Tweed Continues To Post Jobs, Despite Hiring Freeze

It seems that "Tweed", the nickname of the New York City Board of Education, has not been informed that there is a hiring freeze and is offering the three positions below.

I have asked this before, and will probably ask it again in the future: why do we need such a huge bureaucracy at "Central Headquarters"? Why cant we have five people at Tweed:

1) Public School Chancellor: Person with a strong teaching background, with administrative policy-making experience as well as more than 10 years working at an Executive level in an educational institution; legal background not required or recommended;

2)Assistant to the Chancellor, Academic support: An individual with an academic background in curriculum design and implementation who has taught in a public school for more than 15 years, full-time;

3) Assistant to the Chancellor, Special Needs: coordinator for implementing federal guidelines for children with special needs, special education funding (including gifted and talented), and provider procurement; Attorney with strong ethics preferred;

4) CPA/Accountant: experienced Certified Public Accountant with 20 years' experience in managing a large public institution; forensic informatics experience preferred, with a speciality in taxation;

5) Field Coordinator for Personnel and Accountability: person able to coordinate the activities of all 32 Superintendents, and provide accountability assessment for these Superintendents in terms of the success/failure to meet reasonable goals in each school within each of their districts; able to design and implement appropriate standards for personnel hiring/firing; outplacement and re-assignment strategic planning a plus; 10 years' experience in the area of human resource management required.

We all must remember Erin Einhorn's article in the NY Daily News:

18 Ed Dept. bigs making at least 190G
BY ERIN EINHORN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER, Tuesday, December 18th 2007, 12:26 PM
LINK

Educrat Marcia Lyles and Chancellor Joel Klein both make over $200,000 - more than the police commissioner.

Eighteen city education honchos were making more than $190,000 a year when classes began this September - up from just two last year, a Daily News salary analysis found.

That's more than Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and the commissioners of major city departments like Health, Housing and Children's Services, who all make $189,700.

The top execs at the Education Department's Tweed Courthouse headquarters are among only 28 noncourt officials in all of city government who have cracked the $190,000 line. Most of the others are deputy mayors.

"Tweed is too top-heavy," said William McDonald, who heads a citywide group of elected parent leaders. "I don't know what it is these people are doing, but it doesn't seem to be getting down to the kids."

One of the 18 execs has since dropped to part-time status, but even with her out of the mix, the total number drawing salaries above $180,000 has surged to 36 from 20 in September 2006.

"Given their responsibilities, the salaries are appropriate," schools spokesman David Cantor said. "You're talking about the top managers of an agency that employs 140,000 people and educates 1.1 million children."

He pointed out that the number of managers making more than $150,000 dipped from 204 early in the year to 194 in September.

School officials yesterday could not provide details on total administrative salary costs this year compared with last year. A consultant hired to cut fat claims $170 million that once went to the bureaucracy is going to classrooms.

Most of the pay increase was part of a one-year 6.5% bump that went to most city managers last year. That's compared with the 2% increase teachers collected from October 2006 to this October.

The total cost of paying the top 100 people on the school payroll surged by 7.3% from September 2006 to this September.

Those 100 execs cost nearly $18 million.

"It's way too much," said Carlton Richardson, a member of the elected Community Education Council in Brooklyn's District 18. "They need to filter that money down to schools."

City Council Education Committee Chairman Robert Jackson said he has "no problem with paying people a good salary as long as they produce."

But school officials, he said, are leading a system where only 50% of kids earned an on-time diploma last year.

"Overall, as a system, that's failure," he said.

eeinhorn@nydailynews.com

With Tina Moore and Benjamin Lesser

Instead, what we now have is a top-heavy administration that hires more people to hide the facts (the NYC BOE public relations/press office, for example) than necessary, too many people to do petty paper-pushing, and too many positions filled with "thank you" people - people whose relative/friend is owed a favor. The Department of Labor Relations has alot of information for researchers.

I also like the look at personnel issues on the "bold exec" blog, where blogger Tom Epley goes into the Personnel Matrix: "Solid personnel decisions are one of the most important management functions. They impact individual positions and the way the entire organization views the CEO."



Anyway, with so many good teachers in key subjects being terminated or let go for dubious reasons, the right thing to do would be to maximize the use of already hired in-school personnel, and go for an overhaul of "Tweed", as in letting everyone there go off the public payroll. We dont need them.

Betsy Combier

Here are jobs posted on the NYC BOE website, and open until October 28, 2009:

Developer, Progress Reports (DAAR)
Tracking Code: 6561
LINK

Job Description

Position Summary: The New York City school system is the largest in the country, composed of approximately 1.1 million students and 90,000 teachers in over 1,600 schools. In January 2003, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein launched Children First: A New Agenda for Public Schools in New York City, a multi-year reform effort aimed at significantly improving student achievement through effective teaching and learning.

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have made accountability an essential element of New York City’s education reform effort. With an investment of over $130 million from national and local foundations, New York City has embarked upon an ambitious education reform initiative that is unprecedented in urban education. The NYC Department of Education will drive and support the creation of more robust accountability tools over the next three years.

The Report Developer, Progress Reports in the Division of Accountability and Achievement Resources will be responsible for managing the report production process related to the School Progress Reports and School Surveys, which serve as accountability and performance management tools used by school administrators and educators. This will involve programming, design, and distribution of a series of reports and tools. The Report Developer also provides technical support for implementation and policy decision-making relating to the Progress Reports and School Survey. This position requires a detailed-oriented, well-organized professional with experience in Excel VBA or SAS.

Reports to: Lead Developer, Progress Reports

Direct Reports: NA

Key Relationships: Will work closely with members of the Progress Report team and other members within the Division of Accountability & Achievement Resources.

Responsibilities

Manage and improve report production and business intelligence tool production for the Progress Reports and School Survey.
Coordinate product distribution with stakeholders including schools, administrators, and database administrators.
Perform analyses and simulations in support of policy decisions pertaining to the Progress Reports and general school policies (e.g., credits, state exams, Regents, graduation).
Write, maintain, and execute code required for the implementation of the Progress Reports and School Survey
Perform quality assurance of products and codes.
Perform policy analysis or technical support for policy analysis.
Qualification Requirements:

Minimum:

A master's degree from an accredited college in economics, finance, accounting, business or public administration, human resources management, management science, operations research, organizational behavior, industrial psychology, statistics, personnel administration, labor relations, psychology, sociology, human resources development, political science, urban studies or a closely related field; or
A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college and three years of satisfactory full-time professional experience working in one or a combination of the following areas: working with the budget of a large public or private concern in budget administration, accounting, economic or financial administration, or fiscal or economic research; in management or methods analysis, operations research, organizational research or program evaluation; in personnel or public administration, recruitment, position classification, personnel relations, labor relations, employee benefits, staff development, employment program planning/administration, labor market research, economic planning, or fiscal management; or in a related area.

Preferred:

1-3 years experience as a professional programmer.
Expertise with Excel, especially Excel 2007.
Strong object-oriented software development skills.
Proficiency with VBA or SAS.
Dedicated work ethic to deliver results rapidly.
Experience with SQL, particularly Microsoft SQL Server.
Experience with SAS macros.
Experience with design, data visualization, or infographics.
Experience with SharePoint or other Microsoft technologies.
Experience with a scripting language, e.g., Python.
Experience performing file management tasks, e.g., Windows command line, PowerShell.
Interest in public education.
Salary: $60,571

Please submit a resume and cover letter with your application.
Applications will be accepted through October 28, 2009.
NOTE: The filling of all positions is subject to budget availability.
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

It is the policy of the Department of Education of the City of New York to provide educational and employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, ethnicity, national origin, alienage, citizenship status, age, marital status, partnership status, disability, sexual orientation, gender (sex), military status, prior record of arrest or conviction (except as permitted by law), predisposing genetic characteristics, or status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual offenses and stalking, and to maintain an environment free of harassment on any of the above-noted grounds, including sexual harassment or retaliation. Inquiries regarding compliance with this equal opportunity policy may be directed to: Office of Equal Opportunity, 65 Court Street, Room 923, Brooklyn, New York 11201, or visit the OEO website, http://schools.nyc.gov/OEO.

Job Location
Tweed (52 Chambers Street) (TWEED)
Position Type
Full-Time/Regular
New Posting
Yes
Readvertisement
N/A
Recanvass
No
District
N/A

Policy Director, School Performance (DAAR)
Tracking Code: 6559
LINK

Job Description

Position Summary: The New York City school system is the largest in the country, composed of approximately 1.1 million students and 90,000 teachers in over 1,600 schools. In January 2003, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein launched Children First: A New Agenda for Public Schools in New York City, a multi-year reform effort aimed at significantly improving student achievement through effective teaching and learning.

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have made accountability an essential element of New York City’s education reform effort. Over the next three years, the NYC Department of Education will drive and support the creation of more robust accountability tools through the Division of Accountability and Achievement Resources (DAAR).

Reporting to the Executive Director of School Performance and working with the other group leaders in the Division of Accountability and Achievement Resources, the Policy Director will manage a small team of researchers/analysts to evaluate the impact on student achievement of current and potential New York City education initiatives.

Reports to: Executive Director of School Performance

Direct Reports: Associate Director, Policy Team, Director Analytics and indirect management of work done on the Research and Policy Support Group.

Key Relationships: Works closely with Executive Director of School Performance, Chief Accountability Officer, members of the Chancellor’s Office and Press Office, the Research and Policy Support Group and members of DAAR.

Responsibilities

Manages team engaged in the planning, implementation and conduct of major research, evaluation, and policy studies (including college readiness), as well as analyses designed to assess the effectiveness of and improve existing educational programs.
Sets policy agenda for Chief Accountability Officer that largely informs agenda for the Department and ensures that student achievement is a key metric by which potential education initiatives are evaluated.
Uses modeling, regression, psychometric and other techniques to identify structures, conditions, interventions, and programs associated with high student achievement.
Collects, analyzes, and interprets data; prepares statistical and narrative reports and/or graphs, as appropriate; prepares manuscripts for publication; presents research results to DOE leadership.
Directs creation of systems for separating routine reporting and analytic requests suitable for help desk coverage from requests requiring high-end analysis.
Produces ad-hoc data reports and analyses at the request of DOE leadership, including the Chancellor and his Cabinet.
Sets process and policy for maintaining integrity of achievement-focused data system-wide
Maintains currency of knowledge with respect to relevant DOE policies and data as well as state-of-the-art technology and statistical methodology.
Serves as principal investigator on projects of complexities consistent with above criteria; writes proposals to external funding agencies to ensure DOE thought leadership in the area of K-12 school accountability.
Qualification Requirements:

Minimum:

A master's degree from an accredited college in economics, finance, accounting, business or public administration, human resources management, management science, operations research, organizational behavior, industrial psychology, statistics, personnel administration, labor relations, psychology, sociology, human resources development, political science, or a closely related field, and two years of satisfactory full-time professional experience in budget administration, economic or financial administration, fiscal or economic research; management or methods analysis, operations research, organizational research or program evaluation; educational, personnel or public administration, recruitment, position classification, personnel relations, labor relations, employee benefits, staff development, employment program planning/administration, labor market research, economic planning, fiscal management, or a related area, for educational program(s) and/or institution(s), 18 months of which must have been in an executive, managerial, administrative or supervisory capacity. Supervision must have included supervising staff performing professional work in the areas described above; or
A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college and four years of satisfactory full-time professional experience as described in '1' above, including the 18 months of executive, managerial, administrative or supervisory experience described in '1' above.

Preferred:

A Ph.D. in statistics and/or research methodologies or related discipline and 2 years of relevant work experience with 18 months managerial experience OR a master’s degree in statistics and 4 years of relevant work experience with 18 months managerial experience OR a bachelor’s degree in math/statistics and 5 years of relevant work experience with 18 months managerial experience.
Minimum three years data analysis experience, including knowledge of statistical software packages such as SAS, SPSS, S-Plus etc.
Ability to perform independent, original research in advanced areas of statistical expertise.
Ability to conduct systematic analysis and develop solutions to complex data analysis problems.
Ability to develop and follow research methodology and protocol.
Ability to develop reports and charts based research.
Ability to use independent judgment to adapt and modify research concepts and approaches to specific projects.
Knowledge of current technological developments/trends in area of expertise.
Ability to propose, design, organize and coordinate scientific research projects.
Proficient in Microsoft Office applications.
Excellent interpersonal skills in dealing with education and non-education personnel internal and external to the DOE.
???Ability to thrive in and enjoy working in a team-oriented, high-pressure environment.
Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Experience or working knowledge of the public sector and/or demonstrated interest in public education strongly preferred.
Experience in a public reform or start-up environment, favorable.
Attentive to detail, extremely well organized, able to work under pressure, and meet frequent and changing deadlines.
Salary: $95,000 +

(Internal candidates who are selected for this position and who currently hold comparable or less senior positions within the DOE will not make less than their current salary.)

Please submit a resume and a cover letter with your application.

Applications will be accepted through October 28th, 2009.

NOTE: The filling of all positions is subject to budget availability.
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

It is the policy of the Department of Education of the City of New York to provide educational and employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, ethnicity, national origin, alienage, citizenship status, age, marital status, partnership status, disability, sexual orientation, gender (sex), military status, prior record of arrest or conviction (except as permitted by law), predisposing genetic characteristics, or status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual offenses and stalking, and to maintain an environment free of harassment on any of the above-noted grounds, including sexual harassment or retaliation. Inquiries regarding compliance with this equal opportunity policy may be directed to: Office of Equal Opportunity, 65 Court Street, Room 923, Brooklyn, New York 11201, or visit the OEO website, http://schools.nyc.gov/OEO.

Job Location
Tweed (52 Chambers Street) (TWEED)
Position Type
Full-Time/Regular
New Posting
Yes
Readvertisement
No
Recanvass
No
District
N/A

Policy Manager, Progress Reports (DAAR)
Tracking Code: 6560
LINK

Job Description

Position Summary: The New York City school system is the largest in the country, composed of approximately 1.1 million students and 90,000 teachers in over 1,600 schools. In January 2003, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein launched Children First: A New Agenda for Public Schools in New York City, a multi-year reform effort aimed at significantly improving student achievement through effective teaching and learning.

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have made accountability an essential element of New York City’s education reform effort. With an investment of over $130 million from national and local foundations, New York City has embarked upon an ambitious education reform initiative that is unprecedented in urban education.

The Policy Manager will support the Progress Report Team in evaluating the performance of all schools in the City. This person will work on challenging and important projects that require strong organizational, communication, and analytical skills.

Reports to: Executive Director, School Performance

Direct Reports: Senior Analyst, Progress Reports

Key Relationships: Works closely with the Children’s First Intensive team, ARIS team, and other members of the School Performance team.

Responsibilities

Manage, maintain, and evaluate the effectiveness of the business policies underlying the New York City Progress Report.
Work collaboratively with the School Performance Team and other NYC DOE divisions and schools to solicit feedback and get buy-in to any proposed changes to the business policies.
Design and perform data analysis relating to the Progress Report and other accountability reports, e.g., School Survey. Assesses the effectiveness of each measure on the Progress Report, analyzing trends in Progress Report data from year to year, and correlating Progress Report outcomes with other school accountability data.
Apply structured, thoughtful analytical approaches to the examination and solution of a wide variety of policy issues. This includes: how to evaluate student progress for hold-overs; how to baseline a student’s proficiency in the absence of proficiency data; how to ensure that progress is being measured accurately for all students, e.g., ELLs, Special Education, and use ingenuity in selecting and evaluating approaches to unforeseen problems.
Provide guidance to facilitate the development of new Progress Reports for schools that have not received one in the past, such as those focused on special education students and early childhood education.
Demonstrate and apply a thorough understanding of statistical and analytical methodology and protocols. Perform correlation, regression, and factor analysis to test the reliability and validity of the Progress Report results. Use cross-tabs and pivot tables to summarize key Progress Report results.
Qualification Requirements:

Minimum:

A master’s degree from an accredited college and three (3) years of full-time progressively responsible professional experience in education administration in one or more education-related areas, at least eighteen (18) months of which must have been in a managerial capacity; or
Graduation from an accredited college with a baccalaureate degree and four (4) years of full-time progressively responsible professional experience, as described in (1); or
A satisfactory combination of education and/or experience which is equivalent to (1) above including teaching experience towards meeting the general experience in (1) above; however, all candidates must have the eighteen (18) months of managerial experience.

Preferred:

Extensive data analysis experience, including Microsoft Excel and Access and knowledge of statistical software packages such as SAS, S-Plus, etc.
Ability to conduct systematic analysis and develop solutions to complex data analysis problems.
Ability to trouble-shoot, problem-solve, and anticipate issues around accountability measures.
Ability to manipulate, organize, and analyze large datasets.
Ability to develop and follow research methodology and protocol.
Ability to develop reports and charts based on research.
Ability to use independent judgment to adapt and modify research concepts and approaches to specific projects.
Attentive to detail, extremely well-organized and able to meet frequent and changing deadlines.
MA/PhD in statistics or related discipline.
Experience or working knowledge of the public sector and/or demonstrated interest in public education.
Salary: $81,000 +

(Internal candidates who are selected for this position and who currently hold comparable or less senior positions within the DOE will not make less than their current salary.)

Please submit a resume and cover letter with your application.
Applications will be accepted through October 28, 2009.

NOTE: The filling of all positions is subject to budget availability.
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

It is the policy of the Department of Education of the City of New York to provide educational and employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, ethnicity, national origin, alienage, citizenship status, age, marital status, partnership status, disability, sexual orientation, gender (sex), military status, prior record of arrest or conviction (except as permitted by law), predisposing genetic characteristics, or status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual offenses and stalking, and to maintain an environment free of harassment on any of the above-noted grounds, including sexual harassment or retaliation. Inquiries regarding compliance with this equal opportunity policy may be directed to: Office of Equal Opportunity, 65 Court Street, Room 923, Brooklyn, New York 11201, or visit the OEO website, http://schools.nyc.gov/OEO.

Job Location
Tweed (52 Chambers Street) (TWEED)
Position Type
Full-Time/Regular
New Posting
Yes
Readvertisement
No
Recanvass
No
District
N/A

Success For Lucienne Mohammed

On September 15, 2009 I posted an article in response to the "Worst Teachers" article published in the New Yorker magazine and written by Steven Brill. My article:

The Rubber Rooms and the Misinformation of Steven Brill

One of the reasons for my posting this piece on my website and blog was to try to get the NYC BOE Attorney, Dennis De Costa, to ask questions of Lucienne Mohammed relating to her allegations of wrong-doing by PS 65 Principal Daysi Garcia, and get this information into the 3020-a hearing record.

This effort was successful.

A little bit of background into the 3020-a hearing itself may be relevant: arbitrators either are reluctant, or forbid altogether, information about the administrators in the school from which the re-assigned teacher was removed. I heard one arbitrator say at a 3020-a hearing, "I will not hear any information about what the principal did or did not do, as [he/she] is the Supervisor. You must do what the Supervisor asks you to do, and grieve it later." Some arbitrators are less strict about the "dont ask, dont tell" policy of the NYC BOE and what I call the "rubberization" process.

Yet it makes no sense to me that a hearing could be fair if the reasons for a teacher to be observed as "incompetent" are not based on performance, but on some other "fact", and these "facts" or information are not permitted by the arbitrator to be mentioned. A principal who wants to remove a teacher from his/her school can see a 'messy' classroom when indeed the room may be picture perfect; a lesson may take ten minutes too long, says the Principal on the U-rating sheet, but that may not have happened at all; two students may be talking in class about the subject at hand (this is called "accountable talk"), but on the rating sheet the "U" is for deficiencies in classroom management. And so on.

What must be addressed is the visual prism of the Principal when he/she is observing the teacher, and I believe that this information must be allowed into a 3020-a hearing to clarify the record. By the way, as you can see in the information supplied by Ms. Mohammed in her statement about what was happening at PS 65, she signed up for the PIP+ Program, a totally-owned-and-paid-for-by-the-NYCBOE-no-bid-contract thing designed to help Principals. Who said that the program was designed to support the Principal? Executive Director Sandra Kase. Lucienne Mohammed's Peer Observer, who watched her teach and was supposed to help her 'improve', last taught in New York City in 1968 and was never trained in the Workshop Model (the program used at PS 65). The observations proved to be exactly what Principal Garcia asked for: total support for Ms. Mohammed's removal from the school because of incompetence. Watch out for the observers, and try to find out what their visual prism may be. By the way, I filed a freedom of information request of the NYC BOE for the RMC Contract, (see sections #1, #2, and #3) and I was asked to pay $52+ for the document - missing pp. pp. 88 - through 94; 114 – through 183; 187 – through 191; and 221 – through 252. I've appealed.

So, how can the teacher get in to the 3020-a record that the Principal was discriminating against him/her, and this may have been the root cause of the re-assignment? One way is to write about the Principal during the 3020-a, and anger the NYC BOE Attorney into forgetting that the hearing is not supposed to focus on anything the Principal has done or may have done in the school building. Another way is to have your Attorney ask questions about what the Principal was/is doing in the school, and any grievances or special complaints you may have filed, but this is not always accepted by the arbitrator, as I wrote above.

PS 65 Principal Daysi Garcia, in front of PS 65 in Brooklyn, NY

On September 17, 2009 Lucienne Mohammed went to day 37 of her 3020-a hearing and she was cross-examined by NYC BOE Attorney, Dennis De Costa of the BOE "Gotcha Squad". I was there for the afternoon.

Evidently when Lucienne and her Attorney Mr. Cavallero walked into the hearing room, Mr. De Costa had my article on the table before him. All of his questions to Ms. Mohammed were about the actions of Principal Garcia, based upon what Lucienne had sent to me for my posting online.

Mr. De Costa wanted to know if, indeed, Principal Garcia discriminated against Ms. Mohammed and another staff member (whose hearing was not completed, but at which Ms. Mohammed testified), and Ms. Mohammed was asked how, and when this discrimination took place. The possible motives of Principal Garcia to remove Lucienne Mohammed from her job at PS 65 for reasons OTHER THAN the actual performance of Ms. Mohammed were brought to the table and put into the record. This was my goal in writing the article.

The impossibility of "proving" incompetence in the hearing room at 51 Chambers Street is clear to anyone who attends these hearings. A good teacher is someone who knows the subject he/she is assigned to teach, and who transfers this content knowledge in an "appropriate" and "educationally sound" way - please excuse my use of these general terms, but my point is, both "appropriate" and "educationally sound" are based on the students you have in your class and the visual prism and mindset of the person reporting. Thus, arbitrators placed in the position of deciding cases of incompetence must try to understand the school culture and the specifics of the classroom of the teacher whose case is being heard. James A. Gross, author of the book "Teachers On Trial" puts it this way:

"This study has demonstrated that decision makers' conceptions of the way things ought to be and beliefs about the way things presumably are - unchecked and unverified by empirical evidence about the way things actually are - often lead to unjust decisions about teachers' conduct and performance and to outcomes that are detrimental to teaching and learning. Injustice and inefficiency will persist as long as policy makers and decision makers operate without sufficient evidence."
(p 110)....and,

"This study has revealed the serious inequities that result when decision makers operate without objective standards or reliable evidence concerning the educational conseqences of various teacher behaviors both in and outside of the classroom. Of course, educational reform involves matters of productivity and performance as well as equity, and the objective should be to maximize learning and teacher effectiveness in ways consistent with justice and equity for teachers, students, and administrators." (p. 111).

I recommend that you beg someone for this book, or buy it yourself.

Of course in Lucienne Mohammed's case no one knows what the decision of Mr. Jay Siegel will be after the closing on October 27, 2009, but for now, the record is clear that Principal Daysi Garcia may have had a motive to make Lucienne Mohammed appear to be "incompetent" when indeed she was - and is - not.

Think about it.

Betsy Combier

Winning Your 3020-a Part 2: Information Advocacy

You are your own best advocate or enemy.

It is almost ridiculous to write that, and know that you may have no idea why you were told to report to a re-assignment center. But think about it for a minute -"it" being the "unknown".

Haven't there been signs of dislike coming from the administration to you for a "long" time, or at least since the new Principal/Assistant Principal came to your school? How did you deal with this? Was there an incident in your class that ended with a letter to file, disciplinary meeting, or even a SOHO report which includes your name? (A SOHO report is an online occurence report filed with the NYC BOE by a Principal or Assistant Principal which details an incident that led to a Superintendent's Suspension). Was an informal observation done that bothered you because the time or entry of the Principal or AP into the classroom was improper? Keep a log of all such events. Did all of your formal observations have a pre- and post- observation properly addressing the classroom activities? Did you observe the administration doing something wrong? Document everything, then look over your notes. You may see what may have led, or may lead to in the future, to a charge or specification. Or, you may see nothing at all, and this is your defense as well. "They" made a mistake in re-assigning you.

You know your case, and you were there when "it" happened or didn't happen. You need to gather together all of your notes, documents, files, tapes and other possible relevant material and arrange these items chronologically. Then take a good, long look at what you have.

Oh yes, please do not use ignorance of the law, rules and bargaining agreement to excuse your re-assignment and/or removal from your teaching assignment! Read everything that concerns the process known as "rubberization", including:

CODE OF PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ARBITRATORS OF LABOR-MANAGEMENT DISPUTES

How The New York City "Gotcha Squad" Gets Tenured Teachers Declared "Incompetent", and Placed in a Rubber Room by Betsy Combier

and in the article above, read the Labor FAQs.

What Do you Have?

Do you have a tape or video - or can you get one of these - for the time or day that you think you are/will be charged with? Note that in New York State it is the law that you can tape anyone without telling him or her, as long as you are part of the conversation.. If someone calls you up and you believe that you need to preserve the conversation, you can tape the call and not tell the person or people, if more than one, on the other line. Obviously this cuts out hacking into someone else's telephone line, or taping people who are not talking with you or did not include you in their conversation. I observed how two teachers used secret tapes of conversations with NYC BOE personnel in a conversation with them, and this secret taping technique resulted in the presentation of evidence to impeach the testimony of the Principal of the school, the SCI investigator, an arbitrator, even Theresa Europe, Director of the Administrative Trials Unit (ATU) at their 3020-a hearings. In both cases the arbitrators allowed in the tapes as evidence for the teacher. Neither has a decision yet, so stay tuned.

Do you have notes or documents that 'prove' your side of the story (assuming that you know what story you are being held accountable for, or what your charges are)? Keep all notes until after your 3020-a is over, or forever - hey, you never know (slogan of the New York State Lottery).

Do you know anyone who may have any items or information that may be relevant to establishing your defense? Jot down their names/addresses/emails, and google anyone who you can think of who be able to provide information for you with which you can strengthen your defense. After you locate a possible witness, do not call any of these people yourself, but indirectly keep track of those individuals who are essential to establishing your side of 'the story'. Stay on top of this information, as often you may sit in a re-assignment center for a long time, and students graduate, staff move, etc....dont lose your best witness(es). Six degrees of separation: with email, blogs, websites, media now getting more and more in the hands of everybody on the planet, somebody may be able to reach "Jane Smith" who worked with you during the 2007 school year as a para. You can find people today with a little bit of good cyber-snooping.

If a witness is very ill or is moving out of state, see if this person will write a statement about what occurred and ask this person to notarize the statement and then give it to you for your hearing. Keep a file.

Look for the piece of paper that had something on it you remember was important. Search under your bed, behind furniture, in places this note simply couldn't be. It might be there. Try to re-create scenarios that you remember, then go to the source of possible information about the day/location/people there and ask for any documents that might be relevant. Dont give up.

If you are being charged with incompetence, the 'proof is in the pudding' - results count. What were your students' scores? Did they go up? Good teaching requires content knowledge and professional delivery of information. The argument that you are "incompetent" is weakened if your students' scores in your subject area went up the year that you taught them. Use this information to help your attorney prove your point, that you should not be terminated.

If you have your personnel file, fabulous. Go through it very carefully. Pick out all relevant rating sheets, letters to file, etc., and arrange chronologically.

If you dont have your personnel file, GET IT. Call your UFT District Office up and speak with your representative as soon as possible. Get all online postings about you as well. See below.

What Dont You Have?

As I wrote above, if you do not have your personnel file, GET IT.

Get all online postings as well - SOHO reports may have your name mentioned, so ask for these for your students.

You may say, but what if I dont know what I dont have? Then, think. What would you like to have to prove your innocence if you were proving that you were innocent of x, then y, then z. As you may not know your charges, or what the NYC BOE may bring up against you when your hearing begins (this is another story), create charges you think may be charged against you, and think about what documents you may have that you would need to prove your innocence. You will feel better when you know that you have information that will help you overcome any charge or specification.

If you dont have your students' scores, file a freedom of information request of the city or the state. Call the New York state education department. Below is one of my recent freedom of information requests, and you can copy it and put your own information in:

send your FOIL request to:

Joseph Baranello
Central Records Access Officer
New York City Board of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
jbaranello@schools.nyc.gov

Here is a request I filed on August 2, 2009:

VIA E-MAIL

Joseph A. Baranello, Esq.
Central Records Access Officer
Office of Legal Services
New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007

JBaranello3@schools.nyc.gov

Dear Mr. Baranello:

RE: FOIL Request # ______ (Categories Used to Rate Teachers)

Under the provisions of the New York Freedom of Information Law, Article 6 of the Public Officers Law, I hereby request to obtain/inspect records or portions thereof pertaining to:

For each of the following numbered categories pertaining to teaching service (which are listed underneath four lettered headings), the records, memoranda, circulars, bulletins, reports, newsletters, manuals, training materials, PowerPoint presentations, webinars, etc. containing the rubrics, standards, or policies that are used by principals in order to assess whether the category merits a rating of "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" on the Annual Professional Performance Review and Report on Probationary Service of Pedagogical Employee form:

A. PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL QUALITIES

1) Attendance and punctuality
2) Personal appearance
3) Voice, speech and use of English
4) Professional attitude and professional growth
5) Resourcefulness and initiative

B. PUPIL GUIDANCE AND INSTRUCTION

1) Effect on character and personality growth of pupils
2) Control of class
3) Maintenance of wholesome classroom atmosphere
4) Planning and preparation of work
5) Skill in adapting instruction to individual needs and capacities
6) Effective use of appropriate methods and techniques
7) Skill in making class lessons interesting to pupils
8) Extent of pupil participation in the class and school program
9) Evidence of pupil growth in knowledge, skills, appreciations and attitude
10) Attention to pupil health, safety and general welfare

C. CLASSROOM OR SHOP MANAGEMENT

1) Attention to physical conditions
2) Housekeeping and appearance of room
3) Care of equipment by teacher and children
4) Attention to records and reports
5) Attention to routine matters

D. PARTICIPATION IN SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES

1) Maintenance of good relations with teachers and with supervisors
2) Effort to establish and maintain good relationships with parents
3) Willingness to accept special assignments in connection with the school program

The responsive records may be located in any of the following offices or divisions:

a) Office of Legal Services
b) Office of Labor Relations
c) Office of Labor Policy
d) Office of Appeals and Reviews
e) Office of the Chancellor
f) Office of the Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning
g) Division of Human Resources
h) any Integrated Service Center
i) any Learning Support Organization
j) any superintendent's office or deputy superintendent's office
k) any principal's office

After the inspection, I may decide to purchase copies of the entire records or certain portions thereof. Alternatively, you may E-mail me copies of the records.

If you have any questions relating to the specific records or portions being sought, please phone me so that we may discuss them.

As you know, the Freedom of Information Law requires that an agency respond to a request within five business days of receipt of a request. Therefore, I would appreciate a response as soon as possible and look forward to hearing from you shortly. If for any reason any portion of my request is denied, please inform me of the reasons for the denial in writing and provide the name and address of the person or body to whom an appeal should be directed.

Sincerely,

Betsy Combier
Editor, ParentAdvocates.Org
NYC Rubber Room Reporter

Meeting with your attorney

If you are going into a 3020-a arbitration hearing, you are a tenured teacher. This means that when you receive your charges CONTACT THE UFT DISTRICT OFFICE AND HAVE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE FILE FOR A HEARING!!!!!!! You have 10 days from the date of receipt of your charges to request a 3020-a due process hearing. Your rep will know what to do.

You will be assigned a NYSUT Attorney. When the NYSUT Attorney schedules a meeting, remember that you most proabably will not be paid for this meeting if you leave your assigned location during school hours, so arrange to meet after the school day has ended, if at all possible.

Realize that your assigned attorney has many other cases going on and is overworked. Bring copies of your documents to this meeting and show your attorney everything that you have. Make your defense clear.

You have the right to be treated with respect at all times, so treat your Attorney with respect as well.

Take detailed notes.

Support your attorney by trying to get any information that you do not already have.

If you have the money, you always can hire a private attorney. Be careful. The process known as the 3020-a in New York City is a strange one, in many respects. More about that later.

Principals Are Told To Hire Teachers From the Reserve Pool

Ernest Logan, President of the Council of Supervisors and Administrators (CSA)

September 18, 2009
Klein Pressures Principals to Hire Reserve Pool’s Teachers
By JENNIFER MEDINA, NY TIMES

With more than 1,500 existing teachers on the city’s payroll without permanent job placements, the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, has told principals that if they do not fill those jobs by the end of next month, they will lose any money they had allocated for their teacher vacancies.

Principals across the city have resisted hiring teachers from the so-called absent reserve pool, in which teachers are placed if they lose their posts when a school is shut down or forced to shrink its teaching staff because of budget cuts or declining enrollments.

Though the pool has shrunk to about 1,500 teachers, from 1,983 about three weeks ago, it would still cost the department roughly $127 million this year. By forcing principals to fill the remaining 1,050 vacancies in the system from the existing pool, education officials expect to save about $75 million.

In a letter sent to principals this week, Mr. Klein called the pool a “fiscal liability we cannot sustain.”



“Nobody dislikes this situation more than I do,” Mr. Klein wrote to the principals. “Limiting your hiring freedom goes against what I stand for, but because of the economic reality, we must control costs and protect our schools from deeper budget cuts.”

The letter was first reported by InsideSchools.org, a Web site that covers New York City education issues. Mr. Klein has lifted the hiring restrictions in some subjects, like special education and science, and several principals have said they received waivers to hire new teachers in math and bilingual education.

The Education Department is continuing to hold job fairs over the next several weeks and requiring those teachers in the pool to attend the fairs.

Ernest Logan, the president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, said in a statement that the council was pleased that the human resources department was “stepping up to the plate” with the job fairs, but sounded a note of caution. “We would like to know more about what the Department of Education will do if appropriate licensing matches are not made or if excessed teachers fail to show up at the recruitment fairs,” he said.

From Betsy Combier:

I guess that 300 teachers found jobs since the previous article was published about how 1,800 excessed teachers were not being given positions...Anyway, let's see what happens as teachers continue to attend job fairs and report that no jobs are being advertised.

Principals in NYC Leave 1,800 Teaching Jobs Open Rather Than Hire Excessed Teachers
LINK

The Rubber Rooms and the Misinformation of Steven Brill by Betsy Combier

The education of more than 1 million public school children in New York City is a big business. Too big to allow any employee to undermine or sabotage the huge amount of funds generated every year by no bid contracts, scrubbed grades, false test results, and other misinformation that wins big awards. I have attended hearings of Rubber Room teachers for almost 5 years, and visit the Rubber Rooms every week. The article published in the New Yorker magazine article on the Rubber Room written by journalist Steven Brill is a fabricated tale that the NYC BOE will try to market as truth. Dont believe it.

The New York City Board of Education funds the "rubberization" process which removes tenured members of the United Federation of Teachers from their classrooms and jobs and places them in rooms called temporary re-assignment centers, TRCs, or “rubber rooms”. Sometimes members of the Principals’ Union, CSA, also end up in these locations. More often than not these re-assigned teachers and school personnel are not only experienced, but dedicated to protecting the health, education and welfare of the children under their care. Some do disobey rules and the law, and some are, indeed, incompetent. The system should remove these employees from the classroom, especially if there is evidence of misconduct or a crime, and there is substantial evidence to prove this. But many of these tenured, re-assigned people are removed simply because they notice theft, harm and other wrongdoing in their schools by others, and report the crimes and misconduct to authorities – the Special Commissioner of Investigation, for example. SCI then goes "after" the person for reporting what he or she has seen (do not believe the website). Suddenly the "mandated reporter" becomes the dreaded Whistleblower that no one in power wants around. For this reason, many acts of a criminal nature are pushed under the rug.

When you hear the word “incompetent”, look at the person who is writing or saying it. The word itself is situation specific. For example, if a teacher is tenured and teaches chemistry for 10 years and then the Principal assigns this person to teach high school English literature, most people would say that perhaps this person would be “incompetent” to teach that subject. When you find out that a teacher was placed in a Senior calculus class but actually is certified in teaching global history, you know something is wrong. When you hear that a teacher is “incompetent”, the very next question should be “at what?” Nine times out of ten this person can find a classroom right for him or her and the Principal is assigning the wrong one. Classic sabotage.

The person who is dragged through the door of his or her school is not always guilty of anything other than speaking up about someone else’s crimes. You can tell a person to be quiet and not say anything about school personnel doing something that harms someone else, but this doesn't always work. The thought is so unbelievable to a person that he/she would be retaliated against for trying to fix a problem that he/she won’t hide what looks like theft of funds, cheating, abuse of a child by the administration, and, as mandated reporters, speak out about it anyway. (What employees should do when they see harm being done to children in the school is call the police, report the abuse to the NYS Mandated Reporting Line: 1-800-635-1522, or call other non-BOE agencies).

Punishment is swift and degrading for the employee who leaks the news that the Principal hurt a child, that an Assistant Principal changed records, that there is racial and religious discrimination in publicly funded buildings of New York City, and other such activities. Almost every week we can read the NY POST or Daily News and see a school employee handcuffed and led outside the front door of his or her school in front of the very same children who were being taught by this person moments before.It is very easy for a Principal to make a call to the local police station and tell them that a teacher just touched/punched/hit a child, whether this teacher did so or not. Within minutes, cameras are in front of the school as the person accused is marched out in handcuffs. The public is "told" visually that this person was guilty of a crime, before there is any investigation. This is the process that Joel Klein has spent seven years perfecting, and the public must put a stop to it.

However, being re-assigned to a “rubber room” is often as simple as the Principal doesn’t want you, and doesn't want to train you or assign you to a class that is appropriate for you. The Principal can pick up the telephone or open his/her email, and let someone know at the NYC BOE that teacher X stole something, scrubbed test scores or harmed a child, and need not have any evidence or proof. The teacher is not informed of the allegation until the Gotcha Squad has “proven” the allegation, and he/she is on the subway, in a bus, or is driving to a TRC. Often, the employee does not know even then why he/she is going away from the students who are waiting in the school. The NYC BOE would like to get rid of the Union protection and fire the individual on the spot, but the UFT stops the firing of any tenured employee, and gives the employee a chance to gather evidence and prove his or her innocence. The UFT also provides, as I wrote above, some of the best lawyers in town, free of charge to its members for 3020-a hearings.

But the NYC BOE is not interested in finding the “right” classroom for an employee, and does not want people who have a conscience, are courageous, are too experienced, lose a loved one and must attend funerals, gets sick or has operations, or in any way impedes the business of education. Notice I did not say “educating”.

The education of more than 1 million public school children in New York City is a big business. Too big to allow any employee to undermine or sabotage the huge amount of funds generated every year by no bid contracts, scrubbed grades, false test results, and other misinformation that wins big awards. Guess who wins The Broad Prize every year? The most successful education business, not necessarily the school district that educated its students most successfully...and is validated by national testing standards (NAEP).

I have been writing on this website and on my blog (NYC Rubber Room Reporter) about the "rubberization" process since 2004, when I attended my first 3020-a hearing at the request of a re-assigned teacher named David Pakter. As my dad was Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York, I was familiar with the legal system from an early age, but I had never seen anything similar to what I saw at Mr. Pakter's arbitration. I decided then that I would research this further, and, for the past five years, I have attended hearings when asked by the teacher whose hearing it is, to attend, and he/she requests an open and public hearing. Full disclosure: I am a part-time consultant for the United Federation of Teachers, and therefore can visit the "rubber rooms" of New York City to speak with the teachers temporarily re-assigned now to any of the six separate locations. The time I spend sitting at hearings is my own time.

A tenured teacher accused of incompetence or misconduct not only has Union protection from being fired until the charges against him or her are "proven" by a preponderance of evidence, but the teacher also gets free legal representation from NYS United Teachers, or NYSUT, based in Latham New York. Most of these Attorneys are the best in the business, they know the rather unusual procedures followed at the arbitration hearings, they know the arbitrators, they care about their teacher-clients, and do thorough jobs.

I have, therefore, personal knowledge of what I write about the "3020-a" hearings of teachers displaced because of an allegation of wrong-doing or incompetence. One of the biggest problems with this process is the fact that Principals are immune from prosecution for any lies they tell or false claims alleged against anyone, due to the support and assistance of the City of New York Law Department, the New York City Board of Education, and the personal intervention of Joel Klein, his General Counsel Michael Best, Corporate Counsel chief Michael Cardozo, and Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon. Principals and Assistant Principals are almost always protected from any accountability for their own theft, conflicts of interest, misconduct, or incompetence. This in turn leads to an erosion of the working relationship between the administrators and everyone else inside a school building. I often hear how 20 or more teachers left at the end of a school year, rather than go back to a building where an abusive, hostile Principal wielded a heavy hand of unfairness and abuse against all the staff and teachers, with a few designated favorites staying out of the boxing ring. This is not good for the children, who always value stability, especially if they love a certain teacher who suddenly is gone without explanation. The children never forget this.

The "Gotcha Squad" starts the process when a Principal is told that something has happened in the school that involves a teacher, or a teacher is not making the grade - in his or her opinion - and must leave the school. This squad's assignment is to cull the personnel file of anything that can be used against the teacher to remove him/her from the school. Often, this "research" is done without any awareness of the teacher, and the teacher is re-assigned based upon the “sufficient” gathering of evidence to “prove” the case against him or her at a 3020-a.

Think of this as if you were working on your job for five years, and one day you are told to leave your school in five minutes, or at the end of the day, and report to a re-assignment center where you await charges. You could wait months, even years, for your charges. Your employer, the New York City Board of Education, may tell you that "an investigation" is being conducted, so you must wait until this is over. This information is either frivolous or false. The two resident investigating agencies, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and the Special Commissioner For Investigations (SCI) are not interested in conducting proper investigations unless there are documents/pictures/first hand witnesses who cannot be refuted. You know how that works - you are actually guilty and then you have to prove your innocence.

Sometimes the NYC BOE is right. Not all teachers are innocent. But no matter what, the process is broken, and the New York City BOE has placed unlimited power in the hands of Principals who can carry grudges to the extreme, and trash a person who they simply dont like. This is often called workplace bullying, or mobbing. The hardship usually begins and ends with mean-spirited administrators who want to use their power abusively. As the NYC BOE has control over the personnel file of each employee, and as accurate, factual information is the nightmare of the NYC BOE, Bloomberg and Klein have spent the last seven years getting “friendly” with the New York City media. How do I know? I know many of the reporters in NYC. I hear all the time, “They don’t want me to do that story” (if the NYC BOE may end up looking "bad"). However, it's perfectly ok for the NYC BOE to make re-assigned teachers in the "rubber rooms" look 'bad'. See the picture below which was used in Steven Brill's article "The Rubber Room - The battle over New York City’s worst teachers."

and the caption to this picture reads: "One school principal has said that Randi Weingarten, of the teachers’ union,“would protect a dead body in the classroom.”.

In fact, David Pakter’s story appeared on this website several times and on my blog, and also in the New York Teacher. For this last article, he was charged with making the NYC BOE “look bad”. The UFT demanded this charge be removed from his 3020-a specifications, and it was. Amidst the current economic downturn there is an office at Tweed, the NYC BOE headquarters, which continues to grow: the press/public relations office. The NYC BOE is deathly afraid of people who are not under their control, and write about their actions. I am proud to be in this group.

When I attended the open hearing of a teacher named Lucienne Mohammed at her request, I was not surprised to see Steven Brill and Ann Forte from the NYC BOE public relations office already sitting in the room assigned for the arbitration hearing. Lucienne’s case is a strong one for her and the UFT, and the NYC BOE is clearly worried. So, what they decided to do, is, I believe, 'encourage' Steven Brill to do an article on the Rubber Rooms with the main agenda being to put a quick end to Mrs. Mohammed’s employment. Mr. Brill could, he was told, have access to any file that he wanted, courtesy of the NYC BOE. So my questions to Mr. Brill are: First, who paid you to write the article on the NYC Rubber Rooms?? Second, if you were given Lucienne Mohammed's file, why didn't you write about her Special Complaint and her grievances?

I have written about payola before on this website. Mr. Brill and Ms. Forte stayed maybe 10-15 minutes at Ms. Mohammed's hearing, then abruptly left. We did not know that Brill had been given Lucienne’s file without her agreement or knowledge.

Yet look at the Protective Order and stipulation that New York City Law Department Attorney Maxwell Leighton sent teacher Hipolito Colon, who sued the NYC BOE for putting him in a Rubber Room after he blew the whistle on the wrong-doing of the Principal of PS 120, Liza Carabello. Mr. Colon asked for the disciplinary letter that Superintendent James Quail wrote to Principal Carabello for hiring an uncertified teacher for a year, and for other improper acts. Mr. Leighton sent Mr. Colon a log of all the documents that he could have IF he would not show anyone these documents. Ever. In this log, you can see documents that were given to the Panel For Educational Policy members who are not NYC BOE employees. You might ask, as I did, how do they get away with this selective viewing of material evidence?

Lucienne Mohammed has one of the most interesting cases that I have observed. I have attended almost all of her 30+ hearings, so I know her case and the people involved quite well and can say unequivocally that Steven Brill misinformed the readers of his biased article "The Rubber Room" published in the New Yorker magazine at the end of August, 2009. He could not have been more wrong about the facts in Lucienne's case.


Who is Steven Brill? He is an extremely bright man who seems to fail at everything that he does. A source told me that Mr. Brill is "a gun for hire" but doesnt really check his facts. I downloaded just a few of the ventures that he has started and that have failed, and I offer articles from the internet:

Steve Brill introduction to fee media
Brill failures
Clear stops
Journalism Online

The article that is so offensive and wrong is here:
New Yorker Magazine

A journalist named Michael Wolff was investigated by Steven Brill in 1998, and he wrote about it:

New York Magazine
Wolff's Brill's Content
by Michael Wolff, August 31, 1998
LINK

When Steve Brill decided to investigate me, (pictured at right) I decided to investigate him back -- and therein discovered the "true" nature (more or less) of his overreaching crusade.

I am being investigated by Brill's Content.
"There are serious questions being raised about your new book," a young reporter from the magazine charges.
"Who's raising these questions?"
"I'm not free to tell you that."
"It's a funny book," I say lightly. "I hope the questions aren't too serious." The book, Burn Rate, is a memoir about the birth of the Internet industry and the tragicomic (more farce than tragedy) failure of my own Internet business.
"I don't think it would be funny if you distorted the truth."
"It's my story. It's the way I saw it," I sputter defensively, feeling unpleasantly compared to the disgraced reporter Stephen Glass.
A few days later, Brill's reporter, Noah Robischon, calls back and asks for the notes and other materials I've used to write the book. He seems genuinely put out, affronted even, when I decline to surrender my notes.
"I think you should seriously think about turning them over," he says ominously.
The editorial proposition of the magazine is that we all want to know about how the media works. The subtext is that journalists are such a despised class that large numbers of people will buy a magazine that rebukes them. "Journalists are probably the only people on the planet who make lawyers look good," says the magazine's chairman, CEO, publisher, and editor, Steven Brill, whose earlier entrepreneurial effort was a magazine about lawyers.
The business proposition is aggressive, too. The magazine is not just for people in the media business. Brill's Content wants to achieve a circulation of 500,000 and attract big brand-name consumer advertisers -- a formidable, expensive, and wildly unlikely undertaking. Brill himself says it will cost $25 million. In an introduction to the first issue, editor Brill speaks of a search for truth -- Brill's reporters will be an independent truth squad ("We see this as the one black line in everything we are going to write about: Is it true?"). Putting aside questions of whose truth it will be, it's hard to imagine that a seasoned entrepreneur would spend $25 million only for the truth.
Brill's mission is to cover the media, and so is mine; therefore, I reason with some insouciance, I should cover Brill covering me. Sort of Wolff's Brill's Content.
I e-mail Brill's twentysomething reporter that I would like to question him about his questioning of me.
In short order, Caroline Miller, New York's editor-in-chief, receives a call from Brill complaining that I am trying to intimidate his "young reporter." Partly, no doubt, because Brill himself is changing the assumptions of how to report who said what to whom, Ms. Miller prepares what lawyers call contemporaneous notes of her conversation with Brill. From Miller's report of her conversation, it's clear that Brill is not amused by the double reversal I'm proposing -- writing about Brill writing about me writing about other people. His mission, he obviously believes, is righteous, and mine dubious.
"The tenor of Michael's proposal," Miller says to Brill, "as it was conveyed to me, was quite . . . sportsmanlike."
"Well," says Brill, "this was a young reporter, and when he came to talk to me about it, I have to tell you, he was scared to death. . . ."
This seems to be, if not an invitation, at least a reason to call Brill himself. Brill says: "I do not discuss stories we're working on . . ." and hangs up on me. There's wrath in his voice, and some other note: fervor. (Minutes later, however, his assistant calls back to get my address, title, and other specifics for the office Rolodex.)
I find myself asking the question the investigated always asks about the investigator: Who is this guy, anyway?
In fact, it's hard to have hung around the media business and not know Brill. He's one of the business's unique creations. Many people have their Brill story: He's made them cry, or kept them waiting for hours, or upbraided them publicly. The stories of his financial ups and downs, his deals, his battles, his chutzpa, are legion. His passionate admirers are outnumbered only by his passionate detractors. He is what my father used to call "an operator." So his new role, necessarily holier than thou, seems an unlikely one.
But maybe not.

His first venture, American Lawyer, launched in 1978, was dedicated to arbitrating the professional behavior of lawyers. As the bête noire of the legal community, Brill cut a vivid figure: a bouncerlike, cigar-smoking, bullying, crass-comic character in a Saul Bellow novel; part journalist, part wheeler-dealer, part power broker. It wasn't just lawyers whom he antagonized, either. The magazine New York Woman ran a story about the worst places for women to work, flatly stating that the story did not include jobs "inherently loathsome for men and for women, such as working in a subway booth, scrubbing floors or working for Steven Brill, the notoriously bullying editor of American Lawyer."
Brill's bid to build a legal-publishing empire foundered on his expansion plans (he spent $30 million to $40 million on local legal newspapers), and in 1988, Warner's Steve Ross agreed to bail him out. What Brill sold Ross was a new idea: the law as tabloid television. Under the auspices of Time Warner (after Ross agreed to buy American Lawyer, the Time Warner deal happened), Brill launched Court TV, which, post-O.J., found itself at the bottom of the cable ratings.
The mantra inside Time Warner whenever Brill's name came up was "Has this guy ever made money?"
A year ago, having decided it did not want his legal publications and did not want him to run Court TV, Time Warner ousted Brill with a reported $20 million payoff for his remaining stake -- in media-mogul terms, a relative pittance. Certainly not enough to buy yourself another company.
With the help of Howard Milstein, of the real-estate Milsteins, investment banker Lester Pollack, and Barry Diller (can you run a media-watchdog magazine when your partner is a media mogul?), Brill began Brill's Content.
"Once you come up with a couple of ideas that work, people will usually finance the next one no matter how dumb it is," Brill told the New York Times.
And certainly on its magazine-business basics, Brill's Content is dumb. Try finding 500,000 subscribers to a magazine about ethical conduct. In fact, the idea is so dumb that you have to assume there is another strategy here beyond circulation and advertising.
His choosing to call the magazine Content (Brill says the magazine changed the name to Brill's Content because of trademark issues), that awkward word that technologists use to describe the non-code stuff that augments software, is noteworthy. I think it's fair to assume Brill's Content's business model works like an Internet business model. The proposed $25 million investment in the magazine seems clearly designed to grab "mindshare," to build brand. And the brand is Brill.
My guess is that Brill is trying to create an official seal of approval -- to become the independent prosecutor of information. (Indeed, I received a written set of interrogatories from Brill's reporter. Example: "Dinner in SF -- it's midnight for you and you stay up most of the night -- how did you get the right quotes from the people at the table?") Information's independent prosecutor is a very frightening thought, but it could also be an incredibly valuable one.
In its most benign form, it could be a sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. We in the Brill Labs have tested this nonfiction and find that its sourcing methods and general probity conform to our standards. It is easy to imagine that Yahoo, for instance, could "partner" with Brill or "co-brand" with Brill. Brill would provide the editorial "brand" on the vast streams of content running through the global network. FEATURING ONLY BRILL'S CONTENT would flash across participating Websites.
I have seen this business plan many times -- numerous entrepreneurs believe that the market demands a way to regulate the anarchy of content. We need a global editor (editor-in-chief of the world) to tell us what information we can trust. What this plan has always lacked is someone with the certainty and aggressiveness to say, I can tell you what's true and what isn't! Brill's Content, Brill says, "is about all that purports to be nonfiction. So it should be no surprise that our first principle is that anything selling itself to you as nonfiction should be true."
Still, Brill has overreached before. If I were making suggestions about his business plan, I'd say the whole of nonfiction is a grab. Apparently, Brill doesn't want just television news or newspaper reporting. Brill wants everything that is not a novel or a poem to fall under his stamp of approval -- that is, news, essays, magazine features, memoirs, documentaries, history, criticism, speeches, polls, news-group postings, editorial cartoons, and the Bible, as well as a good deal of humor, satire, and parody. All this turned over to Brill's young reporters.
"Our approach," Brill says, "is to look at nonfiction media as a consumer product."
For me, having written a book that is both true and satirical, one that, in the venerable tradition of satire, shamelessly settles many scores, it is something of a literary comedy or nightmare to be dogged by a young reporter calling up the various people I have savaged to get them to say, Yes, Michael Wolff is a person of questionable morals.
Indeed. Alan Patricof, the New York venture capitalist and Clinton host and contributor who is a figure of some derision in my book (and who is or is not an acquaintance of Brill's), and who is represented by the noted First Amendment lawyer Marty Garbus (who is or is not an acquaintance of Brill's), is soliciting me to change certain passages about him in future editions of my book. Part of the inducement is that if I agree to make such changes, Patricof, Garbus suggests, will not talk to the Brill reporter who has contacted him regarding the story about me.
And then: Brill's young reporter seems to believe I've made up the figure in my book of the smarmy AOL executive (I wish) who seduced me with deals that never got done. Though I decided for various soft-hearted reasons to spare this person public disclosure, now, according to Brill, in order to preserve my own reputation, I should name him.
"Why didn't you name names?" Brill's young reporter asked, oblivious to the echo.
The reversals, inversions, and conflicts are breathtaking. The level of full disclosure that's required is Jesuitical. I suppose I should disclose that the more Brill criticizes my book the more books I sell; likewise, the more I rail against him, the more Brill Brill becomes. Brill, of course, is using the media to make a spectacle of himself covering the media. Brill is shocked, shocked; I am shocked, shocked that he is shocked, shocked. What Brill is showing us is not the backstage view of how the media really works, but the levers and cranks by which almost everyone, most of all Brill himself, gets hoisted by his own petard.
Building brand, or making a name for yourself, is largely a function of aligning yourself with the Zeitgeist. As the Zeitgeist turns, Brill chose to go with Starr not Clinton -- with the prosecutor, not the rogue. Maybe he's picked right, although I hope not.

E-mail: michael@burnrate.com. E-mail: michael@burnrate.com.

Pretty scary stuff. Presently, Mr. Brill is trying to get media to set up a system whereby they will get paid for the information that they publish. Mr. Brill believes that people will want pay for information, and has started a business to provide this information to the media. In his rubber room article he does not say that he was paid by the NYC BOE, but it was very clear to Lucienne and me that indeed he was working with and/or for them when he wrote the article for the New Yorker. When someone is hired to write an article and does not disclose who is paying him or her, than there is a serious error, because the public will not know that the ‘facts’ cited in the article may not be true, or are reported in a biased fashion. I believe that Steven Brill was paid to write the article called “The Rubber Room” by the NYC BOE in order to provide the NYC BOE another step in the desire to overrule any presumed objection to what the NYC BOE is doing, i.e., making teachers guilty when indeed they are innocent of any charges. I believe that the public and teachers must look at the giving of personnel files to a reporter without prior approval of the person whose file it is, is unconstitutional.



Look at what the NYC BOE did to Teddy Smith (pictured above): "they" - meaning the SCI folk with the help of Theresa Europe at the ATU (Gotcha Squad) - published a report and sent it to the media saying that Mr. Smith had threatened to kill his arbitrator. Only investigator Michael Humphries of SCI NEVER asked Teddy whether or not he had said this!!! Teddy won his Article 75 appeal, and plans to sue.

Back to the New Yorker article, let me go over all of Mr. Brill’s erroneous “facts”:

-He says that when he entered the re-assignment center at 333 7th Avenue there 15 people in the room. I went every week to this location to speak to the members there, and never saw more than 10 during the 2008-2009 school year. Brill must have

included the two security guards from Allied Barton (another no-bid contract) sitting right outside.

- paragraph two – a “system that rarely calls anyone incompetent”. Where is the proof, Mr. Brill? I want stats. And, did you interview each and every teacher in the TRC the day that you visited? If not, where does you statement of guilt by all stem from? Are the 8 teachers there all guilty of incompetence? No.

-“teachers have been in the rubber room for an average of three years” …oh, really? Prove it.

- that Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg are not popular is true.

-Brandi Scheiner has a “raspy” voice from Brooklyn, not Queens, and her voice was an asset to the school (PS 40) and the Principal Ms. Sandra Felder told her that. She received satisfactory ratings for most of her career, and never said that there was no such thing as “incompetence” before the Bloomberg/Klein takeover, and the statement that teachers simply realized their own incompetence and leave on their own is untrue and ridiculous. She told me that she never told Brill that she was a whistleblower, she never received two “U”s in a row, and her Principal Susan Felder never went to the Leadership Academy; her school, PS 40, is a successful school, one of many at the

pre-2002 BOE. Who did Mr. Brill speak to about Principal Felder? No name? Maybe it was Ms. Felder herself. At least 17 teachers have left the school last year, according to Brandi Scheiner, and one committed suicide – because, it is believed, of the harassment of Felder.

- Dan Weisberg is quoted as saying that the effort is made to remove teachers in order to “make sure the right people are teaching there”. Please Mr. Weisberg – or, now David Brodsky, who are the “right” people? Good teachers, for sure. Who decides? If a principal dislikes a teacher because he/she is too black, too old, too senior, too smart, or “knows too much “ of the politics in the school, does this mean that he or she is a “bad” teacher? Often, yes it does to the NYC BOE. There is alot wrong with this criteria for excellence.

-test scores and graduation rates have improved since 2002? What do you expect, when doubletalk and scrubbing, and massive amounts of public relations time is purchased with public money? The truth can be hidden temporarily but not forever.

The biggest mistake Mr. Brill made was characterizing Lucienne Mohammed as an incompetent teacher. There is no evidence of that in all the 5,000 pages that the NYC BOE Attorney Dennis DeCosta brought to “prove” his case by the preponderance of the evidence. The 5,000 pages are pages that were read into the record from the notebooks held at the school on the Workshop Model and the scripts required of all teachers. I sat quietly, like I always do, at Lucienne’s first 13 days of her 3020-a while Jay Siegel, the arbitrator, allowed Assistant Principal Jaggon to read each page of the notebook, one by one. (By the way, why was Jay Siegel talking to Steven Brill at all, considering that this case is not over?).

I had no problem staying awake, but Dennis De Costa did. I started clocking his naps. He would nod off for 4 minutes, wake up for two, then nod off again. During his awake moments he sometimes writes a short note into his pad, but usually he draws rectangles and triangles. He colors them in, too. I have tried to copy his designs and I think I’ve got it right.

Dennis De Costa probably would not survive as an Attorney either on his own or at a large law firm. He is, in my opinion, not competent. In fact, last week I spoke with a teacher whose case was with Jay Siegel, and Dennis’ actions were so outrageous that when this teacher was completely exonerated, Dennis had to write a letter apologizing for his actions. He is a tall, handsome African American, and his tactic is to scream insults to gain points at a hearing. More than three times Mr. Siegel had to ask Dennis to leave the room with him to be reprimanded for screaming at Antonio Cavallero, Lucienne’s NYSUT Attorney. Dennis always chews gum.

Antonio Cavallero is one of the best attorneys I have seen. I am a big fan. He usually takes Dennis’ antics with a grain of salt, but every once in a while Dennis violates the ethics of common decency too much, and Antonio speaks out when that happens and is very effective.

Lucienne Mohammed is a beautiful person, inside and out. When I first met her more than a year ago, I thought that she must be a model. She is African- American and has the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. She is also beautiful inside, a person of intelligence, character, and integrity. I am proud to say that she is my friend. The case against her is false, and the Principal is motivated to get rid of her because of her filing grievances .

I asked Lucienne to give me the information she would like to publish, so here it is:

From Lucienne Mohammed:

“I have taught at PS 65 for a little over 17 years and have only received satifactory ratings. Ms. Daysi Garcia became Principal in 2004 and by the end of her first term two Black Assistant Principals and guidance counselor lost their positions. The two administrators were demoted to their previous positions and the guidance counselor was sent to the Rubber Room.

In the 2005/2006 school year a teacher who supported the UFT and associated with me and the only other classroom teacher of African descent in our East New York school was advised to stop associating with us. When she continued the friendship she was harassed and then terminated in 2006. However, in a subsequent lawsuit the NYC BOE had to award costs to this teacher and clear her record.

Ms. Garcia (pictured at right) is openly anti-UFT. She promptly disposed of our newly elected UFT representative in the beginning of the 2006 school year, he was sent to the Rubber Room along with the remaining Black Guidance counselor.

Ms. Garcia began an OSI investigation against me in October 2006 for taking part in the filing of a grievance regading teachers’ contractual right to have a menu of choices for their professional development period.

Ms. Garcia prosecuted me for supporting a boy whom she maligned in an open lunchroom by stating that the student’s religion (Islam) “cant be tolerated because it starves children”.

I reported to OEO in April 2007 Ms. Garcia for allowing a racist act to occur during a professional development conference wherein I and the only other teacher of African descent in our East New York school were told to play the role of “Big Ugly Negro”. In April 2007 I gave a character reference to a teacher in defense against slkanderous and discriminatory actions made by Ms. Garcia against him. This was followed by a slew of misleading, embellished, fabricated events put into letters placed in my file. After a series of attacks and harassment at the hands of Ms. Garcia, I filed an Article 2 Grievance in December 2007.

Since Ms. Garcia came to our school in 2004 I had never been given a U rating. My first came after the retirement of the Assistant Principal. Immediately following this Ms. Garcia put in her place a teacher of 4 years’ experience who was elevated rapidly to do her bidding which included harassing me and another teacher.

The new Assistant Principal was ordered to perform observations in the last 6 weeks of the school year, and I and another teacher of African descent received U ratings for the first time. I filed with the DOE’s OEO office, and filed another Article 2 grievance prior to my knowing that I had received a U rating.

Ms. Garcia admitted to making negative and derogatory remarks about me in the open office as was brought out during the arbitration hearing. I attempted to find some resolution for the constant harassment I was subjected to in the 2006/2007 school year and followed proper, recommended procedures: grievances, attempted dialogues, grievance, Special Complaint, OEO, and even a meeting with the Superintendent which was facilitated by State Assemblyman Darryl Townes.

The UFT validated my allegations of harassment and retaliatory behavior by accepting my case as a Special Complaint. Nothing has yet been resolved and Ms. Garcia made no attempt to compromise or have a dialogue. Instead, her harassment became more vicious and I was placed the following year in a new grade (5th) which had students at different cognitive levels and a different curriculum than that for which I was trained. I was given no training.

The 2007/2008 school year saw me in a small classroom with one of the largest, diverse ability group of students in the grade. The room was isolated from any other classroom. I had no desk, no file cabinet, student computers, or even closets. These conditions persisted until I was removed in June, 2008. I was the only teacher in the school who was required to hand in 18 lesson plans every Monday prior to the start of the school day.

Contrary to the UFT contract and the BOE agreement, I was told to sign up to be in the PIP+ program even though I had only one U rating, not two. The PIP+ peer evaluator was not competent to observe me: she had not taught in NYC since 1968; she had no supervisory certification or experience, no knowledge of the required curriculum and was not in a position to advise or mentor me. She did not follow the time allotted for pre- and post observations, and I never received her recommendations in a timely fashion. She stated for the record that she was told by the administration to support a U rating.

In June 2008 I was told to leave the school by the secretary and not allowed to retrieve any personal belongings such as books, my digital camera, games I had bought for the children. These items have never been returned to me.

Not satified with removing me from the school, Ms. Garcia sent police officers to my home after accusing me of theft of student funds, The police called this ridiculous.

I was ordered to sign for letters to my file weeks after being interned in the Rubber Room. Then, after being in the Rubber Room for 6 months, the administration again tried to file a charge against me, with OSI. The charges were unsubstantiated.

Mr. Brill was never given permission by me to see my file, and the NYC BOE will be held accountable for giving my file to a reporter without my knowledge or consent, especially given the fact that Mr. Brill took liberty to alter all the facts for his article. The letter, by the way, mentioned in Brill’s article, was NOT given eleven days earlier. It was from my doctor written the day before it was given I had been in the hospital with viral and bacterial bronchitis the Sunday and Monday of the previous week.

I was never asked questions about any “enforcer student” nor have I ever chosen a student to be an “enforcer”. Furthermore, it was during the 3020-a that I first heard of such charges.”

That’s from Lucienne. This is from me: I will be a witness for Lucienne Mohammed in any venue, at any time, and I will discuss the despicable sabotage of a beautiful, talented and dedicated teacher by the NYC BOE as represented in this case by Principal Daisi Garcia and Dennis De Costa, TPU Attorney at Law. I will try to remember to buy Mr. De Costa a package of gum before I speak.