Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Principals and Sex in NYC Public Schools - The DOE Must Fire Anne Seifullah

Principal Anne Seifullah changes her image so that she can keep her job amidst sexting and trysts in the school, Robert Wagner Secondary School of Arts and Technology in Long Island City. Take a look at the new picture published in the POST, the second picture below.

In order to keep to their standards of zero tolerance for this kind of activity, the NYC DOE must fire her. The nexus to her job is that she is a role model for all the people in her building, and she decided to have sexual relations, using her power to "influence" other principals, employees and even a parent to do her whatever.

Get rid of her.... And Assistant Principal Dany Velazquez, an assistant principal at PS 5.

Betsy Combier


Principal Seifullah

The "New" Principal Anne Schmutz Seifullah


 

Second principal booted amid school sex probe



LINK

A Bronx assistant principal has been booted from his post for traveling to a Queens school allegedly to have sex with the principal there — as sexts between the pair surfaced Tuesday.
Dany Velazquez, an assistant principal at PS 5, has been reassigned pending a city Education Department probe into his alleged sexcapades with Annie Schmutz Seifullah, which were first reported by The Post.
Seifullah, principal of the Robert Wagner Secondary School of Arts and Technology in Long Island City, had already been reassigned amid the shocking allegations that she had sex with two men, including Velazquez, at her school during class hours.
Seifullah’s ex-boyfriend, the dad of a student at her school, described for The Post alleged raunchy texts between Seifullah and Velazquez, including one in which he wrote, “Next time I want to f–k you in the office.’’
Seifullah allegedly responded, “First you have to [perform oral sex],’’ the ex said.
Seifullah told The Post on Tuesday that she’s simply the victim of her ex, who used her money and then exposed her kinky hobbies when she quit paying his way.
NYC Rubber Room Reporter, May 4, 2014 
Thanks to reporters who write about DOE employees, we can get information about people -Anne Schmutz Seifullah, Anissa Chalmers-Reilly, Joe Baranello - who believe
they are "role models", and who are anything but that, yet keep their jobs.
 
Betsy Combier
 
Anne Schmutz Seifullah
 
 

Principal probed over sex in school during class hours

May 4, 2014
A Queens principal was yanked from her school amid shocking allegations she had sex with a guard, an assistant principal and a parent, had trysts in school while classes were in session, and had photos of her sexcapades on department laptops.
Annie Schmutz Seifullah, 35, principal of the 7th- to 12th-grade Robert Wagner Secondary School of Arts and Technology, in Long Island City, was escorted from the school Thursday as investigators seized computers and other electronics from her office and home, The Post has learned.
“We are appalled by these disturbing allegations and acted swiftly to remove the principal while the matter is under investigation,” a Department of Education spokesman said. “This type of alleged behavior is completely unacceptable for any DOE employee.”
Her sudden removal comes after a romance-gone-bad with a student’s dad. The angry ex turned over three DOE laptops he obtained while living with Seifullah, including MacBooks containing photos of herself in racy lingerie and in various sex acts, including a threesome, he told The Post.
He also gave investigators a video and audio tape in which a woman he identified as Seifullah acknowledged engaging in oral sex with an NYPD school-safety agent in the school security office, and with a visiting assistant principal in a book-storage room during school hours.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know why I thought it was OK,” she tells the furious dad in the taped conversation, after he accuses her of cheating on him.
“You gave him [expletive deleted] while my child was in the building,” he roars at one point.
The dad, a fortysomething entrepreneur, also gave excerpts from a letter he says Seifullah wrote, admitting she hooked up twice with an “old lover.”
“The second [time] was a visit to my school that led to a sexual encounter which included brief oral sex in a hidden location,” the letter states.
The dad, whose name is being withheld to protect his child’s privacy, said he came forward because Seifullah — the mom of a toddler son — “played me for a fool.”
“Ms. Seifullah clearly used her power and position as principal to . . . seek several sexual partners at her school,” he charged.

This racy photo of Seifullah was found on her school computer.
The principal helped the dad financially, once giving him $10,000, plus $500 and $300 money orders, records show. Her salary is $136,959.
On April 11, 2013, she testified in Queens Family Court as a character witness for the dad in his custody fight. She spoke as both his child’s principal and as “his girlfriend.”
“So far our relationship has been discreet and people don’t know about it,” she testified, insisting that his child would get no special treatment.
City policy does not forbid educators to date colleagues or the parents of students. However, if favoritism or mistreatment occurs, the employee could be cited for a conflict of interest. Having sex inside a school or placing sexual images on school equipment could lead to misconduct charges.
An insider said it was “highly unusual” for a principal to be removed pending a probe, and indicates allegations of “extreme misconduct.”
But on Facebook last July, she posted a photo of herself with the father, naming him and declaring with a heart icon: “A single dad walked in the office of my school and swept me off my feet.”
Seifullah took down her Facebook page after The Post called to ask about the scandal. “I can’t talk without permission,” she said.
Seifullah filed for divorce last summer and moved in with the student’s father. They split up in March and her divorce is pending.
From Betsy Combier:
Thanks to Susan Edelman for continuing to show how the NYC Department of Education allows certain people to make the DOE "look bad" and not others.
 
Thanks, Sue and the NY POST!
 
-Nothing
DOE Attorney Joseph Baranello

 
-Nothing
 

NYS Education Department Gags Principals From Saying How Bad Standardized English Tests Were In April 2014

Principal Bob Bender
 

LINK

A Conversation About Tests That Educators Want to Have, but Can’t



Let’s talk about testing.

“I want to,” said Bob Bender, principal of Public School 11 in Chelsea. “I want my voice to be heard about how outraged I was about the exam.”

So by all means, speak up.

He sighed.

“I can’t go against the state embargo,” Mr. Bender said.

By state order, teachers and principals may not disclose any contents of the three days of standardized English tests that were given at the beginning of April.

Under many circumstances, this might be considered a favor to humankind: Few subjects are as fraught as standardized testing, with no end to the crossed wires of ideology, self-interest and strong opinions about arcane matters (how many “plausible distractors” — wrong answers that look as if they could be right — should be included in the multiple choices?) and ultimately, what is, or ought to be, at stake.

But it is hard to ignore an uprising by 37 principals from schools in Manhattan, as well as others from Brooklyn, who say they are not opposed to accountability or testing, but have spoken in blunt terms about the design and quality of this year’s state English tests. Among them was Mr. Bender.

“The third-grade test was atrocious,” he said.

While 40 or so principals come from just a fraction of the city’s schools, that is more schools than most districts in the country have. And most striking is who is sounding the alarm: Public school principals, as a group, are generally not militant.

“In some ways the city is having a conversation, but nobody knows what they’re really talking about because they can’t see it,” said Mark Federman, principal of the East Side Community High School, which goes from sixth to 12th grade. “We’re talking about a document that is under lock and key.”

P.S. 118 principal Elizabeth Garraway (left) with P.S. 321 principal Liz Phillips at an open house for P.S. 118
last year. Phillips has said she'll help guide the new school, which holds its ribbon cutting on Sept. 21.


Elizabeth Phillips, the principal of P.S. 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, for 15 years, wrote an essay critical of the tests that was published in The New York Times last month. It began: “I’d like to tell you what was wrong with the tests my students took last week, but I can’t.”

Ms. Phillips blamed the order on a contract between the state and the test’s publisher, Pearson, but a spokesman for the New York Education Department says that isn’t the case.

“Pearson did not do it,” said Tom Dunn, the department’s spokesman. “It’s our policy that does not allow teachers to talk about the test questions.” The purpose is to preserve much of the test for use in future years and to avoid encouraging schools to use it as a blueprint for preparations. In the past, when the state made the exams public within a few days, he said, “the test became the curriculum.”

Sometime over the summer, the state will release at least 25 percent of the questions and answers, along with annotations explaining why answers were right or wrong. John B. King Jr., the state education commissioner, said he has found the criticism baffling.

“Folks are avoiding having the conversation about the actual items,” Mr. King said.

How can they have that conversation if the test won’t be out for months?

“We have posted 25 percent of the test from last year, the questions, the possible answers,” Mr. King said. “We give a narrative explanation of why the correct answers were correct, and the incorrect answers were incorrect.”

That is far more than most states release, Mr. Dunn said. And few put materials on their tests’ design online, as New York does at engageny.org. “One of my frustrations with the way the discourse has played out is that there hasn’t been a lot of discourse about the design criteria,” Mr. King said.

Mr. Federman said principals were more interested in discussing the specifics of this year’s test than what happened last year, and the release in the summertime of a portion of the questions and the answers is no particular help to teachers and students in finding out what they need to work on. The Common Core curriculum adopted in New York is intended to encourage students to get a strong grip on the meaning of a piece of writing. Yet, Ms. Phillips said, too much of the test focused on small details and structure rather than its overall meaning.

In a joint statement issued by the 37 principals, they noted that “there were product placements (i.e. Nike, Barbie) woven throughout the exam.” But Mr. Dunn, the spokesman, said that any brands mentioned had been written into the original articles used in the exam. “There are no product placement deals between us, Pearson or anyone else,” he said. “No deals. No money.”

These people need to start talking to one another, with everyone looking at the same pages — in the same school year.