Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for April 26, 2009 ONE FLEW OVER THE RUBBER ROOM

The New York Post is one of those "sensational tabloids" which writes stories for "shock value"...your basic "rag".

You know...like CAT Tracks!!!

Below is one of their latest "educational stories"...with one of their typical headlines - "TEACH GOES BERSERK".

Other than one attributed comment that "the computers were armed", I'm kinda sympathetic...or, should I say, open-minded.

I mean...

• Why did they have to go and single him out as "tenured"? What's that got to do with a person "snapping". Hell, just goes to "mitigating circumstances" in my humble opinion. Nontenured teachers...with less invested...can just leave an untenable situation...find another teaching job...find ANY other kind of job. A 55-year-old teacher with bills...not so much.

• And, if "tenure" is a determining factor, why not publish the names of the principals and superintendents who gave this teacher satisfactory evaluations for the first 28 years of his career? Aren't THEY the real "enablers"???

• Notice how they gave some mild credit to the always vilified teachers' union (for talking him out of his room), but then identified the evil-doer as a union representative?

• Speaking of "union representative"...after taking abuse from students day-in and day-out AND dealing with the insanity and apathy of administrators on behalf of his doubly-abuse colleagues, well...a good lawyer might well be able to get him off for "justifiable snapping".

TEACH GOES BERSERK

By YOAV GONEN, MATTHEW NESTEL and LUKAS I. ALPERT

A tenured teacher who did not "belong in a school, much less in front of children," because of his history of roughing up students went bonkers yesterday morning and barricaded himself in his Bronx classroom, threatening to blow up the building if the principal wasn't fired, cops and sources said.

Francisco Garabitos, a 55-year-old computer-education teacher who was supposed to be in an administrative "rubber room" for pushing a student a day earlier, instead showed up at his second-floor classroom at MS 328 at about 8:30 a.m. and piled chairs and desks at the door.

The teacher -- who had twice been cited for using corporal punishment -- told school officials that "the computers were armed," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

Police and school officials evacuated nearly 1,200 students from the three schools that occupy the building.

The situation was resolved about three hours later, when negotiators and a teachers' union official persuaded Garabitos to give up peacefully.

No weapons were found, and no children were hurt. He was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation. Criminal charges were pending last night.

Garabitos -- who is also the school's union representative -- had been suspended for "striking a student" on Thursday and was supposed to report to a rubber room for out-of-control teachers yesterday, sources said.

"The principal told him not to come back," Kelly said.

But Garabitos instead marched back into the school. Hours before, he had called an Education lawyer whom he had worked with and left a voicemail warning that he was about to snap.

"He said something to the effect of 'I got notified that I'm being suspended. I'm going to the rubber room. If they're going to take me out of here, they're going to have to take me out of here forcefully. I want to make sure the world knows about what's happening here,' " attorney Nelson Mar said.

He said Garabitos said he had been accused of grabbing a student by the neck and shoving him into a wall, a charge the teacher said was "completely made up."

Garabitos, a teacher since 1981, has been investigated 14 times for allegations and has twice been cited for two cases of using corporal punishment against students, in 2002 and 2004.

"There are so many reasons why this teacher does not belong in a school, much less in front of children," city Department of Education spokesman David Cantor said yesterday.

But the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigations, which handles probes of the most serious misconduct allegations against school personnel, said it had never received a complaint against Garabitos.

Officials with the United Federation of Teachers said they had been aware of a long-standing dispute between MS 328 Principal Dorald Bastian and several teachers at the school -- particularly Garabitos.

"We have been dealing with some of those problems," UFT President Randi Weingarten said. "But let me be clear: No grievance is redressable in this way. We do not condone this behavior at all."

Garabitos has written several self-published books that he sold on his Web site. At times bizarre and rambling, the books ranged from 9/11-theme love stories to get-rich-quick guides to philosophical tracts on genocide.

Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg