The Occupy Activist Teacher that the DOE Spent $1,000,000 to Try to Fire and Lost

Here is the story of David Suker, a US Army veteran who taught at-risk students for 14 years, and was removed from a Bronx GED classroom in December 2011 after he’d spoken out about the horrendous conditions experienced by the students there. As reported by Sue Edelman in the NY Post, DOE spent four years and more than $1 million trying to fire him, a case that they lost at every level; first the arbitrator, then at the State Supreme Court level, and at the Appellate Court.  Now yet another arbitrator has ordered him reinstated, and that he be given $260,000 in back pay, though he has to pay a $7000 fine.

The saga of my current ordeal, the three year termination of my ability to teach in NYC schools, and subsequent reinstatement by some of the highest courts in New York, specifically the New York State Supreme Court and the Appellate Division, oddly began back in August of 2008 on my way to the Democratic National Convention in Denver to witness history. Barack Obama was being nominated, and as a licensed high school social studies teacher, I wanted to say that I was there. Well that didn't happen.

While riding my Vespa Scooter to the convention from New York City, about 100 miles from Denver I was blindsided by an 18 wheeler from behind. It's safe to say I was lucky that I escaped with my life -- a broken jaw, some really bad scrapes and nothing more. I took three months off to recuperate, but when I came back to teach I was placed in a stairwell, outside of the main office, where the main office to my program, GED-Plus was located, with no teaching responsibilities. At the time I thought this was odd, but I was just glad I was alive and back to making a living. I didn't view this as punishment, but now with hindsight, I see how vindictive this system can be.

The reason I was sitting in the stairwell – I sat there for over a month before the administration of GED-Plus grudgingly sent me back to my site to teach my GED students -- had nothing to do with my competency but did have everything to do with my big mouth. You see, my principal, Robert Zweig, had been appointed Deputy Superintendent to District 79 (the district composed of alternative high schools and programs) a year previous, but his appointment was held up because of  allegations that he had a liaison with an assistant principal. The investigation took about a year and I'm pretty sure he was cleared, but I suspect that now he was in a position of even more power, he felt emboldened to go after those teachers who had been speaking out about him and his leadership of the program.

The previous incarnation of GED-Plus was called OES, or Offsite Educational Services, and that was closed in June of 2007. Principal Zweig was promoted, the teachers had to reapply for their jobs, and we were all very nervous. Few people spoke out, but I did and now I see the price was huge. I was put in the Rubber Room for 18 months shortly after being placed back in the classroom in 2009, but no charges were ever brought.

The Rubber Rooms were supposedly closed in June of 2010, and in October of that year I finally went back to teaching. I wasn't sent back to my old site on 145th Street in Harlem where I had previously been so successful, helping get over one hundred students their GED's over a three year period in a one teacher site.

No, I was sent to a dumping ground for teachers and students alike at Bronx Regional High School, a GED-Plus "Hub" with multiple classrooms where our 17-21-year-old students were the most disenfranchised in the system. This ESL/Literacy/Pre-GED site was where I was to be kept an eye on by my principal. I know this because I was standing outside my AP's door on my first day there and I overheard his conversation with her.

Things at this new site were not terrible by NYC standards, but even I was surprised at the lack of concern for moving our students into more advanced programs. All the administration cared about was attendance and enrollment. At the end of the year I was given an Unsatisfactory rating and a $1,000 fine for the ten absences. Most of my absences revolved around the care for my dad who has Parkinson's, but Zweig didn't bother to ask.

Then Occupy happened. I was arrested at the lead of the march across Brooklyn Bridge and four more times.  I plead guilty to one violation, and was found guilty of of another because I ignored the lawful order to get off the bridge. I was happily an "Occupier" and teacher and felt the two could coincide. That thought didn't last very long. At the time of my third arrest, the DoE removed me from the classroom, placed me in a "working" Rubber Room and started a full-on 3020-a termination hearing against me.

The DOE started digging up the most minuscule offenses from my past to charge me with.  When  even that  wasn't enough to silence my criticism of the DOE and its policies affecting at-risk youth,  a "memo" was sent. The DoE wanted to know where my daughter lived because she was at a NYC high school and in 10th grade, and I was living part-time in Long Island, taking care of my dad.

Without my knowledge, they interrogated my daughter at least three times, finally getting her to admit that she lived in the Bronx with her mom. My daughter never told me or her mother about any of this because of the shame and responsibility that she felt for getting me in trouble. They sent undercover investigators to her house and to the management company for the apartment in which she lived. They also knew her mom's and my dad's automobile license numbers and were secretly watching them for some substantial amount of time, which I learned from all the details in the Special Commission of Investigations report that I first saw during the middle of my 3020-a proceedings.

This final charge of "defrauding" the DoE was what got me fired. The problem with that charge is that I never committed fraud, plus the charges went back years ago, to when she was in kindergarten, 1st grade, and 5th grade, when I applied and enrolled my daughter into the three public schools that she attended. This fraud charge was erroneous because I was living in multiple addresses in the districts where my daughter’s schools were located and I didn’t have a permanent address from the time my daughter was in kindergarten.

There is a three year limit for which you can bring 3020-a charges and this "fraud" charge was clearly past that point, because my daughter was in her 2nd semester of 10th grade. They tried getting around this by arguing that this was "criminal" conduct, but never attempted to prove this was a criminal offense to the arbitrator, let alone in criminal court.

The fraud charge was thrown out in 2013 by the New York Supreme Court and the remaining charges were remanded to another DOE arbitrator for punishment less than termination.  Here is an excerpt from the Supreme Court decision from Judge Alice Schlesinger:  

As this Court stated earlier, the school’s leadership did not want petitioner Suker to remain there as a teacher. They did not like him or approve of his actions. They believed he was insubordinate, that he did not conduct himself properly, that he was getting arrested too often, and probably that he was not a team player. It is possible that much of that is true. But with the exception of the two episodes involving disruptive students, which had occurred almost three years earlier in 2009 and had not resulted in discipline, no one has claimed that David Suker is not a good and/or effective teacher.  

Finally, it should be noted that the conduct spelled out in Charge 3, regarding a false address for his daughter, never involved Suker’s own school and never would have been discovered but for the DOE’S decision to target Suker to see if an investigation could find something to be used against him, which it did. But that “something” should not be a basis for terminating this tenured teacher, for the reasons already discussed.”

But the DOE refused to give up, and appealed the case to the Appellate Court, where they lost once again, wasting another two years of my life and thousands more in taxpayers’ dollars.

The lesson that I've garnered from this more than seven year odyssey is that the system is irrevocably broken, but that at least a few teachers can seek out and find justice, myself included. Imagine though for a second what happens to the student that is caught up in a similar Orwellian nightmare, which I'm guessing is not all that uncommon.

If I almost succumbed to multiple threats over the past several years and I'm a veteran, father, and "educated professional," with everything to live for, then what are our students and their parents facing? It's those nightmares that I try to avoid when I fall asleep at night, but the reality isn't so kind.

Thank you for listening. :)

-- David Suker

Video: the drummers from Occupy Wall St. and Norman Siegel gather around the corner from Bloomberg's residence

This afternoon, I went to see the drummers who, after being kicked out of Zuccotti Park, decided to protest outside Bloomberg's townhouse on E. 79 St.  Sadly, the police blocked off the street, but the drummers gathered anyway on 5th avenue next to Central Park instead.

As you will see in the video below, I bumped into my hero, Norman Siegel, who told us that barring the drummers from E. 79 St. was a violation of their first amendment rights.  In fact, in January 2010, Norman sued the city on behalf of teachers and parents, and we gained the right to march on the south side of 79 St.., to protest school closings and charter co-locations.

Off camera, Norman also said that the arrests of reporters that I videotaped a week ago were illegal , and that he had sent a letter written with Sen. Eric Adams to Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly to that effect. Because of Norman's work, NYC press credentials now require that reporters have to right to cross any barriers, along with police lines etc. During the course of his conversation with a reporter who had been assaulted by the police, we also found out that tomorrow Norman Siegel will turn 68 years young. Happy Birthday Norman!

NYC children and teachers speak out at Occupy Wall St. rally in Foley Sq.

My video taken Sept. 17 of our part of the citywide protests as part of Occupy Wall St. and Occupy the DOE, when, among other things, Justin Wedes taught the Children's Brigade how to use the people's mike, and  teachers and students spoke out in Foley Sq.

Part I and Part II below.  Beautiful and sad.

video: Occupy Wall St. as sung by Frank Sinatra

Inspirational and brutal; this brilliant video by Casey Neistat with a soundtrack of the classic Kander and Ebb theme shows one side of the story. Hopefully I will figure out how to edit my less violent footage and post it this weekend!

The Time is now: occupy the DOE! Join us on the steps of Tweed on Thursday, Nov. 17th!

Friends:  There is a total assault being conducted on our first amendment rights to assembly, speech and the press in NYC. If you doubt what I am saying, please watch this.

And then remind yourself of this, our First Amendment right: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What happened this morning and today is  appalling. The city’s move to prevent people from peaceful assembly in protest of profound economic injustice is another instance of Bloomberg’s remarkable disdain for the human and constitutional rights that we – THE people – hold very dear.  In defending this right, NYC council member Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested, beaten up and is still in police custody as I write.  In response, we are organizing an uptown contingent of public school parents and concerned citizens to protest these events and all that gave rise to it on Thursday, November 17.

This Thursday though is not just about our basic freedoms; it is about how both the growing economic inequality that characterizes our country and what drives it are affecting our public school children – your children and my children.

We have a governor that, after slashing education funding, refuses to maintain an existing tax on the richest New Yorkers, and compares this position to a principled stand against the death penalty? This governor denied that last year’s cuts would hurt our children and yet we all know that they have; our children live it everyday.  Further the pain has been distributed inequitably; our poorest children are suffering the most.  (See this AQE report, which shows that state education aid to poor districts was cut two to three times as much per student as wealthy districts over the last two years.)

We have a PUBLIC education system that is being bent to the profit motives of PRIVATE corporations, under the guise of “accountability” through testing, testing and more testing.  I am pretty sure that Pearson does not have the best interests of my son at heart; on the other hand, after one of the best parent-teacher conferences at my child’s school, I’m pretty sure that most of our teachers do.  The new tests being created are an attempt to do what good teachers do all the time, assess the process of academic performance.  The costs associated with creating, administering and grading these new tests, to be done several times a year in ALL subjects including the arts, are going to be astronomical.  Why do we do this? Because "we" do not trust teachers.  How will we pay for this?  Cutting more teachers I am quite sure.  

In so doing, the corporate forces that run our schools will continue to turn them into test-prep academies, where teaching to the “new and improved test” will guarantee narrowed curricula in the arts and humanities, and the production of more (and mere) technical worker bees, incapable of original thought or dissent – just cogs in the corporate machine.  

Say NO to this corporatization of public education, please. 

Come and join us as we Occupythe DOE on Thursday. 

First we will be occupying education at 4:30 PM on the steps of Tweed (52 Chambers; north side of City Hall Park, behind City Hall, between Centre Street and Broadway, map here).  Then we will be marching across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Bring your children; bring your signs; bring your courage and conviction.

Thanks, Tory Frye, parent District 6

Video of arrests this morning of Occupy Wall St. protesters

I was filming the arrests this morning at park/empty lot owned by Trinity Church on 6th avenue and Canal; I stuck my little Flip camera through a slat in the fence. 

Occupy Wall St. on the attack on public education; & Santos Crespo asks, where's the money?

See this video from Occupy Wall St. about the attack on public education in NYC with testimony from laid-off DC37 school aide Cliftonia Johnson and investigative journalist Chris Hedges.  For more on Ms. Johnson and some of the other nearly 700 school aides who were fired this year, and who performed valuable services to our kids, see this NYT article.  The entire Occupy Wall St. session, a people's trial of Goldman Sachs, took place on Nov. 3 at Zuccotti Park, is here. 

Also, see the letter that DC37 labor leader Santos Crespo sent to Mayor Bloomberg last week below, showing how the budget cuts to education have disproportionately hit the classroom and hurt our children as well as the lowest paid school workers.


Where’s the Money Mayor Bloomberg?

            Due to the exuberant contracting out waste in the Bloomberg Administration, school budgets have been slashed and cut to the bone.  On Wednesday, November 2, 2011 the Daily News printed an article titled, “Doing less with less: Budgets and choices shrink at city schools”.

            Department of Education spokesperson Natalie Ravitz stated that “Mayor Bloomberg had actually increased the city’s spending on public schools this year by 2 billion.” REALLY Ms. Ravitz?  The over 2000 Local 372 members that have been laid off in the past few years have a question for you, WHERE’S THE MONEY?

            Did you use it to lower class sizes? NO, since 74% of elementary schools have larger classes.  Did you spend it on tutoring to better prepare our children in schools? NO, since 56% of elementary schools have reduced tutoring. Did you spend it on text books? NO. Extracurricular activities? NO. Teachers? NO. And obviously NOT to add support services to the schools since Local 372 members are always first on the chopping block.

            So where did the $2 billion increase go Mr. Mayor? Did it go to your high priced consultants and out of control contract spending?  Every day it seems the City Council and Comptroller Liu are finding crooks robbing the city to line their pockets with contracting money, which the mayor seems to condone.

            Our schools are suffering Mr. Mayor, the community is suffering and our children will be the ones that pay. This is not about balancing the books, it’s about lowering gun violence and drug abuse in our neighborhoods, it’s about making sure our high school students are academically prepared for college and it’s about making sure our children grow up to be contributing members of society.

-- Santos Crespo, Jr., President, Local 372, DC 37, AFSCME

Occupy the DOE! Join us on the steps of Tweed on Monday, Nov. 7th!

Parents, Educators, and Students of

 New York City

cordially request your presence at the

People’s General Assembly On

 Public Education

Date:  Monday, the Seventh of November,

Two Thousand and Eleven

Time:  Five p.m.

Location: Steps of Tweed Hall, 52 Chambers St.

Please join us for the exercise of democracy, the raising of silenced voices, outrage at the lack of public representation in decisions of educational policy, and

 the creation of a People’s Agenda for our schools!

Hosted by Occupy the Department of Education; please visit us on Facebook!

Last night at the Panel for Educational Policy, we occupied the DOE!

Last night was inspiring as, for once, the 99% had their say at a Panel for Educational Policy meeting. 

The meeting, supposed to be a presentation of the Common Core standards, was very quickly taken over by teachers, parents, students and education activists, some of them from Occupy Wall Street.  We used the "people's mic" to drown out the speeches of Chancellor Walcott and David Coleman, who soon exited the stage to give their lessons upstairs.

Most of us remained in the auditorium for another hour and a half, talking about the rising class sizes, the overemphasis on high stakes testing, the way real learning is being squeezed out of the classroom because of the repeated budget cuts and damaging priorities of the  1% , including Bloomberg, Bill Gates and the Walton family, who are setting policies for our schools against the priorities of the 99% and the needs of our kids.

And the rest of the country and the world were able to watch, via Live Stream Occupy Wall St.  See below.

Join us at the next Occupy DOE event: a People’s General Assembly on Public Education on Monday, Nov. 7th at Tweed at 5 PM, when we will create a People's Agenda for our Schools!

And please leave a comment about some of your favorite speakers.  I loved the little girl at about 16 minutes in.

occupynyc on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Which New Yorkers have the best interests of working people and children at heart?

See below video made by Darren Marelli of GEM, who interviewed NYC parents and teachers joining the Wall St. protesters on Wednesday.

As the NY Times points out, children are most hurt by the nation's cutbacks to social services:

"Children will be among those most harmed by the jobs crisis. The Economic Policy Institute, using data from the September report, has calculated that 278,000 teachers and other public school employees have lost their jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Over the same period, 48,000 new teaching jobs were needed to keep up with the increased enrollments but were never created. In all, public schools are now short 326,000 jobs. At a time when more and better education is seen as crucial to economic dynamism and competitiveness, larger class sizes and fewer teachers are the last thing the nation needs. Staffing reductions also mean that schools are less able to respond to the needs of poor children, whose ranks have increased by 2.3 million from 2008 to 2010."

Bloomberg has ruthlessly cut the education budget five times in the last three years, forcing the elimination of thousands of teaching positions rather than support raising taxes on millionaires.  As the richest one percent of New Yorkers gains more and more wealth, our ,ayor continues to be their biggest defender, favoring their interests over our children. Now, he is proposing yet another 2 percent mid year cuts to schools, with another 6 percent cut next year. 

Meanwhile, on Friday, Bloomberg laid off nearly 700 school aides and parent coordinators, the lowest paid DOE staffers who serve crucial roles in helping kids in high-poverty schools.  And on the same day, he had the nerve to criticize the protesters on Wall Street, as "trying to destroy the jobs of working people in this city."

From the video above, who do you think really has the best interests of working people and children at heart?