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Friday, August 21, 2020

Alonzo Yanes, Burned at School, Keeps His $60 Million Award While Teacher Anna Poole Gets a Raise From the NYC DOE

Alonzo Yanes after being set on fire
The picture above of burned student Alonzo Yanes says it all. A science teacher at his school, Beacon High School on Manhattan's West Side, did an experiment that she should never have done, and burned student Alonzo Yanes after her experiment went horribly wrong.
Anna Poole
There is more bad news that followed this event, as well as good news. The bad news is that the teacher who committed the misconduct, Anna Poole, was rewarded with a raise by the New York City Department of Education. She now is a teacher mentor at NYC DOE Headquarters, teaching other teachers how to teach chemistry. (This article is re-posted below as well). The good news is that Yanes gets to keep his $60 million award.

                                                                          Ruth Lacey


Principal Lacey testified "she made a terrible mistake" and cried on the stand, but was ousted from Beacon in August 2020, basically for this incident and her alleged "racist" policies.

‘Hypocritical’ Beacon principal squeezes rich parents while students rally against ‘privilege’

Some readers may say that I am a teacher advocate and therefore should support all teachers at all times.

I do not believe this. If I want to be believable in hearings or on my blog, (which I do),  I must dig into the facts of a story or case, and tell the reader those facts. If an educator is guilty of misconduct based upon a review of the facts, then I will say exactly that. I still argue for a punishment that is fair, based on the evidence, so I usually do not agree with a termination award and will fight to overturn any termination decision I think was not deserved.

In the case of Alonzo Yanes, I do believe that the NYC DOE should fire the teacher who caused such harm, Anna Poole. One of my reasons for feeling this way is that I know of so many cases where arbitrators have terminated good teachers for no reason or a low-grade accident or mistake that did not harm a child.

I just cannot accept the fact that Ms. Poole did such a stupid act and was rewarded, with her student suffering so much from his injuries.

Alonzo Yanes and his parents
More proof that the teacher disciplinary procedures and penalties must be changed and made more fair.

Betsy Combier
By LAURA DIMON, , and 

MAR 22, 2018 

City educators, parents, and students were sickened Thursday to hear an Upper West Side teacher found a pot of cash and a cushy job at the end of a rainbow experiment that burned two students.

Beacon High School teacher Anna Poole has landed $23,000 in raises since the 2014 accident that permanently disfigured one teen and prompted nearly $40 million in lawsuits.

She is now an instructional leader assigned to the Education Department headquarters and teaches city teachers how to perform science lessons.

New York City Parents Union founder Mona Davids was appalled.

"I think that's outrageous and ludicrous. It's actually insulting," said Davids. "But it's typical DOE. That's what they do, reward poor performance."

As an example, Davids cited former Bronx principal Santiago Taveras, who lost his job at DeWitt Clinton High School in a 2017 cheating scandal. Despite a probe that found he changed students' grades, Taveras landed in another high-paying city schools gig, as an educational administrator.

Poole, 35, was a rookie science teacher on Jan. 2, 2014, when a chemistry rainbow experiment went horribly wrong and caused a classroom explosion that injured two students.

"Oh my God, I set a kid on fire," Poole cried out, according to a Special Commissioner of Investigation report published five months after horrific blast.

But instead of firing Poole, Education Department officials gave her a new job as citywide instructional specialist, and a series of raises the agency said were contractually required. She currently makes a $79,484 a year — up from $56,048 on the day of the explosion.

City public school teacher and education activist Axia Rodriquez said Poole's plum gig shows the Education Department disciplinary system is upside-down.

"The DOE is helping this lady reboot her career because it was a tragic accident," said Rodriquez, who teaches English-language learners. "But when whistleblowers speak up, their careers are in tatters."

Queens teacher Bobson Wong said on Twitter that the city should put its brightest educators in positions to lead important professional development classes.

"I think this says a lot about the quality of professional development — who gets chosen to do it," Wong tweeted. "I wish teachers had more of an opportunity to run PD, but given how busy we are, this is difficult."

Beacon students were shocked that Poole is giving city educators lessons on how to lead science classes. The classroom blast she touched off four years ago melted the ear of one student, burned the forearms and hair of another, and left a third with PTSD.

So "maybe continuing to work with chemicals isn't a super responsible decision," said sophomore Henry Pearl, 16.

Poole didn't pick up her office phone when called for comment, and her coworkers at 52 Chambers St. said they were too spooked to comment on her story.

"Good luck," said one DOE staffer approached by a Daily News reporter outside Tweed Courthouse. "There's a lot of fear here."

Ben Chapman is an award-winning reporter who covers education for the New York Daily News. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Chapman has written more than 2,000 articles about New York City schools for the Daily News since joining the paper in 2009.

Alonzo Yanes at trial
photo: Steven Hirsch
By Priscilla DeGregory, NY POST August 10, 2020





The city lost its attempt to avoid paying the $60 million verdict that was awarded to a Beacon High School student who was badly burned in a since-banned chemistry experiment gone awry, a judge ruled Monday.

Alonzo Yanes was awarded the stunning sum by a jury on July 1, 2019, following a trial that detailed how Yanes, then 16, suffered horrific and disfiguring burns on Jan. 2, 2014, after his chemistry teacher, Anna Poole, conducted a “Rainbow Experiment” that erupted in a fireball.
The trial also laid out the harrowing physical and emotional recovery that the teen went through in the months and years following the incident.
“All of this excruciating physical and emotional trauma experienced by Mr. Yanes has essentially stopped his young life before it even began,” Manhattan Supreme Supreme Court Justice Alexander Tisch wrote in a decision upholding the jury’s verdict.
The city last August filed a motion seeking to toss out or renegotiate the hefty verdict claiming that Yanes wasn’t nearly as disfigured as other accident victims in New York cases who have received smaller payouts.
Tisch said the verdict — which awarded for past and future pain and suffering — is appropriate as “Mr. Yanes was subjected to literally being burned alive.”
Yanes, now 22, spent painful months recovering in hospitals including undergoing skin grafting to his face, neck, arms, and hands and losing his ears, according to trial testimony. He has disfiguring scars on his face and body and has lost the ability to sweat and feel in the burned areas, a doctor testified.
“Having miraculously survived being severely burned and the related trauma of the accident, Mr. Yanes became acquainted with the agonizing pain and suffering he would have to endure daily,” Tisch wrote of Yanes’ recovery.
And as for his future, the judge wrote, “While Mr. Yanes is supposed to be entering the prime of his life, he has been unable to establish a romantic relationship and has never even experienced his first kiss or had a single sexual encounter.”
Tisch said there is no sign that these emotional consequences “will somehow lessen over the remainder of his life.”
The physical and emotional impact of the accident will continue to affect Yanes’ job prospects, his future relationships, his self-confidence, his independence from his parents, and his friendships throughout his life, Tisch said.
he jury “awarded a sizable, but fair monetary award for the substantial injuries … that Mr. Yanes has endured and is statistically likely to continue to endure for an additional 54 years post-verdict,” the decision read referring to Yanes’ predicted life expectancy.
Yanes’ lawyer Ben Rubinowitz told The Post he and his clients are “very pleased” with the decision.
“This young child suffered horrific injuries through the negligence of the Board of Education and a teacher who failed to provide protection for the students,” Rubinowitz said. “Although the award offers some measure of damages I know that my client would return it in a heartbeat if he could have his health back.”
The DOE deferred comment to the city Law Department.
Law Department spokesman Nicholas Paolucci said, “This was a tragic incident and the experiment has been banned in our schools.
“While we respect the court’s ruling, we believe the award is not consistent with the awards that have been upheld by the courts in similar cases.”
Paolucci said the city is “reviewing the city’s legal options” when asked if there would be an appeal.

Jury's $60M Verdict in 'Agonizing' High School Student Burn
Case Upheld

As a chemistry teacher at Manhattan's Beacon High School "poured methanol from a gallon jug" into dishes containing nitrates, "a giant fireball erupted ... and engulfed" the student, and he burned for at least a minute, wrote the judge.
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Sunday, August 16, 2020

The Hidden Rubber Rooms of New York City Create a Fiscal Nightmare

Betsy Combier
by Betsy Combier

 In 2010, the eight warehouses that had the nickname "rubber rooms" were closed due to news reports of hundreds of education personnel sitting in remote places getting paid their full salary to do nothing. When I started working at the UFT in 2007, I simultaneously started talking and writing about the rubber rooms in order for the plight of the enclosed tenured teachers to become visible to the paying public. 

This idea, that millions of public dollars were being spent to keep people out of their classrooms doing non-teaching activities was a political nightmare for Mayor Bloomberg and the NYC Department of Education.

Since 2003 I have been listening to the stories and working as an advocate at the due process hearings of reassigned educators. For three of those years 2007-2010, I was a UFT Special Representative. I agreed to leave the UFT because I could not help members as I thought they needed.

 I found everything about the NYC rubber rooms to be fascinating. Each location was unique because of the number and character of the people placed there while they waited for their hearing, a 3020-a arbitration mandated by Education Law and their tenured status. Tenured educators cannot be fired for any reason without a due process hearing on the allegations of incompetency or misconduct. All employees in these rooms stayed at the location for the regular school day with 30-45 minutes for lunch. These times were monitored by the principal placed in each room. I know one teacher in a rubber room in the Bronx who studied for the LSAT while sitting in her reassignment, and now is a practicing attorney. To pass the time, classes in everything from cooking to the law were given every day, depending on the license or interest of the people in each location.

However, placing about 1500 education personnel in rooms away from students for 1 to 15 years simply could not be sustained. In my opinion, must not remain. Holding a public employee on a full salary in a room without justification is more than bad public policy. It's also demeaning and malicious.

 An important fact is that people in the rubber rooms were organizing. Demands were made by the displaced employees, starting in 2008, to form chapters for “rubber roomers”, and to elect unofficial chapter leaders in each location. Neither the Department nor the UFT wanted to legitimize the rubber rooms in this way.

Under pressure from an angry public, the UFT and the DOE signed an agreement on April 15, 2010, to clear these now very visible examples of fiscal absurdity by speeding up the resolution of charges at hearings known as 3020-a arbitration. No one has paid any attention to either letter agreement, then or now.
NYC hired a roster of arbitrators to hear the cases quickly, but many of the accused fought termination rather than settle, retire or resign, and most wanted witnesses to testify on their behalf. Some hearings are lengthy -- one recent case took 32 days and nine months of hearing dates, not including the decision). The time limits are not enforced.

Then there is the shocking case of Alan Herz. he was charged with two so-called "inappropriate" comments to his students, neither of which, in my opinion, warranted anything more than maybe a slap on the wrist. However, some DOE employee somewhere wanted Alan fired, and he was served 3020-a charges, thus highlighting what I believe is the main problem with the entire disciplinary procedure: the charging, pre-3020-a hearing process. His Attorney informed the arbitrator that the school investigator did not file his report until two years after a student accused the teacher of  'insulting' her. This is a blatant violation of procedure, which requires that any report written by an investigator must be completed within six to 12 months. The arbitrator did the correct thing, as all arbitrators should, and dismissed the case at the pre-hearing, citing the procedural error. Within 10 days the NYC DOE sued the arbitrator in the NY State Supreme Court for dismissing the case so quickly. The Judge dismissed the City’s lawsuit.

 I think you can see my point, which is that all decisions made before a 3020-a case begins are random and arbitrary. The NYC DOE honors no rules, regulations, or law when an employee does something that a 'higher up' is embarrassed by, or doesn't like for any reason. The procedures for disciplinary action against tenured employees beg for accountability and mediation of the proposed charges before an arbitrator is appointed and paid to hear the case to decide the penalty. Under these conditions, false charges are justified and unlawfully validated. All an arbitrator has to do is find the DOE witnesses 'credible' and the witnesses and charged employee, or "Respondent", 'not credible'. The penalty of termination is then the 'only' outcome.

 The political ‘solution’ was, and still is, to spread out the accused or allegedly guilty employees here and there -- in school offices, basements, storage or copy rooms -- anywhere hidden from view. The rubber rooms have gone underground.  No one knows who these new rubber roomers are, because school and central budgets do not have a category for “reassigned” or “suspended” personnel.

 The hiding of the reassignment rooms and process is very clear in the 3020-a hearings. Here is one example: in a 2019 case, whenever a witness or the NYSUT attorney mentioned anything about the accused teacher being "reassigned", the Department attorney Seyi Collins-Jemmott prosecuting the case told the transcriber/reporter,

 "MS. JEMMOTT: [Interposing] I am--the
Department is going to ask that the reference
made by opposing counsel to respondent being
reassigned be stricken from the record."

Ms. Collins-Jemmott interjected this whenever anyone mentioned "rubber room" or "reassignment", to hide the fact that the charged educator had spent almost a year as a reassigned teacher.

In 2009 I wrote:

The "Gotcha Squad" and the New York City Rubber Rooms


In 2010 I wrote about the scattering of rubber roomers throughout NYC:

Teachers in NYC Rubber Rooms Are Now Scattered So That The NYC Board of Education Can Hide The Harm and Retaliation
In 2014 I wrote about the new rubber rooms' and the rules:

The NYC DOE Re-Assignment Policy Issued in 2010


Then, in 2017 we heard the exact same lie about teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve or ATR pool:

City Will Move Sidelined Teachers From Limbo to Classrooms

The Department benefits from hiding the rubber rooms by not being subjected to public outrage for the waste of public funds. The UFT benefits from hiding the rubber rooms because they are saved from public ridicule for keeping "bad" teachers on salary while they are reassigned to do nothing. Everyone wins but the general public and the parents and children in the schools.

When a teacher is reassigned, who takes his/her place? Anyone who is available - a substitute teacher, uncertified para, no one is watching. Kids often have their entire school record jeopardized because their teacher is suddenly absent. The reassigned teacher is not permitted any contact with students.

The saying "throw the largest amount of mud at the wall hoping something will stick" is right on the mark. However, the most outrageous part of this whole public hoax is the fact that none of the charges need to be true, but the public has to pay for it. And, there is no accountability and no consequences for false charges.

 The take-away is that this entire boondoggle is random, subject to whims and fancy, dislike and discrimination, rather than planning and human capital management.  

The psychology of lack of ownership for wasting public funds is well-documented. Every elected official has had to deal with "If it's not coming out of my own pocket, who cares?", "Who is going to find out? I'm protected from prosecution", "it's my job to get bad teachers out of the building", etc. 

NYC needs to refine the charging process so that public money is used effectively to root out the truly bad while supporting the wrongly charged and consequences for those who pursued false charges. 

We also must end the hidden rubber rooms and make these places visible so that public money can be allocated appropriately, and publicly. Give all educators relevant work to do in accordance with their license while they sit in the "rubber room" for a short amount of time, no more than needed to get an arbitrator and hearing date. Give the public a say in where their money goes.

Our educators deserve better.


 By the way, the picture below used by the POST is a great hero of mine, for resilience and his fighting spirit. His name is David Suker. He was charged with putting a false home address for himself when he registered his daughter for a school on the Upper West Side. He did not do what he was accused of, but in addition, by the time he was charged 10 years had passed. I know that any investigation into a student's real address must be completed within 30 days, and no one can be charged 10 years later. But in the random and arbitrary procedures used in NYC to discipline and/or terminate tenured educators, the laws of NY State have no relevance.

 David Suker's NYSUT Attorney Steve Friedman did not know or care to know that the residence requirement charge was bogus, and David was terminated. David called me up after receiving his penalty of termination and asked for my help in his Article 75 Appeal, which I agreed to do with Attorney Maria Chickedanz. We won $250,000.00 for him as well as his job back. Love this guy.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog

A teacher sleeps at the city Department of Education's North Borough Support Center
rubber room in 2016. New York was supposed to have done away with these tax-dollar wasters,
but the practice has merely been hidden from view.
NYC promised to ban teacher ‘rubber rooms’ — they went underground instead
by Betsy Combier, NYPOST, August 15, 2020

The eight-city warehouses called “rubber rooms” were spaces of various sizes where up to 1,500 Department of Education employees at a time got paid their full salaries to sit around — free to read the newspaper, surf the internet, knit, chat or just doze off.
Some got creative. One notorious rubber-room fixture managed his real-estate and rental properties. Another teacher in a Bronx rubber room studied for the LSAT and is now a practicing attorney.
All the “reassigned” employees stayed in these rooms for the entire school day, free to leave only 30 to 45 minutes for lunch.
The fact that millions of public dollars were being spent on holding pens to keep teachers out of classrooms for months or years on end — many even without charges filed against them — became a political nightmare for then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The charging process under mayoral control allows anyone, including parents, other employees, and principals, to make accusations against an educator. But no tenured educator can be fired without a hearing, called 3020-a arbitration in state law.
Since 2003 I have worked as an advocate for individuals stuck in rubber rooms while under investigation or awaiting administrative trials and I currently help defend them in hearings.
To outsiders, being paid to do nothing might seem an easy gig, but people languishing in the rubber rooms got fed up. They began organizing, demanding to form their own union chapters.

Neither the DOE nor the United Federation of Teachers, their union, wanted to legitimize the rubber roomers in that way. But on April 15, 2010, the UFT and the DOE finally signed an agreement to clear out the visible examples of fiscal absurdity by closing the original rooms and by speeding up the disciplinary hearings.
No one has paid any attention to that agreement, then or now.
New York City hired a roster of arbitrators to hear the cases quickly, but many of the accused fought termination rather than settle, retire or resign, and most wanted witnesses to testify on their behalf. Some hearings are lengthy — one recent case stretched over nine months. The time limits are not enforced.
In one case, a school investigator did not file his report until two years after a student accused the teacher of insulting her. Despite the blatant violation of procedure, which requires a report in six to 12 months, the teacher was nonetheless served charges. The arbitrator dismissed the case before the hearing even started, but the city sued him for doing so. It lost.
The political “solution” was, and still is, to spread out the “held” employees here and there — in district or school offices, basements, storage or copy rooms — anywhere hidden from view. The rubber rooms simply went underground.
The DOE keeps the number of these new rubber roomers a secret. The department benefits from hiding them. The embarrassing news coverage largely stopped — with occasional exceptions — as did public outrage over the waste of public funds. The union benefits because it is spared public ridicule for keeping exiled or “bad” teachers on salary.

But the public, parents, and students still lose. When a teacher is yanked from the classroom, who takes his or her place? Typically, a substitute or anyone who is available — and perhaps someone unqualified. Kids are thrown into turmoil and confusion.
The most outrageous part of this hoax is that there is no accountability and no consequences for making false accusations or abusing the process.
New York City needs to refine the charging process so that public money is spent effectively to fire the truly unfit while supporting the wrongly charged and penalizing administrators who pursue false charges.
We must stop hiding the rubber rooms, now even further underground due to the pandemic, when all educators are at home. The hearings came to a halt in March when the city shut down schools amid the COVID-19 outbreak. A restart date has not been decided.
Give all reassigned teachers relevant work to do in accordance with their licenses while they await their due-process hearings. Better yet, streamline the charging process so that only valid charges substantiated by independent investigators can be heard, and penalties issued expeditiously and fairly.
Betsy Combier is a paralegal who defends educators in disciplinary cases and writes the blog NYC Rubber Room Reporter.
Add caption
Suspended teachers serve time in DOE ‘rubber rooms’ — at home
By Susan Edelman, NY POST, August 15, 2020




Home is the new rubber room.
Since the COVID-19 shutdown, scores of city educators removed from classrooms pending administrative trials have spent four months on the city payroll in the comfort of their own homes — often with no work assigned.
“It seems like a good deal,” said Betsy Combier, a paralegal who defends teachers in discipline cases and writes the blog NYC Rubber Room Reporter.
“You’re getting a full salary, you’re home with your family, and the DOE is not giving you anything to do. But it’s very emotionally distressing.”
Combier estimates that some 300 teachers and other staffers are currently idle while under investigation or pending trials that could result in their termination. “Paying that many people to do nothing makes no sense,” she said.
Tenured teachers, who typically make $80,000 to $100,000 a year, are entitled by law to hearings by an arbitrator before they can be fired for misconduct or incompetence — but some wait months or even years before their cases are heard.
Amid a barrage of embarrassing publicity, the city agreed to close its notorious rubber rooms in April 2010, when at least 600 teachers sat in massive “reassignment centers” getting paid to do nothing but nap, read, and chit-chat.
Since then, smaller rubber rooms have persisted, but most suspended staffers have been hidden — tucked away in schools and offices citywide.
Since the school shut down in mid-March, the pedagogical purgatory has been prolonged because hearings came to a halt.
The Department of Education refused repeated requests by The Post for the number of “reassigned” staffers and pending trials.
The DOE is working on a “brand new system to hold trials remotely,” said spokeswoman Danielle Filson. “Meanwhile, employees with pending charges who have work that can be done remotely are doing so.”
But exiled educators say the menial tasks they are asked to perform are few, if any.
“No work,” said Walter Rendon, a teacher at PS 24 in Riverdale who made $100,727 last year.
He was removed from his class last November after openly accusing Principal Steven Schwartz of  “bribing” teachers to praise him in public and previously for gambling on horse races during school hours. The DOE reprimanded Schwartz.
Since the COVID shutdown, Rendon has spent the past four months at home. As a former tech teacher, he wanted to help PS 24 with the switch to remote instruction but was ignored.
“They even sent a survey: ‘Would you be willing to do something online? I said,. ‘Of course.’ I was not asked to do anything.”
While rubber rooming at home is preferable to sitting in a closet-like office in the school, as was the case before the coronavirus outbreak, “It’s not a vacation,” Rendon said. “It’s so demeaning and insulting.”
Guidance counselor Ebony Valentine was removed from Parkside Preparatory Academy last November after accusing her principal of test fraud.
Asked what work she was assigned, she said, “Nothing.”
“I checked in every morning and clocked out every afternoon.”
Valentine, who made $105,505 last year, spent the days caring for her 75-year-old mother, who has cancer, and a 95-year-old grandmother, she said.
Valentine told investigators that principal Adrienne Spencer was giving teachers embargoed state exams so they could coach kids before they took the tests.
Spencer has since retired, but Valentine faces charges she undermined the principal and overstepped her authority, records show. She is fighting back, claiming it was retaliation.
“Not one allegation is about my work or the kids. They took away a good counselor who really helped the kids.”
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Friday, August 14, 2020

Why The NYC DOE and UFT/NYSUT Cannot Say They Protect Tenure Rights


On December 8, 2016, I wrote and posted on this blog my comments on the Thomas Fordham Institute's article called

"Undue Process: Why Bad Teachers in 
Twenty-Five Diverse Districts Rarely Get Fired"

I thought it was time to update my thoughts, considering the number of fake facts inside the Department of Education about everything (i.e., two teachers in every ICT classroom, extensive accommodations for all children who have special needs, a nurse in every school, District 79 + vocational education is not racist, etc.).

The lie which I will continue to comment on is the statement that it is very hard to terminate a teacher. This is bulloney, at least in NYC 3020-a arbitration under the current so-called "rules" and procedures and determination of probable cause. The NYC DOE and the UFT/NYSUT have spent many years making roads around the law, rules, and regulations at both the State and Federal level so that anyone can be accused and found guilty of anything, very easily.

What I do and have done for all these years, is look at the charging process before a hearing or arbitration begins - as well as after. Education Law 3020-a has a specific process with details in Section (2)(a) for determining probable cause. The NY State legislature voted on this vote in Executive Session by the Panel For Educational Policy to determine probable cause in order to protect educators from easily being terminated simply because a principal or Superintendent wanted to get rid of this person. This is the tenure law protection. Mayor Mike Bloomberg and others in power at the start of his reign in 2002 didn't like this public policy. But rather than make a visible attempt to scrub this due process clause, which could backfire against them, Mike and his colleagues - including the Department of Education and the UFT - silently and in total secrecy (they thought) wrote the Department of Justice that they were taking the vote away from the PEP because Black and Brown parents and voters never voted in school board elections, anyway. I called Mr. Rich at the DOJ and wrote about my objections. I don't know how many other people did this.

I continue to object in the 3020-a hearings at the pre-hearing which by law must occur before any testimony is heard by witnesses. I say that if the process of charging an educator/employee does not have a valid, lawful determination of probable cause, then no arbitrator has subject matter jurisdiction to hear a case.

If a person is charged with a false event made up by someone with malice and then a hearing officer who does not have subject matter jurisdiction is able to make any ruling or decisions and can be "influenced" to overlook 'relevant' and material facts, witness testimony and evidence, in order to reach a pre-determined result.

In NYC the arbitrators are hired by the Department of Education and NYSUT, New York State United Teachers (lawyers who are on contract to provide free legal services to UFT members). Once hired for either an incompetency or a misconduct panel, an arbitrator is supposed to hear a case 5 days a month and is paid $1400/day. This is a lucrative deal, and the fix is in.

I argue for a change to the charging process, from allegation to pre-hearing conference, including permitting the UFT member to participate in the hiring of the arbitrator for his/her case.

Betsy Combier

My post on this blog in 2016:

FAKE NEWS: Undue Process


The Thomas Fordham Institute likes fake news, commonly known for years as yellow journalism. I believe that reports like Undue Process are dangerous because the writing reflects anti-tenure political thinking that is based upon numbers. Its always about money. If an employee has tenure, then he/she has, most often than not, spent more years in the public school system than someone who has probationary status. This means that the tenured employee has a higher salary and a higher pension. That's what the anti-tenure policies are hoping to stop.

People are not numbers!!

I have to admit that I laughed when I saw the title and subtitle,
"Why Bad Teachers in Twenty-Five Diverse Districts Rarely Get Fired".

So whose "undue process" are the authors talking about? Are they saying that teachers do not have due process if twenty-five diverse districts can't fire those who are "bad"? Whose defining the word "bad", and what evidence do they have? If a principal doesn't like a teacher for some random - or, in too many cases, for a discriminatory reason that they are Black, women, Jewish or disabled - reason, this principal can observe this teacher and conclude out of thin air that he/she is "bad" or "ineffective" and put them in a 3020-a hearing for so-called "incompetency". This is a word defined solely on the subjective opinions of an administrator focused on terminating the targeted teacher, and the process almost always is successful. I would say that 95% of teachers or staff charged with "incompetency" are terminated, and I can say this because I have been participating in 3020-a arbitration as an advocate for an accused tenured employee for than 17 years.

If I believed that 3020-a arbitration is always a lost cause, I would not have spent all these years doing my best to win my clients the right to continue their employment. There is a formula for winning these hearings after charges of incompetency are served on the tenured educator. This formula involves investigating the backstory of all witnesses testifying for the Department, and finding whatever facts can be used to uncredibilize (my word - means "make not credible") his/her testimony.

Anyway, the title at least started me reading further, so I guess it made the point.

The danger is their writing spurs on policymakers who know that bad news travels far and sells widely. The public likes to hear what we as a society are doing, and how terrible tenured teachers are. Alarmingly, most of the time the people they are describing as "bad" are not bad at all.

What the heck is the best definition of "bad"? It's an adjective and a subjective opinion of something or someone. I might believe that someone is "bad" if I see this person with my own eyes harm another person, animal, bird, or any living creature, for no reason. Otherwise, an investigation is called for that satisfies my standard of proof. We all have our own standard which we do not always acknowledge (see implicit bias), and sometimes this leads to prejudice when we have a lower standard of proof for someone or some group based upon general characteristics such as race, religion, gender, disability, nationality, etc. We must all watch for that. All individuals are unique and should be treated as such.

But getting to know someone who is charged with something is hard to do because, by the time the person is charged, there is little time to figure out what the real facts are. But you gotta do the research. Truly listening to someone tell you his/her life story, what happened in their career, who the bad guys are, etc., all involve first: interest; and second: time. Then you put a whole lot of caring into the mix.

Many are terminated at 3020-a simply because they are not defended adequately by their NYSUT or private lawyer or team (I am not a lawyer, but work on 3020-as as a paralegal, which is permitted in arbitration. Working with attorneys for most cases, I have won about 60 3020-a arbitrations, and 45 Article 75 appeals). I might as well say that I think the team I have assembled for doing 3020-a cases is the best, and my background information and closing arguments are untouchable by any private lawyer. This is my opinion and this is my blog, so live with it. We care.

Also, if you are disabled and/or do not speak English well, you can be terminated, unless you have proper defenses. Of course, the charges against your language and disability are covered up by other allegations, but you can dig up the real reason for being charged, and must do so, in my opinion. The whole scenario of one arbitrator judging you by seeing you in a small room for 1 - 10 days, or the length of the hearing, is absurd. The arbitrators are chosen by the UFT and the DOE but are not neutral. Some are more able to hear facts than others, but there is always an implicit bias.

Nonetheless, 3020-a is winnable if the defense is strong. And, the defenders must know what to do. Unfortunately, not many people are interested in spending 20-30 hours listening and researching a person's life in order to find solutions to problems that are disrupting that life. We do that.

There is a national goal right now to take away job protections for teachers, because if they continue to get tenure, supposedly, our children in public schools will continue to suffer.

Not.

In New York State, tenure is public policy.

Why? Because our state legislators know that children need stability. When a teacher is in a classroom, the first thing that must be established is some kind of trust. The children need to know that they are safe, and the person keeping them safe is their teacher. Children, especially in elementary grades, need to know that their teacher will be there when they arrive at school.

As noted by New York's Court of Appeals in Ricca v. Board of Ed. of the City Sch. Dist, 47 N.Y.2d 385, 418 N.Y.S.2d 345 (1979):
"The tenure system is not an arbitrary mechanism designed to allow a school board to readily evade its mandate by the creation of technical obstacles. ... Rather it is a legislative expression of a firm public policy determination that the interests of the public in the education of our youth can best be served by a system designed to foster academic freedom in our schools and to protect competent teachers from the abuses they might be subjected to if they could be dismissed at the whim of their supervisors. In order to effectuate these convergent purposes, it is necessary to construe the tenure system broadly in favor of the teacher, and to strictly police procedures which might result in the corruption of that system by manipulation of the requirements for tenure."

Public policy is also to give immunity to all judges in the Courts. Same as teacher tenure, except that for judges, there really is no way to get them removed for being "bad" unless some high-powered politician or prosecutor decides to do it.
When I write the closing argument for a 3020-a I always strenuously argue for public policy and tenure protections because each and every case is a mix of truth and lies created to end the career of a tenured person - an individual with a family, a house, a career. Bills. Mortgages. Medical needs.

That is why every case is unique and deserves to be studied and every memo, letter, email, piece of information should be integrated into the record. 3020-a arbitration is, in my 17-year experience, a war against the destruction of tenure rights. Despite my being involved in about 60 cases since 2003, every case is different and must be looked at as if all the parts are new. Every Respondent, or charged DOE employee, is different. No two people bring to the 3020-a the same case, because no two people are alike.

The general public loves hearing about how and when corrupt politicians get arrested for hurting the very same community members who put them into office. Public corruption is everywhere.

How does corruption and fraud in public office get to be so pervasive? One reason, of course, is that sheep people, or sheeple, believe the fake news that the politician spews out in order to win votes. My mom watched ABC News, and that was The Truth of the matter. I tried to convince her that truth may not be what she was seeing, but my efforts were in vain. Strange, because my dad was a fact person, he was Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York under Louis Lefkowitz, 20+ years.

Why people believe certain things and not others, or certain individuals and not others, is way beyond my pay grade. All I'm saying is that I do not believe anything until is see the facts first hand. I love the internet, but I sift facts out and it is time-consuming. This must be done, or find a source that you trust, and stay with it.

For all these reasons, Undue Process is fake news, but even the authors gave a crumb of truth, as seen in a NY POST article:
"It’s basically impossible to fire a New York City school teacher""While decrying needless bureaucratic delays that allow inept instructors to remain in front of students, Griffith stressed that the overwhelming number of city teachers are diligent and effective.
“We’re not talking about,” he said. “We’re not saying most teachers are ineffective. They very hard and are doing a good job on the whole. We’re talking about 2 to 4 percent who are demonstrably ineffective.”
Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

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Sunday, August 9, 2020

UFT Members Demand That UFT President Michael Mulgrew Represent Them Properly and Not Promote Secret Changes To The Contract




The coronavirus has added another historical moment to UFT activism. 
NYC teachers are seeing the disaster that collective bargaining by President Michael Mulgrew and other top people at the teachers' union has brought to effective representation and members' rights. The UFT is, it seems from their actions in the past decade, too politicized to follow their own principles. New lawsuits are popping up in Federal Court citing the collaboration of the Department of Education AND the UFT in pursuing harm to members - or at least playing along to get along.

 UFT members are not blind to the lack of support the rank and file get when a problem arises such as workplace injury, discrimination, false charges of incompetency, or misconduct. At least most who have had, or continue to have, a problem in his or her workplace have been frustrated by the lack of fair representation at hearings or getting relief.

UFT Secretary and Staff Director Leroy Barr

Two recent cases show what I mean. In one case: a probationary paraprofessional who worked without any disciplinary actions for 18 years, suddenly was accused of swinging a small boy - whose para left him for a moment - in the air and yelling at him. He has autism. One person described this alleged "event" to the principal, and the paraprofessional was discontinued. She filed for arbitration with ADCOM and was shocked when she received the decision, written by Staff Director Leroy Barr who was not at the hearing yet cited her "confession" as stated in the principal's testimony, not the paraprofessional's own testimony, to dismiss her case and deny her the arbitration she requested. 

 Tenured members also get shoddy treatment. Tenure is created to protect the rights of teachers to due process and to fight the whims of false claims, and this is something that the UFT is denying members. I know many UFT members who are assaulted by violent students in their classrooms and are denied LODI (line of duty injury) relief by their principals or are told to not go back to their schools and then charged for not stopping the violence, and sent to a 3020-a hearing to be terminated. 

 Where is the UFT in this absurdity? 

 JANUS V AFCME also made a dent in the all-powerful pocketbook of the UFT as well as other Unions, albeit minor, so far.

 Over the last couple of months, members have been demanding the UFT make the Department provide guaranteed safety measures in the fall so that they can go back to in-person teaching without worrying they are going to die. What does the UFT leadership do, but alter the contract without the rank and file voting on the changes! This is what UFT member Michael Flanagan, Ed.D., UFT Chapter Leader, District 10 the Bronx writes, re-posted below.

 We hear you, loud and clear.
Betsy Combier


                                                              August 6, 2020

Dear UFT President Michael Mulgrew, 

 I am a 34-year member of the United Federation of Teachers. This morning I received an email from you informing me—and the other 77,000 or so UFT members—that you unilaterally agreed to drastic changes of our working conditions. Those working conditions were voted on by the rank and file members of the union that you were elected to represent. They cannot be changed by you or by the city without another rank and file vote by the members. That has not occurred.

I represent 110 staff members in a school, and I need to protect those members’ rights, from a disease, from a Mayor who is willing to send us back into harm’s way and now, apparently, from my own union. And I will do so.

I am linking our current, legally enforceable UFT contract, for your review. I am also including the email you sent this morning entitled “Your Work Day If School Buildings Reopen”

 It is interesting to note, that these very same revisions that you agreed to, were sent out to principals by the Chancellor’s office a week ago, I am linking the video of the Chancellor’s Presentation to the principals, dated July 30th. I was presented with these revisions by my own principal two days ago.

 Why is it we, your union members, only hear from you today?

 When did these negotiations take place? Who was on those committees? Why were none of these new conditions brought to your members for a vote? Why did the principals know about this a week before your members?

As UFT President you do not have the right to change our contract without a vote by your members. If we are forced to work under these conditions, we will be forced to resist.

With or without you.

Many will claim that teachers in New York City cannot strike, because of the Taylor Law. Well under the Tri-Borough Amendment of the Taylor Law, if our contract expires, we continue to work under the conditions of that expired contract until a new one is approved by the union’s membership. The City of New York will be violating our contract’s working conditions if these “agreed” upon changes go into effect. UFT members will have no choice but to engage in job actions. They may include any and all of the following:

1. Working to the letter of our CURRENT CONTRACT

 2. ALL of the UFT members working remotely, and none of us showing up in the physical buildings

 3. Mass sickouts

 4. A strike

 5. Class action lawsuits against the NYCDOE and The UFT for contract violations

 If we strike under the Taylor law, we will lose two days' pay for every one day we are out of work. Our union will be fined one million dollars a day, and the union leaders will be arrested.

Due to the health risk of the Coronavirus pandemic, many union members are prepared for that. More will be, the closer we get to the reopening of school.

There is also the unfortunate option, of union members defunding the union, until we get real representation during this crisis. Under the Janus decision, we are all VOLUNTARILY paying union dues. If we are not represented by our leadership, then we have no leadership.

I would urge you to reconsider your email today and this “agreement” you entered without the voice or consent of your union members.

 Put these proposed changes TO A VOTE. Now.

Represent your members.

Sincerely,

Michael Flanagan, Ed.D.
UFT Chapter Leader, District 10 the Bronx.
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