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indecency proposal

Bill would give city the right to fire teachers in sex abuse cases

State senator Stephen Saland (right) and Mayor Michael Bloomberg look on as Chancellor Dennis Walcott describes the reasoning behind a bill that would give the city decision-making power when teachers are accused of sexual misconduct.

A legal change that Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced he wanted in March now has a legislator standing behind it.

State Sen. Stephen Saland is sponsoring a bill that would give school district chiefs the right to fire teachers who have been found to have engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with a student.

Under the current disciplinary process, once the city files charges against a teacher accused of misconduct, an independent arbitrators determines whether teachers have behaved inappropriately, and determine the punishment, no matter the offense.

This bill would create a new disciplinary process for the small number of teachers accused of sexual misconduct. The special process would send the arbitrator’s ruling back to school district officials, who could overrule it. The district would have the power to fire any teacher found to have engaged in sexual misconduct. Termination would be the default consequence, although the district could opt for a lesser punishment.

Walcott and Mayor Bloomberg announced the proposed legislation today at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence on the Upper East Side. Flanked by Saland, the superintendent of Yonkers Public Schools and several other representatives of state district superintendents, Walcott and Bloomberg said those who might oppose the legislation would be choosing to protect teachers over students.

“If city government can’t take care of them, I don’t know who is going to,” Bloomberg said about city students. “We are calling on the United Federation of Teachers to join us.”

But the union said it would need heed Bloomberg’s call. In a statement released during the press conference, UFT president Michael Mulgrew emphasized that the union has “zero tolerance” for sexual misconduct that involves children. But he said the proposed legislation would erode due process for teachers without solving the underlying issues.

“Sexual misconduct involving children is a serious issue,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “Giving the chancellor — who has previously said that an accusation is not the same thing as a finding of guilt — the power to ignore the evidence and an arbitrator’s decision is not  an answer to it.”

Bloomberg criticized the union after a reporter read a portion of Mulgrew’s statement aloud.

“The teachers union is not there to protect our kids,” he said. “The teachers union is there to protect members of that union. They may use children as pawns, but the bottom line is, protecting the public is the obligation of the government.”

“If there’s going to be a mistake, I’d rather have it on the other side than on this side,” he added. “Our first responsibility is to our children.”

The bill announced today represents only a partial fulfillment of the city’s requests for more authority in teacher discipline cases. In 2011, Walcott went to Albany to ask legislators to change the teacher disciplining process by permitting the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings to take over disciplinary hearings from the independent arbitrators.

Walcott called for the latest change in March after he reviewed 240 cases of school workers found guilty of misconduct this winter amid a string of high-profile sex abuse arrests of school workers. Walcott said the review revealed that the arbitrators who set punishments in teacher misconduct hearings sometimes determined that school workers were guilty of misconduct but that they should pay a fine, be suspended, or receive a letter of censure instead of being fired.

“I would like to have the ability, in these types of cases especially, to be the final decision-maker,” Walcott told reporters at the time.

Today he said he was unsatisfied with the outcomes of 24 of the cases he reviewed, and would like to have had the power to change the arbitrators’ decisions.

“The arbitrators are not the ones meeting with parents at the end of the day. The arbitrators are not the ones looking in the eyes of the students,” he said. “I’m the one interacting with the parents. I’m the one interacting with the students.”

Walcott said particularly galling were cases where city investigators had determined that misconduct had taken place but an arbitrator had downgraded the charge and issued only a slap on the wrist. In one such case, he said, the office of the Special Commissioner of Investigations found that a teacher took a 15-year-old student shopping and to the movies, and touched the student affectionately. The arbitrator permitted the teacher to return to the classroom after being fined $5,000, even though the arbitrator found the relationship between teacher and student was “overly personal, ill-advised and unprofessional.”

So far, the bill has no sponsor in the Assembly, where the Bloomberg administration has traditionally had a harder time winning support. But Bloomberg said today he expected Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver—who frequently supports the UFT—and his colleagues to “do the right thing” and support the bill.

“There were 12 cameras here,” he added as the press conference wrapped up. “Lady Gaga was the last one to get me 12 cameras at a press conference. This is something everybody cares about.”

The proposed legislation is below.

  • cj

    The most telling part of Bloomberg’s response was when he said he would rather err on the side of coming down on the teacher than give the teacher a fair hearing.  And where dos it stop?  You discipline a student and it’s easy for the student to make unfair charges, happens all the time.  Nobody, of course, wants to protect sexual misconduct among adults working with children but baed on wht has gone on, can Walcott and Bloomberg be trusted to be fair?

  • Clay

    Meanwhile John Chase still has a job making 6 figured.

  • Clay

    No, they cannot.

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    Although that’s not what he said. So there’s that, I guess. 

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    Anyway, call me cynical, but Bloomberg isn’t pushing this bill as a backdoor way to erode “due process protections.”  Nor is he pushing it because he thinks there’s a crisis of sexual predation in the NYC teaching ranks.  He’s pushing it because (1) there are few things worse than being the mayor who did nothing to protect children from harm and (2) there is *nothing* worse than being the guy who actively worked to stop the mayor from protecting children from harm.  And who’s the guy who will actively work to stop Bloomberg from protecting children?  That guy is Mulgrew.  Bloomberg has far more to gain from this bill being defeated.

  • http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/ reality-based educator

    Sure, Bloomberg cares about “the kids::

    BLOOMBERG TODAY:  “If city government can’t take care of them, I don’t know who is going to…The teachers union is not there to protect our kids. The
    teachers union is there to protect members of that union. They may use
    children as pawns, but the bottom line is, protecting the public is the
    obligation of the government…If there’s going to be a mistake, I’d rather have it on the other
    side than on this side. Our first responsibility is to our
    children.”

    NYCDOE, FEB 2011: Responding to pressure from federal officials and worried parents, the
    Bloomberg administration said on Wednesday that it would replace light
    fixtures containing the toxic chemicals known as PCBs in nearly 800
    school buildings across the city over the next 10 years.

    For months, the federal Environmental Protection
    Agency has been pressing the city to assess and replace older fixtures
    containing PCBs in all of those schools because of the danger of leaks.
    With so many buildings involved — nearly two-thirds of the city’s 1,200
    school buildings — the Bloomberg administration balked at the cost,
    which it initially calculated at about $1 billion.

    The new plan immediately drew criticism from school advocates who said the problem is too urgent be addressed over a decade.

    “The work can be completed in two years if they decided to make it a
    priority,” said Miranda K. S. Massie, director of litigation and
    training with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, which has
    represented parents in a lawsuit against the city over PCB contamination
    from caulk in the schools. “There’s no reason to subject school
    children to PCBs contamination for an extra eight years.”

    LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/science/earth/24pcb.html

  • Pogue

     A. You’re cynical.

    B. No one has done more harm to NYC school children over the past ten years than Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    That’s good hyperbole, but it’s coming from a guy who would rather see 10 children assaulted than see one innocent teacher terminated. Good luck with that debate.

  • Pogue

     As usual, you’re full of it.  And, it’s certainly telling when your nasty side shows.

  • Reality-bites

    Mr. Bloomberg, let me count the ways you have failed our children:

    a)  You failed to handle the PCB problems – a real health risk.
    b) You failed to invest enough in special education when it was needed most.
    c) You failed to support the communities of our lowest achieving students by pooling as many low achievers as possible together so they could collectively be branded failures.
    d) You failed to be honest in bargaining with your workforce – see “Turnaround schools” and  their connection to the need for a “teacher evaluation deal”.
    e) You failed again when you pushed for the disclosure of teacher evaluation reports EVERYONE knew were faulty – to become the problem of your teachers.
    f) You failed several times over by repeatedly threatening the communities of your students with closure, teacher firing, and curriculum reduction at the expense of standardized tests – so you can more adequately attack the teachers rather than the problems facing the students.

    Who is really looking out for the students, and who is looking out for their own interests?

  • Eastsider

    The current contract language below, the proposed bill simply wants to negate any rule of law … wants to negate any due process …it is totally unecessary …

    In §3020-a proceedings, a mandatory penalty of discharge shall apply to any tenured pedagogue a) found by a hearing officer to have engaged in sexual misconduct, or b) who has pleaded guilty to or been found guilty of criminal charges for such conduct.

  • Concerned Citizen

    If you review the “penalty chart” of how the new process goes, it looks something like this:

    Board decides to bring charges – arbitrator rules on charges including on whether they have merit – board (i.e. Walcott) then gets to decide whether the charges have merit.

    If it proceeds, arbitrator rules on the case.  Walcott then gets to issue his own ruling regardless of what the arbitrator says.

    Both “deciding points” would be controlled by Walcott, and would only be appealable to the state board.  The only thing the arbitrator has control over is the following:

    A) Is the employee suspended without pay for the duration of the hearing.
    B) Will the employee’s lawyers be paid for (noting that since Walcott needs to sign off on the “frivolous” provision before this kicks in, it really isn’t being decided by the arbitrator since it’s part and parcel of whether the charges should stick or not).

    This is one short step from having no arbitrator at all – and where would the line be drawn – once Walcott has this power for one offense based only on accusation, where do we stop it?

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    Second time in a week:  double standard? 
    Is the Mayor faster to can a teacher than an administrator for same offense?

  • Schoolgal

    Of course no one wants any sex offender in the classroom.  But make no mistake about this–principals will make up phony charges as students have been known to do, and Walcott will make sure the teacher is fired.  We cannot trust Walcott on any of this.  This is just a “get even” tactic after his little publicity stunt on his so-called “perv teachers” burst  because these teachers gave their side to the media. 

    Look how Walcott does nothing when a principal is accused of wrongdoing even when the evidence is strong.  Look at Bloomberg’s history.  When his own  deputy mayor cannot handle a blizzard,  he instead had union people fired.  Then when the same guy was arrested , the mayor hid it from the media.  The mayor takes care of his own even if they are incompetent.  That’s why he chose Black as chancellor and would have kept on defending her had the media not made mince meat out of her.

  • Larry Littlefield

    You forget that the Mayor drastically increased education spending, and raised taxes to pay for it, but got little or no money for the classroom in return, because of retroactive pension deals.  That trumps everything else the Mayor has done.  If you don’t consider that a failure, at least celebrate it as a success.

  • Larry Littlefield

    No money.  Because of 25/55.  And it’s irrevocable.  But neither Bloomberg or the UFT will say so.  Because they were both in on it.  The UFT doesnt’ want to tell the truth and claim victory over the children and younger and future teachers.  And Bloomberg does not want to tell the truth and admit defeat.

  • SMFH

    John Chase is in the rubber room in Brooklyn keeping his 132K salary and still on the Bronxdale payroll.  It’s kool for principals to speak openly about their “member” and where they want to place it and who wants to suck it.Mr. Chase is going to cost the taxpayers MILLIONS down the road in court.  He’s a timebomb!!

  • Dbnx1

    Don’t want predators in the schools for sure but a person is still innocent until proven guilty. Throwing out the constitution won’t work and will be the biggest mistake for every citizen.
    Bloomberg is an arrogant ass.

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