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January 8, 2013

Allegations of wrongdoing in schools pile up but stay in the dark

by Philissa Cramer, at 3:28 pm

Investigators who look into the city’s schools received more allegations and opened more cases than ever last year. But they found wrongdoing less often than at any time in the last decade.

And once again, only a tiny fraction of the investigations were made public.

The Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation received 4,173 complaints in 2012, 20 percent more than in the previous year, according to the annual report it released today. The complaints prompted 795 investigations.

SCI looks into alleged violations of law and department regulations, from accusations of sexual misconduct to concerns about fraud and embezzlement, to allegations of cheating on tests. (The Department of Education also has an internal investigative unit, the Office of Special Investigations.)

In 2012, SCI also closed 752 cases, many opened in previous years because SCI investigations frequently move slowly. Of them, investigators found wrongdoing in 247 cases for a substantiation rate of 32.8 percent, the lowest in a decade. Condon recommended that 83 education department employees be fired as a result — 20 percent fewer than in 2011.

Condon’s office released just 16 investigation reports, meaning that 94 percent of times when investigators found wrongdoing, their findings stayed under wraps.

The release rate was in line with past years, when SCI has published reports about substantiated allegations between 5 and 10 percent of the time.

Last year’s SCI releases included reports about nepotism, corruption, and sex abuse. It did not include any reports about cheating or academic improprieties.

In a year with a spate of high-profile sexual abuse allegations in schools, the unit received 679 allegations of sexual misconduct, or 16 percent of the total number of allegations. That proportion was in line with recent years.

SCI reports that are not published are sent to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who has the power to act on Condon’s recommendations or take other steps to address wrongdoing. At that point, the only way for a report to become publicly available is via a Freedom of Information Law request. That means that an enterprising reporter, advocate, or elected official would have to know first that an investigation happened, and then would have to file a legal request for permission to look at the report on it.

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  • BloombergMustGo

    I am personally aware of two cases where female students filed false sexual misconduct charges against male teachers because they were disciplined for poor behavior.  In both cases, when confronted by investigators they admitted trying to exact revenge.
    These incidents have increased under the Bloomberg regime due to the instigation by the mayor against teachers.

  • Clay

    SCI goes after any case that seems like it could be juicy! Teachers are always treated as being guilty even when they’re found innocent. SCI is corrupt!

  • Philip Nobile

    What’s
    behind SCI’s abysmal rate of public disclosure? Is it possible that Special Commissioner
    Richard Condon who reports to DOI Director 
    Rose Gill Hearn who reports to the Mayor has an interest in cooking the
    books, that is, in keeping DOE’s misconduct stats on the lowest possible side?
    If teachers cannot be trusted to correct their students’ Regents exams, why should
    SCI, OSI, and even OEO be trusted to police in secret? I happen to know that
    Condon wrapped up a Regents cheating case without ever auditing the disputed
    exams that three teachers confessed to inflating, resulting in a 65 bulge that
    NYSED determined was “unlikely by chance.” “I can’t say
    that there wasn’t cheating,” Condon told the Times.  “What I say is that
    the [OSI] investigation showed no credible evidence that there was cheating.” (June 27, 2007) This is the
    equivalent of a medical examiner declaring no credible evidence of poisoning in
    a murder case without conducting an autopsy on the corpse. To draw the analogy
    even closer, the medical examiner spoke with the knowledge that three people had
    confessed to poisoning the victim.  

    I also
    know that in the same case, Condon exonerated the Principal and LIS of
    cover-up, even though both violated DOE policy, city law and SCI’s own
    Reporting Obligations when they neglected to reveal to school, city, or state
    investigators the chapter leader’s detailed written allegations as well as other
    smoking guns documenting the Regents cheating ring.

    If
    Condon were an honest Commissioner, he would haul me in tomorrow and demand proof
    of my public accusation of bad faith. Same for Chancellor Walcott. But I don’t
    think I’ll be hearing from them anytime soon.

  • I noticed that…

    When you’re principal, OSI and SCI tend to look the other
    way or will do very sloppy or incomplete investigation. 

     

    Case in point, Maxine Nodel was the principal of the
    Millennium Art Academy HS, which is located in the Stevenson Campus.  In 2005, an English teacher blew the whistle
    on how teachers were changing the English Regents so as to inflate the passing
    rate.  My understanding is that they were “aggressively” advised to scrub the English regents.  When OSI came in, several weeks
    later, they could not find the scored English Regents.  Nothing happened to her.  It was swept under the rug.  The whistleblower had to quit because she
    was untenured. 

     

    She left Millennium Art Academy in June 2012 and was hired
    to work as an executive principal at the Newburgh Freedom Academy.

     

    Now, she has been fired because of abusive comments she made
    and the profanities she used toward teachers. 
    The union, who represent 300 teachers, and the board would not tolerate
    that behavior and terminated her immediately. 

     

    Yet, NYC principals can cheat, lie, abuse, threaten, and
    force teachers to change grades and to break their union contract, especially
    the untenured teachers, at a high rate, which is reported to the union but the
    union cannot do much except sit by the wayside helplessly.

     

    http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121127/NEWS/211270330

     

     

     

  • BH

    Adlai E. Stevenson was a real school.  It was replaced with 8 sham schools, and at least half of these have closed.  Stevenson serves as a perfect microcosm of the failure of breaking up large comprehensive high schools.  In regards to Nodel and Millennium Art Academy, they were given the wink and the nod and were basically told, “we like what you’re doing, but try to be a little smarter about it in the future.”

  • Nyr683

    2 schools on one floor at the stevenson campus….the kids and teachers are so jammed in together, no room for counselors, advisors, APs to work with kids in a civilized environment as bloomdoe and his cronies have squished all these schools into one building….kids are fighting over the common areas of the school, i.e. school gym, school cafeteria, library, etc..the other day there was a lock down as kids were fighting  saying their school “owns” the gym, etc..

  • Nyr683

    Vote for Bill Thompson for Mayor and we will get our nyc schools back to normality…..Amazing, this morning Bill Thompson was on the John Gambling radio show and it was a pleasure to listen to him rather than that wining, hypocrite, old hag mayor sitting in the office now..ughhhh…despise him….notice he will not back christine quinn now because she knows if bloomdoe backs her people of nyc will NEVER VOTE FOR QUINN BLOOMDOE IN DISGUISE

  • http://twitter.com/MrPortelos Francesco Portelos

    Check out the counters on my site. See how long I am under investigation and how long the principal has. http://www.protectportelos.org

    Phylissa, ask them why I contacted SCI about thousands of dollars in fraud and they forwarded it to OSI, which is within the DOE. However when my principal contacted SCI about 20 ridiculous allegations against me, they investigated them. even if they were not DOE related.

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