The Partnership of Bully Power and Media Can Convict a Teacher at 3020-a

Bullies have the right of way in New York City, it seems to me after looking into and working on more than 60 3020-a cases of corporal punishment or verbal abuse.

Eileen Ghastin

The case of Eileen Ghastin comes to mind. I've written about her in a previous post after a student threatened Eileen in her classroom with beating her up with the cast on his arm, and he knew how to box, he told her. She was terrified, so she believed that there was only one way to stop him, and that was to say something that would make him re-consider. here is part of the record testimony:

"The teen then “went berserk,” Ghastin said. “He jumped out of his chair, rushed toward me and raised his arm,” encased in a hard cast from elbow to hand.

“I’m going to beat the s–t out of you,” Ghastin quoted him as yelling. “I’m a boxer, so I can ­really f–k you up. "I am really going to do a lot of damage."

Eileen was frozen with fear that she was really going to be hurt. And then, she said, " I thought to myself, I have to say something quickly or else I am going to die. --you know. So, I realized, you know, that he is in a very--a blind rage. If I say something strong enough to him, he will stop.
I said, "If you beat me, I will kill you." 

This statement stopped him."

However the Arbitrator, Richard Williams concluded that Eileen's words embarrassed the student and created a sense of terror in the student and all the other students in the class, and gave her 4 weeks suspension without pay. The lawyer on this case defending Ms. Ghastin was NYSUT Attorney Jennifer Hogan.

But in the record there is testimony that the Student, Student A, had read the article published in the New York Post on May 29, 2016:

My student threatened to beat me — and I’m the one in trouble

and Arbitrator Williams was convinced that reading the article on May 29 2016 was enough for him to conclude he must punish Ms. Ghastin for embarrassing the student.

Huh? Read the Williams' support for entering the POST article at the hearing (Kereen Evans-McKay was the Department attorney making the argument):

"21 MS. HOGAN: …I think

22 there's a distinction between the question of
23 how did you feel as a result of statements being
24 made to you in the classroom versus how did you
25 feel about reading about an allegation contained

in a newspaper. And so I understand your point
3 about the Chancellor's Regulations deriving from
4 the allegations, but here it appears to me that
5 the Department's trying to argue that uncharged
6 conduct, which is notoriety, can be used in
7 making a determination as to whether or not
8 there was a Chancellor's Regulation violation.

MS. HOGAN: ...Here
21 counsel is taking it a step further and asking
22 that question about how the witness felt as a
23 result of reading the newspaper article.

24 THE HEARING OFFICER: But that's a
25 consequence

THE HEARING OFFICER: That question is
6 being answered because in my mind, should I find
7 a violation of the Chancellor's Reg., the impact
8 of the incident and the natural flowing
9 consequences that the student experienced and
10 the impact on that student's future really going
11 forward and interacting with teachers, is
12 relevant in the determination.

MS. EVANS-MCKAY: Okay. So at the end
5 of the day, the Department has to prove for
6 verbal abuse which includes how the verbal abuse
7 by the teacher made the student/students feel.
8 If there is, if there was a follow up to the
9 incident, an incident, there's a continuation of
10 the incident that was now publicized that also
11 bleeds into how the student may have felt by the
12 incident, both the incident that happened inside
13 the classroom and now something that's now been
14 publicized about the incident. So I'd like to

15 be able to ask the student about his feelings
16 about what happened in the classroom and
17 obviously we can only get how this affects him
18 educationally if we get his feelings about what
19 happened and what he read. I think it,20 everything has to be considered in its totality"

(Transcript, pp. 469-471, 2-3-17)

and then shockingly, Williams tried to get some emotional damages to penalize the Respondent, Eileen Ghastin:

"THE HEARING OFFICER: What ways have 5 you been affected?
6 WITNESS: Well I haven't been affected
7 at all physically. Honestly, I just thought it
8 was a stupid thing to still bring up. I'm not
9 holding a grudge. What was said was said, and
10 it was last year. I think it should have been
11 dropped last year. 

19 A. By the time I saw The Post, I was confused
20 on how she said the story had gone or what had
21 happened. But then just a week after that, I was
22 done. I just let it go." (transcript, pp. 472-473)

"THE HEARING OFFICER: She can--did
4 your friends saying stuff about it change your
5 mind about how it impacted you?
6 WITNESS: No. Every time they brought
7 it up, I said, "Yeah. That was me that got the
8 teacher fired." But I just leave it as that."  (transcript, p. 475)

The arbitrator agreed with the Department that the incident and the write-up in the POST must have embarrassed the Student, and gave Ms. Ghastin the penalty of 4-weeks’ suspension without pay, altering her unblemished career forever.

That Williams used the NY POST to give a penalty of 4-weeks' suspension is absurd, in my opinion. Ms. Ghastin has appealed this decision.

Betsy Combier

betsy.combier@gmail.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

Bullying on the rise in NYC schools, reports jump 10% compared to 2016: survey

Ben Chapman, NY DAILY NEWS

More city students experienced bullying at their schools this year compared to last year, a Daily News analysis of data shows.

Responses by students to four bullying-related questions on the public schools’ 2017 school survey reveal that more kids are encountering the dangerous phenomenon in their schools.

This year, 81% of 433,715 kids in grades 6-12 who responded to the Education Department’s annual NYC School Survey reported that students harass, bully and intimidate their peers.

That’s a jump from the 71% of 434,693 students who filled out the surveys in 2016.

Critics of the city’s handling of school safety said the figures show bullying is on the rise and public school students are at risk.


“Under Mayor de Blasio’s leadership, our schools continue to get less and less safe,” said Jeremiah Kittredge, CEO of the pro-charter school lobbying group Families for Excellent Schools.


“The mayor must face facts, and act immediately to keep children safe from violence and bullying,” he added.


The city conducts its annual school survey to gather feedback from students, teachers and parents. Education Department officials published the 2017 survey results online on Aug. 8.


Students’ responses to multiple-choice questions on the survey showed increased harassment in public schools, although there were slight changes to the questions from 2016 to 2017.


Education Department spokesman Will Mantell said the city made the changes to more accurately capture schools’ quality, but argued the changes made it impossible to compare results.


“It’s simply not valid to compare multiple-choice survey questions that have different choices,” he said.


“Over the 11 years of the school survey, on questions that have remained the same, the percentage of students feeling safe in school hallways and teachers feeling that order and discipline are maintained have both increased,” Mantell noted.


In 2016, 51% of students said kid bullied each other at school “because of their race or ethnicity.”


On a similar question in 2017, 65% of students said kids bullied each other at school over “race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or citizenship/immigration status.”


Likewise, in 2016, 55% of students said kids bullied each other at school because of differences “like national origin, citizenship/immigration status, religion, disability, or weight.”


On a similar question in 2017, 73% of students said kids bullied each other at school because of differences “like disability, or weight.”


And in 2016, 46% of students said that kids at their school “harass, bully, or intimidate each other because of their gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.”


That question was unchanged for 2016, when 59% of students reported gender-based bullying at their schools.

Teacher Glenn Storman Wins in Court After Fighting the NYC BOE on False Corporal Punishment Charges

Congratulations Mr. Storman!

We now know how the NYC Board of Education works to get rid of teachers "they" dont want: write TAC memos which'prove' an allegation (see my articles on the Teacher Performance Unit and the TPU, and "Investigating the Investigators")that may or may not be true. What is striking about the case of Mr. Storman is the fact that well-known "Gotcha Squad" OSI-former-police-detective Dennis Boyles is mentioned as changing his mind about what to charge Mr. Storman:
"An investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Special Investigations ultimately substantiated the charges of corporal punishment. But in an apparent change of heart, the investigator who wrote that report, Dennis Boyles, testified during the appeal process that he did not believe Mr. Storman’s actions rose to the level of corporal punishment, according to the May 11 ruling."

See my article about Workplace Defamation Lawsuits and, if you see Mr. Condon or Mr. Boyles, give them the URL or a copy?

Congratulations also to New York State Supreme Court Judge Shirley Werner Kornreich for seeing that the investigators who accused Mr. Storman of corporal punishment after he waved a rolled up piece of paper in the air as "irrational"(read the entire decision below).

May 28, 2009
Teacher Resists a Charge of Corporal Punishment
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ, NY TIMES

When Glenn Storman, a guidance counselor at Public School 212 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, came across an unruly student cursing at a substitute teacher in 2004, he ordered the boy to “zip it” and brandished a rolled-up piece of paper, thinking that would be the last he heard of the encounter.

But five years later, Mr. Storman, 57, is embroiled in a legal dispute over allegations that he committed corporal punishment. A 27-year veteran of the school system, Mr. Storman denies hitting the student and is seeking to erase an unsatisfactory rating that a principal gave him. The Department of Education, however, has defended the rating, arguing that Mr. Storman did indeed touch the student, who was in the fifth grade.

The case shows the difficulties teachers can face in disputing the ratings they receive each year from principals. The ratings can determine whether they are eligible for lucrative teaching opportunities outside of the normal school year. The case also sheds light on the fine lines of interpretation surrounding the question of corporal punishment: Did Mr. Storman’s paper brush against the student? If so, was that intentional, and did it rise to the level of corporal punishment?

Teachers who receive unsatisfactory ratings are allowed to appeal to a court, and this month Acting Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich ruled in Mr. Storman’s favor, saying she did not find evidence of corporal punishment. The unsatisfactory rating, wrote the judge, (pictured at right) “shocks the conscience, was arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.”

The Department of Education said last week that it was reviewing the decision and declined to comment further.

In October 2004, Mr. Storman entered a special education classroom at P.S. 212 after hearing a student yelling. When he stepped into the room, he saw the student on his knees on a chair cursing at the teacher. Holding the piece of paper in his hand, Mr. Storman recalled in an interview, he told the student to be quiet. The student moved forward as he reprimanded him, but Mr. Storman said he did not remember coming into contact with him.

Mr. Storman said he would not have hit the student because he had experience with special education students and did not believe force was the best way of resolving disputes.

“I don’t need to do anything more than to look at them and say, ‘Listen, you know to stop right now,’ ” he said.

Mr. Storman said he had been carrying the rolled-up paper while walking down the hallway. In previous statements to school officials he said he “may have touched” the student’s mouth with the paper, according to the court ruling. He says now that he does not believe that was so.

The boy’s father complained to the school’s principal, who asked for an inquiry, and in 2005, Mr. Storman, who is still a guidance counselor at P.S. 212, received an unsatisfactory rating in his annual review. He appealed, but the Department of Education stood by its determination that he had committed corporal punishment.

Mr. Storman appealed again in 2006, seeking $100,000 in compensation because, he said, the unsatisfactory rating prevented him from getting work as a summer school teacher and a tutor, work which he estimates had added about $25,000 a year to his income. He has also filed a lawsuit in federal court, which is still pending.

Mr. Storman was given another unsatisfactory rating in 2008 after his principal said he had inappropriately yelled at a student, according to Mr. Storman’s lawyer, John. C. Klotz. Mr. Storman is also appealing that rating.

An investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Special Investigations ultimately substantiated the charges of corporal punishment. But in an apparent change of heart, the investigator who wrote that report, Dennis Boyles, testified during the appeal process that he did not believe Mr. Storman’s actions rose to the level of corporal punishment, according to the May 11 ruling.

Mr. Boyles testified in 2006 that the encounter constituted “inappropriate physical contact” but not corporal punishment, the court ruling said. Last year, Mr. Boyles reiterated his statement that he did not believe Mr. Storman’s actions amounted to corporal punishment, but added that Mr. Storman inappropriately touched the student with the paper, according to the ruling.

The Department of Education defines corporal punishment as “any act of physical force upon a pupil for the purpose of punishing that pupil.”

Mr. Boyles stated in his report that three students in the classroom at the time of the encounter could not recall seeing the paper hit the student’s face. But the fifth grader whom Mr. Storman had reprimanded told the investigator that Mr. Storman had brushed the paper against his lips and embarrassed him, though he added that he had not been physically injured.

The principal of P.S. 212 said at a hearing last year that she had recommended that Mr. Storman be given the unsatisfactory rating because of Mr. Boyles’s findings, which she believed substantiated the corporal punishment charges, according to the ruling.

Justice Kornreich called the Department of Education’s actions “irrational.”

“Nothing in the record supports the D.O.E.’s conclusion that Mr. Storman committed a substantiated act of corporal punishment,” she wrote, ordering that the unsatisfactory rating be annulled.

Mr. Storman said in an interview that the Department of Education had turned a “pebble” into a “mountain worth of wrongdoing.”

“This was a long hard, road,” he said, “and a costly one to me.”

Judge: Brush With Paper Roll Wasn't Corporal Punishment
LINK

Back in 2005, Glenn Storman, a guidance counselor at P.S. 212 in Gravesend, entered a special education classroom in which a fifth-grader was kneeling on his chair cursing at the teacher. What happened next is a matter of debate: Storman says he happened to be holding a rolled up piece of paper when he told the boy to "zip it." But according to the Times, the student says Storman "brushed the paper against his lips and embarrassed him." After an investigation, Storman got an unsatisfactory rating in his annual review, which is a big deal because it prohibits him from getting extra work as a summer school teacher and a tutor. But after a long legal battle, it looks like the alleged paper punisher will be vindicated: A judge ruled earlier this month that Storman's actions did not constitute corporal punishment, and said the unsatisfactory rating "shocks the conscience, was arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion." The Department of Education is reviewing the decision while defending another lawsuit brought by Storman in federal court. And it's unclear if the student has yet to recover from his brush with rolled up paper.

By John Del Signore in News on May 28, 2009 11:40 AM