The NYC Department of Education is Ignoring Pleas For a Safe Learning Environment

As I posted in my previous post (See "Ed Boland Writes About His Experience As A Teacher in The Battle For Room 314", Jan. 17, 2016) kids in many of NYC schools do not have a safe environment that supports their culture and out-of-school experience. We have to change this.

In the story, also today in the NYPOST about bigotry at elite high School Brooklyn Technical ("Brooklyn Tech"), students throughout New York City are crying out for recognition of heritage, culture, equality, respect, and finding appropriate strategies to survive. Devora Kaye, the DOE spokesperson, again states her meaningless answer, "We have zero tolerance for any discrimination. We’ll work to provide open forums for the school community to discuss these important issues and will provide any 
support that is needed.”

She means, I think, "Stop bothering me."

Lets all get to work on this.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com

At-risk students improve when they take a race and ethnicity class – study

Eli Rosenberg, Jan. 14, 2016, The Guardian

LINK

Stanford researchers concluded that ‘culturally relevant’ teaching is an important part of the 
education of students who could flunk or might drop out

High school students saw large improvements in their grades and attendance records when they enrolled in a class dedicated to exploring race and ethnicity, researchers in California found.

The Stanford University study analyzed a pilot program of ethnic studies classes at three San Francisco high schools and found that, on average, at-risk ninth-graders encouraged to enroll in the course performed significantly better than their peers who didn’t.

Student attendance increased by 21%, while grade-point averages surged nearly a grade and a half for those enrolled in the class – striking results, according to the researchers.

 “I was surprised that this particular course could have such dramatic effects on the academic outcomes of at-risk kids,” said Thomas S Dee, a professor at Stanford who co-authored the study with postdoctoral researcher Emily Penner. “If I was reading a newspaper with results like this, I would read it with incredulity, [but] the results were very robust.”

The study looked at 1,400 ninth-graders taking part in a pilot program. Students with GPAs of 2.0 or lower in eighth grade were automatically enrolled in ethnic studies during their first year of high school. Their results were compared against students who had similar GPAs who were not automatically enrolled in the ethnic studies class because their GPAs were slightly over 2.0.

The study lends some support to advocates who have worked to make ethnic studies classes a larger part of school curriculums.

Researchers concluded that the results of the study show that “culturally relevant” teaching is an important part of the education of students at risk of flunking or dropping out.

“Slight little nudges that help people reframe their experiences can have a big effect,” Dee said.

Other cities that have instituted ethnic studies offerings in school districts include Oakland and Los Angeles.

In Portland, Oregon, students recently lobbied for the class to be offered on a wide basis in public high schools.

But the non-traditional curriculums have been challenged by some conservatives in places like Arizona, where state legislators passed legislation banning ethnic studies from schools in 2010.

California’s governor, Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed a bill to develop a statewide ethnic studies curriculum in October. In Berkeley, where students have discussed ethnic stereotypes, analyzed history in racial terms, and talked about their own experiences and backgrounds in ethnic studies classes for more than 20 years, black student union leaders recently argued that black history should instead be better integrated into history curricula and that relegating the subject to a portion of a semester-long class was “insulting.”

Dee said that he hoped the study would help move the discussion in a more constructive direction.

“One of my hopes is that this research helps shift the debate away from those heated political outcomes towards student outcomes, about which everyone cares,” he said. “They may have dramatic effects.”

Brooklyn Tech

Students protesting ‘blatant bigotry’ at Brooklyn Tech HS

By Susan Edelman

LINK 

Racism is rampant at elite Brooklyn Tech HS, black students say.

On a new Facebook page gaining in popularity, Black in Brooklyn Tech, students describe offensive and insensitive treatment by faculty as well as classmates.

A movement to end the “blatant bigotry” erupted after several students, since suspended, allegedly made racist jokes in a private Facebook chat.

The school’s Black Student Union created the hashtag #blackinbrooklyntech to “share the stories of racial discrimination and harassment we face” as a minority in the top-rated school, and to open a dialogue, it said in a statement released to The Post.

The social-media campaign is an embarrassment to the city Department of Education and the 5,400-student Brooklyn Tech, the largest of eight elite high schools which base admissions solely on a special test.

The student body is 81 percent Asian, 20 percent white, 8 percent Hispanic and 8 percent black. Mayor de Blasio’s son, Dante, is a recent graduate.

Among the alleged incidents posted:

·         “Getting sent anonymous lynching & KKK jokes.”

·         A class clown at the front of the classroom did “what he seemed to think was a funny impression of a stereotypical black woman” named “Lakeisha.”

·         Black girls wearing crop tops and shorts in the summer “get sent to the dean’s office while girls of other races who are wearing the same things do not.”

·         A guidance counselor told a student expressing a goal to earn higher grades: “The day you get above a 90 average I’ll grow an Afro.”

·         An English teacher instructed a student who skipped the “N” word while reading the novel “Heart of Darkness” aloud in class to “go back and read that word.”

In response to the uproar, one teacher reportedly told students, “Race relations aren’t that bad in this school. You could have it a lot worse.”

On Friday, members of the Black Student Union met with principal Randy Asher and high school superintendent Karen Watts to discuss solutions. Asher has already begun to “enforce mandatory sensitivity training” for faculty members, they said.

DOE spokeswoman Devora Kaye said: “We have zero tolerance for any discrimination. We’ll work to provide open forums for the school community to discuss these important issues and will provide any support that is needed.”

Ed Boland Writes About His Experience As A Teacher in The Battle For Room 314

Anyone who works in NYC schools can see that we - parents, friends, social workers, teachers, administrators and advocates - are not doing enough to prepare kids to learn by setting up an environment which coincides with the cultures that exist both inside and outside the school.

Kids from families (rich and poor) who live day-to-day with hostile people inside their homes and outside, on the streets, learn to survive in many different ways. The current education system judges and discriminates against children for learning how to survive in the manner they have learned from their parents, or the people they interact with everyday.

There are not enough people or programs to re-direct negative behavior into positive outcomes.

The book "The Battle For Room 314 by Ed Boland seems to address the issue, and I commend him for putting this issue again in the public eye.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com

My year of terror and abuse teaching at a NYC high school

By Maureen Callahan, NY POST, Jan 17, 2016

LINK

In 2008, Ed Boland, a well-off New Yorker who had spent 20 years as an executive at a nonprofit, had a midlife epiphany: He should leave his white-glove world, the galas at the Waldorf and drinks at the Yale Club, and go work with the city’s neediest children.

“The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School” (Grand Central Publishing) is Boland’s memoir of his brief, harrowing tenure as a public-schoolteacher, and it’s riveting.

Ed Boland

There’s nothing dry or academic here. It’s tragedy and farce, an economic and societal indictment of a system that seems broken beyond repair.

The book is certain to be controversial. There’s something dilettante-ish, if not cynical, about a well-off, middle-aged white man stepping ever so briefly into this maelstrom of poverty, abuse, homelessness and violence and emerging with a book deal.

What Boland has to share, however, makes his motives irrelevant.

Names and identifying details have been changed, but the school Boland calls Union Street is, according to clues and public records, the Henry Street School of International Studies on the Lower East Side.

Boland opens the book with a typical morning in freshman history class.

A teenage girl named Chantay sits on top of her desk, thong peeking out of her pants, leading a ringside gossip session. Work sheets have been distributed and ignored.

“Chantay, sit in your seat and get to work — now!” Boland says.

A calculator goes flying across the room, smashing into the blackboard. Two boys begin physically fighting over a computer. Two girls share an iPod, singing along. Another girl is immersed in a book called “Thug Life 2.”

Chantay is the one that aggravates Boland the most. If he can get control of her, he thinks, he can get control of the class.

“Chantay,” he says, louder, “sit down immediately, or there will be serious consequences.”

The classroom freezes. Then, as Boland writes, “she laughed and cocked her head up at the ceiling. Then she slid her hand down the outside of her jeans to her upper thigh, formed a long cylinder between her thumb and forefinger, and shook it . . . She looked me right in the eye and screamed, ‘SUCK MY F–KIN’ D–K, MISTER.’ ”

It was Boland’s first week.

At the time, Boland’s new school was considered a bold experiment — not a charter but an “autonomous” one, given freedom in both management and curriculum. It was endowed in part by the Gates Foundation, and the principal hired only teachers who had once lived abroad.

Boland had taught English in China. This was his favored school — advertised as the last, best hope for kids who had fallen far behind — and he was thrilled to be hired. He went home to his then-boyfriend (now husband) and celebrated over takeout pad Thai and an expensive bottle of red wine.

“I was ready to change lives as a teacher,” he writes.

How wrong he was.

There were 30 kids in his ninth-grade class, some as old as 17. One student, Jamal, was living in a homeless shelter with his mother; most of the other students lived in public housing. There was one white kid in the whole school.

“It was as if Brown v. Board of Education or desegregation had never occurred,” Boland writes.

He had rounded up his students into a semicircle and checked for forbidden items: phones, electronics, sunglasses, clothing in gang colors.

Then someone kicked in the door.

And there, Boland writes, “stood one Kameron Shields in pure renegade glory, a one-man violation of every possible rule. Above the neck alone, he was flaunting four violations: He wore sunglasses and a baseball cap over a red bandanna over iPod headphones. A silver flip phone was clipped to his baggy jeans. Everything he wore was cherry red — the hallmark color of the Bloods.

“He turned his grinning face to the ceiling and howled, ‘WASS . . . UP . . . N—AS?’ ”

Boland was outmatched. He was petrified. He ran out the clock and asked his fellow teachers who this kid was.

“Oh, yeah, he’s brutal,” one colleague said. Turned out Kameron had thrown a heavy electric sharpener at a teacher’s head the year before, but the principal — whom the teachers sarcastically called their “fearless leader” — refused to expel any student for any reason.

Two weeks in and Boland was crying in the bathroom. Kids were tossing $110 textbooks out the window. They overturned desks and stormed out of classrooms. There were seventh-grade girls with tattoos and T-shirts that read, “I’m Not Easy But We Can Negotiate.” Their self-care toggled in the extreme, from girls who gave themselves pedicures in class to kids who went days without showering.

Kameron was in a league of his own. “I was genuinely afraid of him from the minute I set eyes on him,” Boland writes. After threatening to blow up the school, Kameron was suspended for a few months, and not long after his return, a hammer and a double switchblade fell out of his pockets.

The principal gave up. Kameron was expelled.

“Oh, they getting real tough around here now,” one student said. “Three hundred strikes, you out.”

Here among the kids who couldn’t name continents or oceans, who scrawled, “Mr. Boland is a f—-t” on chalkboards, who listed porn among their hobbies, were a few who had a shot.

There was Nee-cole, who wore thick glasses and pigtails. She was quiet, smart, much more childlike than her peers, and Boland felt for her. He was also intrigued by a tough girl named Yvette, who showed flashes of insight and intelligence yet did all she could to hide it. “PLEASE DON’T TELL ANYONE I WROTE THIS,” she scrawled on one report.

He asked his fellow teachers about the enigma that was Yvette. “One day in class, I intercepted a note,” said a colleague, Tasneen. “It said, ‘Yvette b—s old guys for a dollar under the Manhattan Bridge.’ We punished the girl who wrote it for spreading lies.”

Soon after, the school heard from Child Protective Services. The prostitution rumor was true. Yvette was removed from her home. “She’s not doing it anymore,” Tasneen said, “but she’ll never outrun that story.”

The bookish Nee-cole was also a target, but things were tolerable — until parent-teacher night. Nee-cole’s mother showed up wheeling a suitcase down the hall, listening to Donna Summer on a Discman. She wore off-brand jeans, rainbow leg warmers, a ratty orange vest, dreads festooned with ribbons and shells, and a face tattoo of pin curls where hair should be.

Boland was flummoxed. He closed the classroom door.

She introduced herself as Charlotte and explained Nee-cole’s history: Her daughter had been enrolled in Harlem, but when her mother saw the school was on the city’s list of underperformers, she pulled Nee-cole out and home-schooled her.

“But we didn’t have a home, so I made do and taught her where I could, mostly on the subway, for the year.”

She went on to explain that she had to put Nee-cole in foster care. “I love my child beyond words and am still very involved with her life,” Charlotte said. “Her education is my priority.”

After that meeting, Nee-cole’s life at school was never the same.

“Nee-cole’s mother is a HOBO,” the other kids would say. “Did you get a look at her? Mama look like a homeless clown.”

Boland came to actively loathe most of the student body. He ­resented “their poverty, their ­ignorance, their arrogance. ­Everything I was hoping, at first, to change.”

His colleagues gave him pep talks, reminded him to contextualize this behavior: These kids had no parents, or abusive, neglectful ones. Most lived in extreme poverty. School was all they had, and it was their only hope.

A lifelong liberal, Boland began to feel uncomfortable with his thinking. “We can’t just explain away someone’s horrible behavior because they have had a tough upbringing,” he argued back. “It doesn’t do them — or us — any good.”

Then there was Jesús Alvarez, boyfriend of Chantay and, as Boland writes, “a perfect s- -t.” Jesús would stroll by Boland’s classroom and shout, “Bolan’, who you ballin’? It ain’t no chick.”

Boland called in the father, even though he was warned it would do no good. The three sat down, and Boland was surprised.

“Jesús, this is a good school,” the father said. He warned Jesús that it was either school or the street, and Jesús wasn’t tough enough for the street. “You get yourself right, get an education, and show this man some respect.”

It was the one thing that had gone well so far. “I left that meeting brimming with confidence,” Boland writes. “Involving parents was key.”

Next, he turned his attention to Valentina, a transfer student who joined his class in February. She wore tight jeans over what Boland calls “an epic derriere,” and as she walked to her seat, the kids oinked and mooed.

“Step down, all y’all n- - -as, or I’ll stab you in your neck,” Valentina said. “Don’t get me tight, bitches.”

Boland soon learned Valentina was what the Department of Education calls “a safety transfer” — meaning she was such a threat to her fellow students that she was pulled out of school.

Now here she was, Boland’s newest charge. He was quickly impressed with her observational skills — a bar he had set extremely low, now the victim of some inner-city form of Stockholm syndrome.

Asked to write about an ancient sculpture of two royals, Valentina wrote, “Well, isn’t it obvious that they are a couple? His hand is on her t—y . . . The way they sit is ­regal.”

It was the use of the word ­“regal” that blew Boland away. He pulled her aside after class.

“You can’t fool me,” he told her. “I can tell from just that one sheet of paper that you have a very fine mind.”

For that, he received an official complaint of sexual harassment, filed by one Valentina. She claimed Boland said, “You are mighty fine, you turn me on, and I can tell you like fooling around.”

The entire administration knew Boland was gay, yet they still had to follow procedure. He was never to be alone with Valentina again.

By the time he invited a highly decorated Iraq War veteran to speak to class and Valentina greeted him with, “Hey, mister, give me a dollar,” Boland thoroughly despised her.

Nor could he escape the kids outside of school. One winter day, Bolan was mounting his bicycle, on his way home, when he saw a gang fight break out in a parking lot. He saw Jesús in the crowd, and an older man egging the kids on. “That’s it, Nelson, show that punk-ass bitch who’s boss. Whale his ass.”

It was Jesús’ father.

Angry and humiliated, Boland relayed this latest heartbreak to a veteran teacher. “As crazy as sounds,” the teacher said, “that ­father may be trying to teach his son how to survive in a hostile ­environment the only way he knows how.”

Boland didn’t know what to ­believe anymore. At the end of the school year, he quit.

Boland ends his book with familiar suggestions for ­reform: Invest more money, recruit better teachers, retool the unions, end poverty. But there’s no public policy for fixing a broken kid from a broken home, or turning fear into resilience, or saving kids who can’t, or won’t, be saved.

Toward the end of his tenure, Boland asks his sister Nora, a longtime teacher, for help. What is he doing wrong? What could he be doing right? Why can’t he break through to these kids, even the ones who seem to care? How can society absorb such a massive ­human toll?

“I’ve been teaching for a long time now,” Nora tells him. “And my only answer is that there are no easy answers.”

NYSUT and 3020-a

In 2014 I posted the article below after seeing some terrific, wonderful teachers fired for no legitimate reason after a 3020-a where their NYSUT Attorney did not, in my opinion, defend properly.

I want to emphasize that many of the NYSUT Attorneys are very nice people and I like them but I would not choose to have them defend me if I was charged. I do not work for NYSUT, the UFT or the DOE.

I think that an Attorney must fight for the client's rights vigorously.

Betsy Combier

ADVOCATZ

Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter

betsy.combier@gmail.com

212-794-8902

How Bad Is NYSUT as Providers of Due Process at 3020-a Arbitration?

My opinion is that the NYSUT/UFT "play along to get along" with Mike Bloomberg has caused the destruction of the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of effective, professional, caring teachers and staff of the New York City Board/Department of Education ....all members of the UFT....for at least the past 10 years. Their goal was to get tenured teachers out of public schools because Mike Bloomberg hated tenure protections and the thought that someone could not be fired in a second for no reason other than that the administrator wanted this person gone. This is good business, says Mike and Jack Welch (pictured below).

I guess everyone knows that you do not have to use NYSUT to defend at 3020-a. Right?
You can use a private Attorney and team, use a friend/advocate as your assistant, or you can do the 3020-a yourself  "Pro se"

My telephone number is 212-794-8902 and my email address is betsy.combier@gmail.com; you can call me to ask questions about how 3020-a arbitration works.

Thus you should find out what you need to know by seeking information on your own. A person brought to 3020-a arbitration is given paperwork with Education Law 3020-a when they are charged. Few read it. Everyone should, but teachers seldom are lawyers too, so they rely on their NYSUT Attorney to tell them what it says.

That's a mistake.

Why is it a mistake? Because your Union, the UFT, and the NYSUT lawyers contracted to protect your due process rights at 3020-a, neglect to do that. For example, if you are charged with misconduct, you may get an email from Virginia Lopreto, a criminal attorney who works on contract to NYSUT. If you actually get to speak with Ms. Lopreto you are lucky. She will tell OSI, SCI, OEO that you refuse to speak with any of them, and then you will never hear from her. Here is a letter written by a member who had that experience (I have removed the name of the member, because victim's names are not important):

"Dear Ms. LoPreto:

My name is                   (                    to you because you never got my name right). My case was assigned to you because I am a UFT member who has been a victim of a false accusation. I received an email sent by your secretary, which was a copy of the email you sent to Ron Vance, from the SCI.  The second and last email that you sent to me was a copy of an email you sent to Mr. Vance, stating that I have the right not to answer his questions. After that, I called your office several times with questions that were never answered. In fact, I could never get in touch with you either by phone or in person. You didn't offer me any support, knowing that I didn’t even have knowledge of the accusations leveled against me. I felt very uncomfortable when told by Mr. Vance, at the time that he had been trying to get my declaration over the phone without legal representation or witness,  that if the UFT lawyer will tell me not to provide information to him, that he would end up closing my case. I wanted to share that with you and I needed some of my questions answered, but it never happen. On May 14, I received the report of the investigation and a letter from the superintendent on May 23rd. I faxed both those documents to you. I called your office seeking advice on what to do next and you never even returned my calls. I kept calling until a substitute to your secretary called me back and said that you were not going to continue with my case and that if I wanted to proceed I just needed to go back to the UFT, something you did not even have  the decency to tell me directly. I asked him if he could send an email stating your decision and he replied that you were not going to send me anything.

In sum, I really didn't appreciate your treatment. It is not you not proceeding with the case that is particularly troublesome, but you not even bothering to show due respect and consideration to people without whom you wouldn’t even be here. You work for the union because we make it possible for you to get a salary, and there is just no room or excuse for your lack of courtesy to people you have moral, professional and ethical obligation to defend.

I cannot even say it was a pleasure meeting you because you did not even make that possible."

See an email from NYSUT Attorney Paul Brown, to a client who fired him when she received this:

"From: Paul Brown <pbrown@nysutmail.org>
To: 
Sent: Wed,  2013 
Subject: Re: - WITNESSES

I have an ethical obligation not to put on witnesses that I believe will be damaging to your case.  I have confirmed with one of my supervisors and with several colleagues at my office that the witnesses you suggested will offer little, if any, substantive value and will open the door to many more potential problems. .....

Please call me should you have any further questions.

Paul K. Brown

New York State United Teachers

(212) 533-6300 Ext. 168"

NO WITNESSES????? That will get you fired and forever guilty of the charges filed against you. 

Below is the Education Law 3020-a (1) and (2)(a):

NY CLS Educ § 3020-a  (2014)

§ 3020-a.  Disciplinary procedures and penalties

   1. Filing of charges. All charges against a person enjoying the benefits of tenure as provided in subdivision three of section [fig 1] eleven hundred two, and sections [fig 2] twenty-five hundred nine, [fig 3] twenty-five hundred seventy-three, twenty-five hundred ninety-j, three thousand twelve and three thousand fourteen of this chapter shall be in writing and filed with the clerk or secretary of the school district or employing board during the period between the actual opening and closing of the school year for which the employed is normally required to serve. Except as provided in subdivision eight of section [fig 4] twenty-five hundred seventy-three and subdivision seven of section twenty-five hundred ninety-j of this chapter, no charges under this section shall be brought more than three years after the occurrence of the alleged incompetency or misconduct, except when the charge is of misconduct constituting a crime when committed.
 
2. Disposition of charges.

a. Upon receipt of the charges, the clerk or secretary of the school district or employing board shall immediately notify said board thereof. Within five days after receipt of charges, the employing board, in executive session, shall determine, by a vote of a majority of all the members of such board, whether probable cause exists to bring a disciplinary proceeding against an employee pursuant to this section. If such determination is affirmative, a written statement specifying [i] the charges in detail, [ii] the maximum penalty which will be imposed by the board if the employee does not request a hearing or that will be sought by the board if the employee is found guilty of the charges after a hearing and [fig 1] [iii] the employee's rights under this section, shall be immediately forwarded to the accused employee by certified or registered mail, return receipt requested or by personal delivery to the employee.

New York State School Boards Association is no fan of teachers' rights, either:
See ON BOARD from 2007

However, as NYC has no school board, NYC is not technically a member of NYSSBA. Several years ago I went to the NYSSBA annual conference as Press at the NY Sheraton Hotel, and sat at the only table with any seats, the NYC table. I sat next to Courtenaye Jackson-Chase. At the same table were leading names from the Office of Legal Services, such as Judy Nathan. In the program, my name and the name of the former General Counsel (before Courtenaye), Michael Best, Esq. were listed as representing New York City. I sent the post below to a listserv, nyceducationnews on October 28, 2007:

"To all:

As a paralegal and a non-Attorney, I attended an all day seminar on School Law held at the Sheraton Hotel on Thursday, October 25, 2007. The seminar was part of the New York State School Boards Association conference.

The book that all participants received describes Open Meetings Law and the requirement that all Executive Sessions of a public body be voted on in a full meeting, and minutes are taken during the subsequent Executive Session where a majority votes on probable cause.

Therefore, all the votes taken and teachers terminated by a vote of the PEP members in Executive Session over the past 5 years are contrary to the law. The NYC BOE has required all persons interested in obtaining a copy of the tape of each meeting to file a Freedom of Information request, therefore the NYC BOE has substantiated the belief that the PEP is a public body. A powerless one, as Michael Best wrote to me “The PEP has no administrative or executive functions”.

Further news distressing to anyone in the New York City school district (NYC and boroughs) who would like to have any voice at all in creating policy or deciding complaints/issues: New York City has the largest school system in the nation, but was not represented at the NYSSBA conference. The only attendees listed from NYC Area 13 were me and Michael Best, a presenter of the “Contract For Excellence” session. Two other people from NYC (who kindly sat next to me at my table) were Ms. Judy Nathan and Ms. Courtenaye Jackson-Chase, both listed as “Attorney” for the NYC BOE.

We thus have a quasi-legal system set up to prevent any opposition to a resolution/vote/consent set by the Mayor/Mr. Klein.........

We have no right to get an independent decision on any complaints we may have, as everyone making decisions on grievances/special education hearings belong to Joel and Mike.

Gosh, how could we get in this position?"

David Bloomfield answered with Open Meetings Law, Sections 105 and 106

As we all now know, NYC does not have a school board/employing board and no longer has Executive Sessions at the PEP meetings. When the PEP did hold Executive Sessions, the group violated Open Meetings Law Section 105 by having the Session before the public meeting began. I used to speak at the public meeting part of the monthly PEP meeting, and ask for the reason for that, as well as a tally of each member's vote. Joel Klein would not nicely tell me to sit down, shut up and my time was up. I would say that my time was not up, but he would not give me an answer. Still don't have one.

In fact, if you look at the Notice of Determination of Probable Cause(paperwork sent to all teachers/employees charged with 3020-a), the date of the Executive Session at which probable cause was voted on, is blank. I posted the probable cause notice received by Francesco Portelos with his permission. There is no date for the Executive Session listed. Superintendent Erminio Claudia

Superintendent Cludia

testified at Francesco's 3020-a that there WAS an "Executive Session", namely when she met with "legal" on Francesco's case and they "found" probable cause for his charges. I would suggest that this meeting is not what is cited in the law, Open Meetings Law, or 3020-a(2)(a). Where did she get this version?

So in all cases brought to 3020-a arbitration, probable cause is determined improperly. Without the proper determination of probable cause according to Education Law 3020-a (1) and (2)(a), arbitrators appointed to hear 3020-a cases have no subject matter jurisdiction to decide on whether there is Just Cause for any penalty.

This is what NYSUT doesn't want you to know. In fact, your NYSUT attorney may rush you into a pre-hearing and then a full hearing/resignation/retirement/fine and settlement without any time to discuss the charges against you. NYSUT states in letters to those who opt to hire a private attorney or advocate, or do the 3020-a themselves:

"...changes to the Education Law negotiated by the UFT and the Board supercede the statutory provisions. Even though you are not utilizing NYSUT legal counsel, your case must be processed pursuant to the disciplinary procedures negotiated by the UFT and the Board. You do not have the right for your case to go forward pursuant to the Educational Law as it exists without the negotiated changes contained in Article 21 (G).(scroll to p. 113)."

No mention of probable cause found as required by Education Law 3020-a. But NYSUT isn't saying that the Law isn't there, just that you cannot use it for your case.

Bulloney.

This is, in my thinking, the biggest error of NYSUT representation. Because without a probable cause determination in an Executive Session of the employing board, and a vote by a majority of members, you are left with anyone "finding" probable cause, and charging you with something that may or may not be true. The arbitrator hears only what the NYC DOE wants him/her to hear.

But arbitrators on the NYC permanent panel are paid $1400/day, and if they agree that probable cause has not been properly determined they wont get paid. So the arbitrators deny the dismissal of the case on any grounds, or there will be no payment coming their way.

Teacher discipline and termination are what the Department of Education calls "their business". It's not only a business, it's a partnership. With NYSUT and the UFT.