"A For Accountability Award" and you can read all about his disturbing account of the attack on him by his employers and Principal Grismaldy Laboy-Wilson after he spoke out about the lack of resources and services for special needs students under his care.
Shame on the NYC DOE!!!!
Tenure rights for teachers is good public policy and must continue, as Arthur Goldstein says in his post below, the children in public schools of NYC need these tenured teachers to help protect the health, safety and welfare of all students.
Betsy Combier
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| Harris Lirtzman |
Teacher tenure: For good apples, too
We need to be protected from our principals
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, July 16, 2014, 4:30 AM
Every day, it seems, I read about a new lawsuit to do away with teacher tenure. The crusade reminds me of my friend Harris Lirtzman. It’s because of tenure that I teach and he doesn’t.
Harry used to be a deputy New York State controller until, in 2009, he decided to become a math teacher of special-education students in the Bronx. He offered experience and a depth of understanding few could match — but his discerning eye proved to be his downfall.
He studied the kids’ Individualized Education Programs , the documents that state what services special-education students require, and discovered that many were being underserved, possibly to save on school expenses.
Harry began asking questions — and learned exactly how unwelcome they were when, in December 2011, he was denied tenure.
Harry now tutors at-risk students in Yonkers. If he’d had tenure, he’d still be helping city public school kids.
Without tenure, I’d probably be in Harry’s place. I teach English as a second language, usually to beginners, at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, Queens.
One year, I had two students who spoke English but couldn’t read or write. One had been kicking around city schools for years.
He had a strategy for pushy teachers like me. He listened intently and participated orally as much as possible. But when I sat him down and wrote words like “mother” and “house,” he could not decode them at all. I contacted his mother, who knew of his problem. I sought help in the building.
Around this time, I read an article in the paper about ESL. I called the writer to comment. The story of my illiterate students came up, and he asked me if he could write about it. I wasn’t sure. He asked me whether I had tenure. I told him I did; he said it shouldn’t be a problem.
After the writer asked the city Education Department about my two students, I was immediately summoned into the principal’s office. He heartily condemned my ingratitude.
I could see I had broken some unwritten rule. From then on, I was scrutinized constantly. In a series of meetings in his office, the principal glared at me as we met with guidance counselors, the school psychologist and others.
No one was asking whether these kids were being helped. The only concern, apparently, was one teacher with a big mouth. For reasons never made clear to me, both kids left the school before any action became necessary.
I’m absolutely sure this principal would have fired me if it had been possible.
Shortly thereafter, I requested books for my students. For some reason, they were unavailable. My colleagues could get books, but I couldn’t. By then I had less than one class set, so students had to share them.
Months later, I learned the United Federation of Teachers contract said the school had to provide supplies. I threatened to file a grievance, something I had never done up to that point. A week after my threat, my kids got two brand-new class sets of books.
Tenure doesn’t only protect the so-called bad apples, or teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence. It protects all teachers. This is a tough job, and despite what you read in the papers, it also entails advocating for our students, your kids, whether or not the administration is comfortable with it.
I meet passionate and effective teachers everywhere I go. How many will stand up for your kids when schools don’t provide the services they need? How many will demand deserving kids pass classes even if they fail a standardized test? How many will tell state Education Commissioner John King that failing 70% of New York City’s students is not only counterintuitive, but also counterproductive?
It’s hard to say. Abolish tenure and that number will drop very close to zero.
Goldstein is an ESL teacher and UFT chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School.
On Special Education, Spurned Teacher Is Vindicated
By MICHAEL POWELL, NY TIMES, Published: July 6, 2012
A passionate fellow, this teacher warned his principal last fall that their Bronx public high school was routinely violating the rights of the most vulnerable children, those in need of special education.
For speaking up, Mr. Lirtzman — who served as a deputy comptroller before turning at age 53 to public-school teaching — saw his career ground to dust. He was denied tenure, and the principal, Grismaldy Laboy-Wilson, asked him to leave immediately. When he took his worries to the investigative arm of New York City’s Education Department, the investigators opened a file on him instead.
I wrote of Mr. Lirtzman’s struggle in May. His vindication arrived in the mail in June.
The State Education Department investigated his charges and sent him a copy of its report. It sustained Mr. Lirtzman’s allegations, one violation of state regulations after another.
High school administrators at the Institute for Law and Public Policy in the Bronx had put unqualified teachers in charge of special education classes. They pushed these students into classes crowded with general education students.
And most egregiously, when faced with teaching vacancies, the administrators brought in a conga line of substitute teachers on “rotating” one-week stints to teach special education classes. That treads perilously close to educational malpractice.
It’s hard to scrape a usable quote from the state report, which is written in Haute Bureaucratese. Perhaps better to leave the talking to Mr. Lirtzman.
“There are a lot of gray areas in teaching special education in a big city,” he says. “But a fair amount is black and white: A kid is either getting the services required by federal law or not.”
This is not quite the end of the story. The city’s Education Department evinced little interest in Mr. Lirtzman’s allegations in May. Now a spokeswoman says it has commenced its own investigation.
of School Supervisors and Administrators, which represents principals, argues that the fault lies with the city’s Education Department, which imposes budget cuts and ever more demands on principals. Higher-ups, they say, approved Ms. Laboy-Wilson’s decisions, including placing substitute teachers in special education classrooms on a rotating basis.
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| Grismaldy Laboy-Wilson |
The principal, they say, is not at fault.
“You’re going to find that the mistakes they make up above are landing on the heads of my members,” said Ernest A. Logan, the council’s president. “This is a case in point.”
The council added in a written statement that history shows that the city and the state often have “inconsistent special education guidelines.”
Let’s posit, as it is true, that Mr. Logan and his staff are intelligent advocates who often stand at the forefront of fighting the most unreasonable aspects of the Bloomberg Education Revolution. They offer a properly stout defense of their members. And they passed along internal department memos that indeed show education officials have turned a blind eye to special education violations, and have directed principals to make do in ways that skirt these regulations..
It’s also true that the city’s Education Department shoulders a heavy burden. It dedicates 18,000 teachers to special education. Each student is required by law to have an individual educational plan.
But those words — “inconsistent special education guidelines” — are a not-so-lovely euphemism for violating the rights of underserved children.
I asked the State Education Department if it is unfair to blame a principal for failing special education children.
“ are supposed to get an education, and they are supposed to get it from properly qualified teachers,” said , a department spokesman. “We said there are violations. They should fix it now.”
All of which brings us back to Mr. Lirtzman. He went to that high school in the Bronx for a job interview just before school began in 2009. The principal hired him on the spot, and a few days later, he was teaching a special education math class.
He had a wild toboggan ride of a time and came to love his students. Several parents said he was one of the best teachers their children ever had.
But when the department denied him tenure and the principal forced him out, he had enough. He retired.
His coda arrived a few days ago, again in the mail. The principal, Ms. Laboy-Wilson, filled out his final evaluation, in accordance with regulations. She rated him satisfactory over all.
On a long list, she listed him as unsatisfactory in just two areas: He did not keep a professional attitude and maintain good relations with supervisors.
If that’s the price of dissent, suffice it to say Mr. Lirtzman can live with that.
Helping Special Education Students, and Paying With His Career
By MICHAEL POWELL, NY TIMES
A former deputy state comptroller, he had decided to give public school teaching a midcareer whirl. In 2009, he landed a job as a special education math teacher at the Gautier Institute for Law and Public Policy, a high school.
He describes that first year as a cross between a hurricane and a tornado, learning his craft in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. He came to love his work.
But in September 2011, school administrators placed uncertified teachers — and a conga line of unemployed teachers who came for one-week stints — in classrooms filled with special education students, which is to say those children most in need of expert help.
This violated federal regulations.
Mr. Lirtzman, 56, decided to speak up. As he was not yet tenured, he stepped gingerly.
“I am NOT trying to cause problems,” he wrote in an e-mail to his assistant principal, but, he added, “we’re violating” court-mandated educational plans for students.
Mr. Lirtzman, unwittingly, became sand in the school’s gears.
He had received nothing but satisfactory evaluations. But in December, he said, the principal, Grismaldy Laboy-Wilson, said that she would not recommend him for tenure. The next day, she told him to leave immediately.
Mr. Lirtzman took his allegations to the , an in-house unit at the Department of Education. An investigator asked for proof.
Mr. Lirtzman handed over 20 student programs, all of which showed that administrators placed students in classrooms with uncertified teachers. The investigator informed Mr. Lirtzman that these were confidential documents.
Now I am opening an investigation of you, she told him. It would be enough to bring a smile to the lips of .
“These are the most vulnerable kids, the ones no one really looks out for,” Mr. Lirtzman said. “This wasn’t a gray legal area. This was black and white, and the decided that I was the problem.”
The portrays Mr. Lirtzman as disgruntled at his failure to get tenure, and the principal declined to comment on his allegations.
does not shoulder an easy burden trying to care for its tens of thousands of special education students. More than 18,000 teachers are dedicated to special education. Each student is required by law to have an individual educational plan, or I.E.P.
It’s also true that the city, over many administrations, has failed many of these students. Therapy is in too short supply; students — who wrestle with emotional and learning disabilities — are crammed in classrooms that are too large; and administrators sometimes conspire to push out troubled children. Graduation rates for these students are vanishingly low.
As Kim Sweet, executive director of the nonprofit Advocates for Children of New York, said: “We see cases of schools violating I.E.P.’s all the time. Our phones ring off the hook.”
Mr. Lirtzman acquired a crash course in these multiple neglects. And, although he does not phrase it so grandly, he also helped rescue a few of these children.
One such teenager, Derek Chestnut Jr., had more or less thrived in middle school, but ran upon the academic shoals at Gautier, where he was stuck in classes with a changing cast of uncertified teachers. One day, Mr. Lirtzman talked to the student’s father, Derek Chestnut Sr.
“He kept hinting something was wrong, and finally he told me there were rotating aides and teachers,” Mr. Chestnut recalled about their conversation. “The administrators told me otherwise, and I really didn’t appreciate when they tried to pull the wool over my eyes.”
Mr. Chestnut took his case to the upper reaches of the education bureaucracy. Quickly, without the usual resistance, he obtained an unusual legal letter that entitled him to place his son in a private school for special education children, all paid for by the city.
“They admitted off the bat that my son’s I.E.P. was being violated,” he said. “I owe this to one honest man, Mr. Lirtzman. He became an advocate not just for my son, but for all special education students in that school.”
Mr. Lirtzman acknowledges that he burns hot. The now says Ms. Laboy-Wilson filed a harassment charge against him after he sent her several particularly heated e-mails. Mr. Lirtzman, who showed me dozens of his e-mails, insists his correspondence included no threat.
He has worked at high levels in city and state government. He was not intent on career suicide.
“I wanted to be a teacher; I wanted to get tenure,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to commit kamikaze so that I would feel good about myself.”
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