The Department Of Education (DOE) has a group of lawyers who's only job is to terminate teachers by any means possible. The lawyers are from the DOE's Office Of Legal Services (OLS), now known as the Office of General Counsel (OGC). The OGC is divided into four departments, two departments primarily go after teachers . One is the Administrative Trials Unit (ATU) that prosecutes teacher misconduct and the other is the Teacher Performance Unit (TPU) also known as the "gotcha squad", that prosecutes teacher incompetence.
If you ask DOE management the OGC only goes after teachers that commit serious misconduct or are incompetent. The truth is far different, the OGC will willingly aid and abet unscrupulous principals to get rid of veteran teachers by any means possible. Principals know that if they claim that the teacher either committed misconduct or are incompetent, the OGC will eagerly help the Principal charge the teacher under section 3020-a. Even if the independent State arbitrator finds the DOE charges to be untrue, the arbitrator will still give the teacher some penalty and this allows the Principal to jettison the teacher into the ATR pool and out of the school.
DOE has two main investigative units, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), who investigate corporal punishment and verbal abuse cases, while the semi-independent Special Commissioner of Investigations (SCI) investigate sexual and criminal complaints . Both OSI and SCI investigators are not fair minded. Both investigative agency's mission is to substantiate the allegations against the teacher. Read my corrupt investigations posts Here.
An example is the lunch teacher, a 20 year veteran, that South Bronx Schools is writing about. The teacher is an elementary school teacher and she was giving an untimed State Common Core test last year. She noticed that one of the students was struggling and hungry, the teacher decided since it was lunch time so she told the students to hand in their tests and she collected them and locked them up. After lunch, she gave the student who hadn't finished the test to complete.
The Principal found out that the teacher stopped the students from completing their tests and took them to lunch The Principal contacted OGC who accused the teacher of test cheating and failure to follow instructions. This resulted in 3020-a charges against the teacher.
There was no cheating and at worst, the teacher should have given a counseling memo not a 3020-a charge. However, with the Bloomberg era ideology that still dominates at the DOE, veteran teachers are targeted and this is just one case among many.
