… large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. James Surowiecki
Why do we honor our women and men in uniform and revile our teachers? One is fighting, whether you agree or disagree with the aims of the wars, on faraway battlefields and the other in the neighborhoods and classrooms from Native American reservations to desperately poor rural hamlets to poverty-ridden inner cities to affluent suburbs.
At the Mets opening day representatives from the branches of the Armed Forces sang the Star Spangled Banner to the applause of the 40,000 fans, and, to my surprise loudly booed as Mayor Bloomberg was introduced.
In his final year and a half the Mayor is determined to weaken and possibly destroy the teachers union so he will be free to fire teachers at will. Children will learn more effectively, Bloomberg believes, if management can rule by fear.
The Bloomberg administration created rubber rooms, holding pens for punishing teachers who not been convicted of anything; over 600 teachers sat awaiting the adjudication of their cases while the Mayor used the existence of rubber rooms to attack the union. The print media heaped blame on the union, a New Yorker feature supported the Mayor, the union fought back, and, finally an agreement was reached.
Not only are the rubber rooms gone, there is no backlog, discipline cases, with rare exceptions are resolved in three or four months.
State Commissioner King called the agreement a model for the State.
Politics forced the Mayor to back away from rubber rooms so he decides to attack the judges, the arbitrators who hear the cases and decide innocence or guilt and assess the penalties.
School districts can charge teachers under provisions of Section 3020a of New York State Education law. (See detailed explanation of the statute here).
The law states,
“The employee shall be terminated without a hearing, as provided for in this section, upon conviction of a sex offense” (the statute lists the specific offenses).
School districts prefer charges against teachers and,
“… the employing board and the employee, individually or through their agents or representatives, shall by mutual agreement select a hearing officer from said list to conduct the hearing and shall notify the commissioner of their selection.”
The law sets forth strict time limits and procedures to both expedite the process and assure that both the school district and the employee have a full opportunity to present their cases. At the conclusion of the process the arbitrator renders a decision,
“The written decision shall include the hearing officer’s findings of fact on each charge, his or her conclusions with regard to each charge based on said findings and shall state what penalty or other action, if any, shall be taken by the employing board. At the request of the employee, in determining what, if any, penalty or other action shall be imposed, the hearing officer shall consider the extent to which the employing board made efforts towards correcting the behavior of the employee which resulted in charges being brought under this section through means including but not limited to: remediation, peer intervention or an employee assistance plan. In those cases where a penalty is imposed, such penalty may be a written reprimand, a fine, suspension for a fixed time without pay, or dismissal. In addition to or in lieu of the aforementioned penalties, the hearing officer, where he or she deems appropriate, may impose upon the employee remedial action including but not limited to leaves of absence with or without pay, continuing education and/or study, a requirement that the employee seek counseling or medical treatment or that the employee engage in any other remedial or combination of remedial actions.”
The Mayor attacked the arbitrators, accusing them of being intimidated by the union. Arbitrators that the Mayor chose and arbitrators that the Mayor can remove from the panel.
“As discussed and agreed upon, all parties would be served better by the implementation of a permanent arbitration panel. The panel members must be agreeable to both sides, however, if the parties cannot agree to a full complement of 20 panel members, additional impartial arbitrators shall be selected by the parties in accordance with the American Arbitration Association (AAA) procedures (strike and rank method) from list(s) provided by the AAA until the desired number (20) is reached to establish such permanent panel.
Panel members shall serve for a maximum of a one-year term. At the expiration of such term, the parties must agree to have arbitrators continue to serve on the panel, and if not, replacement members will be elected by the method outlined above. Removal prior to the end of the one-year term must be for good and sufficient cause upon mutual agreement of the parties.”
In the cases cited by the Mayor a criminal act was not alleged and the accusation was based on eyewitness testimony, testimony that has been seriously challenged by experts and a recent decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court.
“Study after study revealed a troubling lack of reliability in eyewitness identifications,” Chief Justice Rabner wrote. “From social science research to the review of actual police lineups, from laboratory experiments to DNA exonerations, the record proves that the possibility of mistaken identification is real.
“Indeed, it is now widely known that eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions across the country.”
In 1983 accusations of serious child abuse in the McMartin Pre-School in California lead to the longest trial in California history – and the exoneration of the accused. The methods by which authorities interview prospective witnesses and accusers were highly suspect,
“… research demonstrated that the methods of questioning used on the children were extremely suggestive leading to false accusations. Others believe that the questioning itself may have led to false memory syndrome among the children who were questioned”
A dozen years ago I successfully defended two union members who were accused of improperly assisting students on state exams – basically cheating. Parts of the accusations were based on student testimony.
The Office of Special Investigation is not an independent agency, it is an arm of the Department and their investigations are highly suspect. It should not be surprising that the Department is losing cases or penalties are less than dismissal.
The Mayor, comparing the accused to “ax murderers” is despicable. The core of our democracy is the rule of law, the opportunity for the accused to be represented in a tribunal governed by reasonable rules of evidence with an impartial decision-maker.
Attacking the decision-maker because you don’t like the outcome is attacking the system – our system of fairness and the presumption of innocence.
Our Mayor would be far more comfortable in Egypt under Mubarek or Syria under Bashar Hafez al-Assad, or Iran under the Mullahs, totalitarian governments ruled by an oppressor. The rule of law in a democracy is uncomfortable for his honor, after all in a transparent judicial system he may not get his way – his billions used to buy media coverage and buy politicians cannot buy or intimidate arbitrators.
The crowd at Citi Field, those beloved New York Mets fans had it right – the Mayor deserved to be booed – the crowd is wise indeed.
Ed In The Apple 
One MUST ask oneself–why is the Mayor of the City of New York, along with the Fat Cats of the USA, battling to denigrate teaching staff across the USA? Is it to destroy Public Schools as they have been known for at least 100 years? What is to be gained? The Balkanization of the USA?
Maybe it’s that the Teachers across the country are the last group of organized workers whose collective power to act in unison stands in the way of the 0.1% getting its way on a host of selfish issues ranging from the environment to health care, to the dream of the average Joe to give his kids a better life than he has through education.
Let’s staff the Public schools with untrained, poorly paid, barely qualified folk who are highly transient and marking time until the economy improves.
Let’s separate all the kids using educational skill, wealth, religion, etc and cream off the easily educated to make profit from, while condemning the rest to a level of achievement no greater than that of their parents.
Let’s make it impossible for anyone to challenge the unfairness of the system by resolutely denying the 99.9% the tools to better themselves.
Yes, the crowd sometimes has wisdom. That’s why the last time Bloomberg was elected despite spending over $100 per vote cast, and opposed by an underfunded person, he nearly lost.
The upcoming candidates need to be examined to unearth their backers. The current Governor accepted money from the Big Boys. Now see who is paying for his latest ad campaign against schools.
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The Mayor has always made decisions based on his personal agenda (He outlaws smoking because he had a friend who died young from cancer. He has given away hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to develper friends such as Bruce Ratner whose arena project was propped up by public funds and pushed through the approval process by friends like Bloomberg, as the Appellate Court made clear today. (http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2012/2012_02752.htm)
The media has allowed him free reign to make any comment he wants without fear of a fact or a difference of opinion getting in the way. A rare exception appeared in yesterday’s NY Times where James Dwyer pointed out that the Mayor has articulated contradictory standards on disclosure of work in progress for the release of teacher evaluations and the release of the 911 report. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/nyregion/mayors-2-standards-on-public-disclosure.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=dwyer&st=cse)
Unfortunately, Dwyer does not make the obvious connection that these positions are not contradictory. Both further the Mayor’s personal agenda. One serves to denigrate teachers and, by extension, the teachers union, the other serves to protect his image. He is willing to spend any amount of public money for both agendas.
The problem is the sound bite media culture that allows statements from both sides to go unchallenged.
A teacher in the classroom who allowed clearly wrong statements to go uncorrected would be rated unsatisfactory under any evaluation system. But the media, whose major purpose in a democracy is to inform and educate the public, seems to think that this is ethical journalism. It is no
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Peter:
I just need to remind you it is not just sex crimes but any sexual misconduct requires the Arbitrator to terminate the educator. In all sixteen cases , including mine, the Arbitrators found no sexual misconduct whatsoever.
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