Film Review: American Teacher

—By Kristina Rizga

| Wed Sep. 28, 2011 3:30 AM PDT

LINK

velvettangerine/Flickr

American Teacher

THE TEACHER SALARY PROJECT
81 minutes
When Rhena Jasey decided to become a public-school teacher, her friends were appalled: "You went to Harvard!" she recalls them saying. "You should be a doctor or a lawyer." Jasey is one of four teachers profiled by director Vanessa Roth and coproducers Dave Eggers and Nínive Calegari as they address the hottest question in education reform: how to attract and retain great teachers? That, education experts agree, is the single most effective thing a school can do to boost student achievement. Real wages for teachers, the filmmakers argue, have been in a 30-year decline. One subject, a history teacher and coach, makes just $54,000 after 15 years on the job. He supplements that by driving a forklift—indeed, the film reports that 31 percent of US teachers take second jobs to get by. But instead of support, they get the blame for lackluster test scores. With more than half of the nation's 3.2 million public pedagogues coming up for retirement in the next decade, American Teacher succeeds in reframing education's abstract ideological battles in terms of kitchen-table realities.

NYC DOE Mismanaged Test Scoring Process Wrongly Bars 7,000 Students From Attending Their Graduation

7,000 city students wrongly blocked from attending graduation

By YOAV GONEN and LORENA MONGELLI

Last Updated: 10:40 AM, July 26, 2012

LINK

Riyad Hasan

More than 7,000 city elementary- and middle-school students were wrongly barred from attending their graduation ceremonies this year because education officials mistakenly thought they had failed state exams.

Test scores announced last week revealed that the Department of Education had overestimated how many students had failed the exams and needed to attend summer school — but the reversal came only after students had already missed their class celebrations.

“I was looking forward to my graduation — I had a red, strapless dress picked out and sandals. I couldn’t wait to wear my cap and gown and graduate with all my friends,” said Bell Academy MS eighth-grader, Megan Marrera — who was barred from even sitting in the audience at her graduation last month.

“When they told me I wasn’t graduating, I was very sad. I felt like such a failure,” she added. “The day of the graduation, I was crying in bed.”

The 13-year-old was stunned to learn last week that she actually passed the English exam she had been told she failed — and should have been allowed to graduate with her Bayside classmates.

The news left her mother, Joyce, steamed over the injustice — particularly because her daughter worked extra hard to keep her grades up while dealing with a medical condition.

“I feel that Megan was robbed of seeing a milestone in her life, and that’s unforgivable,” she said. “There’s no way to go back to that day now.”

The city’s troubles with identifying failing students began after the state pushed back the date of its annual math and English exams two years ago — causing the release of scores to be delayed until after summer school starts.

The change forced the city to use preliminary scoring and rough estimates — rather than the actual results — to determine who didn’t pass the exams.

Critics say the inaccuracy of that method should have loosened the department’s strict policy that bars failing students from attending their graduation or stepping-up events.

“You’d rather err on the side of allowing somebody to experience that rather than take it away based on a marking error,” said a Brooklyn elementary school principal.

Department spokeswoman Erin Hughes said officials do allow principals some discretion with elementary school kids, “depending on the unique circumstance of an individual situation.” She said a vast majority of students wrongly identified as having failed the exam just barely passed it — so that they benefit from the extra instruction in summer school.

yoav.gonen@nypost.com

UFT Wins Again In The Opposition To Schools' Turnaround

Judge ends year’s turnaround saga with a fast, firm “no” to city

by Philissa Cramer and Rachel Cromidas, at 5:49 pm

UFT Attorney Adam Ross and VP Mike Mendel

The Bloomberg administration’s Hail Mary effort to shake up the staffs at 24 struggling schools fell short today when a State Supreme Court judge shot down the city’s request to move forward.

An arbitrator, Scott Buchheit, ruled late last month that the city’s hiring and firing decisions at the schools — key aspects of the Department of Education’s “turnaround” plans — violated the city’s contract with the teachers union. The schools were not closing, Buchheit ruled, so the city could not invoke article 18-D of the contract, which sets out staffing rules for schools that are shut down.

In a lawsuit filed quickly afterwards, the city contended that Buchheit had overstepped his bounds. Lobis signaled earlier this month that she thought the city was unlikely to win that argument when she rejected its request to be allowed to continue rehiring and replacing teachers at the schools while she considered its appeal.

Today, after listening to city and union lawyers lay out their cases for 45 minutes this afternoon, Lobis retired to her chambers with a warning that she might return with a decision today.

Seven minutes later, she emerged to say that she had come to a conclusion: The arbitrator’s decision would stand.

“I could spend weeks trying to tease out an erudite decision,” Lobis said, but she added that all parties sought a speedy resolution and the legal issues at stake were not complicated.

The city will appeal Lobis’s decision, according to a statement from Michael Cardozo, the city’s top lawyer.

Related Stories

Judge rules that city must reinstate staff at turnaround schools  July 10, 2012 57

City and teachers union return to court in turnaround saga today  July 24, 2012 20

Judge urges city, unions into arbitration in turnaround dispute  May 16, 2012 21

City: Turnaround staffing complaints weren’t arbitrable after all  July 3, 2012 23

Arbitrator: City used “circular reasoning” to justify turnarounds  July 6, 2012 42

“The mayor and chancellor will not allow failing schools to deprive our students of the high-quality education they deserve. Although we will of course comply with the judge’s ruling, we strongly disagree with it — and we will be appealing,” he said.

The appeal cannot be heard before the fall because the Appellate Division does not sit during the summer. That means that there is now no chance of further reversals to staffing decisions at the schools, and the arbitrator’s ruling that teachers and administrators who were cut loose can reclaim their positions will stand, according to Georgia Pestana, the city’s labor and employment law chief. She said the city’s appeal is aimed at clearing the way for the turnaround model to be used in the future.

“There’s not enough time to get it done for this fall. These schools have to be ready to be open in September,” Pestana said.

Opening successfully in the fall is likely to be a challenge for some of the schools. The turnaround tug-of-war has left many of the schools without a clear tally of who works in them or what their needs will be in September.

“It is now time to prepare the teachers, principals and school communities for the opening of school and we hope that the mayor will spend as much effort on helping struggling schools succeed as he does on his own political needs,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement.

The United Federation of Teachers’ top lawyer, Adam Ross, said after the hearing that the department could carry out different plans to improve the schools, including those that were underway at most of them before the city turned to turnaround.

“Most of what the DOE proposed to do for these turnaround plans were part of the DOE’s original ‘transformation’ and ‘restart’ plans, and there is absolutely nothing in the contracts that prevents them from implementing them,” Ross said. “We encourage the Department of Education to do what it can to help every school succeed. If they have actions they want to take in these schools, whether it be curriculum or other changes, they’re free to do so.”

Earlier today, Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the department had taken a wait-and-see approach to planning for the schools.

“I have two plans in place and we’ve been operating waiting to see what the decisions will be. If we lose, we’ll put a plan in place. My staff have been working extremely hard and have been looking at a variety of scenarios, budget situations, staffing situations,” he told reporters while visiting a summer dance program in Washington Heights.

“The vision, the goals of the school, trying to create a new atmosphere at those schools — all those things will be pushed aside,” Walcott said. “Our goal is to make sure we provide a high-quality education for the 30,000 students who attend these schools. Unfortunately, that may not happen.”

Valerie Strauss: Can a Teacher Become Qualified in 5 weeks?

My answer to Ms. Strauss: Depends......but randomness cannot exist in public employment, so, my final answer is: "Not in public education".

Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 07/18/2012

Does 5 weeks of training make a teacher ‘highly qualified?’ — Updated

By Valerie Strauss

(Updated with House subcommittee vote)

LINK

Should someone with five weeks of teacher training be considered ahighly qualified teacher?

A U.S. House appropriations subcommittee approved legislation on Wednesday that extended for two more years the federal definition of a highly qualified teacher as including students still learning to be teachers and other people with very little training.

A Teach for America recruit gets classroom management training. (Ricky Carioti/THE WASHINGTON POST)The nonprofit organization Teach for America places college graduates into high needs schools after giving them five weeks of training in a summer institute. The TFA corps members, who are required to give only a two-year commitment to teaching, can continue a master’s degree in education with selected schools while teaching.

Of course it doesn’t make any real sense that a new college graduate with five weeks of ed training or any student teacher should be considered highly qualified — because they aren’t. But federalofficials inexplicably partial to Teach for America have bestowed millions of dollars on the organization, and TFA has, not surprisingly, lobbied Congress for this legislation.

The reality is that teachers still in training are disproportionately concentrated in schools serving low-income students and students of color — the children who need the best teachers. This inequitable distribution disproportionately affects students with disabilities.

The satirical newspaper, the Onion, has a funny piece on Teach for America. The first part is ostensibly from a new college graduate who supposedly writes:

When I graduated college last year, I was certain I wanted to make a real difference in the world. After 17 years of education, I felt an obligation to share my knowledge and skills with those who needed it most.

After this past year, I believe I did just that. Working as a volunteer teacher helped me reach out to a new generation of underprivileged children in dire need of real guidance and care. Most of these kids had been abandoned by the system and, in some cases, even by their families, making me the only person who could really lead them through the turmoil....

The second part is supposedly written by a young student who had a Teach for America teacher:

You’ve got to be kidding me. How does this keep happening? I realize that as a fourth-grader I probably don’t have the best handle on the financial situation of my school district, but dealing with a new fresh-faced college graduate who doesn’t know what he or she is doing year after year is growing just a little bit tiresome. Seriously, can we get an actual teacher in here sometime in the next decade, please? That would be terrific.

Just once, it would be nice to walk into a classroom and see a teacher who has a real, honest-to-God degree in education and not a twentysomething English graduate trying to bolster a middling GPA and a sparse law school application. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a qualified educator who has experience standing up in front of a classroom and isn’t desperately trying to prove to herself that she’s a good person...

The No Child Left Behind law requires all classrooms to have highly qualified teachers, though the definition of just what those are has been debated for years.

In 2010, Congress approved legislation that defined “highly qualified teachers” as including students still in teacher training programs. There is an effort now among supporters to keep that definition on the books — even though the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals twice ruled that it violated No Child Left Behind because it did not fully meet a credential standard set in that law.

Last month the Senate Appropriations Committee was on its way to extending the federal definition but, after some protest, decided not to. Still there is support in the Senate to do so.

The House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday approved legislation that would eliminate most of the funding for President Obama’s Race to the Top and other education programs — and would allow teachers in training to be considered highly qualified teachers through the 2014-15 school year.

The Obama administration has given waivers to more than half of the states, which allows them to ignore major parts of NCLB. That includes the highly qualified teacher provision, if they include student achievement in teacher evaluations.

However, there are other federal education funds, such as Title 1, tied to a highly qualified teacher provision.

Bottom line: The issue isn’t over.

Mike Bloomberg's Education Plan Is a Total Failure

The article below, printed by Bloomberg's ally The NY Daily News, tells only part of the story about the deliberate and malicious strategy of Mike Bloomberg to remove talented educators, both tenured and probationary, special needs children, and high poverty black and hispanic children from New York City public schools. At least the News is making a start in the right direction.

But watch out in the fall - the Bloomberg/Walcott/Corporation Counsel partnership will try to railroad the closing of the schools which won a temporary win in the Supreme Court.

Betcha I'm right. Prepare, expose, fight.

Betsy Combier

Bloomberg's new schools have failed thousands of city students 

  

Did more poorly on state reading tests than older schools with similar poverty rates

BY RACHEL MONAHAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

PUBLISHED: SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2012, 3:00 AM

LINK

The signature Bloomberg administration reform of shutting down failing schools and replacing them with new schools has — itself — failed thousands of city students, a Daily News analysis finds.

The new schools opened under the mayor were supposed to have better teachers, better principals, and, ultimately, better test scores than the dysfunctional failure mills they were replacing.

But when The News examined 2012 state reading test scores for 154 public elementary and middle schools that have opened since Mayor Bloomberg took office, nearly 60% had passing rates that were lower than older schools with similar poverty rates.

The new schools also showed poor results in the city’s letter-grade rating system, which uses a complicated formula to compare schools with those that have similar demographics.

Of 133 new elementary and middle schools that got letter grades last year, 15% received D’s and F’s — far more than the city average, where just 10% of schools got the rock-bottom grades.

“It’s crazy,” said Tanya King, who helped wage a losing battle to save Brooklyn’s Academy of Business and Community Development, where her grandson was a student.

The school opened in 2005, then closed in 2012.

Tanya King

Instead of closing struggling schools and replacing them with something else that doesn’t work, King says, the city should help with extra resources to save the existing schools.

“You have the same children in the school,” she said. “What’s going to be the difference? Put in the services that are going to make the school better.”

Her grandson Donnovan Hicks, 11, will be transferred next fall for the seventh-grade into another Bloomberg-created school, Brooklyn’s Peace Academy, where just 13% passed the state reading exams this spring.

The News conducted its analysis by grouping 154 new schools into one of five poverty categories based on how many kids in the school were eligible last year to receive a free lunch. It then compared the percent of students who passed the state reading test in each school to the average passing rate for older schools in the same poverty group.

Of the 154 schools, 90 had lower passing rates than the average school in their group.

That translates to massive failure: Just 38% of students at elementary and middle schools created by the Bloomberg administration passed the reading exams, compared with 47% of students citywide.

The News analysis — which looked just at traditional public schools, not at charters — was not the kind of thorough academic study that could be used to draw absolute conclusions on the success of school closures, but three education experts said the method offers an important insight into the city’s reforms.

“This is additional evidence that these (new) schools are not performing better than their peer schools,” said NYU Prof. Robert Tobias, who led the city’s testing program before Bloomberg took office.

City officials defended their new schools, noting they serve students with higher needs than older schools and have improved at a faster rate in recent years.

“While there is still room to improve, these new schools’ proficiency rate is nearly double that of the schools they replaced in both math and English,” said Martin Kurzweil, senior executive director of the Education Department’s research, accountability and data office.

But critics of the administration say they would have hoped for better results.

“(The administration has) been focused on expanding school choice by creating small schools as the solution to school failure when they’re setting these schools up for failure,” said Coalition for Educational Justice parent leader Zakiyah Ansari.

rmonahan@nydailynews.com

NYC 3020-a Arbitrator Randi Lowitt Retaliates Against Christine Rubino In A New Decision Ordered By NY State Supreme Court

by Betsy Combier, Editor

Parentadvocates.org

LINK

 
Christine, an excellent NYC public school teacher, made a stupid comment on Facebook which she took off her page a few days later, but by then, a "friend" had given a printout to her principal. Christine was terminated by Arbitrator Randi Lowitt, and Christine appealed her decision. The NYS Supreme Court vacated the termination, then Lowitt ruled that Christine made her plight public so she has to be punished with two years' suspension without pay. Are there any adults in the audience? by Betsy Combier
           

Christine Rubino

Christine's story has so many sideshows going on, it looks like a circus. We need to look at the entire picture so that the Gotcha Squad stops trampling on the rights of tenured teachers, a group to which Christine has been returned. One thing is crystal-clear, however: The New York City Department of Education, The home and resting place for the Gotcha Squad and the "No Hire" List as well as Arbitrator Randi Lowitt are furious with Christine Rubino and her fearless stand against their lawless and vindictive punishments which harm her. She is my friend, and I am honoring her by writing as much as I possibly can about the retaliation and harm Christine has had to endure simply because she refused to be squashed by theNYC DOE, even though she never had a chance to succeed at her 3020-a. The new Decision from Arbitrator Randi Lowitt is simply vindictive and retaliatory. More about that below.

Perhaps you are not aware of the huge importance the case of Christine Rubino has to Labor Policy and Employment Law throughout the U.S. As far as I know, Christine's case is the first NYC case where a tenured teacher was terminated for making a comment on what she believed was her private Facebook page, while the NYC Department of Education did not have a social media policy. The lack of oversight by anyone at the NYC DOE is one gaping hole in the planning and implementation of any policy. I have spent more than 9 years studying the gaping holes and mistakes of the DOE, and every day I hear of another. Mayor Bloomberg may have wanted to be the "Education Mayor", but he will never reach his goal because he did not put anyone in charge who knew what he or she was doing. Read my articles "The Who Are You Kidding Award Goes To Joel Klein" and "Kleingate", and you may fill in the dots as to what my opinion is concerning the public school system which my 4 children went through and are now, thankfully, out of (as in graduated). 

Christine's Facebook comment was made after a full teaching day with difficult children. She called them "the devil's spawn" on her private Facebook page which she shared with approximately 125 friends, none of whom were children. She suggested she would like to take them to the beach a day after 6th grader Nicole Suriel died on the beach while on a trip with her class for raising money at Columbia Secondary School. A few days later christine took the comment down and has been apologizing to the worls ever since. When the DOE started to go after her 5 months later, two of them ended up verbally abusing a friend of Christine's who taped them. These two investigators wanted the friend to tell them that Christine forced her friend to say that she, not Christine, was the one who put the comment on Facebook. The tape of these two goons was played at Christine's 3020-a and Randi Lowitt thought she heard "proof" that Christine tried to interfere with the investigation of her comment on Facebook, and used the tape to terminate Christine. I heard different "proof" - that SCI uses verbal abuse to get witnesses to say what they, SCI investigators want, and the discussion was frightening.

There are many things wrong with Lowitt's "assessment", if you can call it that. I attended Christine's 3020-a, and watched Randi Lowitt and Attorneys Theresa Europe and Jeff Gamils very carefully. My opinion of Lowitt's "assessment" was, she knew that Theresa Europe and the DOE had to go after Christine and she, Lowitt knew that Christine had to be terminated, because there were too many other side shows going on which could expose the DOE's massive fraud on the City of New York and the parents of the NYC public school system.

If you read the transcript of the first day of the Hearing, you will see that Jeff Gamils, the DOE Attorney, wanted to bring in three witnesses, even though Christine did not have an Attorney. Christine objected, and Randi told her, "There is nothing to object to" (p. 46). Also, it may shocj people to realize that Claude Hersh, head of NYC NYSUT office, picked the Attorneys who would work on the case (and, by picking the Attorneys, he chose the arbitrator). See p. 43, Jeff Gamils talks about the email from Claude. Then, in the transcript of the last day we read that the investigators who interviewed Christine's friend in her car told her that if she did not do what they wanted her to do, she would be put into jail. (p. 1486). This is pretty tough stuff, folks.

Christine had to be punished, not just for her daring to blow the whistle on the DOE by having media at her hearing - I am considered 'press', and Christine asked Sue Edelman of the NY POST to attend - but because of her connection, by sheer coincidence, to the imbedded fraud at the DOE:

1. Nicole Suriel, whose name was never mentioned by Christine, did not have to die in the beach accident June 22, 2010. Dr. Jose Maldonado-Rivera, Principal of Columbia Secondary School, was running a scam operation to fund his fake non-profit, and Nicole's class won the trip to the beach for raising the most money. But he couldnt have chaparones or permission slips, because he did not want questions to be asked about where the money would go. After the accident, the teacher was fired, the AP was demoted and Dr. Maldonado-rivera was reprimanded. The parents are suing. How come the Principal was only reprimanded? The DOE knew all about the scam he was running, and could not allow him to speak up about it, or get angry at the DOE. Tom Allon, CEO of Manhattan Media and running for NYC Mayor in 2013, gave him an award in 2009 as "Principal of the Year". I guess Tom played along , or did not do his research.

2. Several of her students in Christine's class in June 2010 who were referred to in her very temporary post on Facebook as "the devil's spawn" are the same kids who blinded Kardin Ulysse at the Roy Mann Junior High School in Bergen Beach. All people who have heard about the blinding of Ulysse call the kids who did the ugly deed "punks" and "little hooligans". No one has been reprimanded for this, like Christine was.

3. The DOE despises people who make "the NYC Department of Education look bad". Trust me, I am at the top of the list for harm, and all four of my children were harmed while attending their public schools. David Pakter, also a very outspoken teacher brought to 3020-a, was also charged with "making the DOE look bad." He and I asked Randi Weingarten, President of the UFT at the time, to get the DOE to withdraw that charge, and the DOE complied. Francesco Portelos is a new addition to the despised teacher list. He created a blog and posts anything the DOE says or does to him after he blew the whistle on his Principal, Linda Hill. The fact that Christine Rubino allowed Sue Edelman to come to her 3020-a infuriated Randi Lowitt so much, that Randi stopped the hearing after she told Sue Edelman to leave, and Sue said no. Randi backed down afterwards, but remained furious, as you can see from her new decision giving Christine two year's suspension without payafter Judge Jaffe in the NYS Supreme Court wrote a decision saying that Christine's termination was "shocking to the conscience".

4. David Senatore, the "friend" on Christine's Facebook page who printed out her comment and gave it to the principal of Christine's school, was also a teacher at the same school. He was a "favorite" of the Principal, who was covering up Senatore's love for certain boys who attended the after school program. Senatore knew that Christine and others were aware of his taking boys home with him and letting them use his pool. Getting Christine out of the school was a convenient solution. An update on Senatore's story is that in March 2012 he was removed from the school, and has been awaiting charges while sitting at 335 Adams Street. He called me to ask me to help him find one of the boys he was fond of, and told me not to tell anyone. I reported this call, and I heard that teachers have written the investigators about Senatore's actions for several years with the boys in the after school program. 

This article is the third that I have written about Christine Rubino. Here are the other posts on this website and on NYC Rubber Room Reporter:

The True Story of Teacher Christine Rubino And Her Prosecution By The New York City Department of Education
and
New York State Supreme Court Overturns Arbitrator Randi Lowitt's Decision To Terminate Christine Rubino For Facebook Comments by Betsy Combier

After NY State Supreme Court Judge Barbara Jaffe decided that termination was a "shocking" penalty and remanded the case back to the NYC DOE for a lesser penalty, the Gotcha Squad Director Theresa Europe and her subordinate, Attorney Jeff Gamils, made sure that Arbitrator Randi Lowitt got the case again. This is outrageous, as Jaffe did not order the new penalty be decided by the same arbitrator.

Randi Lowitt should never have been given the authority to make a second determination for Christine Rubino, as she was, at Christine's 3020-a, not neutral at all, in my opinion. In NYC the panel of arbitrators who get appointed to hear cases are "permanent", meaning they stay for a year, and get re-appointed by Theresa Europe and Claude Hersh from NYSUT every June. Until April 1, 2012, when new rules changed the business of arbitration that dominates this panel, anyone would have considered the job as NYC Arbitrator a very good one, as each arbitrator was paid $1400-$2300/day, not the much less fees for arbitration under the rules of the American Aarbitration Association.

Each arbitrator gets a DOE Attorney and a NYSUT Attorney who stays with him or her for the year, or for many years. This leads, of course, to an extremely 'chummy' environment where the Respondent teacher's witnesses and defense may be forgotten.

Christine alienated Randi Lowitt the second day of her hearing. Christine was given Attorney Sean Kelly as her NYSUT Attorney, and on day one she knew this would not work for her. Kelly did not believe in her case, and at the pre-hearing kept telling her to resign. I was not in attendance at the pre-hearing, but Christine and I had discussed her case before it began, and she asked for an open and public hearing so that I could attend. Here is Christine's first email to me sent Feb. 12, 2011:

"To Whom it May Concern,
Hello, My name is Christine Rubino and I have been working for the NYC Board of Education for the last 14 years. I have been in the same school for all those years. I am now currently sitting at 131 Livingston Street waiting for my 3020 hearing to proceed (Pre-hearing is Wednesday, February 16th, and hearing is supposed to begin February 17th). My crime... A facebook comment that was made on my own time, from my own computer, that was not racial or sexual in nature. Nor, did this comment contain names of the place of my work. It didnt hurt or threaten anyone. It was an off the cuff comment, that was made out of just having a bad day. My privacy settings were set to private, and a confidential person took comments and showed AP, and Principal. who then lodged a complaint against me with the Office Of Special Investigation. The Board is looking to fire me over this. I have many notes in my file that prove I am an excellent teacher and do a great job, but for some reason they are going for the jugular on this. I do not feel the union is preparing the case like they should, and I am seeking outside counsel on Monday. The punishment does not seem to fit the crime, and I feel like I am being railroaded, and that a huge injustice is being commited against me. Is this something you might be interested in. I am a single mother of 2 children, and feel like this is just a little too over the edge, and the DOE is being unfair."

I called her up and have spoken to her almost every week, sometimes every day, ever since.

On the first day of the actual hearing I was there. Christine told Randi and Jeff Gamils that she would no longer use Shawn Kelly in the 3020-a. This shocked and angered Randi Lowitt. Her team was broken. Lowitt tried to get Christine to start the hearing without her new Attorney, Brian Glass, but Christine kept objecting to this, and finally Lowitt gave in and closed for the day, not so much for due process considerations, but because she was frustrated in not getting her way quickly. If you read the transcript of the first day of the Hearing, you will see that Jeff Gamils, the DOE Attorney, wanted to bring in three witnesses, even though Christine did not have an Attorney. Christine objected, and Randi told her, "There is nothing to object to" (p. 46). Also, it may shock people to realize that Claude Hersh, head of NYC NYSUT office, picked the Attorneys who would work on the case (and, by picking the Attorneys, he chose the arbitrator). See p. 43, Jeff Gamils talks about the email from Claude. Then, in the transcript of the last day we read that the investigators who interviewed Christine's friend in her car told her that if she did not do what they wanted her to do, she would be put into jail. (p. 1486). This is pretty tough stuff, folks. 


A side show to this side show is that on May 25, 2011, less than 1 month after the closing argument, there was a fire drill at 49-51 Chambers Street. I happened to be there for a hearing at which I was the paralegal. Everyone in the building had to exit the building, and all Arbitrators, Gotcha Squad, OPI personnel, everyone had to stand out side. A teacher who was going through his 3020-a with Attorney Kelly as his Attorney saw this person and I talking (the teacher was standing right behind me in line), and came over and said "Come with me." Kelly took this person a few feet away, turned towards the hundreds of people standing on the sidewalk, and started screaming at his client, "DO NOT SPEAK WITH BETSY COMBIER! ANYONE WHO SPEAKS WITH HER IS FIRED! SHE IS A CRIMINAL!" I decided to turn on the video on my smartphone, and walked calmly over to Kelly. I said to him, "Hey, Shawn, what's up with this? Where did you get this stuff from?" He told me that I was violating the law. I walked away, went back to the line.

Lowitt seemed to like Brian, but Christine had asked me to get media coverage and invited Sue Edelman of the NY POST. Sue had never been to a 3020-a, so she came. Lowitt was truly enraged, and told Sue that she could not sit in. Sue said that she did not have to leave, and this is an open and public hearing. Lowitt adjourned while she called a few people, and finally told everyone that she would "allow" Sue Edelman to stay. Sue is mentioned in Lowitt's second decision, below, that's how angry Lowitt was at that point with Christine, Sue, and probably me, as some sort of ringleader. Go figure.

As I have said in my previous articles, Theresa Europe, the Director of the Gotcha Squad and the ATU (Administrative Trials Unit) has her hand in every case, from a distance. I have seen her and spoken to her briefly whenever I see her at 51 Chambers Street quite often over the past 9 years. I have never attended a hearing where Theresa came and sat all day, many days of a hearing, as in Christine's case. I believe that she was making sure that Lowitt terminated Christine. It worked.

Lowitt's second decision after the remand back to the DOE is here. And now Christine is starting a second appeal. And on and on it goes, until nobody wins anything and everyone loses, all paid for by you, the public.

Are there any adults in the audience?

Betsy Combier