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
