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Monday, September 30, 2013

ATR meeting October 3

10/3 2013 at Park Plaza Diner, 220 Cadman Plaza West, one block north of Clark St.,
Brooklyn Heights
5 - 7 pm
 
Open to all displaced ("excessed") DOE staff being United Federation of Teachers, UFT members, (guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, Absent Counselor Reserve, ACRs, teachers, librarians, Absent Teacher Reserve, ATRs), regardless of borough.

NYC Teacher David Suker Fought The Gotcha Squad - Department of Education in NYC - and Wins His Case in Court by Betsy Combier

David Suker

re-posted from Parentadvocates.org

David was fired from his teaching position at his "teacher trial" or 3020-a, by the deadly team of Arbitrator Eleanor Elovich Glanstein, Department Attorney Nancy Ryan, and New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) Attorney Steven Friedman. This lethal team violated David's due process and, writes New York State Supreme Court Judge Alice Schlesinger, the law, and then she vacates the termination.

Theresa Europe's email to OSI Director Regina Loughran
 
     




From the desk of Betsy Combier:

David Suker taught for 14 years at Offsite Educational Services which transitioned into GED Plus, without ever being brought to 3020-a prior to the proceeding described here, namely the 3020-a arbitration hearing, which was brought against him by the New York City Department of Education in 2012. I knew David from the Rubber Room at 25 Chapel Street in Brooklyn, New York. I started walking into this room with David Pakter around 2004, and talked with teachers who were there and followed their stories (see Steve Ostrin and Polo Colon, for example). 

David Suker was and is an excellent teacher and a cult hero among students. He was a leader of Occupy Wall street, and had a run-in with the police which became misconduct charged against him. He had the very unfortunate circumstance of taking NYSUT's offer of representation, and not hiring a private attorney. NYSUT Assistant General Counsel Claude Hersh appointed Senior Attorney Steven Friedman. Steve worked in a deadly partnership with Attorney Eleanor Elovich Glanstein and DOE prosecuting Attorney Nancy Ryan. Why do I call this threesome "deadly"? Because their goal was to terminate those people brought before them. See the case of Nicola De Marco). Recently, sources tell me, Eleanor Glanstein was fired or removed from the UFT-DOE Panel. Nancy Ryan and Steve Friedman were moved to other Arbitrators. Thank goodness this team was broken up. I was fortunate enough to watch the three of them for several years, and, most recently, see how Nancy Ryan destroyed a Department of Labor Unemployment Hearing in August 2013. More about that in a later post.

Eleanor Glanstein is a very small woman who shrugs off violations of law and contract. She dismisses Nancy Ryan, a constant screamer and hysteric, as part of the order of business. Everything Nancy says is what Eleanor writes in her decision at the end of the 3020-a. Eleanor had a lot of power and was able to get away with her irrational rulings because her brother Larry Elovich was a political Somebody out on Long Island. 

The way the Ryan-Friedman-Glanstein termination process worked was as follows: Nancy Ryan would pursue any and all charges with a vengeance that left everyone in the room stunned. Her attacks are personal and vicious, and she continues now, only with a new arbitrator. There are no rules, laws, or contracts that she cares about. Indeed, these are always discarded as wrongly placed barriers to getting to the core of the case, namely, terminating a "criminal" (the poor employee/victim). Nancy must be a very unhappy person to be so malicious. All allegations against a person are "facts", which Nancy defends with her lifeblood. Steve Friedman basically plays along to get along. His defense is the worst of any NYSUT Attorney whom I have observed since I started attending 3020-a hearings in 2003-4. He has none. Steve presents some evidence, but he really would like his client to resign, retire, or go away. He permits, by doing nothing to stop her, Nancy's hysterics. While Steve sits there not doing much of anything and Nancy is screaming that the teacher/employee is criminally insane, Eleanor shrugs off Nancy but almost always terminates the charged employee. Eleanor refuses to concern herself with any issues of probable cause and procedural error. It is good that she is no longer on the panel. No one will miss her....except maybe Nancy.

David was brought up on three sets of charges, the first two sets were unsubstantiated and/or minor, but Eleanor Glanstein found almost all specifications were valid. Then Steve allowed Nancy and Terri Europe to bring forth a third set of charges about David's daughter's school to which she had been admitted more than 7 years earlier, and Eleanor consolidated this set with the previous two. Former Director of the Administrative Trials Unit, the Gotcha Squad, Theresa ("Terri") Europe, heard from Nancy that David had placed his daughter in an upper west side elementary school and then gave an address for himself which was not supposedly in the district (he did not have a permanent address at the time). According to A-101, the Department of Education had 30 days to investigate. David was not told of any investigation. By the time he was charged with 3020-a, his daughter was in high school, where residence did not matter. David's daughter's mother lived in Bronx the entire time. In other words, this issue was a non-issue. 

3020-a charges may go back only 3 years, unless the act charged was a crime when committed. David was not accused of a crime when his daughter started school. Thus, when Nancy told Terri that she had discovered the misconduct of David ten years earlier, Terri told Regina Loughran, Deputy Commissioner of the Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI)  that she wanted an investigation of David, but this violated 3020-a law. 

This type of targeting is a violation of law. Yet, Eleanor Glanstein, with Steve Friedman's permission, charged David with the "misconduct" and David was terminated for fraudulently putting his daughter in a school without living in the district of the school.

David asked us at Advocatz to help him appeal this decision. We gladly contributed. At 3020-a, the Department, "Respondent" , had the burden of proof, and failed to provide a minimum amount of evidence that could justify the determination of termination as a just and equitable award. Certainly there was a clear failure to provide "preponderance of the evidence", which is the required standard pursuant to Education Law Section 3020-a. 

Glanstein's irrational conclusion was that Petitioner's acts were deliberately planned to throw his long and successful career as a tenured teacher out the window. In other words, Glanstein made a determination reeking of bad faith where she ignored the testimony of David Suker, "Petitioner", that he knew nothing about any residency requirement for Columbia Secondary, and that his satisfactory teaching performance showed he was an excellent teacher, to find that David inexplicably committed fraud on his employer. This made no sense. To be fraudulent, a false statement must be made with the intent to deceive the victim. And, the false statement must be made with the intent to deprive the victim of some legal right, and the victim's reliance on the false statement must be reasonable. Therefore, it would have been reasonable for Columbia Secondary School to question/investigate/address Petitioner's residency within the 30-day period cited in the Regulation, A-101, but not have the NYC DOE Office of Legal Services charge him five(5) years later. 

When David filled out the admission forms to Columbia Secondary School for his daughter he gave the address at which he and his daughter were staying in 2007. He did not lie. No one from the school ever questioned him about this address, and the only requirement for the school admissions is that first consideration goes to those students who live above 96th street. Students in the school population come from throughout the New York City area. Here, David never intended any fraud. No misconduct existed then or now, and no notice was given to David about possible wrong-doing, so he could address the issue, until it was "too late", and he was charged by Theresa Europe with 3020-a.

Ms. Europe had no authority, as the Attorney for the Department and Supervisor of the Administrative Trials Unit, to charge David five years after Columbia Secondary accepted his daughter. David invoked the doctrine of laches. From Wikipedia: "Laches is an "unreasonable delay pursuing a right or claim...in a way that prejudices the (opposing) party." When asserted in litigation, it is an equitable defense, or doctrine. The person invoking laches is asserting that an opposing party has "slept on its rights," and that, as a result of this delay, circumstances have changed such that it is no longer just to grant the (Petitioner's) original claim. Put another way, failure to assert one’s rights in a timely manner can result in a claim being barred by laches. Laches is a form of estoppel for delay.

Ironically, while David was charged with filling out erroneous records for his daughter, the Department refused to give him the requested records of the students whose complaints in 2009 led to some of his charges. Here is an excerpt from the transcript:
"Mr. Friedman: Okay, Madam Hearing Officer, pursuant to your previous ruling, I now call for production of any counseling records, disciplinary records, attendance records and anything else that would have been from December of 2008 to April of 2009 and again, pursuant to your prior ruling, I reserve the right to recall this witness in the event that anything in those documents turns up to be material relevant in this case.

Ms. Ryan: I have already asked for those documents, that's what he got...That's the extent of what they have...Yeah, what do you think I asked for. You think I asked them to pick out three papers?" (Transcript, "T" pp. 127-128)

Mr. Friedman: "If I understand correctly, there's absolutely no record of that student being in the program then. Nothing. No test results, no applications, no records that she shows" (T146)
Hearing Officer: "I've heard you both...but I will not strike the student's testimony. The application is denied" (T146-147).

Mr. Friedman: " Then can I respectfully request then that the Hearing Officer take notice that we are very, very hampered in our defense?" (T147)

Glanstein didn't care.

But luckily, New York State Supreme Court Judge Alice Schlesinger did care. She threw out the third set of charges about David's daughter and her admission to the West Side school, and remanded back to the Department for a penalty that was less than termination. Schlesinger mentioned Nancy Ryan in her decision:

"However, in the two-month period between the dates that Mr. Suker was informed of these two Charges, a related but somewhat unusual communication occurred. Nancy Ryan, the attorney prosecuting the matter for the Administrative Trials Unit of the Office of Legal Services (ATU) contacted Theresa Europe, Deputy Counsel to the Chancellor for the NYC Department of Education, and gave her “interesting” information relating to Mr. Suker’s daughter which Ms. Ryan had noted while preparing the case.*
...Ms. Europe ended her letter: “Can you open an investigation? We are scheduled to start trial but I can try to put it off if your office will investigate. Let me know and thanks.”....The findings from this investigation then formed the predicate for the final Charge, notice of which was sent to Mr. Suker on April 20, 2012, after the 3020-a hearing had begun...I thus find that all of the acts in this Charge, in all three Specifications, are time-barred; because the conduct has not been proven to specifically constitute a “crime when committed,” the acts fall outside the three-year limitations period for disciplinary charges under § 3020-a."

Last week, the New York Law Department filed an Appeal with the Appellate Division. David remains off the payroll until the resolution of this appeal.


See more about Regina Loughran below:


Law and Disorder: Special Victims Unit

Investigators say the city's independent schools watchdog has often failed to bark


Tom Robbins


published: December 06, 2005 Back in 1997 police arrested a man named Ronald Taylor, who worked as an assistant public school principal in Harlem. Taylor, 50 years old at the time, easily ranked as a parent's worst nightmare. His arrest came after the mother of a student walked into a local police precinct and reported that Taylor had lured her 15-year-old son to his apartment with an offer to play with his video game collection. He then proceeded to sexually molest him. When cops went to investigate they found Taylor had tricked up his West Harlem apartment as a kids' game room. They also found some 400 X-rated videos.


illustration: Glynis Sweeny
Details:
See also:

Too Hot to Handle
How a crooked congressman got a pass from school probers
by Tom Robbins , Village Voice
 LINK
Unlike a score of school-personnel sex-abuse cases from that era, Taylor's arrest got little news play. The Times ran a short item on an inside page and the Daily News carried one as well, on page 79. The lack of attention was partly because the arrest did not emanate from the efficient publicity machine of Edward Stancik, the late special commissioner for investigation for city schools.

For 12 years until his death in 2002, Stancik's gaunt features were a staple on TV newscasts as he told of corrupt bureaucrats and twisted sex abusers nailed by his office. Such cases made Stancik wildly unpopular in the teachers' union offices and the old Board of Education headquarters on Livingston Street in Brooklyn, where he was viewed as a merciless inquisitor, a publicity hound whose investigations were measured mainly for their TV and news-ink potential.

On the other hand, many politicians, journalists, prosecutors, and parents adored him, viewing Stancik as a valiant warrior against an intractable bureaucracy. So what if he knew how to use the media? What better way to send a message to the public and bad guys alike that wrongdoing won't be tolerated? When Stancik died at age 47 of heart failure in March 2002, there were some misgivings expressed about his occasional overzealousness. But the editorial call was to make sure the watchdog office he'd led didn't lose its fangs.

But a few months after Stancik's death, something unusual in the world of law enforcement happened. A former top investigator in his office, an ex-detective who had been a supervisor there for five years, sat down and wrote two lengthy letters to city officials alleging that a top Stancik deputy named Regina Loughran had dropped the ball in several important cases, either delaying arrests or letting the bad guys get away altogether. In some instances, it was alleged, Loughran had changed cases from being "substantiated" to "unsubstantiated."

The complaints were investigated by city attorneys, and several were confirmed. Yet Loughran today remains as powerful as ever, serving as the $151,000 number two official in the special investigators' office. Former and current investigators, both men and women, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told the Voice they were puzzled by the inaction. "If we had caught someone in the education system behaving this way, they'd be long gone," said one former investigator.

Among the cases the investigators cited was that of Ronald Taylor.

According to the former detective and others familiar with the case, nearly a year before Taylor's arrest by police, investigators in Stancik's office had asked permission to launch a probe of the school official. The request was made after a prison social worker contacted the investigations office to say that an inmate was claiming to have been sexually abused by Taylor, his former teacher. Investigators initially dismissed the charge as one more prisoner trying to reduce his sentence. But the details of the story were disturbingly precise: Taylor had asked the student, then 15 years old, to carry a crate of milk up to his apartment. Once he got him inside, Taylor had sexually assaulted him. The inmate described the apartment in detail.

Investigators drove to upstate Green Haven Correctional Facility to interview the inmate, who convinced them that a sexual predator was loose in the schools. The statute of limitations had expired on the earlier assault, but the inmate said he was willing to wear a recording device to a meeting with Taylor to see if he could get him talking about other victims. The investigators relayed that offer to Loughran, then the attorney-in-charge of the child sexual-abuse unit and a key figure in the office. Loughran refused.

"The issue for her seemed to be, 'Why spend the time and money to get this kid out of jail and wire him up for a case that's too old,' " a former investigator told the Voice. "We argued that if we have this one person there are probably others out there at risk."

Loughran was adamant. But the investigators, most of them retired NYPD detectives who lived by chain of command, declined to appeal the decision over her head. The case was closed. Nine months later, the outraged mother of another victim filed her complaint with police. Taylor was immediately arrested and later sentenced to serve up to three years in prison. Under questioning, he said something that chilled both cops and school investigators. He said he was HIV-positive.

Ed Stancik's public posture was of a manager with a stern "the buck stops here" policy. But according to the former detective and others, the often ailing commissioner ceded wide authority to Loughran, a hardworking former sex-crimes prosecutor whose ability to turn out clearly written reports was highly prized by Stancik and his successor.

Investigators said Loughran was also often tempestuous, given to sudden rages and sulks. What made their jobs most difficult, however, was her apparent skittishness about dealing directly with outside prosecutors who were needed for any criminal referrals. "She just seemed intimidated or something," said one veteran ex-detective who worked in the office for years. "If we had a tape we needed to get to the D.A. she would have you drop it off with the officer in the lobby, rather than make a call to the prosecutor personally."

As a result, the investigators said, the case of the predatory assistant principal was just one of the instances in Stancik's old office where the system simply broke down.

There was the case of the art instructor accused of having displayed nude photos of himself to disabled students, confiding that "what a girl wants is a big dick." (The photos weren't found, and Loughran decided the students' testimony was "problematic," ordering investigators to change their findings from "substantiated" to "unfounded." When Board of Ed administrators asked for investigators to testify against the teacher to bar him from further employment, Loughran refused to allow it.)

There was the 48-year-old male teacher who admitted driving a 17-year-old female student to a funeral home parking lot in the Bronx and asking her, "What if I told you I wanted to go down on you?" (The teacher said he was trying to help her learn to fend off improper advances. The principal vouched for the teacher, and the girl later admitted she'd neglected to say they were also drinking beer at the time. Loughran said her testimony was inconsistent and ordered the case dropped.)

And there was Paul Kerner, a 61-year-old teacher at Sheepshead Bay High School who romanced an 11th-grade girl, taking her to Atlantic City casinos and a motel where he coerced her into performing fellatio and other sex acts. The investigator on the case urged Loughran to make a quick criminal referral to prosecutors, but the deputy balked. "I don't know what to do, let's hold off," she said, according to a report of the incident.

The office dithered so long that the victim called the investigator, complaining that Kerner was now stalking her, and asking why he hadn't been arrested yet. The investigator asked Loughran for permission to take the case to a friend at the FBI. Loughran expressed skepticism that the bureau would be interested, but reluctantly agreed. But when the FBI came seeking the backup documents for the case, Loughran balked again, forcing agents to get a grand jury subpoena. (Kerner was eventually convicted in federal court, where he received a 33-month sentence. Annoyed at the investigator who had called the bureau, Loughran allegedly had him transferred out of the sex-crimes unit.)

Yet another disturbing case posed an investigative challenge, one that Stancik's former detectives readily accepted, given the stakes, but which Loughran flat-out rejected. In that instance, a former city high school student, now a grown man and a member of the Army Reserves, called the office to say that his former principal had repeatedly sexually abused him a few years earlier. According to his story, he had been a fatherless youngster whom the principal had taken under his wing, bringing him on camping trips to Lake George and elsewhere where he had repeatedly molested him. On the advice of his therapist, the man had decided to confront and report his abuser. Once he did, the principal immediately resigned.

The Stancik investigators were able to get a consensually recorded telephone conversation in which the principal admitted his sexual abuse of the former student. Like the Ronald Taylor case, however, the acts were too old to prosecute. But investigators said the ex-principal (a Boy Scout troop leader who still lived with his mother) fit the profile of "a classic pedophile," and they believed he had to have preyed on others.

The next step, they proposed to Lough-ran, would be to wire up the ex-student and have him meet with the former principal to see if they could pick up leads on other victims. They would also talk to teachers and students at the principal's school to find out if other boys had been similarly "befriended." Loughran wouldn't hear of it. According to two former investigators, she said, "He is out of the system. Shut it down." (Loughran has denied using those words.)

In an effort to try to breathe new life into the case, one of the investigators reached out to a federal prosecutor he knew who was familiar with sex-crime statutes to ask if there was any other law the ex-principal might have violated. Loughran later said she was "upset" and "embarrassed" by the call, which she said duplicated her own research and had been made without her permission. Investigators said it was much more dramatic than that. "She was livid," said one of them. When the investigator was asked why the call had been made, he responded: "Because I'm trying to catch the son of a bitch."

According to the investigators, Lough-ran retaliated by shifting one of the two probers who had worked the case, considered one of the office's most productive teams, out of the sex unit. Loughran later insisted the assignment change had been made by Stancik, not her.

But it still wasn't over. The former principal, concerned at possible civil liabilities, offered to purchase a $250,000 house for the victim in exchange for a promise not to pursue further legal action. When Loughran learned of the offer, she allegedly said that the victim might be arrested for extortion, a suggestion that appalled the investigators. (As it happened, the deal fell through.)

"He had been a principal for 20 years, he had such power," said one of the investigators recently. "All he had to do was find another weak kid. We felt there had to be other victims. It was so egregious to shut it down. Pedophiles don't do it once and then go home. You don't have to be Columbo to figure that out."



The two letters detailing the complaints about the bungled past cases landed on the desk of city department of investigations commissioner Rose Gill Hearn in early 2003.

Hearn technically oversees the schools investigation unit (its offices are located in the same Maiden Lane building as DOI), but because of its sensitive mission it operates largely independently. Still, Hearn took the complaints seriously, assigning a pair of senior attorneys to look into them. Over the course of several months, the attorneys interviewed 10 current and former employees of Stancik's old special commissioner's office, including Loughran. During the interviews, the attorneys turned up another instance, in which a complaint about a Bronx teacher accused of sodomizing several young male students had been confirmed by the Stancik office but had somehow never been referred to prosecutors.

Those findings were in turn forwarded to Stancik's successor, Richard J. Condon, a former police commissioner who in the past headed investigative squads for the Manhattan and Queens district attorneys. When Condon took over in June 2002, he retained Loughran, bumping her up a notch to first deputy commissioner. A DOI spokesperson, Emily Gest, said the office hadn't ordered any changes or discipline for Loughran, but had "shared the facts and findings of its investigation, for Commissioner Condon to take any necessary remedial actions."

Condon said that he too took the complaints seriously, spending hours wading through old investigative files. "I was not a witness to this history," he said. "Most of these things happened years before I got here."

The standard he used in examining the cases, Condon said, was whether Loughran had had a "rational basis" for her decisions. In two instances—that of the art instructor who had shown the nude photos, and the teacher who had posed the obscene remarks to the student—Condon said he disagreed with Loughran's actions, but cautioned that even this conclusion was "probably unfair."

As for the failure to make a criminal referral in the Bronx sodomy case, Condon said the explanation was simple. "She screwed up. It happens." He noted that the office had handled a total of 1,800 cases during the period under review. Loughran also later told DOI's inquiry that she was "baffled" how she had failed to make the referral, but said if she was to blame so were her former bosses, Stancik and Robert Brenner, who served as Stancik's first deputy commissioner. (Brenner, now with the investigations firm Kroll Inc., did not return calls.)

At the end of the day, however, Condon said he chalked up the complaints to honest disagreements. "I am used to investigators and prosecutors arguing over whether cases should be prosecuted," he said.

Condon told the Daily News' Kathleen Lucadamo, who asked about the probe last month, that he considered Loughran "one of the straightest, most hardworking prosecutors I have ever worked with."

He told the Voice that he'd encountered none of the erratic behavior by Loughran described by the investigators. "I have been here three and a half years working next door to this woman and I have never seen the behavior these people describe," he said.

In a letter to DOI, however, Condon said he had changed office procedures to make sure he personally reads all complaints that come into the office and examines "every substantiated and unsubstantiated case."

Loughran, who declined to speak to the Voice, wrote Condon a lengthy defense of her actions, insisting that her decisions at the office had been "common-sense based and not capricious by any rational standard."

The investigators, past and current, remain unconvinced. "This isn't just disagreeing over cases," said one. "Yeah, there's always tension [in other investigative offices] between the investigators and the prosecutors. But it's always motivated by respect, and everyone understands they're a team. Here, you don't get that. And they're supposed to be about helping the kids."

Sunday, September 29, 2013

The DOE Sues The UFT Because There Are Not Enough Arbitrators For The 3020-a Teacher Panels To get rid of Everyone Quickly



New York Sues Teachers’ Union Over Deal on Disciplinary Hearings


Parentadvocates.org
LINK

From Betsy Combier, Editor: Now it happens that the NYC Department of Education is complaining that there are not enough arbitrators on the UFT/DOE Panels to decide the 400 cases waiting to go to 3020-a proceedings, and the culprit is none other than the UFT (United Federation of Teachers). What is ridiculous about this is that the DOE has been the party which has dumped so many good teachers into the "new" rubber rooms at such a fast rate and for, in many vases, absolutely no misconduct or incompetency, that there are not enough arbitrators to hear the cases. Why? No one is in charge. Anyone may charge or find "probable cause" at any time against anyone. And the UFT has stood aside and allowed this to happen. Moreover, the UFT arranges for teachers to have their "U" ratings changed to "S" ratings, so how valid are the rating sheets handed out at the end of the year, anyway? Finally, teachers or other tenured staff brought to 3020-a ("teacher trials") can try to settle, where they buy their jobs back for a couple of thousand dollars. False claims harm people, but hardly anyone cares. I do.





NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who allegedly oversees the Department of Education and the NYC public school system



New York Sues Teachers’ Union Over Deal on Disciplinary Hearings
By AL BAKER, NY TIMES

Three years ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and New York City’s teachers’ union celebrated an agreement to end the use of “rubber rooms,” the much-ridiculed holding pens where teachers accused of wrongdoing or incompetence would report for years on end, doing no work but drawing full salaries. [The rubber rooms are now hidden inside schools, but still exist - Editor].

But on Friday, in a sign of just how poisoned his relationship with the union has become, Mr. Bloomberg used his radio show to announce that his administration had filed a lawsuit against the union, accusing it of shirking its part of the deal.

The 2010 agreement, which followed months of news articles that embarrassed the city and the union, closed down the rubber rooms and was to speed up the hearing process so teachers’ fates could be decided in a matter of months. But the lawsuit says the union, the United Federation of Teachers, has been dragging its feet in helping select arbitrators to hear the cases.

“They just keep delaying,” Mr. Bloomberg said to the radio program’s host, John Gambling.

“The backlog keeps getting bigger,” the mayor added. “And it just prevents having a fair hearing for teachers who should be cleared of any charges. It allows teachers who should not be in front of our kids through incompetence or inappropriate conduct to continue collecting a paycheck. The public is paying for all this.”

By the latest count, according to the lawsuit that was lodged on Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, there is a backlog of roughly 400 teachers awaiting disciplinary hearings, as well as 150 new cases since school began three weeks ago. Combined, that is about as many teachers as were in rubber rooms at the time of the 2010 deal. The union, meanwhile, said on Friday that the true backlog was only 52 teachers.

The rubber rooms have largely been done away with, with teachers now given administrative functions or nonclassroom duties while their cases are pending, though some have complained of make-work assignments barely better than no work at all. The part of the agreement now in dispute regards the hiring of arbitrators. To speed up the hearing process, the two sides would agree on a panel of 39 arbitrators, up from 23, but the city now says the union has been too slow to approve arbitrators’ names. In the 2011-12 school year, the two sides seated just 24 arbitrators, and last year 20, the suit said.

In a letter to the schools chancellor this month, Michael Mulgrew, president of the union, laid the blame on the city, saying the process of selecting arbitrators “would be expedited” if school officials proposed better candidates. He also said that fewer arbitrators would be needed if the city processed the cases more efficiently, and that the shortage would not be as bad had several arbitrators not left because the state had not paid them.

Tom Dunn, a spokesman for the New York State Education Department, acknowledged on Friday that the state was behind in payments, because of budgetary issues. “We have a set amount that we can spend,” Mr. Dunn said.

Going forward, Mr. Dunn said, the process for paying arbitrators will be “much smoother and better functioning than it had been.”

The relationship between the Bloomberg administration and the teachers’ unionhas taken on a more vitriolic tenor of late, with both sides describing hearing notes of personal acrimony creeping in between Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Mulgrew. The two clashed in January when their attempts to negotiate a new teacher evaluation system fell apart at the last minute. The city’s teachers have been without a labor contract since 2009, and like other labor leaders, Mr. Mulgrew appears to be hoping the next mayor is friendlier to municipal unions.

“It’s a shame the mayor is wasting public resources on this frivolous lawsuit,” Mr. Mulgrew said in a statement, “but we can all take comfort from the fact that Bloomberg will soon be only a bad memory to the people who care about schools.”

Jake Goldman, a mayoral spokesman, said: “This is not about politics. This is about who is standing up for New York City schoolchildren. We are going to keep doing, for the next 95 days, everything we can to continue to make these schools better and this is one of the ways we’re doing that.”

Kate Taylor contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 27, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misidentified the state for which Tom Dunn is an Education Department spokesman. It is New York, not New Jersey.

Teachers union refusing to assist with 400 misconduct cases
By Yoav Gonen
September 27, 2013 | 10:59am
LINK

UFT President Michael Mulgrew

The city’s public school system has a backlog of more than 400 teacher disciplinary cases because the teachers union is refusing to help appoint hearing officers as required, a new lawsuit brought by the city charges.

The foot-dragging by the United Federation of Teachers has led to the appointment of just 19 arbitrators to oversee teacher misconduct and incompetence cases – well shy of the minimum number of 39 agreed to back in 2010, the Manhattan court papers say.

“Year after year they keep delaying and the backlog keeps getting bigger,” Mayor Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio appearance Friday. “It prevents having a fair hearing for teachers who should be cleared of any charges, it allows teachers who should not be in front of our kids through incompetence or inappropriate conduct to continue collecting a paycheck (and) the public’s paying for all of this.”

The UFT and Department of Education agreed in 2010 to jointly appoint a panel of 39 arbitrators to expedite a severe backlog in disciplinary cases.

At the time, hundreds of teachers awaiting trial were paid to do nothing in detention centers throughout the city known derisively as “rubber rooms” – because teachers said they could bounce off the walls out of boredom.

Since then, however, there were only 24 arbitrators appointed in 2011-12, 20 in 2011-12 – and currently there are only 19, according to city officials.

“They’ve shown their true colors,” fumed Bloomberg. “We’ve got a small number of teachers who are not up to the job and should not be in front of kids, and they hurt the reputation of the vast majority of the teachers who are doing a spectacular job.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew responded by saying:

“How typical of Bloomberg. The administration mismanages the disciplinary process, and in its last days tries to blame someone else for it. It’s a shame the mayor is wasting public resources on this frivolous lawsuit, but we can all take comfort from the fact that Bloomberg will soon be only a bad memory to the people who care about schools.”

Saturday, September 28, 2013

City Sues UFT for Failure to Assign Rubber Room Arbitrators


City Sues UFT for Failure to Assign Rubber Room Arbitrators


LINK
NEW YORK—The city sued the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) on Friday for what it says is a failure of the UFT to uphold its end of an agreement to increase arbitrators. The arbitrators were to expedite the processing of teachers awaiting disciplinary hearings, allowing them to get back to the classroom, or be taken off the payroll.
In 2010, the UFT and the city struck a deal to end Temporary Reassignment Centers, also known as the “rubber room,” which is the place teachers go to await the outcome of disciplinary hearings. The city had taken heat for the rubber rooms after investigations found teachers spent years being paid for doing administrative work.
As part of the agreement, the UFT agreed to increase the number of arbitrators from 23 to 39, a move aimed to expedite the process.
According to the city, the UFT has failed to keep its end of the bargain. 
In a complaint to be filed today, the city charges only 19 arbitrators are on the books, well short of the 39 agreed upon. In 2011-2012 there were 24 arbitrators set, however, they were not seated at the same time, according to the complaint. 
Arbitrators are appointed only if the UFT and the NY Department of Education can agree on the person. The complaint alleges the UFT and the Department of Education were to meet at least twice a year to select arbitrators, something that has not happened. 
“They just keep delaying,” Mayor Michael Blomberg said on his Friday morning radio show. “The backlog keeps getting bigger. And it just prevents having a fair hearing for teachers who should be cleared of any charges, it allows teachers who should not be in front of our kids through incompetence or inappropriate conduct to continue collecting a paycheck.” 
In a Sept. 19 letter, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said he would agree to 30 arbitrators, the minimum required from the 2010 agreement. However, the UFT failed to agree, according to the complaint. 
Epoch Times reached out to the UFT for comment, but the union did not respond by press time.

Lawsuit alleges union is breaking promises in ‘rubber room’ deal

A “big deal” forged to shutter the city’s infamous rubber rooms more than three years ago is getting dragged down by the city teachers union, the city charges in a lawsuit filed today.
Department of Education lawyers say the United Federation of Teachers has failed to hold up a key part of the agreement, which was struck with joint praise from Mayor Bloomberg and union President Michael Mulgrew in April 2010 to speed up the disciplinary process for teachers whom the city wants to fire. At the time, the city estimated it was spending $30 million a year to pay 550 teachers who were removed from the classroom and who languished — sometimes for years — in reassignment centers known as “rubber rooms” while they awaited a hearing.
A major element of the deal was to increase the pool of mutually acceptable arbitrators — from 23 to 39 — who rule on cases against teachers charged with incompetence or misconduct. But three years after the reforms were scheduled to take place, that number has actually fallen to 19 — while the number of teachers facing trials stands at over 400.
The lawsuit alleges that the UFT has repeatedly balked at approving enough arbitrators to hit the new target. Last month, the union agreed to invite just 14 arbitrators, and the selection process stalled entirely this month.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew has argued that the union cannot agree to the arbitrators whom the city proposes. In a letter to Chancellor Dennnis Walcott earlier this week, Mulgrew said the selection process would be faster “if the DOE would propose more qualified candidates.”
The arbitrator pool has also shrunk because the state does not always pay arbitrators for their work in a timely fashion. The State Education Department, which is responsible for the payments, recently reported a $2 million deficit in the “Tenured Teacher Hearing” fund, which is used to pay arbitrators in disciplinary cases.
A group of arbitrators are suing the state over the payments, including one who’s owed $200,000 in backpay. ”The reason many of the very senior arbitrators [sic] no longer do these cases is the state would not pay us based on the work that we had done,” former arbitrator Arthur Riegel told WNYC.
Perhaps as a result, few people have wanted to take the job when it is offered. Just eight of the 14 arbitrators offered the position in August accepted.
“Many arbitrators are reluctant to work with the DOE,” UFT spokesman Dick Riley said today.
As a result, the speed of the disciplinary process appears to have barely budged since 2010.The department reported in its lawsuit that there are currently more than 400 teachers who require discipline hearings with the 19 arbitrators, and lawyers said they expect another 150 cases in the near future.
The city said it is spending $8 million a year to pay teachers who have been removed from the classroom while they await arbitration.
Riley said the current pool of arbitrators would be “enough” if the department would consider using a less aggressive legal process called mediation. In that process, the teacher and the city first try to reach a settlement at a pretrial hearing to avoid starting arbitration. Union lawyers said that of 55 cases that went through this process this summer, 39 reached settlement without arbitration. In some cases, teachers agreed to resign or retire, while in others teachers accepted suspensions before returning to the classroom, union officials said.
“If the DOE was truly interested in in resolving cases efficiently, it would agree to our proposal to keep this process in place permanently,”  Mulgrew wrote to Walcott this week.
The city’s complete lawsuit is below:

Friday, September 27, 2013

ATR Meeting Sept. 29 5-7PM

ATR Chapter Committee
9/29 at Pita Hot One, 73-43 Main St., Queens, between Jewel Ave and Union Turnpike.
5 - 7 pm
 
Open to all displaced ("excessed") DOE staff being United Federation of Teachers, UFT members, (guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, Absent Counselor Reserve, ACRs, teachers, librarians, Absent Teacher Reserve, ATRs), regardless of borough.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Francesco Portelos' 3020-a is on For September 23, 2013

UPDATE 2020:

Francesco Portelos was given a $10,000 fine after being charged with 38 misconduct allegations that showed him to be a harassing embarrassment to the Department of Education. After his hearing was over he formed a mob to threaten anyone who complained about him.

See here:

Editorial: Is Francesco Portelos a Danger to Tenure Law? by Betsy Combier



Francesco Portelos and His "Victim Complex"



EDITORIAL: Cyberstalker Francesco Portelos and His Blame Game Must Be Stopped


Contact me if you are being charged with 3020-a, have had a bad experience with Francesco Portelos, or have been in a "new" rubber room at betsy.combier@gmail.com

Betsy Combier, betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.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


Francesco has an open and public hearing, which means that anyone may attend. Here is how to be there:

The hearing takes place at 49 -51 Chambers Street. The entrance to use is 49, right next door to the parking lot (where the crew for Law and Order park, and tape the show).

Go through security - dont bring anything sharp or any recording devices - and take the elevator to the 6th floor. Go through the door straight ahead, take a right and then left. Walk to the end of the long hallway, take a left, and that is where the waiting room is.

sign in, and ask the receptionist for the room number for Arbitrator Busto. Sit down and wait for Francesco.

At or before 10AM, all who are there to attend the hearing will go to the room at which Felice Busto, Attorney Jordana Shenkman, and the transcriptionist from Ubiqus will be setting up. Francesco's Attorney is from NYSUT and his name is Chris Callaghy (picture of him with me taken by David Pakter in 2008 is below). Chris no longer has a beard.



Busto will give directions for the public - no talking, no faces, no taping, etc., and the hearing will begin.

Francesco's Principal, Linda Hill, is being cross-examined by Chris. She testified previously on direct.

There will be a lunch break, and then the hearing will continue possibly until 5PM. Jordana has a right to re-direct, and Chris then may do re-cross.

All members of the public must remain silent but may take notes of any testimony or anything he/she wants.

See you all there!!

Betsy