ALERT TO ATRs

ALERT ALL ATRs:
An email is making the rounds through the online underground, and I am re-posting it below so that all ATRs can be aware of this (I dont know if it is true or not):

Please pass this on!!! An ATR came in for an interview last week at the school where I am presently teaching We struck up a conversation and they informed me that the DOE is now sending out random MANDATORY interview notices that are being sent DIRECTLY to your DOE email even if you are working and have a full schedule(which this person did)!

If you are like me, I am working and I rarely check it because I am working! It turns out that if you miss three to four of these notices the DOE is using that against ATRs to fire them on the grounds that they are resisting attempts to obtain permanent employment! It is my understanding that some ATRs have already fallen victim to this "scam"! Please let others know since we must be vigilant because the DOE is not playing around when it comes to teachers in general and ATRs in particular!

Education Reform Now, or ERN, With Chairman Joel Klein of the NY POST, Advocates An End To "LIFO"

I remember Joe when he worked for the Daily News, and refused to do stories on the disaster we now know as the Mike Bloomberg/Joel Klein public education "reform". Then, he wrote a book about cheating the kids....

something wrong here. Oh, it is also said that The Robin Hood Foundation pledged $1,000,000 to ERN and The Robertson Foundation $250,000. Mike Bloomberg's daughter works for the Robin Hood Foundation, and the mission is to help those who are too poor to help themselves. how does giving money to ERN  fit into this focus?
Betsy Combier

TV blitz to keep better teachers

By FREDRIC U. DICKER in Albany and CARL CAMPANILE in NY, February 11, 2011
LINK

An education-reform group is launching a multimillion-dollar TV ad blitz to persuade the state Legislature to repeal the "last in, first out" law requiring schools to lay off teachers based on seniority rather than merit.

The 60-second ad financed by Education Reform Now -- featuring three public-school teachers -- will air starting today in New York City and Albany.

"The last-in-first-out policy is bad for teachers, bad for schools and, most importantly, bad for kids," said ERN President Joe Williams.

"Reckless layoffs that aren't based on a teacher's effectiveness have the potential to destroy a school's culture and derail all the progress that's been made to improve student achievement," Williams added. "Our lawmakers can't say they want to improve schools and protect great teachers on the one hand and support this antiquated policy on the other."

State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) yesterday endorsed curbing LIFO.

"If a person is found, whether in a rubber room, or if they're found that their grading has been such that they're not in a classroom, I think that those people should go first before the younger teachers that are doing a good job," Skelos said at a Crain's breakfast.

ERN has emerged as a formidable advocacy group chaired by former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, now a top exec at News Corp., which owns The Post.

The group is bankrolled by financiers interested in school reform, including billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad and a network of hedge-fund managers who pushed Albany to lift the cap on charter schools.

Close allies of Mayor Bloomberg are chief strategists in the bid to repeal LIFO. Among them is consultant Bradley Task, a political adviser to the mayor who ran Bloomberg's successful 2009 campaign for re-election to a third term.

United Federation of Teachers President Mike Mulgrew said he's fighting to prevent layoffs, but skirts questions about whether LIFO should be changed. The union has long opposed any changes.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

NYPOST Comments (1)
Nuff Said
02/11/2011 4:30 PM
Educators reform now, Educators for excellence--ALL FUNDED and Headed by JOEL KLEIN and backed by Eli Broad and Bill Gates. But why after 8 years of Kleins experiments and failures is anybody listening to them? Kleins last major move was to siphon off $1 Billion dollars for IZone schools (virtual online). And who are the direct beneficiaries of his conflict of interest largess--well 1st is NYS Chancellor Meryyl Tisch--her husband owns K12 one of NYC major Izone school suppliers , then there is Klein and Murdock who just bought the company that provides ALL of NYC's educational technology--student/teacher/school report cards and the ARIS system. Bill Gates, who certainly doesn't need any more money ,microsoft that will provide all the programming and tech no-how including online curriculum.So how does following Kleins lead as an utter data manipulating failure help kids. Honestly with enough truth and bad press i expect Murdoch and Gates to hang him out to dry on his own---they really don't need this destruction of their legacies.

Education Reform Now, Inc.


Education Reform Now, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organization based in New York. Their political arm is a related 501(c)4, Education Reform Now Advocacy Committee, Inc.

ERN recorded $92,500 in revenue during their first year (2005)[PDF]. Their President at the time, Amy Wilkins (now at Ed Trust), made $16,329 and an additional $2,017 in benefits. John Petry and R Boykins Curry IV are listed as unpaid directors. Their primary exempt purpose is to “develop policy alternatives in education”. They reimbursed Education Reform Now Advocacy Committee, Inc $83,099 for “labor costs and operating expenses based on timesheets and other contemporaneous accountable plan arrangements.” ERN ended the year with $59,584 in the bank.

The nonprofit brought in $80,000 in 2006 [PDF]. Amy Wilkins saw her salary jump to $65,731; Curry and Petry were still listed as directors. They spent a total of $118,829 in 2006, most of it on salaries ($83,594) and “other expenses”($24,525). Professional fees and occupancy accounts for the rest of their operating budget.

ERN recorded $173,500 in revenues during 2007 [PDF]. Joe Williams replaced Amy Wilkins as President, and Sidney Hawkins replaced R Boykins Curry IV as a director (Petry remained).



Revenues rose to $1,280,081 in 2008 [PDF]. A full $1,070,023 went to program services. According to their 990:



The organization sponsored public awareness events – “Harlem Charter School Night”, “Brooklyn Charter School Night”, and “ED Challenge for Change” at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008. We also conducted outreach to the press on polling results.



ERN also spent $612,000 in “awards and grants” (no money trail?) and over a quarter million in “consulting services”. Joe Williams’ salary jumped to $114,545 (with $32,455 from a related organization).

Deny Waiver Coalition Files An Appeal Of The Dismissal Of Their Lawsuit Against NYC DOE Chief, Cathie Black

The uproar about Cathie Black's appointment as schools CEO is not, actually, about her - it's about the public dislike, frustration, and anger against Mike Bloomberg for ignoring their voices since 2002.

That being said, I just dont get why Cathy Black would WANT the job of "Chancellor" in name only, and why she wants to be the focus of so much wrath. This is a story on it's own - how a Mayor loses all trust of his constituents, despite being a billionaire with all the "right" political ties, and stubbornly goes forward without the public mandate he (and the she-wolf, Cathie Black) need to succeed. This is democracy at work.

Betsy Combier

Cathie Black's Waiver Worries Will Never End

By Garth Johnston on Feb 9, 2011

You almost have to feel sorry for Cathie Black. Almost. All she wanted to do was run the New York Department of Education in peace and instead all she gets are boos, angry parents and, now, threats her new job might not be hers for long. Remember how she had to get a waiver to take the job because she wasn't qualified? And how parents swore they'd appeal when she got it? Well, it looks like they're living up to their threat.


A group of lawmakers and child advocates, the Deny the Waiver Coalition, are planning to announce tomorrow from the steps of the Tweed Courthouse that they are appealing a lower court's decision on Black's waiver, hoping to push her out of the job.

f they succeed and Black's waiver is revoked, she'd have to step down immediately. Which doesn't really have the Coalition worried. Their lawyer makes the sound argument to the Observer that by design Bloomberg and the Department have "surrounded her with a bunch of people who are qualified to run the school system. If they're all as qualified as they say they are, which they certainly seem to be, then they can last for a couple weeks while they find a replacement for her."

The appellate court will decide on the appeal on March 15th. The Ides of March.

Another Bad Night For Cathie Black

LINK


WCBS 2 Things just are not going well for Schools Chancellor Cathie Black. Not well at all. On top of her disastrous Wednesday night appearance (in which she mocked jeering parents at a vote over 10 school closures) last night things got so tense that more than a thousand angry parents, union members and teachers stormed out of a meeting regarding another 12 school closures. ""Ms. Black, what in the world is wrong with you? You show utter contempt and scorn for the parents you should be serving. If you don't want to be here, then leave—because many of us don't want you here anyway," City Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) told the Chancellor.

Black spoke little over the course of the hearing (as she was there to mostly hear) but that didn't stop the scorn heaped upon her. After the first round of people spoke at the hearing—350 people signed up to speak, The Awl has a few highlights from them including “you have created the Lost Generation,” and “since I know you’ve already made up your minds, I’m not going to address you, I’m going to address the audience” and “as far as the UFT is concerned, this panel, this process, is illegitimate.”—things got crazy when a large portion of the auditorium stood up and, according to NY1, "began marching out to the sound of drums and whistles, forcing the panel to suspend the hearing for the next half hour."

Then the hearing restarted there were only a few hundred people left. Just before 1 a.m. the panel voted to close all of the schools on the chopping block.

And in other bad news for Black, a new poll found that only 21 percent of New York voters think she has done a good or excellent job in her first month as Chancellor. Not that the Mayor, who chose Black for the job, cares. On WOR this morning hizzoner instead focused on how unpatriotic it is to boo: “The decorum—this is embarrassing for New York City, New York State, for America. This is not democracy, letting people yell and scream. That’s not freedom of expression. That’s just taking away someone else’s rights,” he said.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

Disband The Panel For Educational Policy

Yes!!!!! Senator Tony Avella, at the Panel For Educational Policy (PEP) meeting last week, says it is time for a revolution.

NYC must end the PEP now.

In 2006 teacher Polo Colon sued the PEP for almost voting behind closed doors to terminate him and end his 30-year career. I am re-posting the 2006 article I wrote on his case, from my website, Parentadvocates.org, so that everyone can see the most disastrous error that we, the general public made, in creating the current situation: going along with the setting up of the PEP as the "new school board". The appointed status of each member of the PEP means that parents, students, teachers, employees and supporters of due process and democracy are out of luck. We dont vote for these people, so they dont care what we say.

 I have made it clear that I am advocating for Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President - who appointed Patrick Sullivan to the PEP - to rescind Patrick's appointment solely on the grounds that the PEP is irresponsibly acting "under color of law" to deny NYC parents, teachers, children, and friends of public education, their rights to a fair representation, and their right to be heard on all issues brought to the PEP. So much for agreeing to disagree, freedom of the press, etc. If Mr. Stringer had pulled out his support of the PEP in 2003, 2004, 2005, the Tweed gang would be hard pressed to continue as the outlaw group that they are now. ALL Borough Presidents, the UFT, and the State legislature could have prevented the past nine years of harm. What they needed to do was to require a vote for all members of the school board, CECs, consultants, and yes, even the Chancellor search committee,  then listen to what parents and teachers said about the wrong-doing going on inside our public schools.

It is also possible that a former Stuyvesant High School parent, Paola De Kock, who posts all the time to nyceducationnews and to Leonie's blog, is still trying to silence me from writing her story, and the story of her hiding theft from the Stuyvesant PA bank account, as well as the throwing out a parent named Mary Lok from the PA Executive Board. Soon after the chinese parents at Stuyvesant asked for my help in finding out where $380,000+ money was that had been supposedly raised for the Parents Association, the Chinese parents' outreach committee was removed from a voting position on the Executive Board.

But the point that I want to make here, is the "illegality" of the PEP. This entity, whatever it is, must end. We need a school board that has members who are voted into office, and can be voted out of office. Then, we, the public, will have a voice in what is voted on at the PEP, not before. Below is Polo's story, which shows how the public revolution seen last week is a little late, but totally correct in the assessment of the Bloomberg mess in education in NYC. Part of the solution is to end the PEP, throw Cathie Black out, and/or get Mike Bloomberg to resign, and Ms. Black as well. Mr. Stringer, pull out of the PEP, have Patrick Sullivan resign in solidarity with the people opposing the destruction that is going that will ruin the lives of many students and teachers. I live in Manhattan, you are Manhattan Borough President. Speak with your Counsel Jimmy Yan about the meetings we, parents at Stuyvesant, had with him about Paola and the PA crew.

Betsy Combier

NYC Teacher Hipolito Colon Makes History and Sues the NYC BOE, The Panel For Educational Policy, and NYSUT For Violating His Rights

The NYC BOE has systematically thrown teachers, who whistleblow crimes in their schools, into the garbage, by "re-assigning" them to "rubber rooms" without telling them what the charges are, and then terminating them at an Executive Meeting of the PEP that is an illegal entity. Mr. Colon wins an A For Accountability Award for his courage and his determination to change this unfair process.
LINK

Hipolito, or "Polo" as his friends call him, is dedicated to the implementation of fair and just education policies which give all children an opportunity to achieve. He is nearly 57, and began teaching at the age of 15 in a summer school job as a Teacher's Aide. At age 16 he worked as a Recreational Supervisor, followed by 16 years in Day Care as an Assistant Teacher and Group Teacher and 20 years in the Board of Education of the City of New York, for a total of more than 36 years. In his early adult years, he attended many pro-union, anti-nuclear, and anti-racism demonstrations around the country, and he was one of the participants in Woodstock Nation at the original Woodstock Music Festival. Years later, he sang with a top-flight recording group.

A problem arose when he, a tenured teacher at PS 120 in Brooklyn, saw that the Principal, Liza Caraballo, was not complying with the No Child Left Behind Legislation. Polo believed that as a mandated reporter he was required to expose wrongdoing whenever and wherever it occurred, and he thought that NYC had whistleblower laws that protected him. He also believed that by contacting the Special Commissioner’s Office, and asking for an investigation of Principal Caraballo, he would put an end to what he considered violations of law. He was very wrong.

Parentadvocates has found that the Special Commissioner’s Office is set up to investigate the reporter, not the perpetrator, of wrongdoing. If a parent of a child in any school calls SCI or the Office of Special Investigations and reports anything, from corporal punishment to verbal abuse in the school, by a Principal, the parent will be retaliated against and the child of this parent harmed.

A teacher who reports wrongdoing by the school Principal is almost always the person investigated. Once a teacher speaks out, if there are no uncles, fathers or relatives who work for the BOE to make “a call”, he or she is immediately harassed, given a U-rating, or forced to resign. SCI and the Office of Special Investigations are two organizations that laugh at innocence. The “detectives” are, for the most part, retired cops who have been able to obtain positions through personal contacts with those who do the hiring, or by connection to an important relative in the Education ‘Family’.

Once a teacher whistleblows anything, the BOE immediately takes action. An example of this is the case of Ronald, a teacher thrown out of his school on false charges of corporal punishment that did not happen, then coerced into signing a stipulation that he would be 'punished' for his 'crime' by losing two months of his salary.

The first step in whistleblower retaliation against a teacher is to remove the teacher as quickly as possible from his/her class or school. The speed of removal is a factor of how verbal the teacher is; how "influential" he/she is within the school or among the students/parents; or, how serious the crimes being exposed are. Sometimes a teacher is harassed out of the system after being given: (1) a class that he/she cannot teach; (2) a class full of the most difficult children, most of whom have special needs that have never been met (the parents are not informed about obtaining services, approving an Individualized Education Plan, etc), (3) a class where there are 40+ kids - many more than the UFT allows, and many are "shadow" students not on the roster for the school, or not listed as attending the class; (4) U-ratings that are not for substandard performance, but are written to get the teacher out of the school.

In other cases, an outspoken teacher must be removed quickly, to keep the school 'safe' from exposure of the wrongdoing.
We met with Polo in September 2006 at an Upper East Side coffee shop, and saw immediately that he was not only being railroaded by the BOE, but that he would be terminated by the illegal entity known as The Panel For Educational Policy (“PEP”). We have written before about the PEP and, for that matter, the Community Education Councils (CEC) being illegal pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Kramer v Union Free School District, and discussed with Mr. Colon (“Polo”) the Executive Sessions of the PEP and the process that was throwing him into the garbage without his participation. (The Press Notice of the November 27, 2006 PEP meeting is hyperlinked to show the disdain that Joel Klein has for due process, as he scheduled a secret 'Executive Session' in spite of being sued for doing this - Ed).

Polo asked us to help him stop the termination that would take place on September 19 at the PEP meeting. We provided service of the Affidavit with the Exhibits on Michael Best at approximately 4PM on September 18, 2006. In the AFFIRMATION IN SUPPORT OF A STAY OF PROCEEDINGS IN ORDER TO HAVE A FAIR HEARING, make note of Mr. Best's letter in the exhibits.

On September 19, 2006 there was an Executive Session held before the PEP meeting began, which is a violation of the New York State Open Meetings Law, Section 105, but Polo was not terminated. He read a statement at the meeting:

"I am here representing myself, as well as the many employees of the New York City Department of Education, who have been unfairly, arbitrarily and capriciously deemed disposable, routinely relegated to the designation of incompetent and/or insubordinate and regularly deprived of their procedural due process rights, with impunity, in deliberate violation of their constitutionally protected civil rights.

There is a flagrant rubber-stamping of people's cases and lives in and out of "rubber rooms", in order to attempt to intimidate them and to break their will and spirit, in order to silence those that may dare to speak out.

It is fairly disgusting that a POW in a foreign land may actually have more quality due process protection than an employee of the DOE, and that the rules of engagement protect the wrong-doer over the whistle-blower, as evidenced by the lack of action taken against the law breaker.

Rather than applauding and appreciating those brave enough to expose nepotism and corruption, the DOE proves itself to be insubordinate itself to the rule of constitutional rights of its employees, citizens of these United States of America, and it is blatantly incompetent, as obviously displayed in its-well known and documented failures to the students, parents and teachers of the entire school system."

and Chancellor Joel Klein said,

“ I am an Attorney, so I know all there is to know about due process…you will get your charges and your hearing.”

Immediately following this meeting, Polo met with well-known lawyer Julia Cohen, who told him that there was nothing he could do until he received his charges. Polo decided he had to file a lawsuit and stop the process that found him guilty before he knew what he had done, a violation of his procedural due process rights.

Mr. Colon filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court on October 13, 2006, and an Amended Complaint on November 9, 2006:

Hipolito Colon, Plaintiff, v New York City Board of Education, Joel Klein, Chancellor; Michael Best, General Counsel for the NYCBOE; The Members of The Panel For Educational Policy, all In Their Individual and Official Capacities; PS 120 Principal Liza Caraballo; James R. Sandner, Esq., General Counsel. NYSUT, and Claude I. Hersh, Assistant General Counsel, Defendants.

Below is his story, in his own words. We give Polo Colon an “A For Accountability” Award for his amazing courage.

What he would like people to know is that: "this lawsuit is more than just about me; I am a people-person who loves children...I was blessed to be there at times when I was able to save the lives of 5 individuals; among my greatest accomplishments has been to make my students into lifelong learners by helping them to really love to learn; one of my proudest accomplishments has been to raise my daughters as a single custodial parent for the past 12 years and among my happiest accomplishments, to have made my family proud of me, as well as to have tried my best."

Hipolito Colon wrote the following letter on October 25, 2005:

To those whom it may concern,

I am a New York State certified, tenured and senior teacher at P.S. 120, 18 Beaver Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11206 in District 14, Region 8. I have been employed there since 1989. I served as Teacher of Pre-K 102 for the school year, September, 2004 through June, 2005. I am reporting the illegal actions of Ms. Liza Caraballo, Principal of P.S. 120.

Ms. Caraballo deliberately and illegally placed an educational assistant in the position of a state certified and licensed teacher for a period of an entire year without license.

Ms. Caraballo thereby violated federal, state and city requirements that a fully licensed teacher be appointed in such a position when she placed Ms. Lydia Arnold***, Educational Assistant, in the position of Pre-Kindergarten Teacher, heading the class known as Pre-K 104 for the school term, September, 2004 through June, 2005. ***(This is not to be construed as a negative reflection upon Ms. Arnold or her character, as she was simply serving in such capacity as directed by her supervisor.)

Ms. Caraballo announced this appointment to the school staff in its first meeting of the new term and the staff thereon recognized that Ms. Arnold had been appointed head teacher and worked in such capacity the whole school term.

Ms. Caraballo placed Ms. Arnold on the organization sheet for the school term of 2004-2005 and it was circulated.

.Ms. Caraballo had Ms. Arnold conducting the Pre-K class on a daily basis, teaching, in loco parentis, including the daily supervision of outdoor play.

Ms. Caraballo presented Ms. Arnold to the Pre-K parents of P.S. 120 as a new Pre-K teacher in charge of Pre-K 104.

Ms. Caraballo scheduled Ms. Arnold in the formal observation schedule for the school’s head teachers.

Ms. Caraballo had Ms. Arnold meet with the head Pre-K Teachers on all Pre-k weekly planning sessions, of which I was a participant.

Ms. Caraballo sent Ms. Arnold to all of the region-conducted workshops as head teacher of one of our Pre-K classes, and Region 8 recognized her as a head teacher.

Ms. Caraballo had Ms. Arnold sign requisitions and arrival orders of supplies as a licensed teacher of authority.

Ms. Caraballo had Ms. Arnold plan and supervise curricular and educational plans, including field trips, community-walk trips and all fire drills, etc.

Ms. Caraballo gave Ms. Arnold daily preparation periods afforded to head teachers.

Ms. Caraballo had Ms. Arnold attend all of the bi-weekly staff development meetings as head Pre-K teacher.

Ms. Caraballo had Ms. Arnold accept at least one Pre-K child that was not old enough to be admitted into the Pre-K classes.

Ms. Caraballo had Ms. Arnold pose as head teacher in all parent-teacher conferences, meetings and events and the children did recognize Ms. Arnold as their teacher. In such capacity, under the aegis of Ms. Caraballo’s directive, Ms. Arnold executed such additional legal documents as student assessments, student profiles, cumulative files and daily attendance and lateness recorded on the ATS forms, where Ms. Arnold was indicated to be the teacher in charge. (*Please see attached supporting documents.)

Therefore, I, Hipolito Colon, affirm that Ms. Caraballo knowingly and certainly violated federal, state and city ordinances, as well as those of the United Federation of Teachers, especially and specifically with regard to the use of unlicensed teachers in place of licensed teachers, which were available.

Sincerely,

Hipolito Colon
October 25, 2005

As a result of my whistle-blowing, I was summarily assigned/reassigned to a regional office in retaliation, and without due process. There has been harassment and intimidation before , during and following my report.. The Deputy Superintendent, Mr. James Quail, met with me at the school during a workday, in which I was relieved of my class by the principal, Ms. Caraballo. Mr. Quail asked my union chapter leader, Dr. Lenora Owens, (whom I had summoned as a witness) to leave, so that he could speak with me privately and confirm the charges that I had made in the report. He told me that he was given the assignment of investigating the charges I made and thus, wanted to confirm, item by item, what I had reported. He did so asking me many questions and I did confirm them.

About 2 months later, without conference or explanation at the end of my workday, I was ordered to immediately report to the regional office the very next morning. Since my assignment/reassignment I have neither received any report of the status of the investigation, nor have I been asked to come forth as a witness to support the facts, nor have I received any indication as to a specific reason for my assignment/reassignment to the regional office.

Eleven months have elapsed since my initial report was made, and I have not heard an iota concerning my status and the status of the investigation, and I suspect that a cover-up has been taking place. Please also investigate the continuation and expansion of admitting and promoting underage children for this school year (2005-2006) as well as last year, misuse of Magnet School Program funds, and the misadministration of the mandated bilingual education program. I would greatly appreciate hearing from your office, as I have once again stepped out to make this report and imperiled my career and livelihood in order to protect the integrity of sound school administration and supervision against the renegade recklessness of actions taken by this principal that endangered the young children of our school.

As I was undergoing the harassment by this incompetent principal, she violated the law, demonstrating that she was the incompetent and any reasonable person would conclude: how can an incompetent rightly determine that an employee of many years (in good standing) is an incompetent? Her harassment began, I recall, immediately after I received my Supervisory certification, and I believe that she was worried I would apply for the Assistant Principal position open at the school.

I have not been given any due process, as I was sent a packet from the NYC Board of Education after the 2005 school year ended and I had left the state on vacation. When I returned, I tried to get the certified mail, but the post office told me the package had been sent back to the sender. Then, at the end of August 2006, Michael Best, General Counsel for the BOE, sent me a letter telling me that I had waived my right to a hearing, and that The Panel For Educational Policy would be conducting a hearing and would be probably terminating me on September 19, 2006!!

The 3020-a rules state that teachers being “disciplined” (is this what is happening?) must be served the charges during the school year, not during summer vacation. I never received the charges.

Additionally, shouldn’t I, and all teachers similarly situated, be served charges personally before being reassigned, and shouldn’t there be an assumption of innocence, rather than an assumption of guilt until proven innocent?

I want to contend for the removal of that self-serving loophole which the DOE one-sidedly benefits from, when teachers are "afforded" a mere 10 days to respond and ask for a hearing, or they will lose their right to a fair hearing by default. This needs to be challenged constitutionally, and I am willing to be used to change 3020a in that regard.

The absurd assumption on the DOE's part is very troubling, namely that an employee might be willing to waive their right to a fair hearing! The obvious assumption must be that any employee would want to have his or her day in court.

On October 16 I told the Panel For Educational Policy:

Good evening, distinguished members of the Panel and audience. I am here, because as you may recall, at the Sept. 19th meeting at the Tweed Courthouse, Chancellor Klein said that he would assure me of a proper hearing and that my situation was postponed for a month, and once again I have not received any information at all.

I am also here to protest that I have been reassigned, rather than the principal that I reported for violating the “No Child Left Behind Act”. It has been an entire year and I have heard from no one about this. Has there been a cover-up as well as an attempt made in retaliation to silence me?

I want to bring to your attention the declaration that this Panel is illegal and in direct violation of a Supreme Court decision made by Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1969, Kramer v Union Free School District; since you’re all appointed , rather than elected, therefore, this panel must be disbanded!

In sum, the real issue and the most important one is due process: knowing why you are being threatened with termination before being removed from your employment, (except for the case of a clear and present danger), so you, or I, or any good teacher with tenure can defend ourselves against false claims ."

Michael Winerip in the NY Times: As Far as Changing the Script On Closing Schools, Forget It

Cathie Black

February 4, 2011

In Panel’s Votes to Close Low-Performing Schools, Rage and Foregone Decisions
By MICHAEL WINERIP, NY TIMES, February 4, 2011
LINK

They knew how the script was going to end. Still, on Thursday night, 2,000 students, parents, teachers and union officials filed into Brooklyn Technical High School, voicing their frustration for five hours.

When the schools chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, opened her mouth, she was drowned out by people yelling (“Cathie’s gotta go” and “Black is wack”); ringing cowbells; blowing whistles; and in the case of one woman, M. Ndigo Washington, pounding a drum.

It was the second long night of hearings this week to decide whether 25 low-performing New York City public schools would be closed.

The outcome was never in doubt. The decisions on school closings are recommended by the chancellor and voted on by the Panel for Educational Policy. Under mayoral control of the schools, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appoints the chancellor and a majority of the 13-member educational panel: eight people who never fail to deliver for him.

So why did the 2,000 bother to attend? Why did 350 sign up for the privilege of waiting up to five hours for the chance to speak for two minutes? As Charles Barron, a city councilman, said during his two, “You will let us scream until we get hoarse, and then we know what will happen — you’ll shut all our schools down.”

Why bother? The closing of struggling schools has been a key piece of Mr. Bloomberg’s agenda, and his eight-person majority has stood behind him, phasing out more than 100 schools, often replacing them with small schools and charter schools.

Why did Tyrek Greene, a senior at University Heights High School in the Bronx, bother protesting?

“Even though we know the D.O.E. is going to close the schools no matter what,” he said, “we’re here to enter their consciences until they can’t sleep at night.”

Stephanie Campbell of Brooklyn came to praise her son’s school, Explore Charter. And yet, she said, the decision-making process bothered her.

“I’m not pleased with the closings,” she said. “They should fix those schools instead. I wish they would let us feel what we say means something.”

Thursday night, after 12 hours of being pounded over two days, Ms. Black and her deputies did not appear happy. As Jose Herrera, a parent who spoke in support of Coney Island Prep charter school, said, “You look like you’re all in detention right now.”

On the other hand, 12 hours of pounding is easier to take when you know you’re going to win.

In an editorial this week, The Daily News focused its wrath on the audience’s behavior, calling the meetings a “disgraceful, rowdy, shoutfest.”

“These meetings cannot continue to resemble World Wrestling Entertainment throwdowns,” the editorial said. But the paper’s comparison was incomplete. Like a professional wrestling promoter, the education panel knows in advance who will win.

The illusion of having a say, when they have none, may help explain audience members’ rage.

On the surface, it seems to make no sense: Why would people fight for the right to go to low-performing schools, when the city is promising better schools to replace them?

The city has documented the below-average performance of the schools it plans to close. City officials point out that Jamaica High School, in Queens, has received D grades the last two years and has been labeled persistently dangerous by the state. They say Jamaica High is already occupied by three small schools that are doing better.

And yet, on Thursday, there was Charm Rhoomes, president of the Jamaica High PTA, arguing that instead of closing the school, the Education Department should finance it better. She described how her son Shawn started in an honors math class last fall, but after one day, the teaching position was eliminated and Shawn was switched to a standard math class.

Ms. Rhoomes argued that Jamaica High had a disproportionate share of children with challenges, skewing test results. The high school has 23 percent English language learners, much higher than the three small schools in the building. The High School for Community Leadership and Hillside Arts and Letters each have 12 percent English language learners; Queens Collegiate has 6 percent.

Thursday night’s meeting had that Shakespearean feel of fates sealed long ago. In the center of Brooklyn Tech’s stage sat Ms. Black, who said little and deferred to her deputies.

Those deputies — Shael Polakow-Suransky and Marc Sternberg — had facts and figures to support every closing. Meanwhile, standing behind the stage curtain was Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott, Mr. Bloomberg’s educational liaison to the schools, emerging occasionally to whisper into a panel member’s ear, then disappearing behind the curtain again.

If there’s one thing the chancellor, the deputies, the deputy mayor and mayor share — they do not appear to be slowed by second thoughts. They seem to share a sureness they are right.

But what if they aren’t?

The schools scheduled for closing are evaluated in good part by test scores. How dependable are the scores? In 2009, when the mayor was running for re-election, he cited skyrocketing scores as one of his most important achievements: 69 percent of city students scored proficient in English, 82 percent in math. And then, last summer, the state announced the tests were too easy and the results needed to be rescaled. Suddenly, 54 percent of city students were proficient in math and 42 percent in English.

Many of the big high schools to be closed will be replaced by small schools. Yet studies indicate the size of a school is no guarantee of quality. Indeed, of the two dozen schools chosen this week to be closed for low performance, 8 are small schools.

Seven of the schools replacing the closed schools are charters. But a national study on charters indicates that 17 percent are superior to traditional public schools; 37 percent are worse; and the balance, 46 percent, are of similar quality.

These facts, however, were just notes in the margin. The script was written, and was not to change.

E-mail: oneducation@nytimes.com

Steve Ostrin And The NYC Rubber Room Scam

The Story of Steve Ostrin And The Violation Of His Due Process Rights By The NYC Department of Education , the UFT, and NYSUT

by Betsy Combier, Editor, Parentadvocates.org

Steve Ostrin with the Eric Nadelstern/Cheryl Smith/Theresa Europe memo

LINK

From Betsy Combier:

I have known Steve for more than four years, as an investigative reporter looking into the false claims and defamation by Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg of tenured teachers thrown into the "rubber room". Steve's rubber room for almost six years was 25 Chapel Street in Brooklyn New York, 10th Floor. The only reason he was there that long was the refusal of the UFT, NYSUT, and the DOE to fix the errors made in falsely accusing him of sexual harassment of a student. He is an innocent man painted with the wrong colors by the New York Post and the New York City Department of Education. Joel Klein, former CEO of the NYC DOE now works for the POST. Now that he is appealing the decision of arbitrator Howard Edelman to suspend him without pay for six months (NYSUT is representing him in Manhattan Supreme Court, he filed a 7511 appeal in Brooklyn pro se that NYSUT told him to drop) and Cathie Black filed an Appeal against the Edelman decision hoping the Court will decide to vacate the Edelman decision so that Steve will be terminated. I believe that this story will be big news.

Steve's case will show the world how the NYC DOE, UFT, and NYSUT threw thousands of tenured personnel into unemployment, ATR status, resignation and settlements without Just Cause. I, for one, will be documenting the process, and how all three groups are trying desperately to support their unsupportable actions in this case. All three groups named above made very serious errors which created this perfect storm of injustice.

On January 30, 2011, NYPOST reporter Sue Edelman wrote an article called "Teach Untouchable" concerning the case of former rubber roomer Steve Ostrin. I met with Sue and Steve on January 25, 2011 at Steve's request, and discussed the mess that the NYC DOE made in this matter. Steve gave Sue the "smoking gun" memo sent from Theresa Europe to former DOE official Eric Nadelstern who resigned last week, (is there a connection between his resignation and this case??) that you see Steve holding in the picture above. Steve also gave her a copy of his grievance when the DOE would not release him from the rubber room after all charges were dropped against him in 2007, he gave her the information that there was no substantiation of the charges by SCI - nor was there an investigation at all - and Steve was acquitted at the criminal trial by a jury. The NY POST chose to ignore all the facts in favor of Steve's innocence and go with the DOE in defaming Steve once again. I see the hands of Joel Klein in this, and I look forward to a final resolution of the terrible process known as "rubberization" of tenured teachers now that NYSUT has taken on the representation of Steve in NYC Supreme Court against the Black petition.

How can I say such things? I worked as a UFT rep. for three years, hired part-time by Randi Weingarten to help her find out what was going on in public schools, assist teachers who needed advice on what to do in times of trouble, and visit the temporary re-assignment centers or "rubber rooms" to talk with the people there and find out what their cases were all about. I did my job, not knowing that they - the UFT now headed by Michael Mulgrew - did NOT want someone like me, an investigative reporter, looking into re-assigned NYC personnel, because the UFT is doing nothing to help its members, just like the DOE is throwing tenured people into the garbage.

In fact, under Bloomberg, the garbage can was at first not large enough to handle all the people principals were allowed, under color of law/rule/DOE regualtions, to throw away. So, large (and 1 small) room(s) were rented or made available to the garbage teachers and these rooms became the holding pens of allegedly guilty people. Tenured teachers get "due process", or 3020 trial, an arbitration hearing 3020-a. In NYC no one gets to assist in choosing the single arbitrator who decides a case. You get the person supposedly randomly chosen to arbitrate the case that is next in line. At present there is at least one lawsuit in federal court and many in State Court on this topic, and there will be more.

As an advocate for rights, I jumped into the mud of the NYC DOE "rubberization process" as I call it, and found that the denial of rights is astonishing. Believe me, I asked why many times at the UFT, and I was told they didn't need me anymore in July, 2010. That's ok, because now I can write about what REALLY happened over the last 9 years under Mayor Bloomberg, and how the UFT, NYSUT and the NYC DOE all worked as a team in making thousands of people sick with emotional distress, without housing, medical benefits, or jobs of any kind. Not everyone that went through the rubber room ringer is innocent, but many are, and my effort to expose this disaster with my website, blog, and my voice at the PEP Sept 2007, is for them, and all of us - our children, our way of life, and our future.

I met Steve at his rubber room, 25 Chapel Street early in 2007, and have followed his case ever since. In sum, his case is a matter of the DOE wanting a diversion from media exposure of the misconduct of Principal Lee McCaskill of Brooklyn Technical High School, and one of the most "honored" DOE officials, Deputy Chancellor Carmen Farina. The NYC DOE picked a very popular teacher to condemn to the garbage as a way of nullifying the media attacks on MacCaskill. The police arrested Steve in March 2005, he was put in prison, given a criminal trial, and his family almost dissolved while he sat for almost six years in the holding pen/garbage can/rubber room at 25 Chapel Street, 10th floor, Brooklyn N.Y. and had the public pay his salary. No investigation ever proved he was guilty at all, no jury or District Attorney ever believed the accusations of the girl who complained about his behavior, and by all accounts Steve was on his way to being the biggest mistake the NYC DOE ever made, with the UFT approval. Until the DOE "Gotcha Squad" dug up arbitrator Howard Edelman and Attorney Timothy Taylor and put Steve on trial at 51 Chambers Street where the Administrative Trial Unit (ATU) conducts the 3020-a arbitrations for tenured teachers. I have sat in hearings when asked to observe, for almost 8 years, and I can tell you that the "due process" is a sham. More about this in another article.

After no investigation took place because no one believed that Grace Olamijulo was telling the truth - as well as her copycat colleague JH, who also got money from the City for making an accusation against Steve and after the Smith/Europe/Nadelstern "smoking gun" memo showed that 3020-a Attorney Cheryl Smith was lying about the charges (and Edelman was furious), Howard Edelman found Steve culpable of "...a single event in which a teacher [Ostrin] touched a student on her arm and made inappropriate comments" (Edelman award, p. 32). Edelman gave Steve the punishment of six months without pay (or medical benefits), to give a Solomonlike decision ("i.e. splitting the baby" and pleasing both the UFT and the DOE by not exonerating Steve, and thus making it look like the NYC DOE was wrongly spending public money for six years). The DOE spent more than $500,000 in this one case, to prove that Grace was right. So why was there no investigation?

Cathie Black, the new CEO of the NYC DOE, has filed a 7511 Appeal of 3020-a arbitrator Howard Edelman's decision to suspend Steve for six months without pay, she wants him terminated despite the lack of any investigation and the DA, SCI and the DOE finding the girl, Grace, not credible. Steve filed a 7511 in Brooklyn Supreme Court two days earlier, pro se (representing himself), Index No. 690/11. NYSUT Chief Claude Hersh told Steve to withdraw this petition in order for NYSUT to represent him in Manhattan against Black.
 
Below, you will hear from me about the "facts" in this case. Keep in mind while you decide for yourself what the "facts" really are, that the UFT did nothing to help Steve throughout this ordeal that almost cost him his marriage and certainly cost him his career and his well-being for six years. What the UFT and NYSUT should have done is, when all charges were dropped in 2007 and all parties found the girl to be incredible, is put Steve back in his teaching position. No one did this because, I think, all parties hate to admit error, and now the battle is on. See my blog, NYC Rubber Room Reporter, for more stories on this.

The real story of the Rubber Room saga of Steve Ostrin

The real story of Steve Ostrin is based upon the fact that no one believed he sexually abused any child at any time. Grace and Julie were two young women who saw an opportunity to make some money, and the City complied, because their investigators were looking into Brooklyn Tech Principal Lee McCaskill and his associate, Deputy Chancellor Carmen Farina, and they needed to divert public attention away from these two people - see links below. So far there is no proof that the DOE paid either girl to lie, but I'm still looking for that smoking canon. I've seen this (bribing, "convincing" kids to lie to get a teacher out of his or her position) before....sadly, many times.

One who is not sure what is going on in NYC education should start, I think, with Michael Cardozo's letter sent to the Justice Department in 2003 that argued for a removal of the right to vote for a school board in New York City. See Michael Cardozo's letter asking Mr. Rich at the U.S. Department of Justice and then read the reasons for the removal of the right to vote in a long report: "Editorial: The New York City Department of Education is a Sham and Mike Bloomberg is the Flim-Flam Man."

After Mike Bloomberg became Mayor and took control of the public school system in 2002, he spoke often about his desire to be "The Education Mayor", the person who turned all public schools into successful mini-businesses. In this business model, teachers become workers who are easily and necessarily replaced whenever his or her performance is, according to the supervisor, "not perfect". Soon, principals and superintendents had the right to hire and/or fire anyone, at any time. Tenure, with the promise of due process for all who hold this status, was technically over.

To prove to his followers he could do whatever he promised, Mike had to get rid of "dead wood", as in senior teachers who didnt want to spend every day teaching to a test, and then testing for the test; as in senior teachers whose salary was $100,000+ ...when two younger teachers could be paid for that price; as in tenured teachers who had cancer or some debillitating injury that had to take time away from their jobs; and so on.

Principals began to throw teachers out of their positions quickly and for no reason, or for a reason that would have incurred only a counseling memo or letter to file in previous years. For example, if you were a caring teacher and a student was crying and you gave them a hug, you became a "sexual pervert" and were removed from your job; if a student made an effort to do well and you were so happy that you tapped the student on the shoulder and said "well done!" you were, and still are, arrested for corporal punishment and led out of the school in handcuffs, in front of your students and reporters from the New York Post or Daily News, called ahead of time to get the picture. Who replaces you? A substitute teacher, someone who probably cannot teach the curriculum.

Where did the miscreant teacher go, while the NYC DOE "proved" his or her "guilt"? The 'rubber room' or re-assignment center. In 2007 there were seven large rooms in all boroughs - Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Harlem, Bronx, Washington Heights, Brooklyn; then, in 2008 another, small room was opened, also in Brooklyn (355 Park Place, basement). This was, in my opinion, a huge error. When 100+ adults are in a room every day and are told to sit and not talk to anyone about his or her case, that is exactly what the conversations will be about. And I was the UFT "rubber room girl" hired part-time by Randi Weingarten to listen, and to find out what was going on, and try to do something about it. I kept complaining about the situation but stayed 3 years, until the rooms were closed.

The other factor that plays into understanding how the rubber rooms were opened and stayed open until July 2010 is, principals were told by hire-ups to get rid of anyone who blew the whistle on school finances, corruption, violations of law, etc., and they - the "higher-ups" and their 'helpers' - would receive immunity from prosecution. In other words, if the administrators played their parts well, and got rid of anyone who did not meet the corporate criteria, no one would be able to hold them accountable for anything. The Corporation Counsel protects all of these people until there is some exposure of what they did. Then, the person "resigns" (and is moved to another job). "politically connected" UFT reps get the same indemnification and movement to a new position within the UFT. Take Burt Sacks, for example, who "resign" as Deputy Chancellor under Harold Levy and was immediately picked up by the UFT as "special advisor" to Randi Weingarten. HMMMM.

It was in this environment of terror, destruction of innocent lives, and lies that the case of Steve Ostrin began, and circumstances made this case a perfect storm of injustice.

The school where Steve Ostrin taught for 18 years and where he was considered one of the "best teachers ever", Brooklyn Technical High School, or "Brooklyn Tech", is one of the Specialized High Schools of New York City. You can get in if you score high enough on the SHSAT (Specialized High School Admissions Test). Lee McCaskill, the Principal of Brooklyn Tech in 2004, felt uncomfortable. He and Steve had a 'contentious' relationship, and he, McCaskill, was beginning to worry that his cover would be blown.

Principal McCaskill with some of his students

McCaskill had made a deal with then Deputy Chancellor (former District 15 Superintendent Carmen Farina) to put his daughter into a highly regarded public school in D15, even though McCaskill lived in New Jersey. This is against the law in New York State. Mrs. McCaskill also worked for the NYC DOE at Boys and Girls High School, a school in Brooklyn, but she resigned.

When the investigation into Lee McCaskill started heating up, the NYC DOE decided it was time to delay and obstruct the public's view of the crimes of Lee McCaskill and Carmen Farina, one of their "best" administrators (she brought in and supported Diana Lam):

B'KLYN TECH'S CRASS WARFARE. Principal, teachers feud at elite high school
BY KATHLEEN LUCADAMO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER, October 23th 2005,
LINK

WAVES OF TURMOIL are threatening to undermine the once-impeccable reputation of Brooklyn Technical High School - one of the city's most prestigious public schools.

Brooklyn Tech's tradition of excellence already has been sullied from a long-running battle between many respected teachers and Principal Lee McCaskill.

But the war inside the Fort Greene school is boiling over now with public charges of crass behavior, censorship, harassment and questionable management decisions.

Teachers have fled to other respected schools. Parents are trying to figure out what to believe. And perhaps most unsettling, Brooklyn Tech's students say they feel the tension.

A senior, who asked to be identified only as Eric, said he witnessed Assistant Principal Tracy Atkins-Zoughlami engage in a screaming match with two deans in the hallway.

"It was disturbing and unprofessional," the 17-year-old said. The student also claimed McCaskill once called a group of media students "dumb-asses."

McCaskill's detractors have no shortage of complaints about him and the school where he has worked since the late 1980s.

Brooklyn Tech has not published a student newspaper in more than a year because McCaskill had so heavily censored it - once destroying 4,000 copies - that no teacher will serve as an adviser, instructors charged.

For the last two months, 32 new computers have sat covered in plastic, unused because the room isn't properly wired.

The school radio room is packed with outdated equipment and has been shut down for 20 years even though a teacher secured a $10,000 grant. Teachers want to know what happened to that money.

Many instructors also claim McCaskill rules with an iron fist - often targeting outspoken veterans and treating students like prisoners instead of prodigies.

But Education Department brass insist McCaskill is maintaining excellence at the school and adamantly support him.

Deputy Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina called the charges a "union ploy to pick on a particular principal who exercises his right" to give teachers unfavorable reviews. "He does what he feels like he needs to do to make the teachers the best possible," Farina said.

Education Department officials promised a student paper would be up and running by next year. They vowed to send in engineers to fix the computer room and said the radio equipment is owned by WNYE.

Since being founded nearly 90 years ago, Brooklyn Tech has turned out Nobel Prize laureates, congressional leaders, billionaire entrepreneurs, corporate executives and noted scientists, engineers and architects.

It remains one of the city's most difficult schools to get into, enrolling about 4,500 students and boasting a 95% graduation rate.

But Brooklyn Tech traditionally has trailed behind Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science in terms of popularity among top students, said Pamela Wheaton of Advocates for Children.

"When parents choose a school like Brooklyn Tech, they choose the name, not the principal," Wheaton said.

McCaskill could not be reached for comment because he was in North Carolina last week for the funeral of his nephew, who was killed in Iraq.

The most recent edition of the teachers union's newspaper included a supercritical article about him and the school, referring to it as Brooklyn "wreck." It marked the latest - and harshest - assault on McCaskill.

Just three years ago, he was accused of sending obscene E-mails to teachers. A city investigation concluded that some of the messages had been sent by his brother and others seemed to be authored by a hacker.

The allegations were among a long list of accusations against McCaskill over the last decade, including playing favorites with job assignments and faking timecards for friends.

In the last four years, a third of Brooklyn Tech's nearly 40-teacher English Department has left, according to English teacher Daniel Baldwin. "There used to be an almost cultish devotion to teaching at Tech," he said. "Teachers would come here and they wouldn't leave. Now there is a revolving door."

But Jean Claude Bizard, the local instructional supervisor, attributed the turnover to retirements - and backed McCaskill.

"Tech has students who are demanding and parents who expect the best from teachers," he said. "So he has to have high standards and quite frankly some teachers can't handle it."

The parents association vice president, Teresa Mule, also defended McCaskill. "The principal's motto is, 'If things aren't done the right way, they aren't done,' . . . and that is a positive thing," she said.

Yet several well-regarded city schools have been thrilled to hire Brooklyn Tech's castoffs.

In a particularly notable case, veteran teacher Todd Friedman took a job at Midwood High School after McCaskill barred him from teaching the book "Continental Drift" in 2002. The book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, but McCaskill called it sexually explicit and unacceptable.

Friedman is being honored this week with the New York Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Award for fighting McCaskill over the censorship.

"People don't generally want to leave a good school like Brooklyn Tech, but McCaskill and Tracy Atkins-Zoughlami are breaking the morale," Friedman said. "That's why many teachers have left."

klucadamo@nydailynews.com
**********

The NYC DOE decided to go after popular teacher Steve Ostrin. On March 2, 2005, a student in Steve's class, Grace Olamijulo, accused Ostrin of making remarks to her that she thought were sexually harassing.

On March 4, 2005 Ostrin was removed from his school and sent to 131 Livingston Street and then to 25 Chapel Street in Brooklyn, where he remained until the rubber rooms were closed, July 2010. (He was then sent to another location to sit and await the arbitrator's decision in the 3020-a arbitration, which he received at the end of December 2010).

On Sunday March 20, 2005 detectives from the 88th precinct came to Steve's home, and in front of his wife and two small children arrested him for "endangering the welfare of a child and harassment in the second degree".

On February 10, 2006 Steve was acquitted of all charges after a trial by jury in criminal court. Lee McCaskill testified, then resigned later the same day because he was so bad a witness for the DOE that they - the Department - did not want MacCaskill on the stand again. Steve remained in the Brooklyn rubber room. No charges were brought by the NYC DOE until May 11, 2007, after Steve asked for Attorney fees for his paying of the attorneys in the criminal trial. This set off a firestorm because the NYC DOE did not want to pay Steve's legal costs and thus admit that they were in error.

On February 5, 2007 Steve was told to go to the Leon Goldstein High School For Sciences, as he was cleared. On February 6, 2007 counsel for NYSUT (the legal arm of the UFT) received an email from Theresa Europe, Attorney of the Administrative Trials Unit or "Gotcha Squad", saying that the ATU was not going forward with charges, and Steve was no longer on the ineligible list. He filed a grievance (2/15/07) based upon Article 21G(4) of the DOE/UFT contract that states:

...the employee will be restored to service no later than 6 months from the date of his/her removal unless 3020a charges have been preferred against the employee (remember, none had been filed). Yet Marcel Kshensky denied the grievance, the very same Marcel Kshensky who is currently being sued in Federal Court for racial discrimination. (See Marcel Kshensky)

Kshensky denied the grievance, saying that there was an internal investigation being conducted by the DOE - but there was no investigation. (April 17, 2007)

On May 8, 2008, Steve was brought to a probable cause hearing with Arbitrator Martin Scheinman. Scheinman ruled that Steve could not be removed from payroll because

"...Probable cause cannot be established where it is based upon an alleged felony committed on school property or while in the performance of teaching duties as to which a criminal court have ruled Respondent not guilty."....Respondent was not found guilty of criminal charges that were based upon the very same factual allegations set forth in the Specifications against Respondent and on which the Department bases its probable cause request."

Again, where is the UFT? Then, on June 19, 2009, Steve Ostrin went to 65 Court street on a tip and looked at his personnel file, where he found a memo from Cheryl Smith for Theresa Europe sent to former NYC DOE official Eric Nadelstern (he "resigned" in January 2011), closing the case against Steven Ostrin. The memo also states that the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI) concluded that "the allegations were unsubstantiated."

The matter was referred to the ATU, who, according to Theresa Europe, were closing the case. Lee McCaskill resigned his position in order to thwart criminal charges, and the investigators were very angry:

February 15, 2006
Investigator Rebukes City Schools Over Retirement of a Principal
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES

The special commissioner of investigation for the city school system rebuked the Department of Education yesterday for allowing the principal of Brooklyn Technical High School to retire days before the completion of an investigation into his daughter's improper enrollment in a Brooklyn elementary school.

The commissioner, Richard J. Condon, included the criticism in a report describing a web of deception by the principal, Lee D. McCaskill, and his wife, a teacher at another Brooklyn school, to hide the fact that they lived in New Jersey.

The report said the couple had submitted a friend's Brooklyn address to get their daughter into the well-regarded Public School 29 in Cobble Hill without paying the tuition required of noncity residents. When faced with an investigation, Mr. Condon said, they gave contradictory testimony and submitted fake leases and other misleading documents to create the impression that they lived at the Brooklyn address.

Mr. Condon said it "was not prudent" for education officials "to enter into a settlement with Lee McCaskill before it could consider our findings." He said that since the Education Department did not wait for the investigation's results, "we can only note that McCaskill should be placed on the ineligible list and barred from future employment" in the city schools.

Mr. Condon wrote that he was forwarding his findings to the Brooklyn and Manhattan district attorneys for possible prosecution. He also recommended that Dr. McCaskill's wife, Cathy Furman McCaskill, be dismissed from her position as a teacher at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn.

"All objective evidence and information examined in this investigation leads to the conclusion that the McCaskills deceived the D.O.E. and obtained more than three years of free education for their daughter, which is reserved for residents of New York City," Mr. Condon wrote. "Their sworn testimony concerning their living and commuting arrangements between the two addresses is, in part, contradictory, and, as a general matter, incredible and false."

Department of Education officials said Mrs. McCaskill had been reassigned to a regional office and that the department would move to fire her. They defended the agreement with Dr. McCaskill under which he was allowed to retire and pay the city $19,441 for four years of tuition, saying that his swift removal from the school was best for Brooklyn Tech, where a successor has already been named.

"The school has been in a lot of turmoil because of this principal, and we are looking at a process that could stretch on for months and could thereby cause a great deal of disruption in the school," said David Cantor, a department spokesman. "We felt that the situation was just too volatile to let this happen."

Neither of the McCaskills returned calls seeking comment, and a man who answered the telephone at their home yesterday said he did not wish to speak with reporters. A lawyer from the city principals' union, who represented both Dr. McCaskill and Mrs. McCaskill during the investigation, declined to comment through a union spokesman.

Dr. McCaskill is still being paid $125,282 because he is using up accrued vacation time, officials said. Under the agreement with the Education Department, he will be able to use his accrued sick leave, as long as he produces documentation of a medical condition. The sick leave will run out in August, officials said, at which point his retirement will begin. Dr. McCaskill, who is 49, will not receive his pension for several years.

In recent years, Dr. McCaskill's management style at Brooklyn Tech, the largest of the city's prestigious specialized high schools, has led to intense and in some cases well-publicized battles with teachers. They complained that he routinely canceled special trips and programs and that he retaliated against critics by giving out unfavorable performance ratings.

Randi Weingarten, president of the city teachers' union, went to the Department of Education last spring to complain about what she described as Dr. McCaskill's pervasive practice of intimidating and punishing teachers.

Until the last few days, the Department of Education had stood behind Dr. McCaskill. Last week, when the department announced the agreement that he would retire, Carmen Fariña, the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, praised his leadership of Brooklyn Tech, telling reporters: "I wish him well. I think he's done a lot of good in that school."

Mr. Condon's investigation started in October, after the department's general counsel informed him of rumors that the McCaskills' daughter was improperly attending P.S. 29. It is a coveted school where Ms. Fariña herself taught for 22 years and sent her own daughters. Investigators found that while the school listed the family as living at 606 Hancock Street in Brooklyn, voting and vehicle registration records showed they live in Piscataway, N.J.

The Brooklyn address is the residence of Robin Kelly Sheares, a close family friend who is a lawyer. P.S. 29 is not the zoned school for that address, but its principal told investigators she had given Dr. McCaskill a variance as a "professional courtesy," believing he lived in the city.

The investigators also observed the family's morning commute, watching as a green Ford registered to Mrs. McCaskill made its way from Piscataway through Perth Amboy, N.J., and Staten Island, traveling to Brooklyn over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Once in Brooklyn, they found, a girl with a blue book bag was dropped off at Ms. Sheares' home or at the home of another nearby friend, who would drop the girl off at P.S. 29.

Asked where he lived, Dr. McCaskill told investigators that he had "both a Brooklyn and a New Jersey address," the report said. He said he rented a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn from Ms. Sheares, where his wife and daughter stayed during the week and where he stayed "off and on during the week."

Mrs. McCaskill, in what the report described as a "remarkable contrast to her husband's testimony," told investigators that Dr. McCaskill spent most weeknights in Piscataway.

Asked for evidence of his Brooklyn residency, Dr. McCaskill provided investigators with leases indicating that Mrs. McCaskill rented a Brooklyn apartment from Ms. Sheares for $200 a month, starting in October 2001. But the leases, investigators found, were ostensibly signed years before a 2004 copyright on the lease forms.

Mr. Condon referred the case of Ms. Sheares, who was also questioned and had signed the leases, to the grievance committee of the appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court and the state court system's ethics commission. Ms. Sheares could not be reached for comment.

***************

Nevertheless, Cheryl Smith, attorney for the DOE, and Theresa Europe at the ATU served 3020-a charges against Ostrin and pursued his termination with Arbitrator Howard Edelman two years AFTER the memo proved that the investigators, the DOE, and the ATU had found the charges "unsubstantiated".

Throughout, Steve Ostrin has denied that he made any sexual comment to any student at any time.

When Steve got the opinion of Edelman, he decided to appeal to the New York State Supreme Court, as he felt it was wrong of Edelman to remove him from his salary for six months based upon unsubstantiated charges that were never investigated. He filed his appeal and got the Index number on January 11, then served and filed the Verified Petition in Kings County, Brooklyn, on January 25, 2011. Cathie Black filed an appeal in New York State Supreme Court on January 13, and served a Verified Petition on NYSUT on January 27, 2011. The DOE wants Steve to be terminated. NYSUT has taken on the appeal.

No one knows what the war of the titans will bring as far as resolution to this matter, but I do know for sure that when Steve and I and Sue Edelman from the New York Post had lunch on January 25, 2011, and a picture was taken of Steve holding the Nadelstern memo, that Sue Edelman knew there was never an investigation, the District Attorney did not find the girl, Grace, to be credible, that SCI found the charges to be unsubstantiated, that a jury in a criminal trial acquitted Steve, and no one believes that Steve is guilty as charged. No one, that is, except Cathie Black and Joel Klein and his new employer, the New York Post. Stay tuned, this will be good reading when the papers from both sides try to justify a man spending almost six years in a rubber room without Just Cause. NYSUT, the UFT and the DOE are guilty of creating this perfect storm of injustice.

Betsy Combier
I have written about my start in the investigation of the NYC DOE throwing educators out of their positions even when they have tenure, before, but here is a summary once again: in 2003 I was invited to be on-camera at a TV show produced by a friend to talk about Judicial corruption. When I arrived at the studio, another person about to be on the same program, teacher David Pakter, started talking with me. He told me that there were rooms for teachers who blew the whistle on their principal, and these rooms were called "rubber rooms". I knew that this was a good story. I started looking into "rubber rooms" from the point of view of a person to whom facts and rights must be honored above all else. The cases that I looked at then, and the cases I still look at now, dont have either.

Teachers Are Easily Sabotaged When a Principal Wants To Get rid of Them: La Guardia High School and Brooklyn Technical High School (posted 2/28/2004)

Carmen Farina: Politics Wins With Her Appointment as Deputy Chancellor in New York City

The Arrogence of Immunity and the "Resignation" -or Retirement - of NYC DOE Deputy Chancellor Carmen Farina

Former Deputy Chancellor Carmen Farina Retired Because of Her Complicity With the McCaskill Wrongdoing(posted 6/2006)

Marcel Kshensky

Report: Education Interrupted: The Growing Use of Suspensions in New York City’s Public Schools (2011)

From Betsy Combier:

More than six years ago a parent friend of mine asked me to help her son, a middle school hispanic boy with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for "emotional disturbance", who had been accused of something that he did not do and had been suspended. I agreed be the advocate and to do the suspension hearing at the New York City hearing office at the old Board of Education building, 110 Livingston Street, Brooklyn. What I saw and experienced that day changed my perception of public school education permanently.

First, the hearing officer told me that he would not admit the IEP into evidence, as this information would not impact his decision. A lengthy argument followed, as I know that often, the behavior of children with special needs are manifestations of their disability, and can influence their actions. Children should not be punished for having special needs. The Hearing Officer told me that he never looked nor considered IEPs, as these papers were not under his jurisdiction.

In NYC children and young adults are punished for having a disability. That is, kids are suspended any day of the week for acting up in the classroom or, sadly, for doing nothing at all, if they are black or hispanic and have an IEP. An IEP brings in money. Schools need money. Principals figured out many years ago that one way to make money is to take it by suspending a child whose parents are not able to fight back, put the child in a "save room" or suspension site, and take the money given the child. It's really very simple.

Second, the hearing officer started with the statement that the student would have to prove his innocence, as the principal had filed an electronic summary of the incident (on the Online Occurence Reporting System "OORS") and the investigation "proved" that the student "did it". Thus, the suspended child is guilty and must prove his or her innocence. This is impossible as the Klein/Bloomberg administration 'urges' Hearing Officers to find guilt if the student was in school the day of the occurrence. In some cases, the HO finds guilt even if the student wasnt there. I asked the H.O. why the Principal's folder was open in front of him, and requested that he recuse himself as he had read the alleged "facts" in the case before the hearing started. He refused.

I "won" the suspension hearing for my friend's son. I brought in all the laws, Chancellor's Regulations, statements of peers, etc that I had gathered, and kept the hearing open for four days. The Hearing officer was last seen leaving the hearing room wringing his hands and shaking. The last time I made an appearance at the NYC Suspension Hearing Office, now located on West 125th Street, all the Hearing Officers recused themselves. The suspended student went back to the school.

And, here's the punchline: in the six years that I have been providing advocacy at the suspension hearing offices in NYC I have never seen a white face.

Below is a thumbnail of the New York Civil Liberties Union report, and the complete Report in a PDF. First, read about how the NYC Board of Education knew all about their using suspensions as a way to get kids out of their schools:

Officials were given advance warning on special-ed suspensions, memo shows
By Rachel Monahan , DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, January 28th 2011, 4:00 AM

City officials got advance warning that schools were overusing student suspensions as a disciplinary tool, an internal city Education Department memo shows.

Before suspensions hit their highest level in the last decade, the memo written by a staffer at a Bronx suspension site documented that special education students were too often punished with removal from their schools.

Roughly 40% of the students at Bronx sites were special education students, according to the memo, and 60% of those kids had a mental illness.

"Suspension is not the answer in these cases and is indeed detrimental to their growth," the memo from November 2008 concludes.

In 2008-09, kids were punished with nearly 74,000 suspensions - up from 44,000 in the 1999-2000 school year.

The memo documented a high number of suspensions in some small schools. Principals, teachers and other staffers in those schools offered several excuses for suspending so many special education students, the memo reports, including teachers' inexperience. But there were also more troubling explanations:

- "We're not set up to deal with this population. We don't have (12 students for one teacher) classes or enough guidance and support."

- "It's either teaching the (regular education students) or bothering with (the special education students) at the expense of the general ed."

The report calls for "additional support and services" for the children at small schools, the memo states.

A report issued Thursday by the New York Civil Liberties Union echoed the internal memo, finding that special education students were four times more likely than their general education peers to serve a suspension.

"This memo should have been a wakeup call to the Department of Education to get its act together," said NYCLU advocacy director Udi Ofer. "We hope that our report today will be the final alarm that triggers a response."

City Education Department spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said she could not locate the memo yesterday and declined to comment further.

Report: Education Interrupted: The Growing Use of Suspensions in New York City’s Public Schools (2011)

The New York State Constitution guarantees a free public education to all children in New York. In addition, both international human rights bodies and U.S. courts have recognized that a free education is the cornerstone of success and social development for young people. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court unequivocally stated, “In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.”

Unfortunately, growing reliance on exclusionary punishments such as suspensions effectively denies many children their right to an education. This is true nationwide, and also in New York City, where zero tolerance discipline is the norm. The New York Civil Liberties Union analyzed 10 years of discipline data from New York City schools, and found that:

* The total number of suspensions in New York City grew at an alarming rate over the last decade: One out of every 14 students was suspended in 2008-2009; in 1999-2000 it was one in 25. In 2008-2009, this added up to more than 73,000 suspensions.

* Students with disabilities are four times more likely to be suspended than students without disabilities.

*Black students, who comprise 33 percent of the student body, served 53 percent of suspensions over the past 10 years. Black students with disabilities represent more than 50 percent of suspended students with disabilities.

* Black students also served longer suspensions on average and were more likely to be suspended for subjective misconduct, like profanity and insubordination.

* Suspensions are becoming longer: More than 20 percent of suspensions lasted more than one week in 2008-2009, compared to 14 percent in 1999-2000. The average length of a long-term suspension is five weeks (25 school days).

* Between 2001 and 2010, the number of infractions listed in the schools’ Discipline Code increased by 49 percent. During that same period, the number of zero tolerance infractions, which mandate a suspension regardless of the individual facts of the incident, increased by 200 percent.

* Thirty percent of suspensions occur during March and June of each school year.

Racism Spurs The Placing Of The Millenium Brooklyn School Into The John Jay Campus, says Activists

Brown v The Board of Education ended segregation in America's public schools, right?

Not in New York City. The way the New York City Board/Department of Education works is to spin information of   corruption, fraud, and misconduct in such a way as to leave the public with the impression that nothing is wrong. Let me tell you, as a parent advocate for 12 years, and a teacher advocate for eight years, I have seen segregation, discrimination, racial bias, and other such violations within most of the public schools located in high-poverty areas that I have visited. Anyone who says that this is not happening is not telling the truth.

Also, activists are becoming more and more angry at the way Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have turned a deaf ear to their requests, as seen in the numerous protests around town:

Increasingly Vocal Parents, Teachers Protest Closings

Betsy Combier

Shortchanging NYC Students
LINK

Protesting the co-location of the "Millennium Brooklyn" charter
in John Jay High School (Grassroots Education Movement)

John Yanno, a teacher at John Jay High School, describes the struggle for scarce resources as the city plans for a "selective" high school in the very same building.

January 25, 2011

A GROUP of 150 teachers, students, parents and community members rallied outside the John Jay High School campus in Brooklyn before a January 11 public hearing on the New York City Department of Education's (DOE) plan to house a new "selective" college preparatory high school in the very same building.

The campus building currently houses three small schools--the Secondary School for Law (where I work), the Secondary School for Journalism and the Secondary School for Research.

Students attending school at John Jay are predominantly African American and Latino youth from impoverished Brooklyn neighborhoods, while the Park Slope neighborhood in which the school is located is affluent and predominantly white.

The decision to place yet another school, this one called Millennium Brooklyn, inside John Jay is in response to demands by the residents of the neighborhood who want a selective high school to send their children to. In other words, the school would set up a separate-and-unequal school in the John Jay campus building. This has led many to label the plan as "Apartheid Education."

Members of the Secondary School for Research's School Leadership Team blasted the New York City DOE at the public hearing, saying:

More than 60 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that separate was inherently unequal, and after hundreds of thousands fought against racism and for the integration of public schools, this country's public school system remains blatantly segregated--and is growing more so by the day.

The Department of Education's proposal to place the new Millennium Brooklyn in the John Jay campus reveals the racism and inequity in the New York City public schools. It also demands that we revive the inspiring struggles of past civil rights movements and take a stand against racism.

The opposition to the placement of Millennium Brooklyn is not because we don't want affluent Park Slope children to study at John Jay. In fact, our rallying cry has been "Integrate, don't segregate."

We are opposed to the placement of the new school because the NYC DOE has for years neglected the schools already in the building. For example, Millennium Brooklyn will receive about $35,000 more per year than the other three schools because new schools are guaranteed start-up money in order to purchase supplies and update classrooms.

When the three current schools in the building opened up about 10 years ago, we never received these funds. Additionally, students at the Millennium High School in Manhattan, which Millennium Brooklyn will be modeled on, receive higher per-student expenditure rates than the students in my school ($18,103 a year compared to $16,973 a year).

It's absurd that the NYC DOE is shortchanging the students who need it the most. "A lot of us don't feel that it is right that this school is coming in and getting a lot of funding when our school has been needing a lot of money, and we haven't been getting it from the Department of Education," said one student who attended the hearing.

OTHER REQUESTS to improve the school were also ignored. Jill Bloomberg, principal of the Secondary School for Research, spoke at the hearing about how, after the NYC DOE denied her request for funding to purchase a bell system for her school, she shelled out $5,000 of her own money to purchase one.

Requests to remove metal detectors and airport-like bag scanners from the building are another issue. The metal detectors, which students must walk through each morning, stigmatize our campus, dehumanize and criminalize our students, and make the school less appealing to prospective students, which has led to dwindling enrollment (cited by the NYC DOE as justification for placing Millennium Brooklyn in our building).

"Scanners only criminalize students," said one student at the hearing. "If you are treated like a criminal, you eventually act like one. Who would want to come to a school where children are treated like criminals?"

The metal detectors and the virtual police state seen in front of the school at dismissal send the misleading message that the kids in John Jay are criminals. "We are treated as interlopers at best, criminals at worst," said one student who described as a "racist ritual" the use of NYPD school safety agents to quickly ferry the non-white students off the Park Slope streets and into the subway at the end of the school day.

Students and teachers testified that they welcome all students, but that it was the NYC DOE's responsibility to adequately fund the three schools already in the building in order to make the schools more appealing to neighborhood families.

The building is infamous for its dilapidated condition. According to the testimony of Principal Bloomberg:

Water damage from a chronically leaky roof was so bad that some classroom walls crumbled. Door frames separated from the walls. In 2005-2006, when the roof of the building was belatedly replaced, nearly every classroom on the fourth floor was flooded. The science lab was so badly damaged that tiles floated in the water. To this day, the lab floor remains a patchwork of different-colored tiles.

Though the building received funds for wireless access throughout, most of our students' classrooms have only one electrical outlet, severely limiting the use of interactive whiteboards, LCD projectors and document readers. In our dingy student and faculty bathrooms, the plumbing is so old that the toilets fail with regularity.

Our drinking fountains function sporadically; what water we get is always lukewarm. Ancient radiators either heat rooms like blast furnaces or don't work at all. Whatever funding ever existed for classroom air conditioners never made it to our fourth floor. Of course, there's no place to plug them in if they ever do.

The John Jay community considers it a slap in the face that the NYC DOE has for years knowingly allowed our schools to exist in such a condition--only to make badly needed building-improvement funds contingent on the new school entering the building.

"This is not necessarily an attack on Millennium. Its about the fact that the John Jay Campus has been starved for resources for years," said Julie Cavanagh, a Brooklyn teacher and a member of Concerned Advocates for Public Education [1] and the Grassroots Education Movement [2].

Cavanagh attacked the NYC DOE's statement that "capital funds be provided to [the John Jay High School campus] school building if and only if the co-location of Millennium is approved."

"That, I'm sorry, is racism," she continued. "And it's shameful."

The chants at the rally outside the school and inside the auditorium during the hearing were an expression of anger at years of neglect--of both the building and the education of the students. The crowd chanted "Black, Latin, Asian, white, students of the world unite," "Whose school? Our school!" and "How do you spell 'racist?' D-O-E!"

THE STRUGGLE at John Jay began last June when teachers from the schools in the building held a joint union meeting and agreed to continue to meet regularly after school on Fridays to discuss school issues.

Naming ourselves the John Jay Campus Community [3], we began reaching out to parents and held "Fight Back Friday" pickets outside the school on Friday mornings to protest budget cuts. While we never beat back the budget cuts, our early organizing made it possible to quickly organize against the most recent NYC DOE decision.

In addition to organizing teachers, students and parents from all three schools, the campus fight-back group held debates, informational pickets, began a blog, reached out to the community and held rallies in front of the school in the lead up to the public hearing. While we did not succeed in keeping Millennium out of our building (the Panel for Educational Policy voted in favor of the placement during its January 19 hearing), our organizing has helped make allies in the community and forced local politicians to take a stand.

Brad Lander, the city council member for the Park Slope neighborhood, has called on the NYC DOE to remove the metal detectors and scanners and to "provide equitable and adequate resource investments across schools by implementing long-overdue building-wide improvements, and making sure that investments tied to these changes serve all the schools equally."

Getting more funding and removing the metal detectors from the building would be important victories. They would improve the lives of the students of the John Jay Campus. Therefore, the fight for our school did not end with the panel's decision. We must continue the fight to make sure promises are fulfilled and to continue to press our demand that poor students and students of color stop being pushed to the margins.