Chancellor Carranza is Criticized For Deplorable Conditions at School For Special Needs Kids

Richard Carranza

UPDATE:
 DOE pours $16M into rotting school for special needs students after Post exclusive
By Susan Edelman and Selim Algar, August 9, 2019

From Betsy Combier:
This man is a disaster for NYC, the most diverse city in the nation. We value the unique qualities of kids with special needs, ultra special needs, no needs, whatever.
NYC Department of Education Chancellor Richard Carranza seems to not value any child who may not have a voice.
This is ugly stuff. He should be fired.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
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Carranza under fire for ‘deplorable’ conditions at school for disabled

NY POST, July 28, 2019
Lawmakers blasted schools Chancellor Richard Carranza on Sunday for ignoring a city councilman’s complaints about the “deplorable” conditions at a Queens public school for disabled kids — as exclusively revealed by The Post.

State Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr. (D-Queens) said his reaction to the paper’s expose “went from surprised to disappointed to depressed, because these children really need the best optimal education.”

“When something is brought to the chancellor’s attention — with the letter not being answered — for the sake of the children, you have to act on it,” Addabbo said.

City Councilman Joseph Borelli (R-Staten Island) also accused Carranza of wrongly focusing his attention on controversial diversity initiatives, including a plan to eliminate the test for admission to the city’s elite high schools.

“Perhaps this could take up more of the chancellor’s time than worrying about how many Asian kids are in Stuyvesant,” Borelli said.

The Post report quoted Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) as saying that Carranza never responded to a May 1, 2018, letter about the PS 9 building at 58-74 57th St. in Maspeth, where about 200 kids attend classes.

“The classrooms are falling apart, there aren’t enough bathrooms, and the cafeteria and kitchen are partitioned off in the deplorable excuse for a gymnasium,” Holden wrote.

Holden also provided video of a tattered bench used to change kids’ diapers next to open urinals in a bathroom, and of a teacher describing how so much dust from truck traffic in the industrial neighborhood seeps into classrooms that “We can taste it.”

Crumbling walls at PS 9

PS 9 is part of the citywide District 75, which the DOE says offers “highly specialized instructional support for students with significant challenges,” including autism, severe cognitive delays, emotional problems and other disabilities.

Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn), a former chair of the Committee on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, called for a “full investigation,” saying the school appeared to resemble something from “a Dickens novel.”

“Let’s not forget what happened decades ago at Willowbrook on Staten Island,” he said, referring to the infamous institution for mentally ill kids that sparked nationwide reforms.

“We can never treat our children like this.”

Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Education Committee, said the situation at PS 9 reinforced his calls for the hiring of a “compliance czar” to ensure that the needs of disabled kids are met.

Tricia Gaudio and her daughter Ava Marie in front of Walter Reed Public School 9.J.C. Rice

“Clearly, folks are dropping the ball,” he said.

“And so the fact that we are failing to meet the needs of children, to me speaks to a greater and deeper culture of incompetence, indifference and inertia.”

As The Post was preparing its report on Friday, City Hall reached out to Holden and said Carranza wanted to sit down with him to discuss PS 9.

Holden’s deputy chief of staff, Daniel Kurzyna, said Sunday that no meeting had yet been scheduled, but credited The Post as “the reason why we see a response from this administration.”

“We want to see these kids with special needs get a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility,” he said.

Kurzyna also said that Holden has proposed “a great location” in a former factory in nearby Glendale.

DOE spokeswoman Danielle Filson said, “We’ve invested $14 million in the historic PS 9 building so that it is a safe, clean and comfortable space for students to learn.”

“We continue to work closely with [the School Construction Authority] to make improvements, and we’re in ongoing discussions with Council Member Holden,” she added.

Additional reporting by Rich Calder


DOE pours $16M into rotting school for special needs students after Post exclusive
By Susan Edelman and Selim Algar




August 9, 2019

Susan Holtzman, Counsel To The District 75 Superintendent, and SCI Investigators, are Cited For Denying Due Process to a Paraprofessional

Every once in a while - like once a year or so - the UFT wins a case, to prove that they "care" about contract violations. The UFT website posted the matter below on Dec. 19, 2013, but the para was terminated in 2010. So I guess they dug this case up after breaking the dusty lock on the vault in the basement of 52 Broadway. Jack Tillem has not been an Arbitrator on the 3020-a panel for several years, but maybe he is still doing grievances. Haven't seen him at 49-51 Chambers Street (and I'm there a lot).

Anyway, congrats to Jeff Huart for winning this grievance, and thanks to Arbitrator Jack Tillem and UFT Grievance Department Director Ellen Gallin Procida for citing SCI and former DOE FOIL Records Access Officer and now Counsel to District 75 Susan Holtzman for violating the due process rights of a UFT member. Happens too often, this denial of due process...stay tuned for the story of a sexual assault by an SCI Investigator in an elementary school in Brooklyn.

Betsy Combier

Due process works for Bronx para

Returns to classroom as rationale for termination ruled ‘fatally flawed’

BY DOROTHY CALLACI | DECEMBER 19, 2013 NEW YORK TEACHER ISSUE

A District 75 paraprofessional in the Bronx who was terminated by the Department of Education in October 2010 is back in the classroom with full back pay and benefits after an arbitrator ruled that the DOE investigation resulting in her firing was “fatally flawed” and that the discharge was not based on “good and sufficient reason after due consideration.”

Jeff Huart

In filing the grievance, the UFT contended that the DOE violated the paraprofessional’s due-process rights as set out in the collective-bargaining agreement. UFT Special Representative for District 75 Jeff Huart declared the decision a “huge victory that clearly states that the contract is paramount in establishing guidelines that ensure our paras receive their due-process rights.”

The paraprofessional, who asked not to be named, had a five-year, unblemished record when she received the termination notice stating that “you lied to investigators” and notifying her that she had been put on the DOE ineligible list and blocked from any future employment in the city school system.

The determination that she lied was based solely on claims by an investigator with the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation of the New York City School District. That investigator concluded the paraprofessional had lied after questioning her on two occasions during his investigation of an unrelated case. Arbitrator Jack Tillem charged that the resulting termination was tantamount to the investigator “morphing into judge, jury and executioner.”

In her testimony at the arbitration hearing, Susan Holtzman, the counsel to the District 75 superintendent, acknowledged that she had accepted the special commissioner’s report accusing the paraprofessional of lying without further investigation and had drafted the letter of termination based solely on that report.

In his decision, the arbitrator noted that it was never made clear what the paraprofessional had lied about, nor was she allowed to confront the person who accused her of lying.

“The entire matter,” he wrote, “is marinated in hearsay.”

Citing the seriousness of Holtzman’s action, which deprived the paraprofessional of her livelihood, Tillem asked, “The question cannot help but nag: Wasn’t the grievant worth a separate investigation culminating in a separate report?”

UFT Grievance Department Director Ellen Gallin Procida characterized the termination as “an egregious lack of due process — a case of guilt by association designed to prove someone else guilty.”

She said the arbitrator’s reversal of the termination “upholds the contract’s guarantee of a paraprofessional’s right to an open-minded and fair investigation under the due-consideration safeguard.”