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Dagobah Resident
This guy is my hero. And no, this is not an exaggeration or an isolated case.
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8020
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8020
Jim Callaghan said:Whistle-blower axed — again
An account of this teacher's assault by the New York City politicos and education lap dogs is included in the new book by Karen Horwitz, White Chalk Crime.
by Jim Callaghan
Seven months after a state hearing officer said that it no "longer makes sense" to keep a 37-year veteran teacher out of the classroom, whistle-blower David Pakter is serving a second stint in a Teacher Reassignment Center.
His crime? Like some of his colleagues in the "rubber rooms," he hasn't been told. All he has is a Nov. 22 letter from the Department of Education saying "an allegation has been made against you." He received it just nine days after he was reprimanded in a memo by an assistant principal at the HS for Fashion Industries for buying plants for the school — allegedly without authorization — and for rewarding students who got good marks with gifts, a practice that Pakter said is not unusual at the school.
The former Teacher of the Year had just been released from the rubber room last September after having spent nearly two years there on charges against him made while at another school.
The beginning of his downfall, he claims, was a three-page letter he sent to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein in October 2003 saying that the civil rights of his students were being violated. "Klein didn’t want to hear it," Pakter recalled. "So, instead of investigating the school, the DOE started investigating me and tried to make me sound like a lunatic after 37 years of teaching."
"It's a disgrace what Klein is trying to do to him," a top UFT official said.
He is back in the rubber room even though HS for Fashion Industries Assistant Principal Giovanni Raschilla told Pakter and others that Principal Hilda Nieto instructed him to write the memo of reprimand. Neither the principal nor the AP could produce a DOE regulation about gift giving.
Raschilla told the New York Teacher during a March 14 telephone interview that he was not allowed to talk about the story because he was "sworn to confidentiality," but refused to say by whom.
At the school on March 15, Raschilla admitted to a New York Teacher reporter that he knew there was no regulation about giving plants to a school. "Nieto told me to write the memo," Raschilla said. "We both knew it wasn’t true. She told me she was under orders from Region 9 to 'get something' on Pakter."
Nieto refused to be interviewed by the New York Teacher. Instead, she called school safety agents to say there was an "intruder" in the school — even though Raschilla had escorted the reporter in the school.
"If I can’t give two plants to a school, what punishment will Klein mete out to Bill Gates and sports executives and rock stars and the folks who donated money after requests made by [Vice Chair of the Fund for Public Schools] Caroline Kennedy?" Pakter asked.
Twice exonerated
Pakter's assignment to the Temporary Assignment Center occurred less than three months after he successfully defended himself against DOE attempts to revoke his teaching license at a 3020-a hearing. This came after Pakter was exonerated at a medical arbitration hearing at which the teacher and lawyers for NYSUT, the UFT's state affiliate, hired a medical expert who successfully challenged the city’s contention that Pakter was unfit to teach.
Pakter has been an irritant to DOE bosses for several years. He was a whistle-blower who demanded an investigation into why the School Construction Authority was replacing windows for the third time in 10 years at the HS for Art and Design. Pakter met with probers from the School Construction Authority. He said they did nothing about his allegations.
Pakter's 2003 letter to Klein charged that mainly black and Latino students at Art and Design had their music programs eliminated by Principal Madeleine Appell, even though the school received $75,000 in funding for the program, while mainly white students in a grammar school housed in the building were receiving music lessons.
Pakter received the first U-rating of his career for the 2003-04 school year from Appell — even though Pakter was rated Satisfactory in 22 categories and Unsatisfactory in one category — lateness.
Art and Design Chapter Leader Lawrence Taylor said that other teachers with worse lateness records hadn’t received a U-rating. Half of his alleged latenesses, Pakter said, were because he was assigned to late Regent exams by his principal.
On Sept. 22, 2004, Pakter was accused of insubordination by Appell after he videotaped the grammar school students being given a music lesson.
The day after Pakter shot his video, Appell called an emergency faculty meeting and quit.
First trip to rubber room
Still, Pakter was sent to the rubber room on Sept. 24. He was finally notified of the charges against him in April 2005 by Local Instructional Supervisor Alexis Penzell. In a letter Penzell itemized a list of reasons why he was allegedly unfit to teach.
In a May 2005 letter to the DOE Medical Bureau, John Lachky — who replaced Appell as principal at Art and Design — charged Pakter with insubordination, lateness and for loading pornography onto a school computer. This, despite the fact that Lachky already knew that investigators had refused to charge Pakter on the pornography count when they discovered the computer was accessible to anyone in the school.
Lachky also testified that attendance records submitted at Pakter’s 3020-a hearing were compiled by a school secretary. But the secretary denied that. "Lachky gave me the numbers and told me to enter them," she said. Pakter said that Lachky doctored the attendance numbers. The DOE admitted at Pakter’s 3020-a hearing that his outstanding teaching and competence were not issues.
In June 2005, the DOE directed Pakter to report for a medical examination based on Penzell's charges. On July 14, he met with the DOE’s Dr. Ann Garner, who summed up Pakter’s "condition" with labels such as "hypomania" and "grandiosity" and "fidgety" and "delusional" and "paranoid" — terms later denounced by a medical arbitrator.
Garner had asked Pakter if he was depressed. When he answered no, she asked him if he had a family, if he lived alone and if he had a problem with substance abuse. "What does living alone or having a family have to do with teaching?" Pakter said.
Two weeks later, he met with an outside psychologist, Richard Schuster, hired by the DOE, who gave him a test that asked him to respond yes or no to statements such as: "A shoe goes on your head. Monkeys live in fish tanks. A room in a house has walls. The color of grass is red. Cars have four wheels. Cats have five legs."
Schuster administered the test even though one month earlier that test had been declared illegal by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The judges ruled that the test has no bearing on whether workers can carry out their responsibilities.
Schuster said Pakter "usually tried to project a positive attitude about life and typically enters new relationships with an open, accepting attitude" and that his clinical profile was "within normal limits." Still, he recommended that Pakter undergo "psychiatric treatment, including appropriate medication."
Medical director makes charges
In August 2005, the director of the DOE Medical Bureau, Dr. Audrey Jacobson, informed Pakter by letter that he was found "not currently fit for duty." She also wrote a letter to Schuster, repeating the false porn charge and denouncing Pakter at every turn. She used terms like "his narrative was self-serving, grandiose and tangential." She also said he "appeared to be somewhat manic, with his mood congruent with grandiosity and paranoia."
Art and Design HS Assistant Principal Harold Mason, who was videotaped saying Pakter was engaging in "mental masturbation" at a disciplinary hearing. Mason was severely criticized by an independent hearing officer who called it "an outrageous comment."
There was one problem with the letter: Jacobson never met or examined Pakter.
In September 2005, Pakter asked for medical arbitration but wasn't evaluated until January 2006. Pakter hired his own expert, Alberto Goldwaser, a nationally acclaimed doctor.
"DOE Medical didn't want to take a chance on finding me unfit with their pencil-and-paper tests and quack opinions with Goldwaser in the room," Pakter said.
The independent arbitrator wrote his final report in June 2006 — even though the DOE-UFT contract mandates that it be filed "within 10 days" after the examination, which took place in January. The arbitrator blamed Jacobson for the delay, saying he was waiting for more information from Jacobson — but Jacobson blamed the arbitrator. Meanwhile, Pakter was off the payroll.
"They were trying to starve me out," he said, "hoping I would give up. I will never give up. They tried to railroad me with junk science."
The arbitrator's decision demolished the DOE case against Pakter, saying the Medical Bureau's finding that Pakter was medically/psychiatrically unfit "was not a medically reasonable one." The arbitrator said Pakter "has never been found unfit; all available teaching assessments are consistently outstanding; inferences about Mr. Pakter's ability to teach, drawn by Dr. Schuster and others from Mr. Pakter's presentation in clinical evaluations, are unsupported."
After the medical arbitrator declared him fit for duty, Pakter's lawyer wrote a letter to the DOE demanding his full back pay, which he received within two weeks of the letter.
While Pakter was enduring the medical ordeal, he also had to contend with the DOE trying to revoke his state teaching license on the charges of insubordination and lateness. There were 11 hearings held from October 2005 through January 2006.
In August 2006, the independent hearing officer fined Pakter $15,000 for the lateness and insubordination, but did not agree with DOE's recommendation that Pakter be fired. He was reassigned to the HS for Fashion Industries.
In the hearing officer's ruling, Art and Design AP Harold Mason was criticized for saying that Pakter was engaging in "mental masturbation" while defending himself at a disciplinary meeting. The hearing officer called Mason's intemperate remark "an outrageous comment … especially when he is engaging in the discipline of a teacher." The officer said that while a supervisor deserves respect from an employee, "likewise, an employee is entitled to respect from a supervisor, which did not happen here."
Why the intense pressure to get rid of Pakter? According to Pakter, Lachky later told him the pressure to get rid of him "was coming from the top."
'All he cares about is kids'
According to his peers and many others, Pakter is by all measures a master teacher, totally dedicated to the success of his students. One top UFT official said "This guy is independently wealthy. And all he cares about is the kids — he wants to teach and he wants to help poor kids fulfill their dreams. He is always trying to help other teachers."
Pakter is one of the world's experts on the oil painting techniques of the Old Masters. He has created exact replicas of the world's rarest and most famous paintings, including works by Michelangelo, Van Dyck and Velazquez. Pakter commands high fees for such reproductions. He also owns a world-famous watch company that sells watches for $250 to $450.
In 1997, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani honored Pakter as a Teacher of the Year at a City Hall ceremony.
Pakter was widely acclaimed for creating an award-winning medical illustration class and was, in fact, praised by some of the very people who later sought to have him fired.
In April 2003, Appell wrote to Pakter thanking him for welcoming the school's principals-for-a-day. The next month, Appell asked Pakter to write a report for a group of well-heeled East Siders called "Friends of Art and Design." Appell thanked him in writing for taking his time after school to both write the report and make a presentation. Before the video episode, she also gave Pakter a Satisfactory rating, concluding with: "It was a pleasure ... observing the rich environment you have created in your classroom."
Earlier this month, Pakter filed a $30 million "Notice of Claim" with the city comptroller, alleging that Klein and his staff violated his civil rights. The city has 90 days to respond and if no settlement is reached, the case will wind up in court.
Pakter is suing Mayor Bloomberg, Klein, Jacobson, two DOE doctors, Region 9 Superintendent Peter Heaney, Deputy Superintendent Mariano Guzman, LIS Penzell, Deputy Director of DOE Human Resources Lawrence Becker, principals Appell, Lachky, Nieto and an assistant principal, Mary Ann Geist-Denino.
Pakter had effusive praise for his UFT colleagues who helped him throughout his ordeal. "During my entire 3020-a trial, the parties involved only agreed to let me call one single witness — the Art and Design Chapter Leader Larry Taylor. I also contacted [former UFT Vice President] Frank Carucci as well as [UFT Special Representative] Klaus Bornemann and asked them to testify."
Pakter said "to their everlasting credit and honor, both Frank and Klaus appeared on the last day of my trial and spoke about how I had fought to protect the constitutional rights of the mostly minority students at Art and Design who were being cheated."
Pakter said NYSUT attorney Chris Callagy "did a fabulous job against all odds. Callagy's final summation was astoundingly powerful." Pakter also praised the union and President Randi Weingarten for their cooperation through his ordeal.
The offending plants, which were "unauthorized gifts," are still at the HS for Fashion Industries.
— Jim Callaghan
New York Teacher
2007-03-15
