A Teacher's Journey Through the Rubber Room, by Susan Lee Schwartz

MY AMAZING ABSOLUTELY TRUE AND VERIFIED STORY demonstrates the arrogance and disrespect for the law that is a direct result of LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY.
THE D.O.E. IS NOT part of AMERICA, BUT A SUB-CULTURE THAT EXISTS WITHIN A QUASI-GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM THAT THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC THINKS IS LEGAL!
I begin with some back story on my credentials so you know what kind of teacher I was, so that when you get to the actual events, you can judge for yourself, the lengths that these corrupt people went to in order destroy my reputation and career, SIMPLY BECAUSE NO ONE IS WATCHING, AND THEY ARE GRANTED IMMUNITY.

I was not ‘dead wood’ who needed to be sent packing. I was, however, soon to get a ‘longevity raise” of $12,000. I had also made enemies of very powerful women in District 2. THAT story will not appear here, but whistle-blowing, and personal agendas are part of it.

Who is SUSAN LEE SCHWARTZ?

I began to teach in 1963, with a BA and MS from Brooklyn College. I had sixty additional credits, in fine arts, theater and literacy education. I was a talented, experienced educator with a stellar reputation on the East Side of Manhattan for 8 years at the end of my career, in a new magnet school, East Side Middle School, that I had helped to put on the map. The reading scores and writing skills of my seventh grade students whom I taught Communication Arts (English & literature, integrated with humanities were at the TOP of the city from the YEAR I began, as the only teacher of English.

I was adored by most of my students and their parents, and I have hundreds of letters to prove this. PARENTS AND FORMER STUDENTS STILL WRITE TO TELL ME HOW I CHANGED THEIR LIVES. I can prove everything I say here.

My adolescent students thrived and were accepted to the top high schools. My successful teacher-practice was observed and published, by the University of Pittsburgh's LRDC (Learning and Research Development Center), the educators who "know what learning looks like." THE LRDC was chosen to go into the classrooms of the hundreds of schools in the 12 districts- across the nation- that were chosen to participate in Harvard's research on teacher-practice, which became known as The New Standards. YES! THAT third level research!

It was after seeing my teacher-practice, THAT VICKI BILL* of the LRDC chose District 2 as the 12th participating district in the NEW STANDARDS!

DISTRICT 2 had been courting the Standards and the mega MILLIONS IT WOULD BRING. Ms. Bill CHOSE ME, and told the head honchos at the district that my room was to be the cohort at that school…bypassing Denise Levine, then Director of Curriculum. THIS was to have an impact on later events. There are seldom rewards for excellence in NYC when powerful people cannot take credit.
* I have never given any names to a soul, until this letter. I want you to be able to verify all my statements.

In 1998, based on the assessment of my teacher-practice by the LRDC, I was awarded the NYSEC (New York State English Council)) "Educator of Excellence of Award," a much coveted and PRESTIGIOUS award. The comments and compliments of administrators colleagues, parents, & students were submitted to NYSEC. (THIS INCLUDED ONE FROM Denise Levine, THE ONE who would, months later, would begin to document incompetence (AFTER OTHER FALSE CHARGES FAILED). My success did not matter to the people who went after me. They knew about me. They rose to national prominence on the standards project, which I had helped attract to our district. They also knew they had nothing to stop them.

It is interesting to note the words of DR.Levine, who eventually documented me as "incompetent," after my second return from the ‘rubber room’. Regarding my successful program, she had at one time stated, when she was the District Coordinator for the Standards initiative "I showed your work at the standards workshops and they went crazy over it!"

It is important that you realize that she knew the quality of my work because she was the point man for the Standards project in our district, as Director of Curriculum, and head of staff development. In the mid-nineties, as a district’s staff developer, she came to East Side Middle School (ESMS), and loved to visit my classroom. During her time with the Standards initiative, she brought prestigious visitors (educators, publishers and administrators) to see my innovative work. Thus, when manufactured charges of “corporal punishment” failed to deter me, (the story of THAT verdict -- later in this letter- will blow you away) she had to devise a failing program in order to prove I was an incompetent teacher. The films and volumes of materials – (my writing and student work,) was chosen by the LRDC, along with only five other educators of the thousands in the Standards research, to be viewed in a special room, at their seminars. Such documentation of my competence did not deter her.
‘That was then,” she spat in my face after one unsatisfactory observation, only a year after the award for my work.

The arrogance of these administrators is legend. Evidence that would be unacceptable in any legal venue is manufactured after the charges are put out, because every shred of documentation of excellence has been removed, expunged, or eliminated! The only purpose for doing so, when the evidence of not only competence, but of excellence is so overwhelmingly documented, is to harass a teacher into retirement.

It is the modus operandi.
It is illegal. It is shameful.
It is destructive. IT DESTOYS LIVES OF GOOD PEOPLE WHO DESERVE BETTER!
THIS IS THE WAY IT IS DONE! EVERYWHERE (Have you read Dania Hall’s story. SHE worked in North Bellmore!)

I had been pulled out of my room in March of 1999, six months after my award. With no information from the union or charges FROM THE DOE, I SAT IN THAT ROOM AND CRIED until June, and returned there in September. I HAD, IN ALL THAT TIME, A SINGLE MEETING WITH A UNION HACK, WHO CAME LATE, AND REFUSED TO LET ME EXAMINE THE LETTER FROM A PARENT THAT WOULD BE USED TO CONDEMN ME. I was not informed of any charges or investigation. NOTHING!

Before a verdict of corporal punishment was made *, there was one meeting with the District 2 Superintendent, Elaine Fink.
* please NOTICE I did not say, before ‘charges’ were put out. I WAS NEVER CHARGED. There was NO hearing.

THAT September 1999 meeting, was the first time I had a chance to say, “what’s going on?” (Where was the union , you ask? THAT is the crucial question, since for a teacher, they are THE LAW!)

The Superintendent of District 2, Elaine Fink, acted as prosecutor, judge and jury, like many superintendents in NYC and across the state and country, she had been assassinating teachers for a long time with impunity, and was gloating. The United States Constitution held no danger for her, as my story will reveal.

IN A LAST DITCH EFFORT TO GET ME TO RETIRE BEFORE TURNING UP THE HEAT with a criminal verdict, AND in front of the union rep, Michelle Daniels, and the Director of Secondary Education, Mike La Forgia, Ms. Fink (UNAFRAID OF ANY CIVIL SUIT FOR AGE DISCRIMINATION) said to me :

“You are 58, why don't you retire, Susan?"

We were on first name basis. Can you believe it?
THE UNION WAS THERE? CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

FINK KNEW ME. 8 years earlier had asked me if I wanted to teach in her school, PS 6,when she was a mere principal. I had declined her offer and went to open East Side Middle School . THE ENTIRE DISTRICT KNEW ME.

In an act that stands alone in its arrogance and contempt for the law, THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE DISTRICT, Elaine Fink, in collaboration with Marlene Malamay at the DOE's Special Office of Investigation, took it upon herself, that October, to publish a letter that I had been found guilty of Corporal Punishment. I had no hearing and no opportunity to meet my accuser, or to defend myself when I was summoned to a dark, windowless meeting room in the District 2 Office. ON OCTOBER 6TH 1999, where this letter was read - despite the fact that the investigatory procedure that is carefully spelled out in the teacher contract had NOT taken place.
They accused me and sabotaged my career based on a calculated interview of six 12 year-old children, where only two girl friends of the accuser, out of thirty children present at the time of the alleged event, backed her tale. The students were listed as “students A,B,C,D. and student E." Can you imagine such a an alphabet soup of witnesses to a crime in a court of this land -- which I thought was America.

They found me guilty of “corporal punishment” based on an alleged verbal assault,* which even if it had been true, did not rise to corporal punishment under the education law, as the private attorney I hired, Arthur Block, pointed out!

Below, for the first time, (you won’t find this on NAPTA or any site)is what the girl alleged that I said, in front of a class of over 30 kids, that made her so ‘fearful. I did not get this information from the union, or from the Superintendent, who only told me the result of the alphabet soup, but from the letters that my students e-mailed me, which I still have:
"Maura S is saying you called her a 'fucking, dyslexic, slutty whore'"

Do you imagine that I am crazy? You might also want to know, that Maura was part of a group of kids who were involved with drugs, but SHE WAS NEVER IMPLICATED, ONLY DAYS BEFORE WHEN THEY WERE SUSPENDED. Her mother, THE WEALTHY WIFE OF AN EAST SIDE RESTAURANTEUR, was the PTA president who sat at Denise Levine’s side in the office.

Maura was terrified all right. She knew that all the students wrote me a weekly letter. THAT WAS MY WRITING TOOL! She knew I was aware of everything that went on in that TINY school, including her relationship with the 14 year old drug-dealer, and she needed to discredit me.

THERE IS ALWAYS A STUDENT WHO HAS A REASON TO RESENT OR FEAR A TEACHER. THIS is what the administrations wait for. THEY USE KIDS TO GET TEACHERS! There were four other attempts to ‘get me’ with parents in preceding years, but my reputation held. One parent came to me and asked why the principal, then Sandy Ferguson, had contacted him in Georgia, over a petty incident, especially since his son really liked me.

My case is exactly like hundreds of others. The only thing that is different is that I really am a “stellar” teacher (that was Karen Horwitz’s appellation for me on NAPTA, where I was anonymous) with an undeniable body of work on my teacher practice. I have the student letters of literal adoration, and parents letters (they wrote endless appeals to Fink and the DOE to no avail) . I would hear my name on the cross-town bus, when people recommended teachers and schools to each other. I ate at Gracie Mansion.

THEY GOT ME, BECAUSE THEY COULD.

Read on! Here is a quick review as I pickup my story:
* I had been in a rubber room since March 1999, with no information, I was thrust into a windowless storeroom - the ‘rubber room’ and incarcerated there for six months with no information as to the reason. I would return there twice more.
* I had never seen the evidence, or any charges, NOR HAD THERE BEEN A HEARING.
* I met once with a union hack, in June, who was late for this 10 minute meeting, where I was not even allowed to see what the child was saying in the letter he held. I was not told of any charges.

NOW LOOK AT THE BEHAVIOR OF THE DAY I WAS FOUND GUILTY BY THIS SINGLE ADMINISTRATOR!
Fink, entered the fateful meeting on the day that the ‘’guilty verdict” was read, and kissed Ivan Tiger hello, and they chatted about their summer.

The illegal and shameful ‘guilty verdict’ was read, not by FINK, but by the Director of Secondary Education, Michael La Forgia, with eyes lowered. He knew me, too, having witnessed my talent and expertise many times. Assistant Superintendent George Miller, was there, and he, too, could not meet my eyes. HE knew what a ‘stellar’ educator I had been. In later months he would admit that the scandal that would remove Marlene Malamay, push Tiger to a UNION job in Albany, and see Fink move on to San Diego, would be too late to help me, although no one faced criminal charges!

I HIRED A PRIVATE ATTORNEY, Arthur Block.

I have his legal letters including, MY LAWSUIT, AND LETTERS TO the attorneys at the Board of Ed and District 2, regarding these charges, based on verbal abuse. Block stated that “Even if Mrs. Schwartz had made the alleged statement” according to education law, it is not CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. Mr. Block, told them to discipline me, or send me back.

THEY ALLOWED ME TO RETURN! I never returned to that wonderful learning environment, that I had created, with the 1000 books AND FABULOUS ART MATERIALS that I had purchased with my own money, or to the outstanding curriculum that I alone had instituted at my middle school, and which included not only literature, media studies, reading and writing, but a full NYS seventh grade art curriculum. They wiped me out! Total invalidation! Teachers like me are what this country needs. If schools fail, it is because we are treated worse than dogs.

They ignored my attorney's command to expunge the false, guilty charges, or face a 40 million dollar lawsuit. THAT letter stating my guilt had been published to my school, before I arrived, and despite dire warnings in the lawsuit papers that no supervisor, or employee should use the letter or any reference to the heinous allegations, Levine used the allegations in that egregious letter of "guilt" to humiliate me in front of parents, students, office staff and colleagues - many of whom I had mentored. On my first day back, THINKING I HAD WON, the educated and celebrated DR. Denise Levine , known bully, whose sole job before she was to move on to become Superintendent of a Brooklyn District, was to get rid of me, threatened to tell everyone that I had been ‘found guilty of corporal punishment.

I was now a “pull-out” teacher, she informed me, as she handed, me a list of kids and a time schedule. This woman whom I had known for years, gave me her back, and took me to a filthy storeroom, which was to be my new "classroom.” I was given no materials and one day to get it ready. This made it easy for this ex-director of curriculum, now principal to "document my incompetence.” But it backfired, because I did a good job, and students annoyed her with requests to be assigned to my program.

Unless YOU, dear legislature make these people accountable to the law of the land THIS is how they spit upon the law.

I CAN NEVER FORGET HOW Levine, that morning, entered the dirty storeroom on the fourth floor, which I was endeavoring to turn into a learning environment. I had covered the glass window on the door, because so many of my former students were wandering from their fifth floor classes, to wave hello. She tore the construction paper from the glass. I tried to explain, but she screamed in my face. “ Shut-up. You just shut-up, or I will be forced to tell everyone you were found guilty of corporal punishment!” There was the direct evidence that my attorney, and the lawsuit did nothing to deter the administration from slandering me.

This was the beginning of six months of humiliation designed to send me packing. I had been taping my log when she entered, and so, I HAVE SOME OF THAT ON TAPE. ONE DAY, When I went looking for some of the 1000 books she had redistributed to classroom libraries, she entered the room where I was looking through a bookcase, and humiliated me in front of a new young teacher, Ms Bishop and the kids, screaming and ordering me into the hall as if I was a delinquent child.

On the basis of “insubordination” I was sent back to the rubber room, A SECOND TIME. However, Rudy Crew ordered the rooms emptied and since there was, as before no real evidence, back I went.

Now, re-assigned by her, as a “push-in,” I had no classroom of my own, and was assigned to the all-purpose room, another filthy room on the fourth floor, which contained a table, a few computers, and stacks of cartons and litter. Occasionally, a teacher might take a break here, working on some lesson plans.

I was given a student desk and chair in a corner by an unlocked closet. Before and after photos show that I removed the litter, put out a variety of periodicals and books on the now clean windowsill, and used the little unused bulletin board by the closet, to put up a photo of my family. I added some attractive literacy posters to the closet door, and flowers to my “desk.”

For my efforts she placed a letter in my file claiming, again, insubordination. She claimed that I was infringing on the rights of the other teachers who used that room. The truth was, that my colleagues could not face me, and even when I made a small luncheon, inviting them to this now cheerful room, not one of them came. I ate alone.

The ‘push-in’ program she created made me an unwelcome intrusion into the rooms of the very colleagues whom I had mentored when they first came to our school as novice teachers. With no instructions, it was easy for her to find fault with what I did.

One egregious moment stands out, because she entered with the Supervisor of Principals, Faye Pallen, a director at the district level. I was actually addressing the class, with an additional piece of information about the ongoing discussion on Greek history. Not only did this occasion an outburst of monumental proportions, she placed a letter in my file, charging insubordination, claiming that I had no right to speak to the class, and that my job was to assist students. MY sixty-thousand dollar salary, and several college degrees, my training in the standards notwithstanding, I was expected to do the work of a para. Ms. Pallen, months later, would meet me in the halls of the district office and apologize for witnessing that abuse. “I know your work,” she said sadly.

The videos of my former CA classroom, made for the LRDC capture a vibrant classroom and a dedicated talented teacher. Yet, her assessment of me in this degrading assignment was the ‘documentation’ that administration would try to use to destroy me, having failed to harass me into a rubber room, with the corporal punishment charges.
I became a pariah, and my reputation on Manhattan's East Side, and elsewhere, as a premier educator was shattered. I lost a book deal, too.

Robbing me of my career was not enough; to seal my fate was next in the process. To remove me once again, THE THIRD TIME a charge was put out in May, which alleged that I had “threatened to kill the principal.” Putting out such charges are just a ruse, to push a teacher into a rubber room, but this one pushed me to the edge of nervous collapse. My blood pressure, when I stopped at a doctor’s office on the way home with a banging headache, had skyrocketed.

Thus, in the course of a little more than a year, I had fallen from a celebrated educator to an abuser of children and a potential killer. And this was not enough, either. With my return to the rubber room on that insane, new charge of threatening the principal, charges of incompetence were "put-out" for the very years that I had been observed and filmed by the LRDC.
Even after I was allowed a medical leave, thanks, finally, to the intervention of Randi Weingarten, the superintendent (before she left NYC for a job in California where her abusive methods to staff were also condemned) mailed the charges, week after week, in packages containing all the bogus charges and "documentation” in the form of those "observations" and scores of file letters, made during the bogus ‘pull-out’ and ‘push-in’ assignments.

When I began returning these POISON PACKAGES unopened, the superintendent sent to my door, a young law clerk from the DOE, holding red-balloons to trick me into opening my door, so he could give them to me.

How could this happen?

The Manhattan Borough Rep, Ivan Tiger, was totally disinterested in helping me, and frequently yelled at me on the phone, and often hung up when I managed to reach him.
Through all the grievances, NYSUT, the state umbrella union was not much better; it simply encouraged me to settle. I eventually went to state arbitration, and knowing what would happen if I returned, I resigned, taking what little sanity and self-esteem remained, and returning to a wonderful family, with a new grandson, to recover.

Two years after the false allegations started me on this ignominious end to my career, I went to state arbitration which I was forced to accept (to extricate myself from their clutches with a pension and benefits in tact, or be returned to more of the same, and to the kangaroo courts, those hearings, that would deal the final blow). I agreed to retire, and to drop the lawsuit claim, and never to sue them! I gave up my rights to justice as an American citizen… no Guantanamo detainee.

BUT the state decreed that ALL THE NEGATIVE OBSERVATIONS, AND CHARGES,INCLUDING THOSE FOR INCOMPETENCE AND INSUBORDINATION SHOULD BE EXPUNGED. (Nothing was included in the agreement to replace my real history of excellence or awards)

I WILL BET, THAT THIS WAS NEVER DONE, because on my last day, before I retired, I begged the union rep at the school where I spent my last six months, PS 128, to have Levine send me those documents. I had begged him for months to get them. LEVINE copied them on 11X14 paper, and those dark, dismal copies were supposed to fulfill the DOE’s obligation.

During my experience in the rubber room,
• I learned: that Habeas Corpus does not exist for teachers; that lies and harassment are the rule and that perjury is justified if it is done by administration.
• I learned that criminals often run the schools and that with no accountability, their crimes have gone beyond petty and egregious to criminal.
• I learned that the DOE is not interested in educating children, but only with maintaining its own power.
• I learned that the children of NYC mean nothing to them, and teachers have absolutely no human or civil rights, AND THAT THE AMERICA WE KNOW DOES NOT EXIST IN THE RUBBER ROOMS.

ADMINISTRATORS who abuse power and ignore the law for decades, come to believe that they are above the law, and finally that they ARE the law. The time has come to show administrators that the schools are failing, even as governments do when the rule of law disappears and the business of the people, in this case --the nation's children-- become second to their need to remain in power as tyrants with absolute power to rule the domain... and destroy the lives of teachers, even as they destroy the hope of a great education for children.

A HIDDEN SCANDAL of ENORMOUS PROPORTIONS:
"NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS"
by Susan Lee Schwartz
NYSEC educator of Excellence 1998

WHY ARE THE FINEST TEACHERS MISSING FROM OUR SCHOOLS? WHY HAS SUCH AN IMPORTANT SEGMENT OF OUR POPULATION BEEN STRIPPED OF THEIR RIGHT TO THE RULE OF LAW, RESULTING IN OUR: CRUMBLING EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM BEREFT OF TALENT?

Teachers are the target, as education is now a business, and the reward is not the education of the kids, but the profits gained by cleansing the system of tenured teachers, and preventing new teachers from gaining tenure. The bottom line in not enriching education, but the enrichment of the administration at the top.

THROWN INTO DETENTION CENTERS, WITH NO RIGHTS TO DEFEND THEMSELVES OR TO HEAR THE CHARGES AGAINST THEM, OUR DEDICATED TEACHERS HAVE LOST ALL CONNECTION TO THE CONSTITUTION, AND ARE BEING HOUNDED OUT OF THEY SYSTEM BY THE THOUSANDS in a manner that should embarrass every American citizen.

HOW IT IS DONE:
ACROSS THE COUNTRY, A BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEM has put into IN PLACE a procedure that CIRCUMVENTS THE union contract, education regulations and basic civil rights laws TO REMOVE ANY TEACHER. This “process” has so infiltrated OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM, THAT NOW OUR TEACHERS’ CAREERS, REPUTATIONS, HEALTH CARE AND PENSIONS ARE BEING ROUTINELY DESTROYED, and there is ABSOLUTELY NO RECOURSE TO THE LAW available to those teachers, because the union represents them, and they fail miserably to do this! In the process, wonderful teachers are humiliated in ways that are reminiscent of slavery.

TEACHERS WHO SPEAK OUT ABOUT UNSOUND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE, the ‘whistle-blowers’, are the first to be singled out. Senior teachers, with strong voices are next to be targeted, particularly as their meager salary reaches longevity steps. They are followed by any teacher that is disliked by some petty, failed human being, often with poor credentials, but given power to ‘supervise’ teachers. “Staff-developers” whose job is to train and facilitate learning, often become tyrants who evaluate and demean teachers whose methods they fail to recognize, because they lack the rubric that recognizes the indicators for evaluation.

The personal agendas of administrators replace curricula; thus talented teachers find themselves on a one way journey to the ‘rubber room.” Those ‘business managers’ at the top -- principals and superintendents -- who call themselves “educators,” in an astonishing number of systems have as their HIGHEST PRIORITY TO MAINTAIN THEIR POSITON IN THE CASH-COW THAT BECOMES THEIR PERSONAL BAMK ACCOUNT. They are given tacit permission by a system that fails to protect teachers, and they stoop to tactics that are so egregious that people find it hard to believe. THAT IS THE PROBLEM! Ordinary people who believe in the law of the land are incredulous and say, “How can this be true?”

THE WAY IT WORKS:
IT IS SO SIMPLE! To bypass the grievance procedure MANDATED in a contract, the principal tells a parent to complain directly to the CHANCELLOR or superintendent, with one of several SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS.
• CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IS A FAVORITE ,and teacher comments can be interpreted as threatening, and used to charge a teacher with corporal punishment. (Education law is clear that this in illegal.)
• Sexual abuse “ there has been a three –fold increase in these allegation interpreted by the ASSOCIATED PRESS release to mean that there is an increase of thirty percent in predation by teacher- now abusive to students, when in truth, this charge is just a ploy to remove a teacher, in most of the cases.
• Theft or misuse of funds: which is ironic, since it is administration that that often robs the school blind.
• Drug Abuse: any allegation can doom a teacher.

Once in a detention center, awaiting a hearing often three years down the road, a teacher is virtually a prisoner, and cannot go to the bathroom without permission. Imagine dedicating your life, educating yourself for years, spending money to make teaching possible in places where books and materials are scarce or non-existent, and ending up in this virtual prison, facing a kangaroo court years later, unable to defend yourself. Arbitration by people whose only objective is to get you to retire, will put the final nail in your career.

The result is that this system allows the brightest, most experienced and educated teachers to be locked up and subjected to humiliation that no minority segment of our population has experienced in decades. Educated professionals, dedicated to enriching the lives of our future citizens have become the targets of petty, corrupt administrations. The numbers are staggering!
IT IS THE SHEER NUMBER OF SYSTEMS THAT EMPLOY THIS TACTIC THAT MAKES IT SO HARD FOR PEOPLE TO GRASP.
EXASERBATING THIS, IS THE MEDIA, WHICH HAS FEW EDUCATION EXPERTS, AND PUTS OUT THE MATERIALS AND LIES HANDED TO THEM BY THE VERY CULPRITS DOING THE NASTY DEEDS. TABLOID HEADLINES POINT FINGERS AT THOSE BAD TEACHERS.
DOES NO ONE STOP AND PONDER WHERE HAVE ALL THE GREAT ONES GONE?

IS IT ANY WONDER THAT THE SCHOOLS ARE FACING A CRISIS OF ENORMOUS PROPORTIONS, AS THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST ARE subjected to heinous and criminal procedures, and finally TERMINATED?

Worse, tens of thousands of senior teachers, the mentors, are GONE, and now these petty tyrants who call themselves "administrators" are going after younger, inexperienced teachers. When these new teachers reach a tenure year, they are routinely terminated in the most illegal and heinous manner.

The scandal is not limited to our future citizens, who are leaving schools with little knowledge or basic critical thinking skills, unprepared to compete in our global marketplace as a result. But it continues to incapacitate a huge segment of our society – OUR EDUCATED PROFESSIONALS, who are unable to defend themselves. Our education system has degenerated into one where due process of law is denied them, and the basic human right to work and make a living is being snuffed out for this segment of our population. They cannot work again as a teacher once this process has destroyed their reputation.

It destroys their lives, too. The toll it takes on good people who have dedicated their lives to caring for children would make you weep, if you witnessed the destruction and humiliation . Working tirelessly to overcome the inherent difficulties of teaching in this centuries’ neglected educational institutions, teaching increasingly difficult populations of children, and earning salaries below what it takes to live a decent life, teachers are blind-sided by the manner in which their career is terminated.

No American should be treated like this. But, to subject educated professionals who have done nothing more than excel in their work and dedicate their lives to our children - this is BEYOND CRIMINAL. It is IMMORAL!

Terrorist detainees have greater access to the law of the land than teachers.
This must stop. A FEDERAL INVESTIGATION MUST BEGIN NOW, before our future citizens cannot compete in a global marketplace that demands KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS. Twelve years of education must be put back into the hands of the TEACHERS who have the talent and experience to facilitate learning!

DO YOU FIND THIS HARD TO BELIEVE?

If you think this is an exaggeration, here are the sites you can go to, to read the stories of an astonishing numbers of wonderful teachers who lost everything. It will make you cry... for the teachers, for this country, and for the children.

WEB WARRIORS FOR TEACHER ADVOCACY

PARENT ADVOCATES AND E-ACCOUNTABILITY FOUNDATION
Betsy Combier, Editor & Founder

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE PREVENTION OF TEACHER ABUSE (NAPTA)
Karen Horwitz - Editor

NYC RUBBER ROOM REPORT
Dr. Lenny Brown, Polo Colon and Betsy Combier, Editors

NYC RUBBER ROOM NEWS: HEROES AND HEROINES
Betsy Combier, Editor

QUI-TAM MEANS; DON’T BE AFRAID TO BLOW THE WHISTLE!
Polo Colon Editor

TEACHER ADVOCACY LONG ISLAND
Dania Hall, Editor
AMERICA'S WORST EMPLOYERS

TEACHER ADVOCACY GROUP (TAG)
Jodeam

GET UP AND STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS
Henry Funes, Editor

SPEAKING AS A TEACHER
Susan Lee Schwartz, Editor

Deb White Returns To Her School Without A Fine After 2 Years

From rubber room back to classroom
by Michael Hirsch, NY Teacher, Feb 14, 2008 4:58 PM

Bravo!
There was a happy and dignified ending for Deborah White — a one-time, self-described “rubber room denizen” for two years before her case was heard.

“My case should never have been brought to a 3020a hearing,” White told the Delegate Assembly. “It should have been resolved at the school level.”

Though she believes she was the victim of an effort to move senior teachers out of the system, the due process tenure system worked in her case. It was resolved, she said, because she had a good attorney, an arbitrator who listened, a newbie Department of Education lawyer and some advice and legal intervention by the UFT’s president.

White thanked the union for its help, told delegates she was now back in her school and urged the DA not to forget others in the rubber rooms. She received a standing ovation.

Letter From a Re-Assigned Teacher

As a 14 month denizen of a DOE Rubber Room, I appreciate your effort to expose the outrageous waste of taxpayers’ dollars that they represent. You have correctly identified that it is the result of a broken system but you shy away from pointing the finger at who is mostly responsible for this. The union contract is to protect teachers from being fired without “just cause” and if due process were followed with hearings and decisions made within six months, this situation would be entirely minimized. The DOE legal department goes for overkill in their charges to show Chancellor Klein how they are cleaning out the “bad teachers” without even knowing that some of these teachers might be worth retaining. They just want to show good “guilty statistics” such as who was terminated, who paid hefty fines (usually $5,000-$15,000) by admitting guilt to one or more charges (even when they aren’t) in order to return to the classroom and save their pensions. Few are exonerated and even fewer lose their licenses.

It is essentially a kangaroo court; each UFT lawyer works closely on six cases at a time with a DOE lawyer overseen by an administrative judge who wants to keep a $1200-1800/day job by making decisions that placate both sides. Many decisions take three to ten months to be issued. That’s after one waits up to six months for charges, and up to 18 months thereafter for a hearing. One could have no intention of returning to the classroom, be willing to sign a resignation deal but instead sit there throughout this Byzantine process. Why not write a book while increasing one’s pension if you are willing to endure the fact that few people from the DOE treat you as a professional and you get managed by a receptionist with half your education. The DOE hopes these teachers get frustrated and threatened enough to give up due to the psychological stress and sheer boredom (they even block access to the internet despite the fact that it would cost them nothing to allow it). Your fellow “inmates” get into petty disputes as nerves fray while the knitting needles fly and the dominoes clack loudly creating a Kafkaesque environment.

Environmentally, this windowless room has been declared by the NY State Dept of Labor’s Division of Safety and Health Bureau to be in violation of safety/ health standards and the DOE to be in failure to comply with same when notified of their violations.

Now for the facts as I have informally assessed them. Essentially, who is in the Reassignment Rooms?

1) Teachers who have outside arrests/offenses (maybe 5 %).

2) Incompetent Teachers (maybe 15%)

3) Teachers Accused of Alleged Misconduct for (at most 20%):

a-sexual, corporal or verbal abuse (some of these cases are handled quickly since the teachers may be suspended without pay for several months prior to the hearing).

b-substance abuse (these cases are processed here since the DOE is the only city agency that has no Employee Assistance Program: the police, fire, and sanitation departments all handle these issues through EAPs, meaning they are handled as a medical issue first per the Disability Act and not as a discipline issue).

4) Teachers (at least 60%) who are victims of :

a-student false allegations (for some reason, the principals and the DOE primarily side with the students in these cases, probably fearing lawsuits). In the final hearings, the students frequently do not show up and often admit to lying in the final analysis.

b-administrative harassment of alleged “insubordinate” teachers who may disagree with their principal’s policies and are sent to these rooms on such trumped up charges as: “word wall was not updated” (for a high school science class); students did not work in groups (group work is now mandated?); and “no opportunity was given to reflect on learning” (in a 40 minute period?). These might be suggestions in an observation but certainly should not be career-ending charges.

c-ageism- over half the room is over age 50. I believe this is the primary cause for the increase in the membership of the Rubber Room, especially now that principals have control of their budgets. These teachers represent higher salaries, thus bigger chunks of their budgets. They also don’t bend as easily to the new pedagogical mandates; many teach effectively based on years of experience.

d-unsupported allegations- some teachers never receive charges (one teacher is in there over two years without charges) because an investigation was never done.

Many of these issues could be resolved at the school level. 3020-a hearings are for serious termination issues but are being overused by the legal department. It is also a collection department for them given the hefty fines that are imposed. Some teachers in the Rubber Room would leave the city system for teaching positions elsewhere if they did not put a hold/flag on their license by starting these proceedings and then delaying them for two years. One is captive to their incompetence and glacial pace. Whether or not one views the union rules as obstructive, cases that are ready to be heard in 3-6 months drag on for two years because the DOE does not have enough lawyers and administrative judges. They prefer to badmouth the union and waste taxpayers’ money in order to make their point.

And you think I should be doing administrative work for them in the meantime? I have dreams of the sabotage I could incur although it might not be noticed in light of the general level of work the DOE is accustomed to.

Name Withheld by Request

Excellent Teacher Becomes a "Potential Killer"

The following story was told to Betsy Combier over more than 4 hours, with every step documented; the teacher wants to remain anonymous.

"I was a talented educator with a stellar reputation on the East Side of Manhattan for 8 years, in a new magnet school that I had helped to put on the map because of the reading scores and writing skills, of my seventh grade students whom I taught Communication Arts. I was adored by most of my students and their parents, because my adolescent students thrived and were accepted to the top high schools. My successful teacher-practice was observed by the University of Pittsburgh's LRDC (Learning and Research Development Center), the educators who "know what learning looks like," and thus, they were chosen to go into the classrooms of the hundreds of schools in the 12 districts- across the nation- that were chosen to participate in Harvard's research on teacher-practice, which became known as The New Standards.
In 1998, based on the assessment by the LRDC, I was awarded the NYSEC (New York State English Council) "Educator of Excellence of Award," a much coveted and PRESTIGIOUS award. The comments and compliments of administrators (including the very ones who would, months later, put out charges of incompetence), colleagues, parents, & students were submitted to NYSEC. It did not matter to the people who went after me. They knew about me. They rose to national prominence on the standards project, which I had helped attract to our district.
It is interesting to note the words of the principal who eventually documented me as "incompetent," after my return from the ‘rubber room'. Regarding my successful program, she had at one time stated: "I showed your work at the standards workshops and they went crazy over it!" However, upon my return, she stuck me in a new program that was deliberately doomed to failure so she could find me "incompetent." She knew the quality of my work because she was the point man for the Standards project in our district as Director of Curriculum, and head of staff development. She had begun, at my school, as a district’s staff developer, and loved to visit my classroom, bringing prestigious visitors (educators, publishers and administrators) to see my innovative work. Thus, she had to devise a failing program in order to prove I was an incompetent teacher.
The only purpose for doing so, when the evidence of not only competence, but of excellence is so overwhelmingly documented, is to harass a teacher into retirement. My case proves it all! To my face, and in front of the union rep, and the Director of Secondary Education at the time, the superintendent of district 2, said to me, “You are 58, why don't you retire?" This from a woman, who 8 years earlier had asked me if I wanted to teach in her school, when she was a mere principal.
The superintendent charged me with “corporal punishment” based on an alleged verbal assault, which even if it had been true, did not rise to corporal punishment under the Education Law. The rubber room was my first stop in the road to persecution.
Heinous charges were made against me, among some others (all of which are criminal in nature), all of which were outrageous and false, and designed to remove me and all teachers, similarly situated, immediately and without access to the union grievance procedure.
This is such a simple thing to grasp. You see, if allegations and complaints are put through the investigations and grievance procedures AT THE SITE, they will be resolved in the teacher’s favor, since the petty and grievous nature of these allegations will be revealed. It has to be a complaint that rises to the level of “criminal” in order to rip a teacher out of her classroom and doom her to the fate that the administration desires.
I never returned to that wonderful learning environment, with the 1000 books, AND FABULOUS ART MATERIALS that I had purchased with my own money, or to the outstanding curriculum that I alone had created at my middle school, and which included not only literature, media studies, reading and writing, but a full NYS seventh grade art curriculum. I was thrust into a windowless storeroom - the ‘rubber room’ and incarcerated there for six months with no information as to the reason.
In an act that stands alone in its arrogance and contempt for the law, THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE DISTRICT in collaboration with a person at the DOE's Special Office of Investigation, took it upon herself to publish a letter that I had been found guilty of Corporal Punishment. I had no hearing and no opportunity to meet my accuser, or to defend myself when I was summoned to the meeting room in the District Office where this letter was read - despite the fact that the investigatory procedure that is carefully spelled out in the teacher contract had NOT taken place. They accused me and sabotaged my career based on a calculated interview of six 12 year-old children, where only two girl friends of the accuser, out of thirty children present at the time of the alleged event, backed her tale. The students were listed as “student B and student E, from an alphabet soup of students A through F. Can you imagine such a witness to a crime in a court of this land, which I thought was America.
My attorney, hired at a cost to me of over $25,000, filed a lawsuit and he made it clear that the charges must be dropped.
It said: "Discipline her, or send her back," and they did send me back but not to my proven curriculum. I was now a “pull-out” teacher, handed a list of kids, and a time schedule, by this woman whom I had known for years, as she gave me her back, and took me to a filthy storeroom, which was to be my new "classroom.” I was given no materials and one day to get it ready. This made it easy for this ex-director of curriculum, now principal to "document my incompetence.” But it backfired, because I did a good job, and students annoyed her with requests to be assigned to my program.
Ignoring my attorney's command to expunge the false guilty charges, or face a 40 million dollar lawsuit, the letter stating my guilt had been published to my school, before I arrived, and despite dire warnings in the lawsuit papers that no supervisor, or employee should use the letter or any reference to the heinous allegations, this principal used the allegations in that egregious letter of "guilt" to humiliate me in front of parents, students, office staff and colleagues - many of whom I had mentored.
On my first day back, this woman whom I had known for years, entered the dirty storeroom on the fourth floor, which I was endeavoring to turn into a learning environment. I had covered the glass window on the door, because so many of my former students were wandering from their fifth floor classes, to wave hello.
The principal entered and tore the construction paper from the glass. I tried to explain, but she screamed in my face. “ Shut-up. You just shut-up, or I will be forced to tell everyone you were found guilty of corporal punishment!”
Despite there being direct evidence of abuse presented by my attorney, and the lawsuit, nothing detered the administration from slandering me.
This woman holds a PhD, would go on from this ‘interim’ job, to the superintendent of a Brooklyn school district, yet knew how to bully a fine teacher. This was the beginning of six months of humiliation designed to send me packing. I had been taping my log when she entered, and so, for all eternity, her words are there for me to remember.
When I went looking for some of the 1000 books she had redistributed to classroom libraries, she entered the room where I was looking through a bookcase, and humiliated me in front of the young teacher and the kids, screaming and ordering me into the hall as if I was a delinquent child.
Eventually re-assigned by her, as a “push-in,” I had no classroom of my own, and was assigned to the all-purpose room, another filthy room on the fourth floor, which contained a table, a few computers, and stacks of cartons and litter. Occasionally, a teacher might take a break here, working on some lesson plans.
I was given a student desk and chair in a corner by an unlocked closet. Before and after photos show that I removed the litter, put out a variety of periodicals and books on the now clean windowsill, and used the little unused bulletin board by the closet, to put up a photo of my family.I added some attractive literacy posters to the closet door, and flowers to my “desk.”
For my efforts she placed a letter in my file claiming insubordination. She claimed that I was infringing on the rights of the other teachers who used that room. The truth was, that my colleagues could not face me, and even when I made a small luncheon, inviting them to this now cheerful room, not one of them came. I ate alone.
The ‘push-in’ program she created made me an unwelcome intrusion into the rooms of the very colleagues whom I had mentored when they first came to our school as novice teachers. With no instructions, it was easy for her to find fault with what I did. One egregious moment stands out, because she entered with the Supervisor of Principals, a director at the district level. I was actually addressing the class, with an additional piece of information about the ongoing discussion on Greek history. Not only did this occasion an outburst of monumental proportions, she placed a letter in my file, charging insubordination, claiming that I had no right to speak to the class, and that my job was to assist students. MY sixty-thousand dollar salary, and several college degrees, my training in the standards notwithstanding, I was expected to do the work of a para. The visitor, months later, would meet me in the halls of the district office and apologize for witnessing that abuse. “I know your work,” she said sadly.
The videos of my former CA classroom, made for the LRDC capture a vibrant classroom and a dedicated talented teacher. Yet, her assessment of me in this degrading assignment was the ‘documentation’ that administration would try to use to destroy me, having failed to harass me into a rubber room, with the corporal punishment charges.
I became a pariah, and my reputation on Manhattan's East Side, and elsewhere, as a premier educator was shattered. I lost a book deal, too. Robbing me of my career was not enough to seal my fate. To remove me once again, a charge was put out that I allegedly had “threatened to kill the principal.” Putting out such charges are just a ruse, to push a teacher into a rubber room, but this one pushed me to the edge of nervous collapse. My blood pressure, when I stopped at a doctor’s office on the way home with a banging headache, had skyrocketed.
Thus, in the course of a little more than a year, I had fallen from a celebrated educator to an abuser of children and a potential killer. And this was not enough, either. With my return to the rubber room on that insane, new charge of threatening the principal, charges of incompetence were "put-out" for the very years that I had been observed and filmed by the LRDC.
Even after I was allowed a medical leave, thanks, finally, to the intervention of Randi Weingarten, the superintendent (before she left NYC for a job in California where her abusive methods to staff were also condemned) mailed the charges, week after week, in packages containing all the bogus charges and "documentation” in the form of those "observations" and scores of file letters, made during the bogus ‘pull-out’ and ‘push-in’ assignments. When I began returning these POISON PACKAGES unopened, the superintendent sent to my door, a young law clerk from the DOE, holding red-balloons to trick me into opening my door, so he could give them to me.
How could this happen? At the site level, my union rep - assigned to teach physical education, not what she had transferred to the school to teach - did not help me. I have e-mails that I received, at that time, from former students, asking why this woman was saying that I “had ruined the lives of two girls.”
The superintendent entered the fateful meeting on the day that the ‘’guilty verdict” was read, and kissed this union leader, hello, so as to ‘show me’ her power. This illegal and shameful ‘verdict’ was read, not by her, but by the Director of Secondary Education -- with eyes lowered. He knew me, too, having witnessed my talent and expertise many times.
Through all the grievances, NYSUT, the state umbrella union was not much better; it simply encouraged me to settle. I eventually went to state arbitration, and knowing what would happen if I returned, I resigned, taking what little sanity and self-esteem remained, and returning to a wonderful family, with a new grandson, to recover.
During my experience in the rubber room I learned:
• that Habeas Corpus does not exist for teachers; that lies and harassment are the rule and that perjury is justified if it is done by administration.
• that criminals often run the schools and that with no accountability, their crimes have gone beyond petty and egregious to criminal.
• that the DOE is not interested in educating children, but only with maintaining its own power.
• that the children of NYC mean nothing to them, and teachers have absolutely no human or civil rights, AND THAT THE AMERICA WE KNOW DOES NOT EXIST IN THE RUBBER ROOMS.

ADMINISTRATORS who abuse power and ignore the law for decades, come to believe that they are above the law, and finally that they ARE the law. The time has come to show administrators that the schools are failing, even as governments do when the rule of law disappears and the business of the people, in this case --the nation's children-- become second to their need to remain in power as tyrants with absolute power to rule the domain... and destroy the lives of teachers, even as they destroy the hope of a great education for children."

Teacher Kathy Blythe is Falsely Accused

Tales From the Rubber Room: Charge Has Teacher Dangling
By MEREDITH KOLODNER


'THEY ASSUME YOU'RE GUILTY': P.S. 147 Teacher Kathy Blythe says she has been falsely accused of roughing up a student, and as a result has been sitting in the Brooklyn 'rubber room' for the past two months.
When veteran Teacher Kathy Blythe escorted a 9-year-old girl to her seat after she tried to run out of her classroom at P.S. 147 in Brooklyn for the third time that day, she had no idea that just a few hours later police officers would be escorting her to a cell in the 90th Precinct.

Ms. Blythe has not yet been charged by the Department of Education, but she is accused of physically harming the child while preventing her from leaving the class Feb. 15.

The police investigated the accusations and released her without charges that same day. She has nonetheless spent most of her days in the DOE's Brooklyn temporary re-assignment center ever since.

'I Didn't Hurt Her'

"I did not harm that child," Ms. Blythe said on a warm March day after she and a union representative had been to a Manhattan office to answer questions as part of the DOE's investigation.

Principal Rafaela Espinal, who had recommended that Ms. Blythe be placed in the reassignment center, did not return phone calls requesting comment. Other school staff members said they had been instructed not to speak about the issue, although several of them said that they didn't believe the charges.

Ms. Blythe said that she was told that three other children in the class claimed that she was rough with the child when she restrained her from walking out of the room.

The little girl was not supposed to be in Ms. Blythe's class that day, since the school's support staff usually took her out for behavioral counseling. So when she began to act up in class, as the girl often did, Ms. Blythe called her parents to come to the school.

'Kept Me From Teaching'

STUCK IN THE 'RUBBER ROOM': Brooklyn's temporary re-assignment center holds more than 100 Teachers and administrators accused of violating Department of Education regulations or committing serious crimes. Some have been there for months and are still awaiting formal charges.

"I couldn't teach the rest of the class with her constantly getting out of her seat," said Ms. Blythe, who had never before been accused of harming a student.

The girl's father arrived and talked to her alone in the hallway twice during that Thursday morning class after Ms. Blythe had blocked her from leaving the class, according to the Teacher. It wasn't until the 22-year veteran Teacher was called out of her final period class, and saw several police officers standing in the hallway, that she was aware that there was a bigger problem.

Ms. Blythe had gone to the Assistant Principal's office earlier that day to talk about how to deal with the little girl's habit of running out of class, and she said the girl's mother had become enraged with her, to the point that a School Safety Agent was called to help Ms. Blythe get away from the parent and out of the office.

But just an hour or so later, it was she was walked into a police van, where she was handcuffed. It wasn't until she was being questioned at the precinct, with one cuff attached to a pole, that she learned that the little girl had alleged that Ms. Blythe had ripped the buttons on her shirt and scratched her while preventing her from running out the classroom door.

"I was taken out of my school by police officers with everyone watching," said Ms. Blythe. "It was horrible."

Job At Stake

The Office of Special Investigations will eventually determine whether or not there is sufficient evidence to charge Ms. Blythe with corporal punishment. If they do not, she will be allowed to return to her school. If they bring charges and find her guilty, she could lose her job and her teaching license.

The legal process when Teachers are accused of hurting students is often a long and arduous one.

Most educators accused of corporal punishment are not placed in re-assignment centers, or "rubber rooms" as they are commonly called, and most are found innocent.

The school Principal or administrator must believe that a school employee could put a child in danger for the employee to be re-assigned while awaiting charges, unless that person has serious criminal charges pending, such as a drug-related arrest.

Teachers like Ms. Blythe who are accused of violating a DOE regulation must have charges brought against them within six months. Others who have criminal charges pending can sit in the rubber room longer, sometimes for years. Teachers in the re-assignment centers are technically considered innocent until proven guilty, and therefore receive full pay and benefits while their cases play out.

A Grim Tableau

There is a rubber room in every borough, and on a late-March morning, the one in downtown Brooklyn was filled with more than 100 Teachers and administrators of every age and race. The window shades were pulled down in the long hallway of a room; fluorescent bulbs overhead brightened it. The backless benches that lined the tables held Teachers who were napping, working on personal laptops, and debating the latest developments in the Sean Bell police shooting case.

An Assistant Principal with 28 years in the system sat at one table. A few tables over, six Teachers from Automotive High School tried to occupy their time. Some said they missed the company of a Teacher who had been recently released with no charges after spending 26 months at the center.

"It's just depressing in here," said Ms. Blythe. "The good ones, we just want to get back to our schools."

A security guard sat at a desk near the front door where inhabitants punch their time cards, staying from 8:00 a.m. until 2:50 p.m. or 8:30 a.m. until 3:20 p.m. A DOE employee supervises the room, which is open the same days that school is in session.

Banished to Limbo

Most of the instructors say the experience is demoralizing and humiliating. "We are expendable," said a woman who has been a Social Worker for 27 years and has been in the Brooklyn center for about two months. "Once you go in, they forget about you."

Some educators said they felt as though the union had forgotten about them as well. Last month long-time Teacher Hipolito Colon asked the United Federation of Teachers to recognize the centers as separate chapters of the union in an effort to get more assistance.

The UFT's long-held position is that Teachers should be processed as quickly as possible.

One Teacher, who has been in the center since the fall of 2004 and began teaching special education in 1985, said he was going to retire in June. "It sucks," he said. "A lawyer told me I'm going to be fired, so I'm giving up." It is his third time in the rubber room, and he has spent 7-1/2 years out of the past decade there. In the late 1990s, he was sent to a re-assignment center on an accusation of corporal punishment.

Targeted by Principal?

Angry at what he sees as an endless series of injustices, he said his last tenure in the classroom came after a senior transfer to P.S. 131 in Brooklyn. He amassed 26 letters in his file in 14 months. He believes the Principal was out to get him from the time he arrived at the school.

A special education Teacher in the Brooklyn facility was there for the first time after 20 years of teaching. He was accused of a security breach for losing track of a student after classes with about 100 students were dismissed and the school's first-floor hallway became chaotic.

He said he didn't see one student run through a gate that had been left open. As a result, the child was left unsupervised in the playground. "We get punished for things that are not our fault," he said, "If I'm having difficulty, I need support, and it's a management issue as much as anything else." He said in his case, a new Principal sided with an Assistant Principal who had been looking to fire him.

A woman standing next to him wore a head band with bunny ears that stood up. When asked about her unusual choice of headwear, she said, "Why not? It's all a farce, everything that happens in here."

Ms. Blythe said she hoped her case would be cleared quickly, but she was worried that the process would get bogged down. "Sometimes it seems like people assume that because you're in here, you must be guilty," she said. "But I'm going to keep fighting it. They're not going to get rid of me like this."

North Bellmore NY Teacher Dania Hall Tells of Retaliation, Termination, and Wanting to be a Music Teacher in the NY School System

America's Worst Employers: North Bellmore - New York
From Dania Hall:
"Remember, new teachers, that since this is your first job, it is just another step in creating a favorable resume for you, and it would be a shame to have that destroyed by unfair and critical performance reviews, denied tenure or termination. However, this seems to be a trend that is running rampant in the school systems today. This is my story"

DISPOSABLE TEACHERS
from the website "parentadvocates.org"

In our present day throwaway society, superintendents gather and haphazardly dispose of new teachers like empty coke bottles, after the school districts have sucked them dry.
D. Hall – North Bellmore

As a new member of NAPTA, and as an illegally “retired” teacher, I feel that all of us must help new students entering the teaching profession by steering them away from districts that can be very harmful to their health and that can easily ‘trash’ their career.

Remember, new teachers, that since this is your first job, it is just another step in creating a favorable resume for you, and it would be a shame to have that destroyed by unfair and critical performance reviews, denied tenure or termination. However, this seems to be a trend that is running rampant in the school systems today.

True, I know that you have your BA degree, your MA degree, your Provisional Certifications, perhaps your Permanent Certification by now. You have completed lengthy student observations and student teaching internships. You have studied the new “National Standards in Education”, have been quizzed and submitted written proof and videos that you have internalized these concepts. You have completed the new required “Child Abuse Workshops” and “Violence Workshop” and you have spent a day going to another part of the state to get fingerprinted, I guess, to prove your not terrorist, or alien, or whatever. You think this protects you, but it does not. Your education courses did not teach you about a concept called, “At Will Employment”. This means that the superintendent can terminate you and your career at any time, unless you have tenure. He doesn’t even need a reason. But hey, that’s fair, you too, can quit any time that you like. You can trash your own career by yourself if you don’t like the way things are going. Be forewarned and armed with such knowledge so that you will not be caught “holding the bag” which contains your portfolio of useless degrees, certifications, workshops, recommendations and fingerprints. This portfolio can only guarantee you a permanent position in the ranks of the unemployed.

As a service, I think that we teachers should compile a list of school districts to avoid, to aid new teachers in their initial job search. Instead of the teacher becoming a part of the “Blacklist” (see article on home page of NAPTA), why not compile our own “Blacklist” of school districts which have become exceedingly adept at the above-mentioned budgetary strategy? I would like to add NORTH BELLMORE Elementary School District, New York, to our ever-expanding list.

First of all, I have heard for a long time that it’s hard to get teaching job on Long Island. I only recently heard that North Bellmore was one of those districts that just does not give tenure. I only recently heard that they don’t hire anyone over 20-years old. Hmmmm. But that’s only rumors. I can only talk from experience. I only know that there was a roomful of new hires with me when I came into this district September of 2002. This was our “orientation class”, and we were all embarking on our exciting new careers. What happened to the whole room of fresh-faced and hopeful nubees? There must have been 30-50 of them! The union contract states that tenure is granted after a successful 3-year probation period. So in 2005, I should have expected 30-50 teachers celebrating tenure, right? Wrong. In fact, only two administrators were awarded tenure, and they had “done more time” than 3 years. One was the assistant to the superintendent. Just a coincidence, I suppose.

Then in the in September of 2003, which was the beginning of my second year in this district, there was an even larger roomful of new hires – I couldn’t count. All the regular teachers commented about the number of strange new faces there for the first day of school, all suspiciously young and blonde. Only two teachers got tenure in 2006. Were the other 98% of teachers all unsatisfactory? Or worse, deemed incompetent? Maybe I am missing something. Maybe I am too obsessed with reading the NB Board Meeting Minutes every month. Or perhaps the GREAT CLUB is becoming a secret society and maybe they are holding clandestine tenure celebrations that we don’t know about. At any rate, we can safely say that my experience makes NORTH BELLMORE eligible for the “LIST”. Please read my experience at (http://www.endteacherabuse.info/Hall.html)

WASTED IN NORTH BELLMORE, NY

I was illegally terminated from my teaching job at in June of 2005. My intention for publicizing my experience on this website is to expose the truth about our education system.

I am a 59-year-old woman who was terminated from her position as an orchestra director for the North Bellmore School in Long Island. I loved my job and built up the program since I was hired in September of 2002, and entered my children in many extracurricular concerts and festivals, since I was affiliated these many musical organizations as a professional. I have videos, pictures and programs to validate the fact that I was their district orchestra director. Although I have been a musician all of my life, I went back to school full time in 1994 so that I could acquire my NYS certifications so that I could reach my dream of teaching in the NY Public School system. I received my Bachelors of Music Education in 2000 and my Masters in Music Education in 2003, and Music Certification K-12 in 2003.

My orchestra program at North Bellmore was awarded community funds for its continuation by the end of the 2005 school year. Perhaps the superintendent did not get the fact that he was firing the sole director and person responsible for its success.

Since the union contract states that tenure will be granted at the end of a successful 3-probation period, I was anxiously anticipating the announcement of my tenure in April of 2005. I was hired in September of 2002 and there was nothing to make me suspect otherwise. Instead, I was given my "request for termination" by Mr. Mucci, the new superintendent, in April of 2005. Prior to this "award," he had never talked to me. He did not know anything about me, my qualifications, or what my position entailed. No one else knew either, since I had no help or no supervisor. My personnel file was suspiciously empty. It was missing my Master's Degree, my job description, and my permanent certification. It contained no annual observations and did not contain any evidence of the numerous concerts that I had conducted since 2002, which numbered 27 concerts! I conducted more concerts than any other music teacher did - 9 per year, while the band and orchestra only performed 2 per year.

I believe I was fired because Mr. Mucci wanted to hide the following administrative negligence and malfeasance:

1. I told Mr. Mucci I had no supervisor and no one to assist me in the administrative side of my job. I was having great difficulty trying to schedule my rehearsals, concerts and class time. This is an administrative function and required access to the administrative calendar on the computer network of which I was not allowed access.

2. I told Mr. Mucci that I thought it was inappropriate not to be informed of Special Ed students in my class. The "music coordinator", Mr. Wolk, demanded that I allow any student who wanted to take a string instrument (violin, viola, etc.) into my class. I was not part of any IEP team, and my professional evaluation was ignored. By law, I should have at least been informed that these students were IEP. If I voiced my concern, I was accused of being "insubordinate," since parents of special education were quite vocal in this district and decisions were based on fear and ignorance rather than intelligent consultations. In my naivete, I thought that Mr. Mucci would straighten this out! (Much to learn!)

3. I told Mr. Mucci that I had not been observed in my first 2 ½ years of my 3-year probation period, when every other teacher is observed annually. My union representative told me that I needed these observations for tenure. How was I to be awarded tenure if I had no observations for the past 2 ½ years?

4. I told Mr. Mucci the name of the principal, Marilyn Hirschfield, who had given me a bad evaluation in 2004 and had accused me of being an "insensitive" teacher, although she had never observed me. Frankly, she had lied and had never observed me. This can be proven, since no written observations exist prior to a month before my firing.

5. I told Mr. Mucci that there is no realistic account of my achievements, my teaching ability, my credentials, or my rehearsals or my concerts for the past 2 ½ years because of my empty personnel file and lack of supervisory assistance and lack of observations and evaluations.

6. I went to this superintendent on April 1, 2005 because I had nowhere else to go with scheduling problems. At that time, I was still naïve enough to think that surely the superintendent could help me, as my only source of administrative help. So I initiated this meeting and went to this meeting alone. But instead of helping me, he handed me an envelope requesting my termination, even though I was completing, and did complete my probation period!

When I asked the superintendent why I was being terminated, he warmly replied that I would have to ask in writing in a letter to him before the May 5, 2005 North Bellmore Board Meeting. I did better than that. I sent a packet to each and every board member including all overwhelmingly positive evaluations from North Bellmore district principals. I explained exactly what I did in the district, that I worked in all schools, and that there was a traditional bus tour of concerts, which took place in all the schools. I even included numerous pictures of the orchestra concerts and smiling faces of happy events!! I prepared these packets with my lawyer and took them to the district clerk, who was to make sure that each board member received this information. I have no idea whether any of the board members ever received these packets since the district clerk is also the assistant to the principal, so if the superintendent had anything to do with it, do YOU think the board members received it? Judging from his track record?

When I filed a grievance with the union challenging due process and adequate notice for my tenure, I sat down with the president of the teachers union and she reluctantly typed what amounted to be a faint-hearted pretense of a grievance. This document was never acted upon and procedure was clearly not followed. The union president told me bluntly that the superintendent could do whatever he wants. She was also working closely with the superintendent all year on the budget. The school lawyer of course backed her up with the same statement.

In October of 2005, I filed a complaint with the NYS Public Relations Board (PERB) regarding the union's failure to represent me in what resulted in wrongful termination. I was granted a legitimate case number, hearings, etc. A PERB hearing took place in May of 2005, with the school and union administrators. I am still awaiting a decision from this day-long hearing, although PERB is supposed to be swift regarding their decisions. Even though any one else reading the contract would say it is a slam-dunk conclusion that the union clearly did not follow procedure. This is not brain surgery either!!

I have also filed a complaint in October of 2005 with the NYS Human Rights Division regarding my cornucopia of disparate treatment by this district. This is currently in process as an ongoing legitimate case of discrimination. More legal documents ad nauseum.

Most disappointing, however is the NYS Commissioner of Education, Commissioner Mills who received my petition to him regarding wrongful and illegal termination, of which I also have a legitimate case pending. This petition was served to North Bellmore District before the end of June of 2005, before school was even out. Having just graduated from school, I had full confidence in the Education Department and Commissioner Mills in having awareness of my very current state-of-the-arts qualifications and certifications. Everybody knows that he makes all the rules and regulations!! But maybe what we didn't realize was that all those rules and regulations are only for teachers!

Straight out of school, I had been indoctrinated as to the importance of credentials, skills and education, and I felt very confident, regardless of my age. In addition, I was sure that he was very aware of my oh-so-current $23,000 debt to the NYS Education Department for my school loans for this education that amounts to the above scenario. Commissioner Mills had full power to grant me what is called an "Order of Stay," which would have frozen the action of the superintendent. If he had granted me this, I would have continued as a teacher on the first day of school in September of 2005, and would have been granted tenure by "estoppel." This is a legal term used when one earns tenure by default when one has been "overlooked" and worked the required time. However, although I was denied the "Order of Stay," I was granted a legitimate case number, and the green light to write 100+ pages ad nauseum of legal documents, including answer, replies, rebuttals, memorandum of laws, etc. I had to do this myself because, of course, I didn't have money for a lawyer. However, I did not go for 8 years of music education to write legal documents to prove my existence, nor did I serve North Bellmore for 3 years as district orchestra director to kill my music career!!. Commissioner Mills' very polite secretary said that he would make his decision promptly. Well, here it is, a year later and still not a peep from him. Ho, humm.

I have submitted more than sufficient documentation to support my case to the commissioner. This included incriminating e-mails from hostile principals, unsigned documents, unsigned scrawled notes supposedly from parents, pictures of my students smiling faces in rehearsals and concerts, and 4 overwhelmingly positive and detailed evaluations from principals. Incidentally, Superintendent Mucci much preferred the unsigned, personal comments from Principal Marilyn Hirschfield as rationale to terminate me rather than positive observations from the 4 other principals. There were also statements from principals attesting to my lack of administrative support to conduct my job. There is also documentation of a hostile work environment and evidence of misrepresentations and fraud.

Yet in the face of all of this, these agencies turn the other way. This is not brain surgery!

My unemployment has run out and I have been out of work now for a full year. At the present time there is not a chance that I would be hired somewhere else in this illustrious public school system. I am not 18 years old either. As this my first full time appointment in the school system, it was to supposed to build my career on the excellent reputation that I had from student teaching and numerous temporary music assignments I had in Long Island that I had worked for. Not destroy it!! I really get pangs of anger when I come across letters of congratulations that I received from principals and administrators from other school concerts during my student teaching and substitute teaching. In the music teaching professions, it is good form for the principal or superintendent send a note congratulating you for each and every concert and commenting on various aspects! I have a collection of these congratulatory notes from other schools! It is unbelievable that I would get more acknowledgments as a substitute than for 3 years and 27 concerts at North Bellmore! Let it be known that this is not just validation for me, but for the students, who were also neglected by not being acknowledged for their work and efforts. I had to buy them their NYSSMA music pins with my own money!

I was never given any type of severance from this job, my health care was abruptly taken away before June 30th of 2005. Mr. Mucci said he would not give me a good recommendation at the Public Employee Relations Hearing as the "District" complained how much money this legal expense is cost them! There is no validation for 27 successful concerts that we performed in this district. At the PERB hearing, when Mr. Mucci was asked by my lawyer, "was she the district orchestra director of North Bellmore, Mr. Mucci replied, "No."

Please reply with any ideas to publicize this atrocity.
Contact me at Lazyday46@aol.com

D. Hall

From NAPTA Founder and Winner of ParentAdvocates' A For Accountability Award Karen Horwitz
MS HALL IS THAT PERFECT, EXPERIENCED TEACHER THAT EVERYONE SAYS WE MUST ATTRACT INTO OUR SCHOOLS TO SAVE THEM FROM THE INEXPERIENCED TEACHERS WHOSE INEPTNESS HAS DEPRIVED CHILDREN OF QUALITY EDUCATION'S. SHE IS A MASTER IN HER PROFESSION OF MUSIC AND JUST WHAT WE NEED TO PRODUCE TALENTED ARTISTS IN OUR SCHOOLS. THE NEXT TIME YOU HEAR AN EDUCRAT CLAIM THEY JUST CANNOT FIND THESE TYPES, REMEMBER MS HALL'S STORY. OR BETTER YET, CONTACT MS HALL SO SHE CAN HELP YOU LEARN THAT THE EDUCRAT$ RUNNING OUR SCHOOLS DO NOT WANT QUALITY TEACHERS. THEY CAN AND DO ATTRACT THEM, BUT THEY DISPOSE OF THEM QUICKLY BEFORE PARENTS BECOME INVESTED IN QUALITY TEACHERS. AFTER ALL, OUR SCHOOLS ARE NOT THERE FOR EDUCATING A FUTURE CITIZENRY. THEY ARE AN ENRON-LIKE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLOIT TAXPAYERS WITH NO ONE WATCHING OVER THEIR SHOULDERS. AND DO NOT DECEIVE YOURSELF INTO THINKING HER SALARY WAS TOO HIGH AT HER AGE, THUS THEY HAD TO DISPOSE OF HER EVEN THOUGH IT IS ILLEGAL TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST PEOPLE OVER FORTY. SHE CAME TO THE PROFESSION LATE IN LIFE AND WAS THE ULTIMATE BARGAIN, TO SAY THE LEAST - TALENT, MATURITY, AND SUCCESS AT A BEGINNER'S SALARY. IF SHE HAD NOT BEEN DRIVEN FROM HER POSITION, A POSITION SHE SOUGHT AT A HIGH PRICE TO HER AT THIS POINT IN HER CAREER, BELIEVING THAT EDUCRAT$ CARE ABOUT EDUCATION, MS HALL WOULD BE TEACHING RATHER THAN WRITING LEGAL DOCUMENTS TO EXPOSE THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR SCHOOLS. JUST ASK HER. SHE IS MORE THAN WILLING TO SHARE THE TRUTH WITH ANYONE WHO CARES ABOUT OUR CHILDREN, OUR COUNTRY AND THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION. NAPTA

What Ever Happened to Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

By: Guillermina Rodriguez

I began working for the Board of Education 17 years ago. I came from Mexico with two daughters, 12 and 2. I struggled to be accepted in the universities because I was a temporary legal resident.

It took me seven years to complete my bachelors degree and certification to work as a bilingual teacher. Now I am a tenured, highly qualified teacher with an 03 regular certificate, K-9 bilingual, and Language Arts Jr. High endorsements.

I transferred in August 29, 2007 to a school because the principal offered me The Bilingual Lead Teacher position. I accepted. The principal gave me a myriad of duties to do. Plus, she asked me to take charge of the School Based Problem Solving Program, Teach ESL, and take the half position of Literacy Coach. In September of 2007, the principal reprimanded me in front of another young teacher, and took the Bilingual Lead Teacher position out of my hands. Since then, the principal started asking me to leave the school. She sent me to Human Resources to find another school. She sent me to interviews at other schools. She also sent an e-mail to the university where I am studying to get the 75 to discredit me. She refused to sign for my practicum and I dropped it without any refund.

The principal has changed me to five different positions. September 28, she assigned me to teach a self-contained upper grades special education classroom with 18 students in all categories (I do not have a Sped certificate). I filed a grievance, and she changed me to teach writing from 5th-8th. The principal gave me only four prep times, while other teachers have up to 11 prep times.

Before the principal changed me, she gathered other teachers, and in front of them, humiliated me by saying that she expected more from me. As a tenured teacher, working for almost twenty years, I was supposed to pick up many techniques to work with special education students, and that I should be a master to work with these students.

She gave me a schedule with my new assignment, but then she orally directed me to change it at the very last moment almost everyday. Then she gave me a cautionary letter for insubordination stating that I changed the schedule. The Principal sent me another memo because she said the discipline in my classroom was terrible (it is a school-wide problem), and before that, she blamed me for the discipline because I wrote anecdotal records. She stated that "I was the only one writing anecdotal records, "so I was causing the student's misbehavior.” Last Thursday, at the end of the day, I tried to send a report of a student who misbehaved. The student said I smacked him (not true). The student remained in the classroom with the homeroom teacher and another student. I didn't know what happened after that because I left for my outside duty.

When I returned from my outside duty, I went to a room where I hang up my coat and I store my wheel cart. I was picking up three discipline reports when security and a clerk came to tell me that the principal said I had to leave the building immediately. I tried to talk to the principal, but she refused to talk to me. I was in the parking lot trying to contact the Union when security came again and told me that the principal said I cannot be in the parking lot.

Next thing I knew from the Union that afternoon was that a teacher was accusing me of grabbing and slapping the student, and that they had pictures of the student with marks of "my hands" on his face and arm. I am in shock. I can not believe that this is happening to me...but it is.

I am 55, single, and I have been working as a teacher for 34 years. I planned to retire in three years and go back to my country. I have a college daughter, another single mother daughter with two little boys, and an 85 years old father that I support. Since September, I have lost 15 pounds, I cannot sleep well, and I worked three extra hours daily and all the weekends to have my work impeccable so the principal cannot find excuses to fire me. I stopped enjoying my family, I could not do anything for Thanksgiving because I was working doing lesson plans and materials. I always knew that our lives as teachers were on the hands of a fool who, with a lie, could ruin our careers, but I never thought that a principal would do something abominable like this.

I am at home now, waiting for a pull out letter from the Board of Education. I was told I will get paid for Friday and Monday and wait for directives. The Union said the investigation can last months.

I do not want to go back to that school... Is there anything we can do to stop these abusive principals?

Guillermina Rodriguez
www.ytb.com/ggtravel1