Tag: department of education
School allegedly sent badly behaved disabled kids to closet called ‘dark door’
Children called it “the dark door” — a cramped closet where disabled kids in a Brooklyn special-ed classroom were sent when naughty, according to testimony in a teacher-discipline case.
“We’re always put in the closet. That’s where we go when we misbehave,” said one boy who endured the cruel confinement at PS 345 in East New York, officials charged.
One classmate was put in the closet “to let the rats eat him … because he is a monster,” the boy told administrators.
“Sit down, sit down and go to the dark door,” another boy said kids in the kindergarten/first grade class were told if they acted up.
An investigation by the city Department of Education concluded that teacher Sherri Edwers, 30, directed or authorized a paraprofessional to shut kids inside the dark closet as punishment.
The scheme — which sounds a bit like “Matilda” headmistress Miss Trunchbull locking wayward students in “the Chokey” — could “instill an atmosphere of fear,” DOE officials argued.
The DOE sought to fire Edwers, who denied the charges.
But after a six-day administrative trial, hearing officer Mary O’Connell found the tenured Edwers guilty only of negligence, spared her job, and slapped her with a $4,000 fine.
The shocking allegations came to light on Dec. 22, 2016, when Assistant Principal Stacia Mason and an instructional expert made an unannounced visit to Edwers’ classroom, where she taught a dozen children, ages 5 and 6, with physical and emotional disabilities.
When the administrators walked in, Mason “had a feeling something was not right, but she could not put her finger on it,” O’Connell reported.
Edwers was seated on an alphabet rug with students, but the paraprofessional, Sachia Gaffney-Sharpe, was behind a smart board next to the closet.
Gaffney-Sharpe opened the closet door, and pulled a boy out by his hand, the instructional expert, Mia Williamson, testified. The closet, crammed with supplies, was dark, and the boy said he had been sitting cross-legged behind the door.
Mason said the boy then sat down by a radiator — “curled up in a ball.”
Edwers claimed the boy had tossed a pencil into the closet, and went inside to get it. But Mason argued that would be impossible because the closet was blocked by a smart board.
The principal questioned the child, who seemed “drugged up” by medication but confided that Sharpe-Gaffney had put him in the closet “for being bad,” the report says.
The boy said he didn’t cry or bang on the door.
In her hearing, Edwers insisted she never told Gaffney-Sharpe to lock kids in the closet, and wasn’t aware if she did so. Gaffney-Sharpe was suspended for two weeks without pay.
Edwers testified that some of her students had a tendency to make up stories or lie. She also said the boy found in the closet that day “was trying to stab another student with a pencil” — a claim she hadn’t made to DOE investigators.
Hearing officer O’Connell concluded that Edwers, even if she didn’t order it, improperly let a student go into the closet. The $4,000 fine will ensure the issue “does not repeat itself,” she said.
Edwers, a DOE teacher since 2012, still works at PS 345, and makes $73,112 a year. DOE spokesman Doug Cohen called her behavior in the closet case “completely unacceptable.”
Teacher fired for making black students play slaves in class plans $1B lawsuit
A white city public school teacher — who claims she was wrongfully fired over a controversial lesson on slavery in which she was accused of having black students lie on the floor while she stepped on their backs — plans to sue the city for $1 billion.
Patricia Cummings, 37, was canned in October after complaints about the highly unorthodox teaching method that left some students feeling humiliated and singled out by the exercise.
But Cummings insisted Thursday that she initiated the lesson in her class at MS 118 in the Bronx in good faith — and only one student and her parent objected.
Her sacking — and the torrent of criticism that followed — has rendered her permanently unemployable, Cummings said at a press conference alongside her lawyer, Thomas Liotti. “I have no career at this point,” she said.
She filed a $120 million lawsuit in Suffolk County, where she lives, against a slew of defendants ranging from the city Department of Education to Mayor Bill de Blasio to media outlets. But Liotti said they plan to build a $1 billion class-action case with other teachers claiming similar forms of discrimination.
Cummings said she was initially cleared after an internal school investigation but that the case was revived after media reports on the incident.
The teacher said her suit will be supported by the testimony of a black teacher at the school who witnessed the lesson.
That colleague found it effective — and said he would not have objected if his own kids had taken part.
“That 20 seconds of a teachable moment changed my life,” she said, adding that she was pelted with emails calling for her murder and was widely vilified as a racist.
“Anyone who has met me knows I don’t have that bone in my body,” she said. “I was brought up — you treat everybody the way you want to be treated.”
Liotta argued Thursday that the lesson only drew objections because of his client’s race.
“How does the City of New York expect to attract effective teachers when people like Patricia Cummings have to go through this kind of abuse?” he asked. “It’s outrageous.”
The Education Department initially reassigned Cummings before firing her after an investigation, according to agency spokesman Doug Cohen.
Their probe found that she used poor judgment but did not substantiate the corporal punishment charge.
“Ms. Cummings was terminated based on a thorough investigation and a review of her performance as an educator,” Cohen said Thursday. “We’ll review the complaint.”
Photo Credit: Twitter
Middle-aged teacher called 11-year-old student her ‘boyfriend’: records
In a shocking case of twisted misconduct, a 41-year-old Bronx public-school teacher doted romantically on a fifth-grader — calling the 11-year-old her “boyfriend,” records show.
“As long as without sex, I think its(sic) legal,” teacher Yi Chen Cheng told a friend on Facebook, investigators found.
A Department of Education teacher for 16 years, Cheng taught music at PS 1 Courtlandt, a pre-K to 5th grade school in Mott Haven.
According to investigative reports and disciplinary records, Cheng sent the fifth-grader messages adorned with heart emojis, told him often, “I love you,” and expressed jealousy of his girlfriends.
With a phone she bought for him, they exchanged 563 texts and engaged in video chats at odd hours, chatting about kid stuff like basketball, going to the mall, and dating.
Cheng is one of two teachers recently fired after disturbing Facebook messages and texts came to light, reports by the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation reveal.
In the other case, Dennis Colon, 46, a teacher at Mott Haven Village Preparatory HS in the Bronx, texted a student while driving in June 2017: “I f–king WISH you were my girlllllllllll,” the SCI reports.
Colon quickly texted other sheepish remarks, including, “Ugh should I have shut the f- -k up???” Moments later he texted: “Just got into an accident,” and sent a photo of his wrecked mini-van. “Waiting for a f–king Uber right now.”
The girl turned in screenshots. Records over three months showed 680 texts from Colon to her phone, and 350 from her to him. Confronted with his vulgar words, Colon claimed he was “drunk” at the time, quickly realized “it was a mistake,” and apologized. The DOE fired him.
In Cheng’s case, the boy told probers that his teacher never engaged in sexual behavior with him. The NYPD and Bronx District Attorney’s Office did not file criminal charges.
But a disciplinary hearing officer, Timothy Taylor, terminated Cheng, calling her conduct “particularly shocking.”
Records show her estranged husband, who shared a Facebook password, was stunned to discover a trove of notes between Cheng and the pre-teen boy.
“Don’t use me as a bargaining chip for your gf [girlfriend],” Cheng allegedly wrote in June 2017. “This is the second time that you are telling everyone what I told you. Do you think it’s a joke. Or you think I am a joke? You hurt me again. And this is what you should tell everyone from now, including your gf: I don’t love you, I don’t. Goodnight.”
The student replied, “Woow first I ain’t tell anybody about u. …”
Cheng then added, “I feel you are using me to get her jealous. And that hurts because you care about her feelings more than my feeling. And don’t you know how much I love you through everything?”
Cheng, who has a 5-year-old son, sent a photo of the student to a Facebook friend, calling him her “boyfriend,” reports state.
She confided she “fell for someone that [she] shouldn’t fall for. [M]aybe because we are meant to be … we know what each other wants without even saying a word … we don’t even fight. … I feel connected to him.”
Cheng, who did not testify or return a message from The Post, now works for the Piano School of NYC in Manhattan. She gives piano lessons in the homes of students under age 10 with a parent present, a spokeswoman said.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/10/20/middle-aged-teacher-called-11-year-old-student-her-boyfriend-records/