Tag Archives: Christine Rubino

DECLARATION OF A LIFELONG TEACHER

Posted on February 19, 2013 | 17 Comments

allen

Please welcome our next guest blogger, Christine Rubino:

The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

To me, the Right to Life means I should not be deprived of my life for the benefit of another person or group of people.

To me, the Right to Liberty means that my thinking be free from interference from the forces of unfreedom.

To me, the Right to the Pursuit of Happiness means that I have a right to live for myself and choose what makes up my personal, private, and individual happiness, just as long as I respect the same right in others.

Today, I realize that these three things were taken from me. I watched them burn, smolder into ash and blow away right in front of my eyes. For the record, I did not go down without a good fight.

Some things in life you are born with. I was lucky to be on the line, which gave me a good sense of humor, fortitude, and the ability to relate to children. I consider the last gift to be paramount to my whole being.

I grew up in the early 1970′s in a predominately Italian neighborhood. It is now known as Cobble Hill. Before it was invaded by hipsters and Midwestern transplants, we just called it “”South Brooklyn”. I lived directly across from the Red Hook projects and one block off of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. My days were filled with playing outside and keeping my eyes on my younger cousins. I loved this job and took great pride in it. It was then that I learned that I was a natural teacher. This has formed a major part of my identity ever since.

My parents moved us out to Marine Park by 1984, which seemed like the opposite end of the planet to a 12-year-old like me. One day, a new family moved across the street from us. They had 4 children ages 7,4,2, and 1. The mother of this family asked me one day if I knew anyone who could babysit her children. Being the boisterous child I was, I immediately told her it was her lucky day because she was looking at her new babysitter. Looking after her children made me happy and gave me purpose. They are grown now and help take care of my own kids. As time went on, they became my second family. There is a trust, an unspoken bond, between us. It is a bond that was forged all of those years ago when they were little ones in my care.

Babysitting was my sole means of income throughout college. I watched many people’s children around my neighborhood.  When it came time for me to decide upon a college major, it was inevitable that I chose Childhood Education. My parents were proud.  They said it was a fabulous union job, something I could make into a career. I graduated from Kingsborough Community College with an Associate’s Degree in Early Childhood, then transferred to Brooklyn College where I got a B.S. in Elementary Education. I continued at Brooklyn College until I received my Master’s in Math Education.

In 1996, at the ripe old age of 24, I began teaching full-time at P.S.203 which is in a section of Brooklyn called Old Mill Basin. Once there, I held many different jobs and developed into a jack-of-all-trades. I got along with every child that crossed my path, just like I did during my babysitting career.

My days as a teacher were filled with:

1) The constant chatter of children, to which I added constant chatter of my own.

2) Paperwork, paperwork and paperwork.

3) Planning, organizing, and implementing lessons

4) Meeting deadlines

5) Adhering to a minute by minute schedule, including planned bathroom breaks.

6) Creating and grading homework and projects.

7) Writing notes and making phone calls home.

8) Making sure that I was always prepared and that my students were learning.

9) Planning and overseeing trips that I always managed to creatively connect to even the most boring topics.

10) Making copies

Within this list are things that I loved and things that I did not love so much. It was all worth it because it allowed me to be around children; to let my natural vocation as a teacher flourish.

Fourteen years of my life I put in that school before I was terminated at the ripe old age of 38 in June 2011.

Whenever I speak to colleagues, I find that I do a ton of reminiscing. Most of my sentences start with “when, I was in the classroom…” or “when I was a teacher…”. When that happens, my friends say “you will always be a teacher”. Their words make me pick myself up and brush the eraser dust off.

I am still a teacher when I listen to my own children chatter and laugh.

I am still a teacher when my children come home from school and I help them with homework, projects and studying.

I am still a teacher when my friends send their children to me so that I can help them with their tricky math problems.

I am still a teacher when I am talking to my own friends, neighbors, and complete strangers. I am asking a million questions and answering all of theirs.

I am still a teacher when I see a sign misspelled or a grammatical error in a book. I feel a need to get out a red pencil and start circling, highlighting and commenting. I even want to reach for the post-it notes.

I am still a teacher when I am trying to cheer a friend up, requiring me to dig deep into my humor arsenal to get a smile or a laugh.

I am still a teacher when I have to shuttle my children and their friends to and from school and all of their other activities.

I am still a teacher when I realize that every single second of the day has to be spent productively and accounted for. Yes, even bathroom breaks are still planned.

Despite the Department of Education’s efforts to deprive me of my life, liberty and happiness, they have not deprived me of my identity as a teacher.

That does not mean that my life has not been drastically changed. It has changed in ways that I could never have imagined. I was living decently when I was employed, raising my children and trying to keep my head above water like every other working person. Instead of a ”rags to riches”, my life since being terminated has been a ”rags to tattered threads” tale. It is not even remotely close to the life I led when I was gainfully employed in a “good” union job

My liberty has been buried. Yes, I am free to think but I always have this little pitchforked guy on my shoulder. He is constantly poking me. He is forcing me to self-edit EVERY SINGLE THOUGHT, WORD AND ACTION. Self-editing is essential in life but not to the extent of which I am speaking. That one moment years ago when the pitchforked man was not around constantly comes back to haunt me. People continue to judge me, my character and my abilities as a teacher based upon a few sentences I wrote years ago, sentences that I regretted and erased quickly after they were written.

As far as my happiness goes, I have been forced to pursue it even more. I have on the best and most expensive running sneakers. I am running as fast as I can. Yet, no matter how fast I run, I just cannot grab the baton from my partner’s hand. I can see it shining but I just cannot feel it. But, one day, I hope to have hold of it again.

So, despite the fact that I have been deprived of my life, liberty and happiness, I have not been deprived of my identity. YOU CAN TAKE THE GIRL OUT OF TEACHING, BUT YOU CANNOT TAKE THE TEACHING OUT OF THE GIRL.

→ 17 Comments

Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School, teaching

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

WHO IS NEXT TO GUEST BLOG? A ROLE MODEL

Posted on February 18, 2013 | 10 Comments
This country has never been very good at picking role models. I remember growing up one of our role models was a blond steroid and drug addict.

This country has never been very good at picking role models. I remember growing up one of our role models was a blond steroid head and drug addict.

I thank Ms. Ortiz for her inaugural post here yesterday as a guest blogger. Now that we have an idea of who she is and from whence she is coming, it is a good time to introduce the next guest blogger to you. As you will see, this next person is at a totally different stage in their life and career.

Those of you who have followed this site, or New York education news in general, will be familiar with this person. I thought it was important for you to hear what this person has to say and to give them a chance to say it.

The person to whom I refer is Christine Rubino.

If you don’t know the case of Christine Rubino, you can familiarize yourself with it here, here and here. I first learned about her situation from the New York print media who were, not surprisingly, less than fair. For this reason, I decided to write about her situation myself. Despite the fact that this site can never hope to have the type of reach of the New York Post or Daily News, I would have been remiss if I didn’t use this little corner of the internet to give her a fair hearing. I am glad that I did because, since my first piece about her, Christine and I have become friends.

What convinced me of the need to talk about her story were the responses it elicited in the comments section of the news sites. People could not wait to pass all types of judgments on her character and fitness to be a teacher. It was sadly ironic that people who bemoaned the lack of role models for our children were saying some of the most vile and hateful things to be found on the internet. Vile and hateful not only describes the treatment she received from anonymous Puritans, but from the Puritans at the Department of Education as well.

As most of us know, Christine’s nightmare stemmed from a comment she made on her private Facebook page. It is a comment that Christine has never defended. She removed it very soon after it was posted. Very few people saw the comment. Since no students or parents were on her Facebook page, it would have been very unlikely that anyone who would have been truly offended by it would have ever known of its existence.

Unfortunately, one of the people who saw the comment during its brief life span was the resident teacher snitch of Christine’s school. Not only did he see it, he took a screen shot of it, saved it, printed it out and showed it to the assistant principal, a man with whom he had a “special” relationship. It usually works out that the people who have the most to say about their coworkers are also the ones with the most skeletons in their own closet.

The rest is history, a sad and bizarre history. The Special Commissioner of Investigation of the DOE sent goons to her house to rifle through her garbage. Those same goons harassed and threatened Christine’s friends. They lied through their teeth at her hearing. Her union-appointed lawyer wanted to roll over and die, pretty much advising her to accept her termination without a fight. The DOE lawyers tried to cast a pall of doubt on her character. Since Christine had a clean record as a teacher of 14 years, they weren’t above coaching the principal and students to lie about her, not to mention making up lies themselves. The head of the Administrative Trials Unit ensured that the “independent” arbitrator, Randi Lowitt, came to the right decision: termination.

Did it matter to anyone that this was a comment made on her private Facebook page? Did it matter that the comment expressed the normal frustrations of being a teacher? Did it matter that she had taken the comment down almost immediately after it went up? Did it matter that she showed remorse and never defended what she said? Did it matter that she had a spotless record as an educator?

It mattered to Christine Rubino, who took Lowitt’s decision to the New York State Supreme Court. It mattered to Judge Barbara Jaffe, who ruled that Lowitt’s termination decree was “shocking to the conscience” of the court.  It matters to any teacher or thinking person who has an ounce of empathy.

The Department of Education likes to say that it puts “students first”. Christine’s two children are students in the DOE. Did they put those students first when they took away the livelihood of their mother? Are they putting them first by denying the woman they tried to destroy any form of unemployment compensation? If people are so concerned about role models for our children, why don’t they criticize the unethical and underhanded way the DOE harasses teachers? Barring that, why don’t these people act like the role models they seek by not judging an entire person’s character based upon one news article?

It is for these reasons that it is important we hear directly from Christine Rubino. When I had the idea of getting some guest bloggers, Christine was the first person who came to mind. I have seen first-hand the type of good person she is. I have seen her be a mother to her children, protecting them from the misery through which she has been put so they can have as normal a life as possible. I have seen her open her house to people and share what she has, despite the fact that she can barely make ends meet herself. I have seen how she maintains friendships she has had since childhood, a sure sign of a person with character and integrity. I have seen Christine help me get some of the things I needed to get settled into my new apartment when I moved a few months ago. Perhaps if other people see the type of person she is, they wouldn’t be so quick to pass ignorant and misinformed judgments on her.

Up until now, Christine has had people speaking for her. Me, her lawyers, the DOE and the media have all been allowed to paint the picture of what type of person she is. But she deserves a space where she can speak for herself.

The Christine  Rubino case has been a lesson in the best and the worst in humanity. On the one hand, you have a person who has done nothing but be generous and helpful to everyone around her; someone who always wanted to be a teacher and did the job with distinction. On the other hand, you have a bureaucracy that lied, sneaked around and harassed to get what they wanted, and what they wanted was the destruction of another human being.

You can decide for yourself which one is the bad role model for our children. I, for one, would not allow a bad role model to be a guest blogger on this site. Stay tuned because tomorrow, for the first time, Christine Rubino finally speaks for herself.

→ 10 Comments

Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School, teaching

Tagged , , , , , , ,

A Very Close Look At Tenure

Posted on August 19, 2012 | 8 Comments

South Bronx School posted the first twelve of what promises to be many hundreds of pages of transcripts from Christine Rubino’s 3020a hearing. This is the supposedly fair hearing process through which teachers in New York City accused of wrongdoing have to go to determine whether or not they get terminated.

This is tenure in action. Anyone who still clings to the fallacy that tenure means a job for life should read these transcripts. By the way, the “tenured” Christine Rubino was terminated in this hearing.

It has been some months since I have read a book. Yet, in that time, I have read a few 3020a transcripts from different teachers and I am always enthralled by what goes on in those secretive little rooms on Chambers Street. This is the type of reading material that can be made into a great and sad movie, like a Greek tragedy or, more appropriately, a farce.

From a distance, the 3020a process resembles a legal proceeding. There is a judge, known as an arbitrator. There are lawyers: a defense attorney (appointed by the union by default) for the teacher and a lawyer for the Department of Education (the one who tries to terminate the teacher).  There is a stenographer keeping records. There are supposedly neat protocols and procedures determined by state labor law.

These protocols, again, resemble a court of law. There is a pre-hearing where the lawyers exchange evidence, the most important of which is a list of witnesses. This process is called “discovery” in a regular court of law (correct me if my legalese is off here). Then, witnesses are examined and cross-examined by the lawyers. Attorneys can object and have those objections sustained or overruled by the arbitrator.

Upon closer look, however, the fancy sheen of these hearings hides a rotten core. We can see this rotten core in the transcripts of the Rubino case.

As is mentioned in the transcripts, Christine rid herself of her union-appointed lawyer during the pre-hearing. This is understandable. Teachers who have gone through this process raise concerns that the union lawyer is not really on their side. For example, union lawyers always advise teachers to close off the hearing to the public. This allows them to work clandestine deals with the arbitrator and DOE without input from the teacher. These deals routinely end up with the teacher getting either the pink slip or forced resignation. It seems that the union lawyers have an interest in shepherding as many veteran teachers out of the system as possible. In many cases, the lawyers advise the teacher to resign even before the hearing begins. The same thing can be said for union leaders at both the school and district level who, as I have seen on many occasions, advise teachers facing 3020a charges to merely lie down and die by allowing the DOE to take their careers from them. Therefore, even before the pre-hearing begins, the union, the supposed defender of the teachers, beats it into the teachers’ heads that there is no hope.

How hard, then, do you expect the union to fight in a teacher’s favor? Campbell Brown says the United Federation of Teachers goes to bat for sexual predators. In reality, they do not go to bat for anyone.

So, after being subject to the union’s defeatist attitude for months, Christine fired her union attorney. She saw him in (in)action during the pre-hearing and knew she was toast if he continued to represent her. She signed off on his release, at which point he gave her all of the pertinent documents given to him by the DOE during discovery. This was late in the day of February 16, 2011. The hearing was scheduled to start the morning of February 17, 2011. Christine had mere hours to scrounge up the money to find a new, non-union lawyer. She also had to get home to feed, bathe and tuck in her two young children who she raises by herself.

Needless to say, when the next day rolled around, she was short a lawyer. She knew that she was going to retain Bryan Glass as her attorney, but did not have the time to get him the $5,000 he charges for his services. She had the money, which she had to scrap together throughout the course of the previous evening, but not the time to get it to him. All she needed was an extra day, an extra few hours even, to get him the money and have him come to Chambers Street.

Therefore, the entire first day of Christine’s hearing (the day covered by the transcript at the South Bronx School website) revolves around the DOE lawyer maneuvering to start the proceedings without Christine’s lawyer. He had a lot of help in this from the arbitrator and our old friend, Randi Lowitt.  Christine was faced with the prospect of being her own lawyer that day. She at least wanted an hour to go over the humungous stack of files given to her the day before so that she could know who the DOE was going to call as witnesses that day. As she said:

… I had just gotten the packet. So I would like to read it. I really haven’t been given much time. Once I left Mr. Glass, I went home to my two children and was enthralled in homework and bath and bedtime. So I could not read that. I would like to have some time to read this and go through the documents. I need a good hour or two. And Mr. Glass will get his money by the end of today or tomorrow, so that he can take on the case. So, right now, I have no counsel.

And our good friend Randi Lowitt responds later:

The case, as I told Mr. Glass on the phone last night, and I know he wasn’t representing you, and as Mr. Kelly (the union lawyer) told you yesterday during the course of the prehearing conference, the case is properly scheduled. The timing is properly met. Nothing has been improperly done, relative to the scheduling of this case. And that is why today’s hearing has not yet and will not be adjourned. It is a properly timed, properly commenced action. And it will proceed today. You will be able to participate in it, to the extent that you wish. The Department has the obligation to bring the case forward. So, unless I’m speaking out of turn, Mr. Gamils (the DOE lawyer), he’ll make an opening statement. I assume he has a witness or two here for us to hear. He’ll question them. You’ll have the opportunity to cross-examine them. And that’s the way the case proceeds. And the next hearing date is February 28th. So there is plenty of time, between now and then, if you chose to retain counsel…

Therefore, because the case is “properly scheduled”, it does not matter if Christine has a lawyer or not. Christine can cross-examine the DOE’s first witness, which happened to be Christine’s principal, on her own. For all of the proper rules and procedures established by 3020a, apparently a properly represented teacher is not one of them. Even accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay get some sort of representation. But, hey, we are teachers. We are worse than terrorists in the eyes of everyone else.

Of course, the DOE lawyer chimes in later with this revealing nugget:

I don’t think it’s appropriate for the Department to make any type of comment on Ms. Rubino’s statements. All we’re going to say is that we believe that she was well aware that this hearing was commencing by February 3rd. She had requested the hearing. She has spoken to counsel previously. She was adequately represented yesterday. The Hearing Officer made a representation that the hearing was commencing today. She still chose to fire her counsel and she has come today without counsel. Department is ready to proceed and, at that point, we will rest making any comments regarding her statements…

So, Christine was told way ahead of time that the hearing was going to start that day. Despite that important fact, she still chose to fire her lawyer. What a horrible decision on her part! I mean, she knew the hearing to decide her career and whether or not she will be able to feed her two children was starting February 17, 2011, and she had the gall to not want her incompetent, defeatist and uncooperative union attorney to be in charge of her defense. She is just so difficult. To hell with her representation. If she does not want to play ball the way it is supposed to be played, she can defend herself. We, the almighty DOE, are ready to proceed. After all, we had an army of high-priced New York City Police Department detective drop-outs investigate her for a year, go through her garbage, question her friends and write up reports through Richard Condon’s office, and we did it with no time limit and no pressure whatsoever. We took our sweet old time and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars railroading Christine Rubino for the past year. It is only fair that she have no opportunity to get real representation or even get an hour break so she can read the thousands of pages of “evidence” we handed off to her deadbeat lawyer yesterday. Most of that evidence we have absolutely no intention of using anyway, since it is a tactic we use to prevent the other side from properly preparing a defense.

Yes, this is exactly what Mr. Gamils, the DOE lawyer, is saying.

To her credit, Christine held her ground. She held the floor as long as she could to reiterate her point that she needed proper representation that would take her one measly old day to get. She kept explaining how it was not fair that she was being forced to proceed without representation, or at least a break to give her the opportunity to prepare. At one point, she even said that she felt as if she was being punished for firing her union lawyer. That is precisely what they were trying to do. It is typical DOE: retaliation for not playing their brand of filthy ball. Retaliation with the complicity of the union.

And then we get to my favorite Randi Lowitt quote of the entire hearing:

Oh, okay. I have been reviewing in my mind the conversation we had over the past hour or so. And while acknowledging that there is no obligation at all, anywhere, for me to do so, I am going to grant Ms. Rubino’s request for an adjournment for today. Please be clear, on the record, that if State Education does not cover my fee–obviously, I am not going to let the DOE cover it because the DOE is not asking for the adjournment–and it will be your responsibility to cover my fee, Ms. Rubino. Do you understand that? If the State Education Department does not cover my fee–but I’m going to submit it to them because we have been working this and that’s the way it goes. Um, but I do not want to disadvantage you, especially when it comes to questioning witnesses, with not having counsel present. Acknowledging the fact that although you were told, yesterday, that the hearing would go forward today, you were not able to retain counsel as expeditiously as you might have wished….

So, Randi Lowitt, a woman who gets paid upwards of $1,800 a day, does not want to adjourn because she fears she will not get paid her daily “fee”. She demands that the woman she knows she is going to terminate, the woman who is blowing her life’s savings on salvaging her career, pay her daily fee if “State Education” does not cover it. This just so Christine Rubino can get halfway decent representation. Christine’s children have to starve so Randi Lowitt can keep driving her Mercedes (I assume) and living in her McMansion (I assume). Apparently, people can make a great living from destroying teachers and making inane sports references (read the transcript) all day long.

Of course, this could have also been Lowitt’s way of trying to dissuade Christine from asking for an adjournment, in which case it makes Lowitt a liar and a bully. Liar, bully, extortionist or teacher-killer, you decide.

Yet, Christine stuck to her guns and received the adjournment she was seeking. As you can read in the transcript, she refused to be bullied by the DOE, Randi Lowitt and Theresa Europe.

Unfortunately, this was just the start of many daily uphill battles Christine Rubino had to fight. We know what happened at the end of this hearing. We also know that the New York State Supreme Court overturned Lowitt’ s Draconian termination. Unfortunately, Lowitt got the case again and suspended Christine for two years without pay. That is two years of being unable to pay her mortgage or feed her children. All the while, Randi Lowitt lives high on the hog terminating, extorting and taking revenge on teachers.

This is another close-up of the 3020a process. This is what “tenure” looks like for New York City public school teachers. Oh, what cushy gigs us teachers have.

→ 8 Comments

Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School

Tagged , , , , , , ,

The DOE’s Long War on Christine Rubino

Posted on July 16, 2012 | 6 Comments

Casualty of war: the arbitrator’s first decision

When we last saw Christine Rubino, the New York State Supreme Court vacated the Department of Education’s penalty for comments she made on her private Facebook page.

The penalty was termination. The arbitrator who came up with the penalty, Randi Lowitt, knew that this was the outcome the DOE wanted. She was probably the only arbitrator ever to have the head of the DOE’s Administrative Trials Unit, Theresa Europe, stare daggers at her throughout the hearing to ensure she came to the right decision.

As we have seen, in June of 2010, Christine wrote on her private Facebook wall that it was a perfect day to take her students to the beach. This was a day after a NYC student drowned off the coast of Long Island.

Christine was one of the first, if not the first, teacher in NYC to be brought up on charges for something she wrote on Facebook. This was before the DOE’s social media policy. This was also at a time when working people nationwide were being fired for things they said on the internet, especially teachers. The case of Christine Rubino was the morning star of a movement aimed at depriving working people of their freedom of speech.

This movement found many well wishers in the media and the general public. Newspaper articles made Christine out to be some sort of loose cannon. Readers who left comments on the NY and Huffington Post were quick to call for her termination, to exclaim that she was unfit to be around children and to say that this warranted her being deprived of her livelihood.

The drums of hypocritical American Puritanism beat heavy and constant in the case of Christine Rubino. The general public wants to bully teachers, call them names, blame them for low test scores and poverty, say we are underworked and overpaid and are drawn from the meanest part of the intellectual bell curve. Yet, at the same time, they want us underworked, overpaid idiots to be held to a moral system that Oliver Cromwell himself could not follow. They want us to smile at the grocery store, wave hello to them every morning and, if we use Facebook, to do nothing but post pictures of us grading exams and write thoughts about how every child is special like a snowflake.

We are to act like Mr. Rogers and be treated like Mr. Gotti.

Yet, Christine did something that these reporters and jurors in the court of public opinion have rarely done in their own lives: she took responsibility for what she did. Three days after she posted her comments, she erased them from her wall. This was before any investigation or inkling she would be in trouble. She took down her comments because she realized they were wrong. She did not need the specter of public controversy to all of the sudden force her to acknowledge she had made a mistake. Instead, she tried to rectify the mistake on her own accord.

Unfortunately, as we saw previously, a coworker of hers had already printed up her words and had designs to show it to the principal. This is a teacher that has since been removed from his classroom to await 3020a charges of his own; charges that could land him a lengthy jail sentence. Schools always have their resident snitches, the ones who inform on their colleagues because they are unable to let their professional work speak for itself. It is often the case that these snitches have dark skeletons of their own to hide. Finding ways to get their colleagues in trouble is a way to throw the scent off of their own often hideous wrongdoing. So it was in this case.

If it was not for this snitch, Christine’s comments would have dissolved into the ether. No reporters or private hypocrites would have had the opportunity to establish themselves as her judge.

Throughout her entire hearing, Christine was remorseful about what she had said. At no point did she stand by her words or try to defend them. She owned up to her actions for what they were: a mistake, a lapse of judgment, a regrettable action. This was not enough for the DOE or Randi Lowitt or the media or the lynch mob of public opinion. Terminate her, ensure her children starve and never allow her around children again. Meanwhile, the accused child molester who ratted her out gets to work another year in a public school building. Way to go, all of you.

The bright side is that, one, Christine Rubino did not give up the fight to salvage her career and her good name; and, two, the New York State Supreme Court under Barbara Jaffe is wiser than the DOE, Randi Lowitt, the media and the hypocrites. She vacated Lowitt’s decision and ordered her to come up with a less draconian punishment.

That punishment has turned out to be two years suspension without pay. That means that Randi Lowitt thinks it is fitting for Christine to face another year of being unable to support her children. Perhaps this is the “children first” policy the DOE speaks so much about.

Randi Lowitt’s new decision reads like something written by a woman scorned, an arbitrator who had her ridiculous ruling overturned, a primal scream of vindictive pettiness. She makes very little mention of Christine’s Facebook comment and, instead, bases her two-year suspension on the fact that one of Christine’s friends lied during the investigation.

What happened was that, in an attempt to save Christine, a friend of hers lied to investigators and said she was the one who logged into Christine’s account and wrote the incriminating things. In the world of Randi Lowitt, this means that Christine put her up to the lie. What evidence does Randi Lowitt have to substantiate this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That does not matter. In the world of 3020a, a teacher is guilty no matter what the evidence, or lack thereof, says. Randi Lowitt, understanding that the jig was up as far as the Facebook comment is concerned, instead based her two-year suspension on the fact that Christine Rubino’s friend lied to investigators.

This is how the equation works in Lowitt’s head: Christine’s friend lied, which means that Christine was behind the lie. Yet, every time I ask Christine about her lie, she insists she did not lie. What a liar! Not only that, she never apologized for putting her friend up to the lie. Why does she just not take responsibility for the lie she never told? This is unacceptable! Looks like her and her children need another year of starvation.

She should have lied and said she put her friend up to the lie, then she would not be such a liar! Instead of giving her a two-year suspension for being a liar, I would have given her a two-year suspension for being a liar.

Thankfully, Christine is fighting this most recent round of viciousness on the part of the DOE. Her story teaches us a lot about how teachers in similar situations can find some measure of justice.

First, everyone associated with the 3020a process knows it is a joke. The investigators are retired detectives from the NYPD. When they get a case, they know whether or not the principal or the board wants that teacher out. Their job is not to find the truth as much as it is to use the truth in a manner conducive to punishing a teacher. For example, at a recent 3020a hearing about which I will write more in the future, one of these investigators found that a comment a teacher made on Facebook was a total joke. Case closed, right? Wrong. According to the investigator, he has children and he would not want his children’s teacher joking around in this manner. Therefore, he believes the teacher should be terminated.

This investigation takes about 6 months to a year. In the meantime, the teacher is reassigned and usually does not know why they are being investigated. They are in the dark and they wait. It is here where the DOE hopes that the teacher will save everyone the trouble and quit. If the teacher is sufficiently scared, they might go the way of Mary Thorson. To the DOE and the investigators, it is all the same.

If the teacher sticks around this long, they finally get to the 3020a process. First, they meet with the lawyer who is paid with the teacher’s union dues. Most of the time, the lawyer will encourage the teacher to resign or settle for some ridiculous punishment all out of proportion to what the teacher is accused of. Part of this is laziness. The other part is that these lawyers know that the hearing itself is a joke and they would rather save themselves the embarrassment.

By this point, a great many teachers opt out of the game. They will either resign or drop dead during the investigation, or get railroaded out by their union lawyer. For those hearty souls that decide to go through with a hearing, their union lawyer will tell them the hearing is private. Nobody from the outside will be allowed to witness it. If the teacher wants to make it a public hearing, count on the lawyer throwing a hissy fit. They will make a million and one excuses as to why everything should be done in secret. This is because they want to take the 10 or so cases on which they are working, sit down with the arbitrator and DOE lawyer, and go down the list to tick off the names of which teachers get fired and which do not. It does not matter the merits of each individual case. They would prefer to sit there and divide the spoils, so to speak.

If you get your public hearing, be prepared for one of the saddest jokes this side of the Mississippi. The DOE lawyers will introduce the charges, then they will introduce more charges that they never showed you or your lawyer beforehand. They will then ask the arbitrator, and receive from the arbitrator, permission to add more charges, evidence and witnesses as the hearing progresses. They literally make it up as they go along. Many of these DOE lawyers would be selling apples in the subway if this 3020a process did not exist. They call themselves lawyers, but they are more like law school dropouts and graduates of online JD courses, where all one needs for a degree is a printer and mouse that clicks.

And why not? The DOE does not need good lawyers when the process is so skewed in its favor.

The arbitrators sit there and take notes, allowing the DOE lawyers do whatever it is they want to do. In their mind, it is not a matter of a teacher being guilty or not guilty. It is a matter of what they will find the teacher guilty of and what will the penalty be. Teachers that get to keep their job are so thankful that they have made it through this process that they will take their punishment and move on. Those that get terminated are so demoralized and beaten down by the process that they just want to pick up the pieces of their lives and find some form of employment.

That is exactly the way the DOE wants the process to work. They understand that 3020a is a joke, that the process is a sham, arbitrators are in their pockets and the lawyers are court jesters. They know that the rulings that come out of that building on Chambers Street bear little resemblance to truth or justice. The DOE gets it. This process is designed to get teachers to go away on their own. Most teachers do just that.

Not Christine Rubino. She is the worst nightmare of the DOE and arbitrators like Randi Lowitt. She will not roll over and die while these hucksters make off with her career. She makes the DOE fight for every inch they get. She is now out to appeal the two-year suspension. This explains why Randi Lowitt’s decision reads like the ramblings of a hurt 10-year-old and not a venerable figure of justice. It explains why the DOE releases information to Sue Edelman of the NY Post so she can do one of her trademark hatchet jobs.

A teacher who tries to fight the DOE in its own court is a fool. Everyone, including the union lawyer, is in the DOE’s back pocket. The real fight is in the press, on the blogs and in real courts of law where the DOE’s filth is exposed to the light of day.

All the same, the toll is heavy on people like Christine Rubino. Yes, she fights, but that means the DOE spends more time judging her and her character. That means more hatchet jobs in the press, more assassinations on her character by rank-and-file morons and more opportunities to live and relive this walking nightmare.

Most importantly, this means that Christine Rubino is still without the means to support herself or her two children. It means that poverty and desperation define the lives of her and her kids. How the likes of Randi Lowitt, Theresa Europe, Dennis Walcott, Michael Mulgrew, Sue Edelman and the base fools who leave anonymous comments about her character can still live with themselves is beyond me.

A Paypal account has been established to help Christine and her family make it through this rough time to come. You would think the union would help her, but she does them no good because she cannot pay them dues anymore. Please, give whatever you can. She is fighting not just for herself, but for every teacher who has been, or will be, the target of the DOE and the handmaidens of education reform.

DONATE HERE

→ 6 Comments

Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Teachers, You Are Being Watched

Posted on May 15, 2012 | 6 Comments

I always feel like, somebody’s watching meeeee.

Chancellor Walcott has already said in the DOE’s social media policy that teachers should have no “expectation of privacy” online. This includes our Facebook pages and our blogs. The principal’s union tepidly protested by saying it is unfair to administrators to make them police the online actions of teachers.

With the cases of Christine Rubino and Patricia Dawson, we have seen teachers destroyed for what they have said on the internet. There might come a day, not too far off, when I will be targeted as well.

I already know this blog is being watched. It has been banned on the DOE’s server, most likely for my early articles in support of Occupy Wall Street. Then there was the time that the police showed up to a public, open-air discussion that I had promoted on this blog.

Sometimes, when I am looking at my site stats, I wonder who is out there just reading in an attempt to find something, anything, that could incriminate me.

Yes, I am paranoid. After the horror stories I have heard of and witnessed, you would be as well.

It is funny, since I try my best to not personalize this blog in any way. My topics are generally universal. I do not reveal anything about the politics at my school or who I have problems with. That is not what I want this blog to be.

Yet, I know that people are watching me, people even more paranoid than me.

Look at what happened to Francesco Portelos. In many ways, he runs my alter-blog. He has been fearless in naming names in an attempt to hold his administration and union rep accountable. He was recently reassigned due to an investigation, an investigation that we all knew was coming at some point.

There is a petition in support of Mr. Portelos that you can sign via the NYC Rubber Room Reporter.

And yet, the people that know me best have advised me to watch my back. They see the handwriting on the wall that the boys in the trench coats are coming for me next. They too know I am being watched and they fear for my career.

I know there is no free speech anymore. The DOE, as well as employers in general, want to make it so their workers cannot be critical in any way of the rotten system to which they bear witness on a daily basis.

All I can say is that this blog has never been about me. It has been about making universal observations about the DOE, education, politics and social class. All I have done on this little internet space is exercise my First Amendment right to discuss issues of public moment.

But, then again, so does Mr. Portelos.

We are both radicals in our own way. The DOE would love nothing more than to make examples out of radicals.

So, keep your eyes peeled for news as to when, where and why I am being reassigned. To those shadowy figure who have been keeping an eye on me: I hope you find what you are looking for. It must be nice to have a job where you can spend time reading the harmless words of regular people. I just hope it is all worth it for you in the end.

This one is dedicated to you:

→ 6 Comments

Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School

Tagged , , , , , ,

Corporate Workers, Corporate Children

Posted on May 2, 2012 | 5 Comments

Corporate mascot, nothing more

After trying to destroy teachers like Christine Rubino and Patricia Dawson over perfectly innocuous Facebook comments, New York City’s Department of Education has finally unveiled its social media policy. The lack of policy allowed these two great teachers to be brought up on frivolous charges. Now that a policy is in place, nothing will change.

To summarize, teachers cannot friend students on Facebook or communicate with them via their private Facebook accounts. But, teachers can set up class pages where students can get help with work. All that is needed is approval from an administrator as well as written permission from parents. Essentially, they have made establishing professional Facebook pages so burdensome that it is unlikely any thinking teacher would go through the trouble to create one at all.

The most chilling part of the policy is that teachers should have no expectation of privacy on their personal Facebook pages. Administrators will be on the lookout for inappropriate (what a great word) comments from teachers. Something is inappropriate on Facebook if it would be considered inappropriate in the classroom or a professional work environment.

The leader of the administrator’s union is on record as saying that this requires administrators to police teachers’ private Facebook pages, a liberty many principals have already been taking. Our esteemed union leader, Michael Mulgrew, is on record as saying that the policy discourages teachers from using social media in any capacity whatsoever, private or professional.

During a lesson on ancient Greece, telling my students what I did on Friday night could be deemed inappropriate. My Friday nights usually consist of quiet reading and feeding my cat, yet it is not something that should be shared with one’s class. Do I get investigated if I share what I did on Friday night on Facebook? It would be inappropriate if my best friend, who is not a DOE employee, came walking into my classroom to joke with me. Do I get investigated if he posts something on my Facebook page now?

The policy is wide enough to drive a truck through, or at least wide enough to drive a maniacal administrator’s ego through.

This touches on serious issues of freedom of speech not just for teachers, but for all workers. Ostensibly, the First Amendment protects our freedom of speech from being denied by the government. We have taken this to mean that employers, whether public or private, are free to discipline their workers for things that they say out of the workplace. It is the reason why Ozzie Guillen can be suspended by the Miami Marlins for things he said about Fidel Castro. It is the reason why the DOE can make a social media policy this broad. Neither the Marlins nor the DOE are, strictly speaking, the government and, therefore, they have the power to abridge the freedom of speech of the people on their payrolls.

It seems there is a conflict here: individual freedom of speech versus the freedom of employers to discipline their workers for that speech. The employers are winning.

During the Civil Rights era, protestors conducted boycotts and sit-ins of businesses that practiced segregation. While the 14th Amendment provides that everyone in all states should be protected by the Bill of Rights, people who got the short end of segregation were having their rights violated. This segregation was enshrined in southern Jim Crow laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only did away with those Jim Crow laws, but required businesses to not segregate their customers or employees. Since that time, all types of federal agencies have ensured that businesses follow some sort of guideline of equal opportunity in who they serve and/or employ, although not as vigorously as they used to.

Libertarians like Rand Paul have criticized the Civil Rights Act because it tells businesses against whom they can discriminate (i.e.: nobody). They see it as a violation of the rights of American businesses. After all, they are businesses. If they want to discriminate, let them discriminate. The 14th Amendment merely guarantees that government, both state and federal, will not discriminate against people. Businesses are not the government, therefore they should be free to discriminate if they so choose.

It is this type of logic that allows employers to lay down guidelines about what their employees say outside of work hours. An employee always represents their place of business, the thinking goes, and should be mindful of that fact when they go about his or her life.

And it is this type of thinking that has been responsible for the curtailment of our freedoms. The Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights in an age when people owned and farmed land. They did not have to worry about representing a company or employer like we do now. Allowing employers to regulate their workers, even when they are not on the clock, has been a backdoor way to controlling what we can and cannot say. Our speech is increasingly being defined by who signs our checks. The rights of employers have been trumping the rights of citizens. As citizens, this should be of grave concern.

In my opinion, First Amendment rights should be absolute. There should be a 28th Amendment that expands on the 14th (how numerically appropriate would that be?) that guarantees that neither government nor employers can infringe upon our Constitutional rights. I suppose I am alone in thinking this.

The other issue with the DOE’s social media policy is seen in the way the New York Times covered the story. The title of the article is “Social Media Rules Limit New York Student-Teacher Contact”, yet the article seems much more concerned with the “student-teacher contact” portion. It highlights several cases where teachers had sent sexually explicit or inappropriate messages to students via the internet or telephone. The Times’ point is crystal clear: we need a social media, as well as a cell phone policy, because teachers are perverts who sexually harass students every chance they get.

While I do not have students on my personal Facebook page, I never assumed that teachers that did were perverts. I never assumed that it was a front so that these teachers could carry on inappropriate relationships. This is because I am an adult who does not have a childish fear that molesters are everywhere in our school system, not to mention society in general. I have worked with hundreds of teachers during my career. The times I have ran across true blue child molesters are notable because they are rare, rare enough to count on less than one hand.

More than just the regular old teacher bashing in which the media partakes daily, this article shows very clearly the media’s role in creating fear in our society. The local news is filled with stories of people being robbed and murdered. For the past few days, the news here in New York City has been obsessed with a tragedy involving 7 members of the same family plunging to their deaths on the Bronx River Parkway. It has been sandwiched between all of the warnings that terrorists might try something on the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death, not to mention reminders of how close Times Square came to blowing up at this time last year. I guess it is time to move the terror level to red. Start stocking up on batteries and bottled water.

So the media-generated epidemic of pedophile teachers fits in well with the overall crusade of the media to make us all afraid of everything all of the time. We have enshrined children behind so many laws that adults are scared to death to come near them. Teachers fear tutoring children in their classrooms lest one of their fearful colleagues gets the wrong idea. Education deformers, not to mention the general saccharine clichés, idealize children as “our future” and set them up with this image of being Rousseau’s noble savages.

Yet, we cannot close their schools fast enough. We cannot cut their art, music and humanities programs with enough speed. We cannot wait to throw another high-stakes exam in their way. At the same time, we cannot bombard our children’s eyes with enough advertising nor can we force feed our teenagers enough sexually charged popular culture. All of us: teachers, parents and society at large must keep our distance from children. We must keep our distance so that the corporate class can have their own way with them, whether it is through education deform or mass media.

→ 5 Comments

Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School

Tagged , , , , , ,

The DOE’s Moral Bankruptcy

Posted on April 15, 2012 | 12 Comments

As a potential witness in an ongoing 3020a hearing for a colleague, it has been made very clear to me that I am not to talk about specifics of the case. The same goes for my colleague. One gets the sense that the Department of Education treats this as an actual trial.

We have already seen in the case of Chaz that the DOE has no problem with revealing incomplete information to the media about cases that have already been resolved. Despite the fact that independent arbitrators have already closed the cases of 16 teachers, the Daily News was able to run an article about these teachers along with Dennis Walcott’s sentiments that they should be fired.

The Daily News was only able to run this story because the DOE gave them biased and incomplete information.

It does not stop there. Susan Edelman of the New York Post ran a story this morning featuring teachers who got in trouble for things they have said on Facebook. The first teacher that was mentioned stuck out:

Meanwhile, Facebook is an occupational hazard. Patricia Dawson, an English teacher at the HS of Economics and Finance in Manhattan, is fighting DOE termination on misconduct charges for jesting 15 months ago on her Facebook page, “I’ll bring a gun to school” to get into security-controlled elevators. Several students joined in the banter — one offering to bring a gun to help her.

“No one took it seriously,” an insider said.

Colleagues say Dawson should not lose her career over a wisecrack, but her words, which the DOE deems harmful, are carved in cyberspace.

Patricia Dawson is “fighting termination”. Does this mean that the DOE is still doing an investigation or conducting a hearing? Does this mean that the hearing is over and the teacher is waiting on the arbitrator’s decision? Whatever it is, judging from this passage, the case is not yet closed.

I am sure that, just like my colleague, Patricia Dawson was warned against talking about the case. So how did the NY Post get information about a case that is not yet resolved?

There could only be one answer: the DOE gave them the information.

Why is it that a teacher cannot talk about their case, but the DOE can?

It seems to me that the DOE is looking to put pressure on the investigators and/or arbitrator to make the “right” decision. And what is the “right” decision?

That’s right, termination.

If they are able to cause enough of a public uproar, the arbitrators will be pressured to make the decision that the DOE wants. All the while, the teacher is not allowed to speak out or give their side of the story.

This is just one of the many ways that the 3020a process is skewed against the teacher.

It is fitting that the article ends with a mention of Christine Rubino. As we have seen, Rubino was able to get her termination overturned in New York State Supreme Court, a decision that the DOE is currently appealing.

During Rubino’s hearing, the DOE made up charges as they went along. They added new charges not originally included as they went into her past and tried to find things they could twist out of context.

So while the DOE tried to scare teachers with a sense of gravitas about these termination hearings, the fact is that they are nothing more than kangaroo courts. While most teachers do not get fired, the vast majority are found guilty. Exoneration is rarely ever an option for a teacher brought up on the most frivolous of charges.

How much tax money is being spent on these hearings? How much money is being wasted on lawyering up so the DOE can fire someone for something they said on Facebook? In an age of supposed budget cuts where art and music are disappearing and schools are being closed, this waste of tax dollars should be a crime.

Our tax dollars, the hard-earned money of working people, are being spent to fire other working people. And if the DOE can fire these working people for such trivial things, it sets a nationwide precedent for employers across the country to do the same.

This is the twisted game Bloomberg’s Department of Education plays. To say it is unethical is an understatement. To say that it is underhanded falls short of the mark. This is pure evil done by people with no scruples and no sympathy for those who have to actually work for a living.

The 3020a process is in need of a major overhaul. Add it to the list of things for which our union should be fighting, but is not.

→ 12 Comments

Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School

Tagged , , , , , , ,

The Human Cost of Teacher Bashing: The Christine Rubino Case

Posted on April 11, 2012 | 21 Comments

Readers of this blog are familiar with the story of Christine Rubino.

Rubino is a veteran teacher with 15 years’ experience in the Department of Education. In June of 2010, she was teaching at P.S. 203 in Brooklyn when she made the following comment on her Facebook page:

“After today, I’m thinking the beach is a good trip for my class. I hate their guts,”

The comment was made the day after a 12-year-old girl drowned at the beach on a class trip. A few days after making the comment, Rubino took it down from her page. Yet, the damage had already been done. A coworker of hers printed up the comment and showed it to the principal, who then called the DOE.

Since the comment came to light in June, it was not until the following September, after the new school year had begun, that an investigation was launched. Rubino was not pulled out of her classroom during the investigation and had no idea the DOE was conducting one.

It was not until after the DOE had completed their investigation that she was pulled out of her classroom to await a 3020a hearing. The DOE’s recommended penalty? Termination.

Rubino’s original, union-appointed (NYSUT) lawyer had advised her to resign at the outset of the hearing. Believing that this was not an incident that warranted termination, Rubino fired her union attorney and called in outside representation in the form of former NYSUT lawyer Brian Glass.

Sue Edelman of the New York Post had showed up to the hearing. It was her right, since Rubino requested to make the hearing open to the public, a right many NYSUT lawyers try to dissuade their clients from exercising. This raised the ire of the DOE, including the arbitrator assigned to the case, Ms. Randi Lowitt.

This is when the DOE decided to play hardball. Theresa Europe, head of the DOE’s Administrative Trials Unit, sat in on the hearing to stare daggers at the arbitrator. This is not the usual practice, Europe ostensibly having better things to do with her time than to concentrate on any single case.

Throughout Rubino’s ordeal, the DOE kept throwing on charges that had nothing to do with the original Facebook post. They tried to bring up an instance in 2008 when a student had assaulted Rubino, trying to twist it into a corporal punishment charge. Students who had been coached to testify in the most damning possible way for the DOE were tripped up during cross-examination. At least one of them was forced to admit “that’s what they told me to say”. The principal testified that Rubino was a wonderful teacher who never had a problem.

Most importantly, Rubino herself had expressed genuine remorse throughout the process. The fact that she had taken her Facebook post down a few days after writing it shows that she had felt bad for writing it. She testified that she regretted writing it. At no point did she stand by her words. She acknowledged that it was a statement made out of frustration, a place every teacher finds themselves every now and then.

After all of this, what punishment did Randi Lowitt decide upon? Termination.

We should stop here for some commentary.

It was about a year between the Facebook post and the notice of termination. That means a year of investigations, lawyers and substitutes to cover Rubinio’s class. All of this for a Facebook post that was taken down after a few days. Needless to say, it was a tremendous squandering of resources.

And who is this coworker who informed on Christine Rubino? A man who is currently awaiting his own 3020a hearing for abuse charges that could wind him up in prison. This is one of the seedy underbellies of school politics. There are informants in every building. Usually, the informants are those with lots to hide: either they are creeps or incompetent. They play the role of informant because that is what gets them through another year. It is the only role that they are able to play, one that shines the spotlight on others in order to take it off themselves. It is a system conducive to destroying good teachers while protecting the worst our profession has to offer.

Of course, these informants would not have any power if not for a principal who feeds into their informing. In my experience, most administrators are happy to have a few glad-handers and back-slappers on their staffs, ones who share gossip in hushed tones in the principal’s office.

And then there is the matter of what the principal did with this information. Despite the lines that principals run that they do not have a choice but to call in complaints to the DOE, there is always a choice. A human being with people skills might have called Rubino into her office, asked about the post and gave her a reminder of professional conduct outside of school hours. At the very worst, the principal could have given her a letter in the file. The transgression did not warrant anything more than some sort of in-house disciplinary action.

But the rumor mill reveals that principals are under strict orders from Tweed to call in any Facebook incidents that come to their attention. Of course, this still does not mean that the principal has to follow this directive. The DOE refuses to set a clear social media policy for teachers. They want to formulate policy through precedent and they want to set the strictest precedent possible. Bloomberg’s DOE, at the end of the day, is an entity that aspires to be corporate. They want to set a strict precedent for teachers in NYC because they know it will set a strict precedent for the teaching workforce throughout the country, not to mention the workforce in general. It is Bloomberg’s gift to corporations. He wishes to give employers nationwide more and more control over the lives of their workers.

This is why the DOE had Rubino’s verdict determined before she sat in front of a hearing officer. Even on the best of days, the 3020a process is skewed against the teacher. In those instances where the DOE already has their minds made up, the teacher’s fate is sealed. This explains Theresa Europe’s glowering presence and the final verdict that is just too ridiculous to be called anything close to fair.

Termination left Rubino without a livelihood. A career and a school that had defined her for 15 years, in which she had an unblemished record, were completely cut off. Rubino had to find a way to support her two children without any sort of financial support. She took to tutoring students in her neighborhood. She took to doing odd jobs here and there like focus groups. Still, it could not replace the salary she had achieved as a teacher of 15 years. She started falling behind on her mortgage. Eventually, she had to sell the house in which she lived with her two children. Before she had been terminated, she took out a massive loan against her retirement account. It was one of the only means she had to sustain herself and her children.

While all of this is going on, she was the subject of countless news columns, including Susan Edelman’s at the New York Post. Edelman brought a photographer with a telescopic lens to stalk 51 Chambers Street in order to catch a candid photograph of Christine Rubino. What is worse, in my opinion, than the half-baked and half-digested stories spit up by New York’s newspapers about teachers who face termination are all of the comments left by readers who say things like “fire her, she’s not fit to be around children”. It would be hard for me not to stalk the internet and correct every judgmental dimwit who thoughtlessly called for my head on a platter. I guess none of these people ever made a mistake or had a candid moment that, if discovered, might also lead them to lose their jobs.

But there was a lot of fight left in Christine Rubino. Knowing that the verdict she received was unfair, she did what more and more teachers are doing with the independent arbitrator’s ruling: she took it to court. By this point, most teachers are so beaten down that they cut their losses and find someplace to lick their wounds. Plus, traditionally, courts of law have been hesitant to overturn rulings by labor arbitrators for fear of weakening the integrity of the arbitration process.

Rubino hunkered down for another round of battle with the DOE, this time in front of the State Supreme Court and Justice Barbara Jaffe. Jaffe reviewed the details of the case, the hearing and of Rubino’s career. She deemed that the Randi Lowitt’s decision was “shocking to the conscience” of the court and vacated her decision. This type of thing is becoming more and more common in New York City. Rubino’s attorney, Brian Glass, wrote the following letter about this issue:

“This is the fourth 3020-a decision in which I have had the penalty vacated by judges in the last approximately two years. I also have had at least 3 Unsatisfactory annual ratings of teachers overturned in the same time period. Each decision has been by a different judge. I frankly was not optimistic about winning any of these cases. There appears to be a recognition by the courts that the 3020-a process as well as the U rating appeal process have become wrongly exploited as a weapon of the DOE gestapo that has sought to demonize teachers over relatively minor incidents. There also appears to be a recognition that these so-called “neutral due process” procedures for teachers are in reality not neutral at all, given the powerful financial incentives of the hearing officers to not risk their own livelihoods in such cases. Hearing officers who dare not to do the DOE’s bidding risk their livelihoods by not imposing overly harsh penalties that assuage the DOE bully prosecutors. Fortunately, there are judges in this country who are wholly independent of the DOE and are compassionate enough to understand the importance of due process in this democratic society as well as allowing individuals to learn and move on from their mistakes.

The DOE almost certainly will appeal this judge’s decision, invoke its automatic stay for 9 months, and tie up this case in litigation for the next year. Even if Ms. Rubino is successful on appeal, the DOE will seek to further delay her reinstatement by insisting on additional costly hearings and arguing that only the most severest of penalties must be imposed. The DOE and media outlets favorable to its present policies will also likely criticize the courts rather than the DOE prosecutors, claiming how outrageous it is that Ms. Rubino should get a second chance at restoring her career. Unfortunately she has a long road ahead in her quest to restore her livelihood and reputation.

The DOE did not need to elect to invoke the 3020-a process in this case. A simple warning to Ms. Rubino about her mistake would have sufficed, and this would not have been repeated. Perhaps in this time of scarce resources, the substantial time and money on this case could be better allocated by the DOE positively supporting its teachers in the classroom rather than demonizing and punishing its staff.”

Most recently, Peter Principe also got his termination verdict overturned after the same process of a biased hearing, media bashing and a deprived livelihood.

For Christine Rubino and Peter Principe, the war is not yet over. Barbara Jaffe might have overturned Randi Lowitt’s decision, but the DOE is sticking to its anti-teacher guns. Jaffe concluded that Rubino should have another hearing to find a lesser penalty. And the arbitrator for this hearing? Randi Lowitt.

Who knows how bitter Randi Lowitt will be after a judge has already vacated her first decision? She might give a lesser penalty, but it can still be a harsh one. She can exact any type of penalty she wants short of termination. It can be an unpaid suspension for a ridiculous amount of time or it can be a fine meant to drive Christine Rubino into the poor house once and for all. And who knows if she won’t have Theresa Europe in that hearing room glowering at her again to ensure she makes the right decision? If the details of these 3020a hearings prove anything, it is that the DOE cannot be trusted to honor its contract with the UFT with a fair hearing process.

Here is a novel idea for Randi Lowitt, Theresa Europe and the general public who want Christine Rubino’s head to roll: the woman has suffered enough. Her two children have been forced out of their home, she has had her name dragged through the mud and the public has put her under enough scrutiny to last a lifetime. For one human moment, a moment that she immediately regretted, Christine Rubino has been repeatedly pummeled into the ground. Much more than I, she is entitled to the moniker “assailed teacher”.

This is the human cost of the DOE’s war on teachers. These are the facts that they do not include in their notices of termination and press releases. All of us, no matter what we do for a living, are entitled to our mistakes. We are entitled to blow off steam and should have the ability to speak freely in whatever forum we choose. This not only goes for teachers, but for all human beings.

Employers across the country, whether public or private, exercise greater control over the lives of their workers than ever before. Not only do they own the labor of their workers for the time they are on the clock, they are coming to own everything their workers say and do in their personal lives. What used to be protected speech is increasingly being regulated by entities who do not work by any sort of Bill of Rights. In the case of Christine Rubino, they did not work from any sort of written policy at all. The rights of employers more and more are coming to supersede our most cherished democratic values.

This was the original purpose of “tenure” for teachers. They were supposed to be protected from frivolous allegations. Today they can you for letting off steam on Facebook. Tomorrow they can you for having the wrong political views, the wrong sexual orientation or the wrong color hair. There is something much more fundamental behind the war Bloomberg and Walcott have declared on the rights of teachers. It is more than corporate education reform. It is a war on our most fundamental American values, values for which people have fought for over 200 years.

What happens to one teacher happens to us all. What happens to one worker happens to us all.

→ 21 Comments

Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, Politics, School, teaching

Tagged , , , , , , , ,