Teachers say the Brooklyn School of Global Finance cut special education services to cut costs. (Post)
Two years after the city said P.S. 138 had no more room, it wants to move a new school in. (Daily News)
New York spent more than $1,000 per student on busing, more than any other state, a report finds. (Post)
City students whom Hurricane Sandy affected are using the experience in their college essays. (WSJ)
Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited Staten Island schools hurt by Sandy. (GothamSchools, NY1)
The city’s teacher pension fund will be invested in Sandy recovery projects. (GothamSchools, Post, WSJ)
WHEELS, a Washington Heights school, has dedicated a classroom to college access. (Daily News)
A second woman has sued over lower pay and lewd behavior in the DOE’s facilities office. (Daily News)
Missouri wants to tighten test security and not rely on districts to note concerns. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
In New Jersey, a teacher who was arrested for streaking was fired quickly under a new tenure law. (AP)
Former Turnaround Teacher
Re: The Daily News article on Success Academy Brooklyn moving into P.S. 138: I guess this is true DOE math. The DOE said that the building could not handle the 250 kids that explore would have had at full capacity, but now the building will be able to handle Success Academy which will have 560 kids…The DOE just loves playing these number games, especially when it is to help out a well connected buddy like Evil Moskowitz.
Last year the DOE decided that Lehman could handle another small school in the building, yet according to the EIS that THEY put out we were already at 116% capacity. I guess the DOE already knew by then that they wanted to phase Lehman out, so that they could make more room for all of the small schools they want.
http://twitter.com/BNiche B
The Jersey case about a misdemeanor rings up a question I’ve been pondering since I started teaching: is there a certain unspoken “moral code” teachers are expected to subscribe to versus other professions in the public sector (policemen, firefighters, etc) outside their work place?
I’m not a puritan in any case and many of my colleagues aren’t as well. Should the facts that I go out until late on the weekends like many others in other professions, enjoy adult beverages occasionally, and celebrate certain events with zeal (Santacon, woo!) be used against me to fire me? Do those facts even matter if I do my job well and have a great rapport with administrators, parents, and students?
I appreciate the case being dealt quicker, no question, and I believe his misdemeanor bringing brought up in the news was a big reason why he was fired. I’m just wondering, separate from this case, if we expect teachers to be more than human, incapable of making stupid (and in some cases, really stupid) mistakes outside the classroom.
Tim
None of the non-Puritan behavior you describe is illegal, and as long as you’re showing up for work Monday ready to work, if not bright-eyed and bushy tailed, no reasonable person would have a beef with your extracurriculars.
This guy took off all his clothes and ran around a apartment complex and public sidewalks, and was arrested for public lewdness several minutes afterward at an adult bookstore based on a description of his car and a partial plate number. If you read the brief, it is not believable that this was a random unlucky mistake– he drove to the site in his car, he admitted that it was not the first time he had done it, and it was a crowded/busy area at about 8:00 pm with lots of children in the area. This, to me, is not someone who should be working unsupervised with 10- or 11-year-old children 6+ hours a day.
Even if you are more tolerant than I am, surely you can see the burden that returning this guy to the classroom might pose for his school. Some parents might not have a problem with putting their fifth-grader in this guy’s classroom, but some sure as hell would. And with Google the issue would never go away at his old school, and it would follow him to any other school willing to hire him.
The tenure decision brief for this case sums it up nicely–yes, teachers are held to a higher standard, and the standard is elastic. Perhaps it’s unfair/unsettling that things aren’t more cut-and-dried than that, but you can take some consolation in the fact that many different professions and employers have similarly high/vague expectations for employee conduct.
http://twitter.com/BNiche B
Of course, I see the burden, no question. Not every streaking case has been reported on the news (same with DUIs, etc), however, which is why I said I believe the news reporting what happened was a big reason why he was fired in the first place. Him doing it in a more public place definitely aided in his firing. I don’t disagree with the firing, but I do worry about the moral implications with lesser charges or no charges at all.
There have been instances of teachers being fired for much less than this. Just look up Ashley Payne for an instance, which touches on the examples I wrote. Tiffany Webb for another. I understand there are high/vague expectations and that allows certain people to get off while others get taken through the ringer (a police officer getting little to no punishment for a DUI, for example), but what is the line between private and public life in terms of being a teacher?
I know I shouldn’t expect an answer to a question as difficult and vague as mine, but it’s just a thought.
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