of staff.” But now she would effectively mandate that schools take teachers they initially rejected. This includes teachers who end up in ATR because they drink too much, have abused students, or for some other misconduct that renders them unfit for the classroom.

The underlying problem is a tenure system that makes it all but impossible to fire teachers after they’ve spent four years on the job. Those suspended for misconduct continue to receive pay, pension contributions and benefits as disciplinary hearings stretch on and on, sometimes for years. Unions have the power each year to approve or reject the arbitrators who decide misconduct cases.

Under this rigged system, New York fired a mere 61 of its 78,000 teachers over a decade, the American Enterprise Institute found in 2014. Each teacher in ATR costs taxpayers about $100,000 a year, so no wonder many have declined the city’s $50,000 buyout offers.

The logical solution would be to make it easier to fire bad teachers, but Mayor Bill de Blasio is a wholly owned union subsidiary. Poor students will bear the real cost of his rubber-room rebound as their education suffers with a subpar teacher—or worse. No wonder tens of thousands of parents have put their children on waiting lists for charter schools that are free to hire and fire teachers on the merits, not by union diktat.

From Betsy Combier:

And then there is, of course, Chalkbeat, a well-known hater of teachers and teacher unions:

New York City principals balk at plan to place teachers in their schools; some vow to get around it

Many New York City principals are unhappy that the city is planning to place teachers directly into their schools — and in some cases, they’re vowing resistance.

Department of Education officials announced last week that they would place up to half of the 822 teachers who currently do not have positions into jobs that haven’t been filled by Oct. 15. Those teachers are part of the Absent Teacher Reserve, a collection of educators moved to the pool for disciplinary reasons or when their positions were eliminated. They remain on the city payroll in an arrangement that has generated political tension for years.

The move by the city reverses Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s promise in 2014 to avoid “forced placement” and raises questions about principals’ already fraying sense of autonomy. The city claims the plan is not forced placement because it would only apply to vacancies, as opposed to displacing teachers who are already employed. Regardless, many principals aren’t on board.

Some say they’ll avoid any attempt to place teachers at their schools, even if that means obscuring open jobs from the city’s hiring systems past October.

“I’m going to make sure my school doesn’t have a vacancy,” said one Bronx principal who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the topic. “I’m not going to post a vacancy if someone will place an ATR there. I’ll be as strategic as I can and figure out another way.”

Some principals raised concerns about the quality of the teachers in the pool. Education department officials could not readily provide the percentage of teachers in the pool who are there for disciplinary reasons, but a 2014 report estimated it at 25 percent. The same report said another third had received unsatisfactory ratings and half hadn’t held a classroom position in two years or more.

“Many of them have been coming from schools that have been closed down or subject areas that were cut,” said Scott Conti, principal of New Design High School in Manhattan. “The majority of them were at schools that were highly dysfunctional.” He noted that some may have been out of the classroom for years and not getting proper professional development, effectively hindering their performance as teachers.

Conti said he did hire a teacher from the ATR pool three years ago, through the standard procedure he would use to hire other teachers. He objects to the idea of being forced to hire someone whose effectiveness he could not fully judge.

“It’s never good when somebody from outside a school decides to fill in a vacancy in a school,” Conti said. “ It’s scary that some teacher could be put in your school that you have no choice about.”

Other principals were more harsh. One Bronx principal said multiple experiences working with ATR teachers sent to the school for monthly rotations in the past left the impression that those in the reserve are “not qualified, with very few exceptions.” Other principals agreed, suggesting that if the teachers were high-quality candidates, they probably would have found positions on their own.

To circumvent the new policy, some principals said they might check in with all their teachers early in the hiring period to be aware of potential future vacancies. If there is a vacancy in October, others said they’d consider hiring a long-term substitute to fill the position rather than leaving it open to an ATR placement.

The city says the new approach will be more stable than having teachers in the ATR rotate monthly, and will allow schools to more closely support and supervise the teachers in their building. It plans to work closely with principals on the hiring.

“We will work to find the right fit, and hear and work through concerns that they might have,” education department spokesman Will Mantell told Chalkbeat last week. “But ultimately, we do have discretion to place an educator in a vacancy that exists, and it kind of makes sense.”

Schools will still have final say over whether the teachers are permanently hired. If at the end of the school year, the teacher is rated as “effective” or “highly effective” in the observation portion of their evaluation — performed by principals or other school administrators — that teacher will be permanently hired to that school.

It is unclear if any of the ATR teachers placed into schools this coming fall could have a background of poor disciplinary conduct, or if the teachers placed would come solely from the share that are in the pool because they were excessed.

“The DOE has discretion on which educators in the ATR pool are appropriate for long-term placement, and may choose not to assign educators who have been disciplined in the past,” education officials said.

Last year, the city offered an incentive system to encourage schools to hire from the ATR pool. During that school year, 372 teachers were hired from the ATR pool under a DOE policy that subsidized the cost of the teachers’ first-year salaries by 50 to 100 percent. Those incentives will not be offered with the placements expected this fall.

Daniel Russo, principal of Walton Avenue School in the Bronx, said he has had positive experiences with the two teachers he hired from ATR pool in previous years. He added that though ATR teachers sometimes have a gap because they are coming from a different school — and sometimes not a high-performing school — his school is able to fill that gap and assimilate the teacher to the school’s culture and expectations.

Still, he noted, finding the right fit between candidates and schools could be a “challenging undertaking” for the city.

New Design’s Conti fears that challenge will disproportionately fall on schools like his that struggle with fluctuating enrollment.

“These teachers are not going to end up at Lab, they will end up at places like New Design where the positions will open up,” Conti said, referring to the selective and successful NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies. “Schools with the most unstable populations, serving the neediest kids is where the low-functioning teachers will end up.”

Congratulations, Rafe, for keeping the fight going!
See also:

Rafe Esquith, Teacher Now Re-assigned in Los Angeles, Moves a Nation To Ask, "What Are We Doing To Our Teachers"?

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Fired LAUSD teacher can sue district for alleged discrimination, court says

By City News Service

POSTED: 07/20/17, 3:40 PM

Rafe Esquith

LOS ANGELES >> A state appellate court panel Thursday upheld a trial judge’s ruling that a former Los Angeles Unified School District teacher can move forward with his lawsuit alleging he was removed from his classroom for criticizing many of the school district’s policies and initiatives.

The three-justice panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal found that Rafe Esquith’s causes of action did not arise out of an employment investigation conducted against him and that therefore the district was not engaged in “protected activity,” which would have been grounds for dismissing the case.

“We agree that Esquith’s claims do not arise from a protected employment investigation,” Justice Audrey Collins wrote. “Rather, Esquith has alleged that defendants harassed him, discriminated against him, and retaliated against him, and to accomplish these ends they engaged in a baseless investigation and took adverse employment actions against Esquith.”

Zack Muljat, one of Esquith’s attorneys,issued a statement on the ruling.

“We agreed with the ruling in the trial court and we agree with the opinion of the Court of Appeal,” Muljat said. “We look forward to the opportunity to forge ahead and bring justice to Mr. Esquith.”

In his July 2016 ruling, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Mooney said he could not grant the district’s motion to dismiss Esquith’s entire complaint because some of his claims did not fall under what is considered protected speech and the right of the LAUSD to conduct an investigation of the teacher.

Mooney’s ruling meant that Esquith’s claims of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, the taking of items from his classroom, retaliation, age discrimination and unfair business practices remained in the case. He also is seeking reinstatement to his teaching position.

“Esquith alleged that he was an outspoken critic of certain LAUSD policies and he was nearing retirement, and as a result (the district) retaliated and discriminated against him by removing him from his teaching position and conducting a baseless, meandering investigation designed to damage Esquith’s career and reputation,” Collins wrote.

Esquith, 63, was removed from his Hobart Elementary School classroom in April 2015. The district began investigating him when another teacher came forward to allege that Esquith was using inappropriate sexual language with his students.

Esquith is known for introducing Shakespeare to his pupils.

“I have received international recognition as an innovative and groundbreaking educator,” Esquith says in a sworn declaration. “Additionally, I am a New York Times bestselling author of books addressing my teaching and educational philosophy.”

Esquith says he never received a complaint from a parent or teacher during his 30 years as an educator.

Esquith also maintains that he has “suffered at the hands of (the LAUSD) for criticizing their wasteful practices, collusion with private business interests and lack of concern for student development.”

As a result, Esquith claims, the district has “attempted to silence me through a campaign of retaliation.”

Elsa Cruz, one of Esquith’s former students, denied in her own sworn statement that he ever sent her any inappropriate emails as alleged in the LAUSD’s statement of charges against him.

“The communications described in the statement of charges between Mr. Esquith and myself are small pieces of much larger conversations that are taken wholly out of context,” she said, adding that she believes the district “cherry-picked” portions of the emails to make it appear the entire conversations were sexual in nature.

The district fired Esquith in October 2015, two months after he sued.

I would add to the quote above: "...or for stealing public property."

If public funds have paid for 50 computers to be given to your school, who is to point the finger at you, the principal/AP if you take one home? No one. I am not saying that all principals have thought about doing this, but I am saying that there are principals who have taken public property for themselves, or others.

See Stuart Possner's case. and,

Five NYC Department of Education Former and Current DOE Network Leaders Exposed For Violating P-Card Rules

There are many more.

On Thursday July 20, 2017 City Councilman Ruben Wills was convicted of public corruption:
City Councilman Convicted of Stealing Thousands in Public Funds
I wonder how MS226 Principal Rushell White feels about that.

MS 226 Principal Rushell White Key Words: Checks From Ruben Wills

Did Rushell White get the $750 handbag made by Louis Vuitton? People I spoke to at MS 226 say yes, she did.

Or, if a member of your staff asks where a missing computer (or two or three) may be, you, as the principal can charge him/her with taking it, and if this person doesn't have tenure, he/she can be discontinued immediately following the 60-day notice; or, if this person has tenure, then it is time for a 3020-a, with other charges padding the list of Specifications to make sure the person is terminated.

So you, principal/AP/favored staff member dont have to worry about anything. Just enjoy your spanking new computer.

Parents and non-staff members are also sometimes on the take:
Stuyvesant High School Parents' Association is Cited For Financial Fraud and Discrimination

or in danger because they say something:
Booker T. Washington Middle School 54, Grievance Brings Retaliation

How many teachers have been told suddenly that they are re-assigned, and must leave the building, leaving all their stuff accumulated over many years, in their classrooms, never to be seen again. Sometimes the property of the re-assigned gets put into a room where staff can go through the items and take what they want.

If this happens, go to the police, make a complaint. Pronto. Then tell the Principal you need your stuff, and go to the UFT and tell them .

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Scott Stringer

New Comptroller Stringer Audit: Thousands of DOE Computers, Laptops, and Tablets Missing or Not Properly Accounted For

JULY 19, 2017

In a sample of just nine locations, DOE failed to account for almost 35 percent of machines

Over 1,800 computers, tablets, and other technology were missing from sampled schools

(New York, NY) – A new Comptroller Stringer investigation has found the New York City Department of Education is missing more than 1,800 computers, laptops, and tablets, while more than 3,500 were not properly accounted for. In a sample of just eight schools and one agency office, the Comptroller found 35 percent of approximately 14,000 machines were not properly accounted for.

The follow-up audit released today comes two and a half years after a December 2014 audit by Comptroller Stringer that highlighted how the DOE could not locate 1,817 computers and identified another nearly 400 laptops and tablets that were sitting in storage, unopened and unused.

The Comptroller’s new investigation today revealed that the DOE has made no real progress in managing its technology inventory in the years since. Auditors found:

An additional 1,816 laptops, computers, and tablets are now missing—from just nine DOE locations audited;
3,541 devices that were or should have been at those nine locations were not listed in DOE’s inventory — increasing the risk that DOE equipment can be stolen undetected; and
The DOE continues to maintain the same decentralized inventory records for its technology equipment that were found inaccurate two and a half years ago and remain so.

“I’m calling on the DOE to do a top-to-bottom review of all of its computers, laptops, and monitors. When we should be preparing our kids for the great age of technology, when coding is changing the world, the DOE is losing and misplacing its tech equipment. This isn’t just a massive mess – it’s wrong. When laptops and tablets go missing, or are stored in closets gathering dust, children and teachers are let down. The ineptitude by the bureaucracy is resulting in wasted resources, and it undermines our ability to prepare our children for the future,” New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said. “The DOE has known about these problems since we audited this very issue over two years ago – and the agency has made no real progress in addressing them. We constantly hear the same excuses from the agency – that monitoring is in place, that systems are functioning the way they should, and that the public should trust that everything is fine. As this audit once again shows, taxpayer dollars are exposed to waste, fraud, or abuse – and it’s coming at our kids’ expense. This has to change.”

Between July 2014 and March 2016, the DOE entered into $209.9 million worth of contracts for computers, laptops, monitors, and tablets with Apple, Lenovo, and CDW Government, LLC. The items purchased through these three contracts included:

Desktops computers that cost between $332 and $2,290;
Laptops that cost between $167 and $2,339;
Tablets that cost between $251 and $900; and
Computer monitors that cost between $94 and $452.

Comptroller Stringer’s December 2014 audit found that the DOE was unable to properly manage its technology hardware due in large part to its decentralized inventory system. Today’s follow-up audit found that those failures have continued.

Currently, more than 2,000 individual “site administrators” across the school system are responsible for maintaining and updating their own computer inventories, which are never reconciled with the DOE’s central purchasing database or its Asset Management System (AMS). As a result, the DOE has no way of knowing whether all of the items it purchased are properly accounted for at school locations. These systemic failures expose the City to an increased risk of waste, fraud, and abuse.

In the earlier audit, the Comptroller recommended the DOE establish a centralized inventory system — possibly through the existing AMS database, which already contains information on hardware purchased by the DOE. Today’s follow-up audit showed the results of DOE’s rejection of that and other recommendations — still more missing and unused equipment — and revealed that the DOE had not even tried to find 1,090 of the 1,817 computers that were identified as missing in the December 2014 audit.

Findings from the follow-up audit include:

The DOE’s records remain inaccurate and incomplete

The DOE failed to properly account for 4,993 of its 14,329 pieces of computer hardware — or 34.9 percent of the total — at the nine sampled sites. Of those 4,993 items:

Auditors looked for — but DOE was unable to produce — 1,816 pieces of computer hardware during physical inspections; and
Auditors found that 3,541 pieces of computer hardware were not listed in the locations’ inventory records.

No centralized system for monitoring inventory

The previous audit recommended that the DOE revise its Standard Operating Procedures to record all computer hardware purchases in AMS and ensure that annual inventory counts are conducted and reconciled with the information in AMS. Yet, the DOE continues to refuse to implement that recommendation, citing costs, despite the potential for fraud and wasteful spending.

The DOE did not monitor recordkeeping procedures at schools and administrative sites

DOE fails to ensure that its inventory records are accurate and complete. The Department’s unmonitored, decentralized inventory system — in which site administrators from each of DOE’s 2,278 sites are responsible for maintaining and updating inventory records — are never checked against central databases of purchases. This puts computer hardware at a higher risk of being lost, stolen, and wasted.

The DOE accounted for only 12.9% of the items that were previously identified as missing

In today’s audit, the DOE accounted for only 234 of the 1,817 missing pieces of computer hardware identified in the previous audit — or 12.9 percent. The findings are broken down below.

The DOE reported that it did not attempt to locate 1,090 computer items, most of which were listed in AMS as “location unknown.”
Of the remaining 727 pieces of missing hardware identified in the 2014 audit, the DOE reported that it had located 353 items at eight sites.
However, when the Comptroller’s office attempted to inspect 188 of those items at two of the sites, DOE could account for only 69 of them, or 36.7 percent.
- The DOE claimed it had identified 162 of the missing items at the sampled DOE administrative office, but when auditors visited, they only found 69 of them.
- Although the DOE claimed that 26 pieces of computer hardware were located at a single school, the DOE did not provide the auditors with access to that school to verify their claims.

The DOE did not provide schools and other decentralized sites with sufficient guidance and support to ensure compliance with its inventory guidelines

During interviews with DOE staff at nine sampled sites, auditors were told that they were not aware of — and did not receive access to — inventory training, AMS data, and other vendor inventory services, all of which should have been in place to help properly track computer equipment.

To address the issues that were identified in the earlier audit and the persistent problems uncovered in the follow-up audit, the Comptroller’s office issued 19 recommendations, emphasizing the need for the DOE to establish a single centralized system for monitoring its hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of computer hardware.

New York Schools Faulted Again for Failing to Keep Track of Computers

By KATE TAYLORJULY 19, 2017, NY TIMES

Three years ago, an audit by the New York City comptroller’s office found that because of “grossly inaccurate” record-keeping, the city’s Education Department could not account for 1,817 computers it owned.

On Wednesday, Scott M. Stringer, the comptroller, issued a follow-up audit and said things had not improved. Mr. Stringer rebuked the department for its “ineptitude” in keeping track of computers and tablets it had bought for schools and offices.

The recommendations the comptroller’s office made in 2014 included creating a centralized inventory system for computers and tablets and routinely monitoring record-keeping procedures at schools and department offices to ensure that their inventories were accurate. Neither recommendation was adopted. The department said maintaining a centralized inventory was not practical.

For the latest audit, the comptroller’s office examined the computer inventory at eight schools and one administrative office. The comptroller’s office found that 4,993 out of 14,329 pieces of computer hardware at those locations were not properly accounted for, and that 1,816 pieces were not found by the auditors at all. At Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, for example, more than one in five pieces of computer hardware listed in purchasing records, school inventory records and other city documents were not physically accounted for.

As for the 1,817 computers that were unaccounted for in the earlier audit, the comptroller’s office said the department had accounted for 234, or 13 percent.

“We constantly hear the same excuses from the agency — that monitoring is in place, that systems are functioning the way they should and that the public should trust that everything is fine,” Mr. Stringer said in a statement. “As this audit once again shows, taxpayer dollars are exposed to waste, fraud or abuse — and it’s coming at our kids’ expense.”

The Education Department criticized the new audit, saying its findings were “fundamentally flawed and unreliable.” The department faulted the comptroller’s office for relying on the department’s Asset Management System, which is primarily used to track hardware warranty and service data, as a central inventory of hardware that had been bought.

The comptroller’s office noted that the department had instructed schools to use data from the Asset Management System as a basis for creating and updating their own inventory records.

The new audit covered the two years from July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2016. The department bought more than $200 million worth of computers and tablets during that period.

Nearly 2,000 technology devices for students are missing

Matter of Meyers v Department of Educ. of the City of N.Y.

2017 NY Slip Op 03891 [150 AD3d 501]

May 16, 2017

Appellate Division, First Department

Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.

As corrected through Wednesday, June 28, 2017

[*1]

In the Matter of Frances Meyers, Appellant,
v
Department of Education of the City of New York et al., Respondents.

Glass Krakower LLP, New York (Bryan D. Glass of counsel), for appellant.

Zachary W. Carter, Corporation Counsel, New York (Jane L. Gordon of counsel), for respondents.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Alexander W. Hunter, Jr., J.), entered January 6, 2016, to the extent appealed from as limited by the briefs, denying the petition to annul the determination of respondent New York City Department of Education, dated November 5, 2014, which sustained petitioner's unsatisfactory performance rating for the 2013-2014 school year, and dismissing the proceeding brought pursuant to CPLR article 78, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

Respondent's determination that petitioner's performance as a teacher of English as a second language during the 2013-2014 school year was unsatisfactory is not arbitrary and capricious (see Matter of Richards v Board of Educ. of the City Sch. Dist. of the City of N.Y., 117 AD3d 605 [1st Dept 2014]; Matter of Brennan v City of New York, 123 AD3d 607 [1st Dept 2014]). The determination is rationally supported by the principal's detailed descriptions of petitioner's difficulties in developing learning objectives, using lesson plans, maintaining academic rigor, meeting students' varying needs, facilitating "accountable talk" through "higher order thinking questions," and actively engaging students, among other things, as well as managing her classroom, and petitioner's persistent failure to improve despite the ongoing individualized professional development support she received.

Petitioner's contention that she was not provided with sufficient time or feedback to remediate perceived deficiencies is belied by the record.

We have considered petitioner's remaining contentions and find them unavailing. Concur—Sweeny, J.P., Renwick, Andrias, Feinman and Gesmer, JJ.

Well, finally Ruben Wills has been convicted. I wonder what MS226 Principal Rushell White thinks of this? And, does she have the $750 Louis Vuitton handbag?

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

City Councilman Convicted of Stealing Thousands in Public Funds

Ruben Wills is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 10. He faces up to seven years in prison.

Queens Councilman Ruben Wills found guilty of stealing over $30G in taxpayer money

Queens Councilman Ruben Wills was convicted Thursday of five counts against him in a corruption trial, which included charges of stealing more than $30,000 in taxpayer money.

Wills, who was accused of using the money to buy food, clothes, gas and a $750 Louis Vuitton handbag, buried his head in his hands as the jury read its verdict at the end of an 11-day trial in Queens Criminal Court.

The jury found Wills guilty of one count of a scheme to defraud, two counts of grand larceny and two counts of filing a false instrument. The jury acquitted Wills on a single charge of filing false business records.

The conviction automatically expels Wills from the council.

His bio has already been removed from the council website.

"Ruben Wills' crimes were a shameful violation of the public trust," said Attorney General Schneiderman, whose office prosecuted the case. "Ruben Wills stole taxpayer dollars to buy fancy purses and clothes for himself and his friends. New Yorkers deserved better."

Prosecutors said Wills used public matching funds from his 2009 council campaign to pay $11,500 to fund a shell company created to translate and distribute campaign literature that was never given out.

The money was instead redirected to a nonprofit corporation that Wills controlled and used to make personal purchases including the handbag, which he bought at Macy's. Wills, a former state Senate staffer, also used money to shop at Nordstrom and Home Depot, officials said.

"Ruben Wills betrayed the trust of all New Yorkers when he abused his position in the State Senate to steal thousands of dollars from the hard working taxpayers of New York for his own selfish gain," said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.

"Serving in elected office requires honesty and integrity and today's conviction makes clear that Ruben Wills is unfit to be a member of the City Council,"

During the trial, the black councilman and his attorney said questions from the prosecutor about a possible romance between the married Wills and his chief of staff were racially charged and out of bounds.

"It was just to muddy up Ruben to the jurors," Kevin O'Donnell told the Daily News before the verdict. "They wouldn't have done this with a white politician."

The councilman, who was elected in 2010 and indicted four years later, faces up to seven years in prison.

My opinion of the employment opportunity for Administrative Trials Unit Deputy Director:

If you are a lawyer and have issues with ethics, meaning that you do not think ethical conduct should get in the way of terminating tenured Department employees who, you have heard, lie, cheat, steal, have sex with minor children in their workplaces, and alter records as well as take money that isn't theirs, and you want to be head of a team of lawyers who violate the rule of law and rules of evidence to fire these wrong-doers, then the current job opportunity is for you!

The position at the NYC DOE assures you immunity for any mishandling of any case of misconduct where the tenured employee is not terminated, which is always somebody's fault at the ATU or the error of the arbitrator who, of course you can fire at the end of the school year when the arbitrators' contracts are up for renewal. I'm sure that if you keep in mind that "all Respondents accused of misconduct are guilty when charged" is the prevailing policy, that you can always schedule the miscreant for a probable cause hearing where the rights to cross-examine by the Respondent's representative of any DOE witness is prohibited, and that you must make sure that your legal team spends as much time as possible altering facts and making scripts for witnesses to study and learn before they testify, you will be fine.

Go to the link and apply. Good luck. Oh - you may end up on this blog, as well!!!

This is my opinion.

See my post about what I think about DOE Attorney Michael Francis

Michael Francis

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Deputy Director – Administrative Trials Unit

Tracking Code

12539

Job Description

Position Summary: The Deputy Director – Administrative Trials Unit serves as the representative of the Chancellor performing sophisticated legal work in disciplinary proceedings and provides support to the Deputy Counsel. The Deputy Director will be accountable for the success and performance of team members in assigned practice areas in meeting performance goals and identified objectives; will be designated as the Administrative Trials Unit Assistant Deputy Counsel; and will perform high-level legal work. Performs related work.

Reports to: Deputy Counsel, Administrative Trials Unit

Direct Reports: Administrative Trials Unit Attorneys and administrative support staff.

Key Relationships: Represents the Department of Education (DOE) in 3020-A proceedings and hearings pursuant to Section 75. Provides legal counsel and training to Community Superintendents and Principals on disciplinary procedures. Confers with subject matter experts, technical specialists, and other attorneys, including counsel for litigants. Acts as a liaison to executives within the DOE and to other City agencies.

Responsibilities

Case Management

· Manages the case load of the Administrative Trials Unit by assigning cases to staff attorneys and monitoring the conduct of Technical Assistance Conferences (TAC), review of charging instruments and potential stipulations of settlements.

· Reviews Office of Personnel Investigation (OPI) arrest cases to determine if there is appropriate substantiation and evidence for charges.

· Manages monthly case reviews with office attorneys. Assumes direct responsibility for all phases of complex high profile legal cases. This includes preparing for and/or litigating complex cases involving large amounts of money, significant precedents, novel and complicated determinations of law and fact, or cases having significant legal, policy or financial implications for the DOE.

· Determines the advisability of presenting witnesses, admissibility of types of evidence and matters of legal strategy.

· Prepares and argues difficult cases and appeals in administrative tribunals and in the courts.

· Reviews, revises and approves agreements prepared by other attorneys.

· Coordinates and assists with professional development for Community Superintendents and Principals concerning the 3020-A disciplinary charges process.

Trial Strategy

· Handles legal issues and cases including recommendations concerning the soundness of charges, preparing specification of charges, coordinating the gathering of evidence, and briefing witnesses.

· Develops plans and objectives for the conduct of various Administrative Trials Unit functions; devises methods and procedures for the implementation of approved policies.

· Recommends settlements pursuant to DOE administrative tribunals.

· Leads trial issues discussions and determination of appropriate charges.

· Administers trial calendar in conjunction with the Chief Research Attorney.

· Manages intra-office trial seminars and Center for Law and Education (CLE) training for staff attorneys.

· Coordinates and assists with professional development for superintendents and principals concerning the 3020-A disciplinary charges process.

· Manages legal summary informational database for recurring case issues which will be utilized by staff attorneys to complete closing briefs and arguments.

Legal Research

· Conducts legal investigations, holds informal hearings, and examines prospective witnesses.

· Conducts research and prepares legal briefs and memoranda on labor and employment law issues.

· Reviews complex, highly technical laws, rules, and regulations.

· Serves as the chief research contact on cases and issues “first impressions,” particularly on contract interpretation as it relates to 3020-A issues.

· Manages and maintains the "Case Decision Bank" used by staff attorneys when completing answers to motions, closing arguments, and related documentation.

· Plays a lead role in coordinating and/or providing professional development for Community Superintendents and Principals concerning the 3020-A disciplinary charges process.

· Manages the distribution of decisions of interest and advises staff on any changes of law and controlling authority.

Qualification Requirements:

Minimum

Admission to the New York State Bar; and four (4) years of recent full-time satisfactory, relevant legal experience subsequent to admission to any bar, eighteen months of which must have been in the supervision of other attorneys, in an administrative, managerial or executive capacity, or performing highly complex and significant legal work.

NOTE: Selected candidates must remain members of the New York State Bar in good standing for the duration of their employment.

Applicants who have a client with a legal or business matter pending against, before or with the DOE must obtain such client’s consent to apply for employment with the DOE. If invited to interview for this position, such applicants are required to disclose the nature of such matters at the interview.

Preferred

· Ability to coordinate and supervise complex legal and labor relations activities.

· Overall knowledge of the school system and ability to advise and render legal opinions on educational policies and practices.

· Ability to initiate effective litigation strategies.

· Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

· Ability to interact effectively with others.

· Highly organized and excellent problem-solving skills.

Salary: $102,788+

Please include a resume and cover letter with your application.

Applications will be accepted until position is filled.

NOTE: The filling of all positions is subject to budget availability and/or grant funding.

AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

It is the policy of the Department of Education of the City of New York to provide educational and employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, ethnicity, national origin, alienage, citizenship status, age, marital status, partnership status, disability, sexual orientation, gender (sex), military status, prior record of arrest or conviction (except as permitted by law), predisposing genetic characteristics, or status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual offenses and stalking, and to maintain an environment free of harassment on any of the above-noted grounds, including sexual harassment or retaliation. Inquiries regarding compliance with this equal opportunity policy may be directed to: Office of Equal Opportunity, 65 Court Street, Room 1102, Brooklyn, New York 11201, or visit the OEO website at http://schools.nyc.gov/OEO

Job Location

NEW YORK, New York, United States

Position Type

Full-Time/Regular

New Posting

Yes

Readvertisement

Recanvass

N/A

District

N/A

Office of the General Counsel

The legal office is comprised of the General Practice Unit, the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) Unit, the ISC Counsel, the Special Education Unit, the Commercial Unit, and the Ethics Officer.
The investigative office is comprised of the Office of Special Investigations, and the Office of Equal Opportunity.
The disciplinary office is comprised of the Administrative Trials Unit, and the Teacher Performance Unit.
The audit office is comprised of the Office of the Auditor General.
The labor office is comprised of the Office of Labor Relations.
The compliance office is comprised of the Office of Compliance Services.
The Office of Federal and State Regulatory Compliance (OFSRC) is comprised of the Administrative Legal Unit.

Investigative

The Office of the General Counsel's investigative office is comprised of the following units:

§ The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) investigates allegations of improper and unlawful behavior, including corporal punishment and verbal abuse against students, to help ensure a safe and secure learning environment for New York City’s students, staff members, and parents. All other allegations of misconduct should be reported to the Special Commissioner of Investigation at (212) 510-1500.

§ The Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) investigates allegations of discrimination or harassment. In addition to investigating internal agency complaints, OEO advises schools on matters relating to equal employment opportunity, and provides training on acceptable workplace practices under equal opportunity employment law.

Disciplinary

The Office of the General Counsel's disciplinary office is comprised of the following units:

§ The Administrative Trials Unit (ATU) is responsible for the prosecution of tenured teacher disciplinary cases, trainings and advice on how to discipline a tenured employee or permanent civil servant, and also to review documentation as it relates to the discipline process.

§ The Teacher Performance Unit (TPU) is a new unit comprised of experienced attorneys who will litigate incompetence cases against ineffective tenured pedagogues.

Administrative Trials Unit

The Administrative Trials Unit is responsible for the prosecution of disciplinary cases.

ATU is available for trainings and advice on how to discipline a tenured employee or permanent civil servant and also to review documentation as it relates to the discipline process. If appropriate, ATU may draft charges under Education Law, Section 3020-a or Section 75 of the Civil Service Law against the subject employee. This process entails a joint effort by the principal and/or supervisor along with the ATU attorney to litigate a case against the employee either for the purposes of progressive discipline or to seek the employee's termination. Should you seek charges, you must schedule a Technical Assistance Conference (TAC) with ATU for a complete review of the employee's personnel file and any related discussions.

From Betsy Combier:

This information is not correct. Laura Brantly is no longer the Director of the ATU, Attorney Karen Antoine is currently in that position (kantoine1@schools.nyc.gov)

Teacher Performance Unit

The Teacher Performance Unit (“TPU”) is a new unit comprised of experienced attorneys who will litigate incompetence cases against ineffective tenured pedagogues. TPU’s goal is to help improve teacher quality in schools by bringing and litigating these cases in a thorough, expeditious and effective manner.

In partnership with the consultants of the Labor Support Unit (“LSU”), TPU will offer high quality and responsive support to principals, and other school officials in connection with cases involving previously identified tenured teachers in need of support and remediation. This support will include, among other things, providing these ineffective tenured teachers with quality professional development.

Additionally, TPU in consultation with the principal will make a determination, on a case by case basis whether to commence the 3020-a process. Thereafter, TPU and LSU will continue to provide counsel to the principal and other school officials in connection with the preparation and litigation of 3020-a disciplinary charges.

Want to be a teacher real bad, but can't spend years on it?

If you have never been certified to teach, then you can apply to the NYC Teaching Collaborative and be an instant teacher.

These newbies can fill all those positions that may be open in October, 2017 so that the principals don't have to hire ATRs.

This quick teaching experience idea is not new, I've written about it in 2014 and 2012:
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/search?q=NYC+Teaching+Collaborative

This ad says "Starts in September 2018". Must be the higher starting salary, up from $49,000.
Inflation.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Become a Full Time Teacher by Fall 2018. Apply to the NYC Teaching Collaborative

Posted by NYC Department of Education

JOB TYPE

Full Time

SALARY

Details: • Starting salary of at least $56,711 and full benefits following the residency experience (starting September 2018)

PUBLISHED:

07/21/2017

DESCRIPTION

Every student in New York City deserves an excellent teacher. The NYC Teaching Collaborative is an alternative certification program designed to provide training and support to aspiring teachers who dedicate themselves to raising student achievement and effecting change in New York City's highest-need schools.

The Collaborative Experience

The NYC Teaching Collaborative affords aspiring teachers the opportunity to apprentice in a New York City public school for eight months prior to becoming a full-time teacher. During this unique, practical preparation, participants grow into effective teachers through hands-on experiences in a public school classroom and targeted, ongoing coaching from skilled Collaborative Coaches and program staff. In the summer, participants begin Master's degree coursework to complement their second residency experience and lay the groundwork for a successful teaching career.

Following the residency experience, program participants begin teaching full-time in a New York City school with continued feedback and support. Within 2-3 years, participants earn their Master’s degree and apply for initial NYS teaching certification to continue their career as New York City teachers.

Why Join the NYC Teaching Collaborative?

Build the foundation of your teaching career through a supportive, practice-based training experience. NYC Teaching Collaborative benefits include:

Stipend during residency experience
Starting salary of at least $56,711 and full benefits following the residency experience (starting September 2018)
Partially subsidized Master’s degree in education
Ongoing coaching and feedback
Opportunities to support future Collaborative cohorts

Who We Are Looking For

We represent a wide range of personal and professional backgrounds. Successful collaborative participants possess:

Commitment to raising the academic achievement of students in low-income communities
Desire to join a community of educators at a high-need school
Ability to respond well to coaching and feedback
Success and leadership in past endeavors
Perseverance in the face of challenges
Ability to think critically and analytically
Desire to grow professionally and seek new opportunities to learn
Integrity and clarity in all interactions
Passion for working with the youth of New York City

To be eligible, candidates must not have been previously certified to teach and cannot have completed more education coursework than a minor’s degree.

Apply by our first priority deadline of Tuesday, August 8: nycteachingcollaborative.org.

HOW TO APPLY

https://nycteachingcollaborative.TeacherTrack2.org/r/3cb11254-7fcb-4f6f-b4d9-a7ac0126ea06

PROFESSIONAL LEVEL

None specified

MINIMUM EDUCATION REQUIRED

No requirement

Robert M. Morgenthau, then the Manhattan district attorney and president of the Police Athletic League, with children on a Playstreet in July 1981. CreditDith Pran/The New York Times

From Betsy:

I know you all thought that the Carmen Farina-Bill de Blasio team would care about kids and the families in the Bronx but you were wrong.

One of my very favorite people on the planet, chapter leader, wholistic health advisor (mine), and a great resource for anything anyone needs at anytime (I LIKE her ALOT), Tollyne Dickerson, is involved in Playstreets, and has told me the story of what happened.

There would be no Playstreets this summer if it weren't for Tollyne. She made it happen.

I love her. The Bronx loves her.

Thanks, Tollyne !!!!

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Heard on the Stoops: A Nostalgia for Playstreets

For more than 100 years, Playstreets have been part of New York summers. They're being phased out in favor of more curated experiences.

By JIM DWYER

JULY 11, 2017

Stoopside in Harlem, a conversation began Monday evening about the loss of a summer institution in neighborhoods across the city.

Frances and Shiasia Harris, mother and daughter, gently debate for how long — before this year — their block, 151st Street between Broadway and Amsterdam, served as an official summer Playstreet, a kids’ kingdom, closed to traffic and open for fun.

“We had it here for over 20 years,” Shiasia said.

“More than 20 years,” Frances corrected.

“I said ‘over’ 20 years,” Shiasia rebutted. “I’ll be 27 next month. Since I was a child, I was coming out to play on Playstreet.”

As of this summer, that’s not a choice for those growing up on 151st Street or dozens of blocks around the city that also used to be transformed in July and August into Playstreets. There will be 15 this year, down from about 40 in 2016 and 150 two decades ago. Those that remain are nearly all in city parks or on the grounds of housing projects.

Tollyne Dickerson, News12, Fordham

Fordham Playstreet reopens to children for summer
News 12, July 10, 2017

Hundreds of children in Fordham were able to return to their local Playstreet this summer.

The Playstreet at 196th Street and Briggs Avenue was thought to be closed due to a lack of funding, but a nonprofit organization stepped in to raise the money. The Fordham Housing Corporation donated the $28,000 needed to open the site and buy supplies for the summer.

Alumni of the program and parents say they are relieved to see the Playstreet back open.

The Police Athletic League's Playstreets program started in 1914 to provide children with a safe place to play within their communities.

The 196th Street Playstreet will be open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. until Aug. 17.

Tollyne speaking to News12, June 27, 2017

Bedford Park's Playstreets set to close

Posted: Jun 27, 2017 7:39 PM ED

The Police Athletic League's Playstreets program is set to close after more than 20 years of serving children in Bedford Park.

The popular summer program hosts more than 100 children, but its director says it will be gone this year "due to a reduction in departmental funding."

Some Playstreets are being closed and replaced by other summer programs.

PAL Playstreets was started in 1914 to provide children with a safe place to learn, play and interact with their communities.

The Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice told News 12 in a statement, "This year, we are making some strategic improvements to serve more people with a richer array of dedicated services for the same amount of money."

My goodness, there seems to be a feeding frenzy on the Absent Teacher Reservists in NYC (ATRs). The media is to blame, see the absurd comment posted below. Comments by the uninformed basically can be seen as ads for a change in policy, about to be announced by the DOE.

I also posted below the missing money and computers from DOE schools, showing that the ATR situation is not the only mess currently being looked at.

NYC Mayor De Blasio and NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina are implicated in this scheme to so defame the ATRs as to effectively get them removed from their jobs by an arbitrator at 3020-a faster than a blink of the eye. In fact, I just did a 3020-a for a teacher who had a Specification that charged him with making the NYC Department of Education "look bad" by having articles published about him and how he abused kids (not).

Thus, incredibly, he was charged with false claims against him being published in the news (mostly the Daily News) and making the DOE look like they hire child abusers as teachers. Incredible. And the guy is innocent, on top of it.

What is happening is that the UFT and the DOE want to get rid of the mess they made by having teachers who are not terminated at 3020-a become, automatically, ATRs. ATRs who win their 3020-a hearings have been able to prove that the charges against them were false and/or unproven by a preponderance of the evidence. These winners ARE NOT GUILTY as charged.

But the UFT and DOE must make all ATRs guilty of something, because they are about ready to sign an agreement (just like they did in 2010 to end the rubber rooms), to change the policies regarding the ATR charging process and rotation. The media is an important part of this strategy. Without parents and deformer groups standing up to decry the despicable criminals in the ATR pool harming every child in their classes, the mess that is the ATR situation would not be seen as a disaster, and someone may point a finger at the UFT and/or the DOE for creating the mess in the first place.

UFT President keeps saying nothing in press releases:

Mulgrew reacts to ATR articles

JULY 26, 2017

The UFT reached agreement on June 1 with the Department of Education on a voluntary severance package for UFT members who are in the Absent Teacher Reserve for at least one school year. The agreement sparked several newspaper editorials attacking the ATRs.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew issued the following statement in response:

Our recent ATR agreement generated its share of teacher-bashing editorials. Whether the media will print any of our rebuttals is an open question, but what is not up for debate is the UFT’s conviction that members of the ATR pool provide needed services to schools and that their work should be respected.

Teachers whose schools have been closed or downsized will fill vacant classrooms in their chosen subjects this fall. Members in the ATR pool will also continue to play a valuable role in schools by filling in for teachers who are sick or on another form of sick leave.

The real problem facing New York City schools is the thousands of teachers in good standing who walk out the door every year for other systems or other professions because of large classes, lack of supplies and managers who do not support their efforts to help children learn.

Perhaps one of the editorial writers will accept my offer and join me on one of my school visits. Facts and time spent in the city's public schools would make for more accurate editorials.

I am pointing to the UFT for not giving representation to ATRs and not allowing a chapter or chapter leader for ATRs. I am pointing to the DOE for automatically making all tenured teachers who win (are not terminated) the 3020-a arbitration into ATRs, and thus expanding the number of tenured "glorified-substitutes-ATRs" for no reason.

Many ATRs are the best in the education business:

ATR EC, for instance, one of the best science teachers ever, charged with abuse when he tapped a girl in his class on the shoulder and said "good job!" when she got a passing grade on her test;

ATR BP, another brilliant science teacher, accused of verbally abusing the students in his class when he told them they must study or they would have to go to summer school, and he had been re-assigned out of the classroom before the DOE charged him with the event!

ATR EM, asked where the special education teacher was for the ICT class, charged with incompetency;

ATR LL charged with "losing" a student at dismissal time, who was never missing nor did anyone ask where he was and the student was never interviewed;

etc, I could go on and on. The charges are just irrational in soooo many cases.

NY Daily News and Chalkbeat: why aren't you doing THAT Story?

Betsy Combier

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, Center; NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina, on his right

Don’t force a dud teacher on my kid: The mayor's decision to override principals will hurt families like mine

NY Daily News

by Nicole Thomas

As a mother, I try to do everything I can for my daughter. I make sure she eats well and works hard and I’m involved in her education. I do my part, and when I drop her off at school, I want to know that the educators are doing theirs. I have to trust that the principal is picking the best teachers and holding them to high standards.

Last month, Mayor de Blasio made a decision that shatters the trust I have when I send my daughter to school. Principals across the city will no longer be able to select the teachers they want if they’re unable to fill a vacancy; instead, breaking a promise made by Chancellor Carmen Fariña, the city will force on the school an unwanted teacher from the Absent Teacher Reserve, or ATR.

This is the pool of teachers from across the city who lose positions at their schools, either due to school closures, budget cuts or enrollment changes, or because of disciplinary records. They land in the ATR — sometimes for a short period, sometimes for a long one — because they are unable or unwilling to find full-time teaching positions after losing their placements.

ATR teachers currently work in schools in month-to-month stints on an as-needed basis; now de Blasio and Fariña want to send them back into full-time positions in our classrooms.

In a rational world, if a teacher couldn’t find a job somewhere in our massive school system, he or she would be cut loose. But because of the extreme legal and contract protections teachers have in this city and state, public-school teachers who lose one job and can’t find another stay on payroll.

It would be bad enough if ATR teachers being sent back into full-time jobs would be equitably distributed across the city. But based on everything we know, they are certain to be concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, which already get the short end of the stick educationally.

Nearly two years ago, an education group requested information about who was in the ATR at that time and where they are being placed. The Department of Education wouldn’t release details.

We know that in 2014, a third of the teachers in the ATR had unsatisfactory ratings and a quarter faced disciplinary charges. More than half of them had stopped even applying for teaching jobs, meaning they weren’t so interested in being in the classroom. Many if not most of these teachers are unwanted for a reason.

But all the mayor seems to care about is rewarding the teachers union during an election year. So instead of fighting to protect public-school kids, he is focused on building support for his reelection campaign.

I started to become very concerned about teacher quality ever since a teacher at my kid’s school, Public School 256 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was arrested and later convicted.

Parents should trust that only quality teachers can stay in the system, but the ATR pool is evidence of the opposite.

In September, my daughter is starting fifth grade at PS 256, and I am terrified that a subpar ATR teacher, or one with a disciplinary record, is going to become her teacher. There are vacancies at the school, so this is a very real possibility. When principals don’t have final hiring authority, the chances increase that a bad apple can be placed in the classroom.

A 2015 report by the federal Education Department confirmed what many of us feel every day in our communities. Schools in low-income areas with high percentages of minority students tend to have more teacher vacancies.

So when de Blasio sets out to empty the ATR pool, these impossible-to-place teachers are going to end up in schools with lots of vacancies. In other words, the worst teachers will be sent to schools with families who don’t have the political clout to protect their kids.

Just because I live in Bed-Stuy doesn’t mean my kids deserve any less than the kids in Park Slope or the Upper East Side.

I am fed up at having my kids constantly be treated like second-class citizens in this very unequal public school system. I know the mayor would never have allowed this to happen in his own kids’ schools, so he shouldn’t do it in mine.

Kids in my neighborhood deserve quality teachers, not the system’s leftovers.

Thomas is the parent of a rising fifth-grader at PS 256.

Controller audit of NYC schools shows 1,800 computers are missing

NYC Education Dept. can't account for how $347M was spent on internet upgrades, controller says

Republican mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis blasted Department of Education spending Tuesday, calling
for the Department of Investigation to look into de Blasio’s handling of the agency.

Malliotakis demands investigation of ‘I don’t care’ de Blasio’s education spending

NY Daily News, August 1, 2017

Republican mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis called Tuesday for a Department of Investigation probe of education contracting, charging wasteful spending has run rampant under Mayor de Blasio.

Malliotakis cited three recent audits by City Controller Scott Stringer— who has endorsed de Blasio for re-election — into the Department of Education that found missing equipment or a lack of documentation on how money was spent.

“We can’t continue to keep throwing money at problems and hoping that something sticks,” the Staten Island Assemblywoman said at a press conference outside City Hall. “But Mayor ‘I don’t care’ de Blasio doesn’t seem to have a regard for the taxpayers of the city or for the children of our city.”

One audit by Stringer found that more than 1,800 computers were missing from nine schools and school offices, while thousands more were not properly accounted for in records.

Another audit found DOE spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade internet at public schools, but couldn’t provide any budgets or timelines, and more than half of surveyed schools said internet was too slow to meet their needs.

A separate probe found that 98% of sampled payments to the New York City Leadership Academy, which got more than $100 million in contracts for teacher and principal coaching, were not supported by required documentation.

Stringer criticized the GOP pol for invoking his reports.

"Our audit shouldn't be used as a political football. We do this work for our kids — and it shouldn't be cheapened and exploited by adults,” his spokesman Tyrone Stevens said.

While each matter has already been audited, Malliotakis said DOI was better equipped to investigate whether there are systematic failings in DOE’s contracting because its investigators have subpoena power and can make referrals for criminal charges, though she did not cite any evidence that a crime occurred.

“The DOE is a bureaucratic nightmare and because it is a bureaucratic nightmare you are seeing contracts like this,” she said. “The children of our city, the teachers of our city are not seeing this money trickle to the classroom despite spending more than any other state in the nation.”

De Blasio dismissed his opponent’s attacks, which have also recently included going after his supervised release program.

“The things she talks about consistently show that she’s out of touch with the values of New Yorkers,” he said Tuesday.

“People all over the city want to see fewer people incarcerated with the right rules in place to make sure that public safety is preserved. They certainly want to see Rikers Island closed,” he said. “We’ll have plenty of time to debate issue by issue, but I think her values as a conservative Republican, her values are out of touch with people of New York City. I think that’s an obvious statement.”

DOI declined to comment.

WITH JILLIAN JORGENSEN

Just a few weeks ago NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina was tooting her horn over a "new policy" of integration, wasn't she?

Diversity in Admissions in New York City Will Bring Integration to the City's Public Schools....or Not

New York City Department of Education Chancellor Carmen Farina Unveils a New Plan: Integration

I guess the "new policy" does not include Harlem.

Betsy Combier

DOE fails to provide Harlem schools with librarians: activists

NYPOST, Sue Edelman, August 4, 2017

School librarians are all but extinct in Harlem.

The Department of Education has failed to provide librarians at 87 percent of Harlem schools that are legally required to staff them, according to a group of activists.

State education law mandates that schools serving kids in grades seven to 12 must have a librarian on staff to develop research skills.

“In a secondary school with an enrollment of more than 700 but less than 1,000 pupils, a certified school library media specialist shall devote the entire school day to school library work,” the law states. For schools with less than 700 kids, a part-time librarian is required.

The Harlem Council of Elders, a community advocacy group, said that requirement goes all but ignored in their schools — and that 10,000 mostly black and Latino students are suffering for it.

“This is crucial for their education,” said Diane Tinsley of Community Education Council 5. “They don’t have this fundamental skill — how to research. This is something kids in other areas know how to do because they have those resources.”

Citing DOE data, CEC 5 found that 40 of the 46 schools in five Harlem districts that qualified for librarian staffing didn’t have one.

In District 4, not a single school requiring the presence of a librarian staffed one.

Tinsley said Harlem students are receiving diplomas but end up lost at the collegiate level without some of the skills that a librarian could help to impart.

“They jump into college without these basic skills,” she said. “A lot of them end up taking remedial classes and having to use up their financial aid to do so. It’s a serious problem and no one seems to want to do anything about it.”

The DOE suggested Friday that there’s a shortage of certified librarians to staff city schools.

“While there are challenges in identifying and hiring library media specialists in New York City and across the state, we’ll continue our investments in libraries and students’ reading skills,” said DOE spokesman Will Mantell.

Mantell said that the DOE would be placing “reading coaches” in District 5 and 6 elementary schools but did not cite any imminent plans for the secondary school librarian drought.

The Harlem Council of Elders blasted the lack of a specific plan and said that their patience is wearing thin.

“This discriminatory practice is shameful, illegal, and must end immediately,” the group said.

Can an employee be fired for activities outside the workplace?

In the social media age, the line between personal and professional lives has all but disappeared

In the wake of recent protests and subsequent violence in Charlottesville, a Twitter account with the handle @YesYoureARacist announced its intent to reveal the identities of those who marched in favor of white nationalism in order to, in the short-term, get them fired from their jobs.

Naturally, that got a lot of employers (and employment lawyers) thinking about how they might respond if one of their employees was shown to be one of those participants.

They might have even wondered, can those employees be fired? According to a blog post by Jon Hyman, partner at Meyers Roman Friedberg and Lewis, they certainly can. Hyman's post focused on the firing of a man who was exposed by @YesYoureARacist for participating in the demonstrations in Charlottesville. Hyman's point: There’s perfectly good legal precedence for firing an employee for certain disruptive behaviors, even if done during off-work hours.

There was a time when employers could decide how to manage employeebehavior based solely on what happened in the workplace without worrying about the specter of social media blowback. But what was once considered private is now part of a personally curated public broadcast that all, including employers, can see. In an era in which most people share scores of details about themselves publicly every day, the line between what employers can and should look at and what they can ignore has all but disappeared.

If anything, the employer anxiety that rose post-Charlottesville represents a generational shift in the understanding of social media, of privacy and of what behavior is acceptable both inside and outside of work.

HR Dive spoke with Hyman about that transformation and the new context within which employers must consider employee behavior. The conversation below has been edited for style and length.

HR Dive: Obviously we’ve seen a lot of opinions in the days since the events in Charlottesville. I’m curious if anyone asked you any questions or sent any comments about your piece arguing participants in the white nationalist demonstrations could be fired?

Jon Hyman: I’ve gotten feedback on both sides of the issue. I’ve had people saying thanks for saying this, I couldn’t agree with you more. But I have some people that have said private time isn’t an employer’s business, and that this employer — speaking specifically of the one in the blog — has no proof this guy was a neo-Nazi, they just saw a photo of him marching at this rally. Who is this employer to fire him for what he did on his personal time?

It’s so interesting because we all have these Facebook accounts and Instagram accounts and Twitter accounts and we all have these incredibly powerful cameras or phones in our pockets or purses that has turned every person on the planet into a photo and video journalist.

There’s a guy, Jason Seiden, I saw him speak at an HR conference, and he used the term 'profersonal,' which I think he coined. So I have since used that word with attribution to him to explain what I feel, which is that there is no longer the existence of a personal persona and a professional persona because social media has so intertwined everything. Back ten years ago, you punch the time clock, you go home and no one knows what you did at home ... now everyone knows what you do 24/7 because you broadcast it.

It’s frankly not enough to say you are only broadcasting it to your 200 friends on Facebook and it’s a closed network and I have my privacy settings set appropriately so my employer can’t see it. But when you are Facebook friends with someone you work with — even if you are not friends with your boss — once they print that post out, then everything is fair game.

When you post a comment on someone’s post, you are not having a private conversation. All of your connections are seeing it.

HR Dive: Social media obviously played a role in revealing who these people were this weekend, which just highlights some of the weird situations employers are exposed to now that they might not have been 20 or even 10 years ago. Now employees might not understand they can post something and easily lose control of a situation.

Hyman: Right, you’ve lost control. Nothing you do is private. And that includes as you walk down the street.

There are cameras everywhere. We are, for better or for worse, being monitored or seen just about 24/7. And most of it is self-inflicted, because we are out there posting. Everyone’s diaries are no longer locked books in their nightstand next to their bed. They are all there for the world to see.

So for these white supremacist marchers to say, “This is my private time, that’s not fair that I’m being held accountable by my employer for my private time,” well, you were in about as highly visible a place as you could be. You have to assume risk that you will be photographed and your face seen everywhere. And you risk that your employer sees it and says that’s not who I want working for me.

HR Dive: Has this rise of social media changed company policy at all? Or has it just made explicit what was kind of unspoken?

Hyman: I don't think it's changed company policy. It’s just given employers so much more access to information about their employees' behaviors.

I saw it in my practice four years ago when Barack Obama won the second term. The morning after the election, I started getting phone calls saying “So-and-so just called into HR because his co-worker called Obama the N word on their Facebook page and they no longer feel safe working with someone who uses those words. What do I do?”

The workplace essentially now has extended beyond the walls of the workplace. I see it as no different than if a group of employees goes out for happy hour after work and a male employee gets handsy with a female employee and grabs her inappropriately. If the female employee goes to HR or a supervisor sees it and does nothing, the company’s got issues.

HR has an obligation to employees that work together, whether it is a work event or not, or within the workplace or out. Social media has just broken those walls down further and maybe brought the outside world further into the workplace.

HR Dive: Will we see any changes to policy or legal protections because of how much that extends now? Will there be consequences of the blending of personal and professional lives?

Hyman: Some states have off-duty conduct laws. There are 29 states that protect employees that engage in lawful, off duty conduct. Some people call them “smoker’s rights laws” or “gun owner’s rights laws.” It’s legal to smoke, it’s legal to own a gun assuming you have a permit, so it would be illegal for an employer to fire you for this legal off-duty conduct. But it would be the same if you peaceably marched in a permitted event. When that crosses the line to the violence seen in Charlottesville, it's a totally different ball game.

We’ve seen the NLRB in the Obama administration take a very liberal view of the definition of protected concerted activity under the NLRA and really went through some contorted machinations to pigeonhole facially neutral social media policies to find that either those policies were illegal as written or illegal as applied regarding employee communications. Those are two areas that come to mind.

I look at the issue almost generationally. I think we have very different concepts of what privacy means. My parents’ generation … they don’t fully understand that social media conversations are not private, or they think it is private — and it isn’t.

I’m smack in the middle of Gen X, so my view of privacy is a little different, and I look at my kids who are 9 and 11, and they have grown up in a social media world and they will not remember a time without iPhones and Facebook. They’ve grown up in a world where Mom and Dad share everything we do on Facebook, so they will inherently have a different concept of what privacy is — that most of what we do out in public is not private.

HR Dive: One angle I’ve noticed is one side saying “Maybe keep these employees on and teach them why their ways are hurtful to others.” What are your thoughts on that?

Hyman: Here’s the way I kind of frame the issue in my brain. If a client calls me and says, “It has come to our attention that so and so employee was marching at Charlottesville over the weekend. It has made some of our employees and customers uncomfortable ... what do we do?”

There’s really two issues here. There’s the internal employee issue and the external public relations piece. Where I come down on the issue is ... if an employer wants to try and rehabilitate someone, more power to you. I think you are probably fighting a losing battle, but if you think that is your role, more power to you.

If you choose to fire the individual — which if it was my business that is what I would do — I think it is important to take a stand and signal to your other employees that type of behavior is not who we are. We don’t tolerate that here.

To take a slight detour, I approach LGBT issues the same way. There’s no real national consensus on whether Title VII covers national LGBT rights in employment, but I tell employers that there’s no point in waiting to get that guidance we will at some point get. Why wait? Send a message to your employees that you are an employer of inclusion, not exclusion, and just put LGBT rights in your handbook. This is our policy. This is who we are.

And I look at this issue the same way. This is who we are — or, more to the point, who we aren’t. We aren’t an employer who tolerates, condones, accepts or whatever this behavior. Inside the workplace, outside the workplace, period. You can send that message of inclusion to the rest of your employees.

Whatever legal theories are out there that someone can sue an employer on — whether it is lawful off-duty conduct, or protected concerted activity under the NLRA, or if you are a government employer, or a private employer since some states specifically protect speech rights in the workplace, or religious expression under Title VII, or a race discrimination claim because of my whiteness or whatever claim an employee can concoct — you need to understand what risks are out there.

But as long as you understand the risks, I would tell the employee, “This is not the workplace for you, and if you want to sue us, bring it on. I’d be happy to defend my decision in court that this is not the type of behavior inside or outside of work that helps define who we are as a company.”

KARE 11 (NBC Minneapolis - St. Paul)Fargo man, 'pro-white activist' disowned by father speaks out
Ohio Employer's Law BlogWhen you discover that you employ a Nazi
HR DiveYour brand, your employees and their social media

The new policy of forcing teachers (and Guidance Counselors?) into vacancies in October is not going to work.

Despite what the deformers think about ATRs, most ATRs are the best in the business, wrongfully accused of misconduct or incompetency by Principals who themselves did something wrong, or don't like the employee for any number of reasons, including that they are too expensive.

Although principals will not have to pay the entire salary the first two years, this is just enough time to get two ineffectives on the ATRs' records, and send them into a 3020-a or 3012-c arbitration. The principal has to pay it after the two years. There is going to be angst in the administration because the $100,000 salary could easily hire two or even three newbies without such a high salary. It's a budget problem which has been left out of the mix after the two years. Without senior transfers, the only way to remove a tenured employee is to charge him/her with enough charges of misconduct, neglect of duty, unprofessional behavior, etc., so that something will stick, and the employee can be sent to a 3020-a for termination.

Randy Asher, in charge of moving ATRs to vacancies

The UFT and the DOE are very cunning. They made principals responsible for their school budgets, then do not put the ATRs' salary into a pool so that the school doesn't have to pay all of the salary if the ATR is terrific and wonderful, and should be given the effective/highly effective ratings that he/she deserve. But won't be. Principals are not given any incentive to hire one expensive, senior teacher who knows what to do to have kids learn as opposed to several less experienced employees who are not as skilled, but so what? The budget trumps any other worries. Grades and exam scores can always be changed, violence in the school can be covered up, etc.

And now that the school system rates teachers on performance using the Danielson rubric, anyone can be charged with incompetency and found guilty - if the proper defense is not present at a 3020-a teacher trial. It is horribly easy to charge anyone in New York City with crimes that they never committed. In a 3012-c hearing, the employee is guilty when he/she walks in the door, and must prove that the charges are false in order to not be terminated.

What may happen is that principals will rate the ATR ineffective at the end of the year, and legal will charge the ATR with incompetency under 3012-c, and before you can blink, the employee charged will be terminated. The principal of course will testify that the motive behind charging the ATR is the employee's malfeasance, and not the budgetary burden of the ATR's salary. But the argument must be made by the charged employee's defenders that it is the money, not the skills or lack of skill of the ATR which caused the charges to be filed.

The deBlasio administration is in the same position as Mike Bloomberg in 2010, when media made a big issue of the $ millions spent on UFT members sitting in rubber rooms doing nothing. The uproar caused Mike Mulgrew and Mike Bloomberg to close the rubber rooms. Not.

What they actually did was close the big warehouses (8 of them, of various sizes) and hide the re-assigned UFT/CSA members and Guidance Counselors in many different locations and in small areas of offices. The hearings were sped up, more arbitrators were hired, and the media lay off of the money issue for a while. Now the same issue pops up again. It doesn't have to be this way, but there is no political will to come up with some really good human resources strategy which could benefit the children and the employees as well as take care of the thorny issue of the budget. We can send someone to the moon, but we cannot handle human beings on earth properly.

So here we go again.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina and NYC Mayor Bill deBlasio

City Will Move Sidelined Teachers From Limbo to Classrooms

For a dozen years, hundreds of New York City teachers have been paid despite not having permanent jobs, sidelined in most cases because of disciplinary problems or bad teaching records or because they had worked in poorly performing schools that were closed or where enrollment declined.

This limbo was largely the result of a deal that the Bloomberg administration struck with the teachers’ union to give principals more control over who worked in their schools. Under the deal, teachers could not simply be fired, so they were put in a pool known as the Absent Teacher Reserve.

But now, saying the city cannot afford expenditures like the $150 million it spent on salaries and benefits for those in the reserve in the last school year, the education department plans to place roughly 400 teachers inclassrooms full time, possibly permanently. They will be placed in schools that still have jobs unfilled by mid-October. Principals will have little, if any, say in the placements. Neither will the teachers.

The department, which announced the plan in July, has in the past deflected questions about the makeup of the pool. But on Friday, it released some data. Of the 822 teachers in the reserve at the end of the last school year, 25 percent had also been in it five years earlier. Nearly half had been in it at the end of the 2014-15 school year. The average salary was $94,000 a year, $10,000 more than the average salary of teachers across the school system.

Close to a third of the teachers in the pool were there because they had faced legal or disciplinary charges. Others worked in schools that were closed for poor performance or lost their jobs because of declining enrollments. Twelve percent had received the lowest possible ratings of effectiveness in the 2015-16 school year; only 1 percent of all teachers in the system scored so low.

With the beginning of the school year weeks away, principals and others who work in education are wary.

Harry Sherman, the principal of Junior High School 127, Castle Hill Middle School, in the Bronx, said that while some teachers in the pool, often referred to as A.T.R.s, are unfairly stigmatized, “There are also A.T.R.s who are A.T.R.s because we have had the choice of whether or not we want to take them. And sometimes those people are not good fits for schools.”

Daniel Weisberg, the chief executive officer of the New Teacher Project, who worked for the Education Department under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said: “We’ve got this group of teachers who either can’t find a job or won’t find a job. That’s the group we’re dealing with.”

Education experts are worried that a disproportionate number of the teachers will be placed in schools in poorer areas, like the South Bronx, which have difficulty attracting and retaining teachers. Some may be placed in schools in the Renewal Schools program, one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature education initiatives, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to turn around low-performing schools.

The principal of a high school in Manhattan, who did not want to be named out of fear of reprisal from supervisors in the department, was blunt about the effect: “You’re going to force the worst teachers in the system into the schools that are struggling the most.”

But the city described the plan as a “common-sense solution” to the problems of both vacancies and the cost of paying unassigned teachers.

“My role is to drive down the A.T.R. and to help take these resources and put them back in schools,” said Randy Asher, the senior adviser to the chancellor for talent management and innovation, and the former principal of Brooklyn Technical High School.

The number of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve increased dramatically after the deal made in 2005 by the Bloomberg administration, which was seeking to close failing schools, and the United Federation of Teachers. Before then, teachers with seniority could claim whatever job they wanted, displacing novice teachers without so much as having to interview with a principal. And teachers without assignments were involuntarily placed in whatever positions were open.

The deal ended that system and let principals decide whom to hire. Teachers who could not find jobs or were not happy with ones available went into the A.T.R., at full salary.

Reserve teachers do monthlong rotations in schools, frequently serving as substitutes, and some get longer temporary assignments. In the last few years, the department has offered principals incentives to hire teachers from the pool by picking up all or part of their salaries for the first two or three years. It has also offered teachers in the pool buyouts. As result, on the first day of school last year — traditionally the point in the year when the pool is largest — there were 1,494 teachers in the pool, down from 1,957 on the first day of school in 2013.

The department says the new policy of placing teachers in vacancies is expected to reduce the size of the pool by half.

In interviews, Mr. Asher and Michael Mulgrew, the president of the teachers’ union, used similar language to defend the plan, saying that it was better for students to have a permanent teacher with the appropriate license than to have a rotation of substitutes.

Michael Mulgrew, UFT President

“We’re talking about being five, six weeks into the semester where they still don’t have a permanent teacher,” Mr. Asher said. “We need to provide stability in these learning environments.”

Mr. Mulgrew said, “What we’re trying to do is give a more stable educational environment for the students.”

A recently retired principal of a school in a hard-to-staff district disputed the idea that putting any teacher into a vacancy was better than other possible solutions. “I have had over the past five years a lot of A.T.R.s come in,” said the principal, who spoke anonymously for fear of repercussions for the school. “And I have to say, less than 10 percent of them — way less, maybe 5 percent of them — would I hire.”

Lynette Guastaferro, the executive director of Teaching Matters, said that in high-poverty schools, it was particularly important that principals be able to choose teachers carefully.

“Kids living in poverty need schools led by strong teams with shared cultures and the best teaching possible,” she wrote in an email.

Principals who are forced to take the teachers will observe them over the course of the year. Teachers who earn an “effective” rating from the principal at the end of the year will then, in most cases, be placed in their positions permanently.

Asked what would happen to teachers who at the end of the year received a less than effective rating, Mr. Asher said the department would, in some cases, start the legal process to remove them.

Nicholas Weber, a special-education teacher who has been in the Absent Teacher Reserve for three years after losing his job at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers because of declining enrollment, said he thought the policy would motivate principals to give bad ratings to teachers so as to not have to hire them permanently.

“It questions the legitimacy of the ratings,” he said.

Mr. Weisberg, who helped negotiate the 2005 deal when he was at the Education Department, said that one problem with the new policy was that once principals can no longer choose their teachers, it becomes harder to hold them accountable for their schools’ performance.

“The idea that principals get final say over which teachers get selected to work in their buildings should not be thought of as a crazy radical notion,” he said. “This is common sense.”

Bullies have the right of way in New York City, it seems to me after looking into and working on more than 60 3020-a cases of corporal punishment or verbal abuse.

Eileen Ghastin

The case of Eileen Ghastin comes to mind. I've written about her in a previous post (I and Attorney Jonathan Behrins are working on her Article 75 Appeal) after a student threatened Eileen in her classroom with beating her up with the cast on his arm, and he knew how to box, he told her. She was terrified, so she believed that there was only one way to stop him, and that was to say something that would make him re-consider. here is part of the record testimony:

"The teen then “went berserk,” Ghastin said. “He jumped out of his chair, rushed toward me and raised his arm,” encased in a hard cast from elbow to hand.

“I’m going to beat the s–t out of you,” Ghastin quoted him as yelling. “I’m a boxer, so I can really f–k you up. "I am really going to do a lot of damage."

Eileen was frozen with fear that she was really going to be hurt. And then, she said, " I thought to myself, I have to say something quickly or else I am going to die. --you know. So, I realized, you know, that he is in a very--a blind rage. If I say something strong enough to him, he will stop.
I said, "If you beat me, I will kill you."

This statement stopped him."

However the Arbitrator, Richard Williams concluded that Eileen's words embarrassed the student and created a sense of terror in the student and all the other students in the class, and gave her 4 weeks suspension without pay. The lawyer on this case defending Ms. Ghastin was NYSUT Attorney Jennifer Hogan.

But in the record there is testimony that the Student, Student A, had read the article published in the New York Post on May 29, 2016:

My student threatened to beat me — and I’m the one in trouble

and Arbitrator Williams was convinced that reading the article on May 29 2016 was enough for him to conclude he must punish Ms. Ghastin for embarrassing the student.

Huh? Read the Williams' support for entering the POST article at the hearing (Kereen Evans-McKay was the Department attorney making the argument):

"21 MS. HOGAN: …I think

22 there's a distinction between the question of
23 how did you feel as a result of statements being
24 made to you in the classroom versus how did you
25 feel about reading about an allegation contained

in a newspaper. And so I understand your point
3 about the Chancellor's Regulations deriving from
4 the allegations, but here it appears to me that
5 the Department's trying to argue that uncharged
6 conduct, which is notoriety, can be used in
7 making a determination as to whether or not
8 there was a Chancellor's Regulation violation.

MS. HOGAN: ...Here
21 counsel is taking it a step further and asking
22 that question about how the witness felt as a
23 result of reading the newspaper article.

24 THE HEARING OFFICER: But that's a
25 consequence

THE HEARING OFFICER: That question is
6 being answered because in my mind, should I find
7 a violation of the Chancellor's Reg., the impact
8 of the incident and the natural flowing
9 consequences that the student experienced and
10 the impact on that student's future really going
11 forward and interacting with teachers, is
12 relevant in the determination.

MS. EVANS-MCKAY: Okay. So at the end
5 of the day, the Department has to prove for
6 verbal abuse which includes how the verbal abuse
7 by the teacher made the student/students feel.
8 If there is, if there was a follow up to the
9 incident, an incident, there's a continuation of
10 the incident that was now publicized that also
11 bleeds into how the student may have felt by the
12 incident, both the incident that happened inside
13 the classroom and now something that's now been
14 publicized about the incident. So I'd like to

15 be able to ask the student about his feelings
16 about what happened in the classroom and
17 obviously we can only get how this affects him
18 educationally if we get his feelings about what
19 happened and what he read. I think it,
20 everything has to be considered in its totality"

(Transcript, pp. 469-471, 2-3-17)

The arbitrator agreed with the Department that the incident and the write-up in the POST must have embarrassed the Student, and gave Ms. Ghastin the penalty of 4-weeks’ suspension without pay, altering her unblemished career forever.

That Williams used the NY POST to give a penalty of 4-weeks' suspension is absurd, in my opinion. Ms. Ghastin has appealed this decision.

Betsy Combier

Bullying on the rise in NYC schools, reports jump 10% compared to 2016: survey

Ben Chapman, NY DAILY NEWS

More city students experienced bullying at their schools this year compared to last year, a Daily News analysis of data shows.

Responses by students to four bullying-related questions on the public schools’ 2017 school survey reveal that more kids are encountering the dangerous phenomenon in their schools.

This year, 81% of 433,715 kids in grades 6-12 who responded to the Education Department’s annual NYC School Survey reported that students harass, bully and intimidate their peers.

That’s a jump from the 71% of 434,693 students who filled out the surveys in 2016.

Critics of the city’s handling of school safety said the figures show bullying is on the rise and public school students are at risk.

“Under Mayor de Blasio’s leadership, our schools continue to get less and less safe,” said Jeremiah Kittredge, CEO of the pro-charter school lobbying group Families for Excellent Schools.

“The mayor must face facts, and act immediately to keep children safe from violence and bullying,” he added.

The city conducts its annual school survey to gather feedback from students, teachers and parents. Education Department officials published the 2017 survey results online on Aug. 8.

Students’ responses to multiple-choice questions on the survey showed increased harassment in public schools, although there were slight changes to the questions from 2016 to 2017.

Education Department spokesman Will Mantell said the city made the changes to more accurately capture schools’ quality, but argued the changes made it impossible to compare results.

“It’s simply not valid to compare multiple-choice survey questions that have different choices,” he said.

“Over the 11 years of the school survey, on questions that have remained the same, the percentage of students feeling safe in school hallways and teachers feeling that order and discipline are maintained have both increased,” Mantell noted.

In 2016, 51% of students said kid bullied each other at school “because of their race or ethnicity.”

On a similar question in 2017, 65% of students said kids bullied each other at school over “race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or citizenship/immigration status.”

Likewise, in 2016, 55% of students said kids bullied each other at school because of differences “like national origin, citizenship/immigration status, religion, disability, or weight.”

On a similar question in 2017, 73% of students said kids bullied each other at school because of differences “like disability, or weight.”

And in 2016, 46% of students said that kids at their school “harass, bully, or intimidate each other because of their gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.”

That question was unchanged for 2016, when 59% of students reported gender-based bullying at their schools.

Below you will see one of the most disturbing articles on the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool that has appeared recently in the blitzkrieg to get public opinion around firing all of the people in NYC with this title.

Mr. Ludwig obviously knows absolutely nothing about the ATRs who are, according to him, currently re-assigned to offices to do nothing. Wrong. ATRs are currently in classrooms, not re-assignment centers. he writes,

"napping, reading newspapers, doing crossword puzzles, or conducting menial tasks" this is not true, for many of the ATRs, who have been given weekly or monthly assignments.

I had to laugh at Luwig's ignorance and lack of due diligence when he used the pictures of David Suker to prove his point, see below!

David Suker was brought to a 3020-a under false charges, that DOE Attorney Theresa Europe grabbed from David's past, about 10 years earlier, when his daughter was accepted into Columbia Prep on the upper west side of Manhattan, although David did not have an address in the District. I posted Ms. Europe's email in the article I wrote, showing her misconduct. When a parent gives an address for his/her child, the Department of Education has 30 days to check it out and to claim the address as false. But 10 years?

David asked me to help him in the Appeal of his termination at the 3020-a (his attorney was Stephen Friedman, NYSUT), and also asked Attorney Maria Chickedanz to work with me on the Appeal. Judge Alice Schlesinger and the Appellate Division agreed with us, that David's termination for the Department's misconduct was wrong, and David was given $250,000.

David Suker

NYC Teacher Wins More Than $250,000 From New York City and the NYC Department of Education Gotcha Squad by Betsy Combier

City loses $1M bid to fire teacher arrested in Occupy Wall Street

Why did Ludwig choose to use David Suker's picture? Bad reporting. Mr. Ludwig, thank you for exposing your lack of due diligence to uncover any real facts about ATRs. And by the way, many of the current ATRs are the best in the business, senior teachers who really know how to teach.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Below is Mr. Ludwig's error-filled article:

New Yorkers Pay $150 Million to Prop Up Bad Teachers, Then Send Them Back Into the Classroom

Once again, students are the victims of the misguided teachers' unions efforts to protect their members

by Hayden Ludwig

August 22, 2017
New York’s so-called “rubber rooms”—reassignment centers where hundreds of teachers in need of academic discipline are sent to do virtually no work—are a running joke in the city. Teachers in limbo are left to finish out each six hour day by napping, reading newspapers, doing crossword puzzles, or conducting menial tasks – stuffing envelopes and making paper copies.

It’s a time-out the New York Department of Education has long denied even exists, yet it costs taxpayers $150 million each year in teachers’ salaries and benefits. The average rubber room idler earns $94,000 a year, or $10,000 more than the average teacher salary in the school system. Unsurprisingly, the rigors of the rubber room aren’t enough to improve discipline. Many idlers are repeat offenders. Even the New York Times recognizes the problem:

Of the 822 teachers in the reserve at the end of the last school year, 25 percent had also been in it five years earlier. Nearly half had been in it at the end of the 2014-15 school year.

Close to a third of the teachers in the pool were there because they had faced legal or disciplinary charges.

Faced with ballooning costs and unable to fire many tenured educators, the Department of Education’s solution is to flood local classrooms with some 400 of the worst teachers in the education system. The consequences are predictably dire. In underperforming schools (particularly in poor areas) bad teachers could take the place of potential new hires, blocking the influx of qualified, motivated educators to a system that badly needs them. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned on spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help these schools; without good teachers to guide students, however, it’s a wasted investment.

It’s a classic case of entrenched Big Labor, and it’s ruining a generation of young students. Thanks to sweetheart deals with pro-union lawmakers, teachers in New York state are virtually fire-proof. With the rubber rooms gone, they’re virtually discipline-proof.

But through it all, the victim remains the same: students.