This hag is the current head of the problem. President of the Teachers Union in NYC.
Posted on 06/29/2005 1:20:57 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Abuse cases suggest some schools are havens for sexual predators on staff
Julia Haich had been misled by the school she trusted to protect her, and now another girl was suffering.
On March 20, Steven Ostrin, a 51-year-old history teacher at New York's prestigious Brooklyn Tech, was arrested for allegedly groping and kissing a 15-year-old student.
It was not his first offense. Haich, now 19, said Ostrin molested her in 2002--but when she reported the assaults to school officials, they persuaded her not to press charges, promising Ostrin would retire at the end of the academic year. Haich believed them.
"I thought if I spoke up about what happened, it would never happen again," she told the New York Daily News for a March 29 story. "I was wrong."
Predators Lurking Nationwide
Haich's 2002 accusations were not the first ever leveled at Ostrin. According to the Daily News story, in 1992 female students at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn complained that Ostrin "told X-rated stories and rubbed their shoulders and arms."
In response, "officials placed a letter in Ostrin's file and ordered him to 'act appropriately,'" the Daily News reported. Despite that admonition, Ostrin continued to make off-color remarks in front of students and to touch them--behavior he attributed to being a "touchy-feely person."
Assaults like those allegedly perpetrated by Ostrin are not uncommon in public schools. Nor is it uncommon for districts to fail to adequately protect students from them.
According to a report from the state's auditor general and a Detroit News investigation, Michigan fails to keep tabs on teachers convicted of sexual assault and other crimes. More than 200 licensed school workers in Michigan had criminal records in 2004, and the state didn't know about 178 of them.
In addition, the state often failed to revoke the certification of teachers found guilty of crimes--including, according to the Lansing State Journal, Matthew Mankoff, a band teacher in Deckerville found guilty of soliciting sex from a minor in 2003, and William Ayler, a Detroit teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to one count of second-degree sexual assault.
In Florida, David Mosquera, a 71-year-old Orange County school bus monitor, was arrested in April and charged with eight counts of abuse for molesting a special-needs child.
Complaints Are Common
Earlier this year, a Berwyn, Illinois elementary school band teacher was arrested on charges of molesting five girls between 1999 and 2003. According to court documents, Robert Sperlik, 45, used duct tape to bind his victims to chairs before fondling them.
Although Sperlik's arrest didn't come until 2005, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that in 2001 three girls told district officials Sperlik had touched them inappropriately. In response, the district placed in Sperlik's file a reprimand and guidelines on how to teach without touching. The police didn't hear about the 2001 allegations until they were contacted in January 2005.
According to Educator Sexual Misconduct, a 2004 report by Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft, as many as one out of every 10 children will suffer school employee sexual misconduct at some point between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes teachers telling sexually themed jokes or making suggestive gestures--mild behavior compared to the acts allegedly committed by people like Mosquera and Sperlik, but behavior that can harm students nonetheless.
Of course, no one wants potentially threatening employees in the schools. So why are incidents of misconduct so prevalent?
Communication Is Lacking
The first problem is that keeping predators out of schools is difficult because many have no records of abuse before they're hired. As a result, Shakeshaft noted, "screening will not identify the majority of educators who have or will sexually abuse."
The system also breaks down, as the Michigan auditor general found, because individuals with criminal backgrounds often aren't adequately tracked due to communication breakdowns between school districts and police departments.
New York City, in particular, may have a political atmosphere that exacerbates the problem, said Betsy Combier, president of the E-Accountability Foundation, a local group that keeps tabs on public school officials. She said New York City school board members often are more interested in hiring people who won't rock the boat about district decisions than they are about safety.
"[They] want to hire teachers who are new, who they can mold," she explained.
Teacher Contracts Impede Removal
Perhaps even more vexing than schools' inability to find predators in the initial screening is the difficulty officials have in removing them once they have been identified. Policymakers often blame teacher contracts that make removing suspect teachers extremely difficult.
According to an April 22 New York Post article, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg blamed the collectively bargained teacher contract for difficulties in heading off predators.
"If you look back in history, [sex abuse is] not a huge scandal. It is unfortunately business as usual," Bloomberg said, noting that firing teachers is a Herculean task, and because of that, sexual assaults happen far too frequently. "It just goes to reflect the fact that unfortunately at the moment, the city really has little recourse to terminate teachers who abuse their position."
Mike Antonucci, director of the Education Intelligence Agency, an organization that tracks education labor unions, agreed, saying that in districts around the country union contracts require administrators to follow onerous, costly procedures before they can fire a teacher, and hence "when a case is not clear-cut ... districts will always side with employees."
Suspected Teachers Collect Pay
Common Good, a group dedicated to restoring "common sense to American law," corroborates those conclusions, noting in its November 2004 report Over Ruled: The Burden of Law on America's Public Schools it can take longer than a year in New York City to oust a bad teacher.
In addition, the New York Daily News reported in an April 22 editorial that school officials can't actually do the firing. The best they can do is assign suspected teachers to so-called "rubber rooms"--where they are segregated from students but continue to collect full pay--until their case is heard by administrators.
Effort Is Just Beginning
Combier believes the solution to the problem is to close the door on predatory teachers. She said districts should hire a neutral third party, such as an education ombudsman, to investigate allegations of teacher abuse.
In her report, Shakeshaft agreed, saying that in addition to doing things like writing clear guidelines describing inappropriate teacher behavior and meticulously screening new hires, districts should "appoint a case coordinator who handles all incidents of educator sexual misconduct. In the most effective structure, the case coordinator is outside of district control but with regulatory authority within the district."
Shakeshaft prefaced her recommendation by noting, "[b]ecause so little has been done to prevent educator sexual misconduct ... there are no studies of the effectiveness of prevention programs or legislation." Therefore, any reforms undertaken in the near future will be just the beginning of the effort to combat predators in the nation's public schools.
Here is today's list Results: 1,930 for teacher arrested. (0.71 seconds)
Neighbors were suspicious when Fox drove up with her new Toyota because she often complained about subsisting on a public school teacher's meager salary, Koh said.
"She's always saying that she doesn't have any money and doesn't know how she's going to pay her bills," Koh said. ***
At the heart of the discrepancy may well be a reluctance on the part of educators to report campus crime fully. A survey by the National Association of School Resource Officers found that 89 percent of school police believe crime is already underreported. "It's the scarlet letter in education today," says Mr. Trump.administrators have said to me privately that they would rather be academically failing than be a dangerous school." ***
No deep pockets to go after AND the teachers' union is the Democratic Party's biggest money and muscle contributor, so the msm media isn't going to pursue it.
NEA views students as having only coincidental importance to the educational system.
…………..Once the Harris County fire marshal's report is in hand, "our folks will then do a thorough investigation and then make a decision as far as employment status," said Leticia Fehling, Aldine ISD spokeswoman.
…………..After calling her in for questioning last week, Fox admitted to the hatched plan.
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Above from LINK in Post # 2. I have no doubt she will remain on full salary until she is (if caught) convicted.
This hag is the current head of the problem. President of the Teachers Union in NYC.
Looks aside, she no doubt is an active Democrat Party supporter.
If we think it's bad now wait until Hillary Clinton runs for president.
******
At ten minutes after two, Mrs. Clinton made a regal entrance. Her hostess was Randi Weingarten, president of the union, who delivered a little sermon on class size.
snip
Randi Weingarten lauded the federal government, "led by President and Mrs. Clinton" (we'll be hearing more of this), for-please follow-"getting more money for class size in New York." All the while, Mrs. Clinton nodded robotically. She didn't seem to be listening, particularly; rather, she was on auto-nod.
Then came Virginia Fields, Manhattan borough president, to sing the same class-size song. There were fully "twenty-seven students" in the typical New York classroom, a situation that no teacher could tolerate. Next up was a real-live teacher, who proclaimed herself, with giddy enthusiasm and pride, "fully certified!" The crowd burst into applause. The woman might as well have announced that she'd won the Olympic decathlon. She assured her listeners, from the front lines, that class size was all-determining.
snip
Tom Junod recently devoted an entire piece in Esquire to Mrs. Clinton's physical appeal: "She has a sexy mouth, I think," it began. The First Lady looks markedly unlike her pictures of even two years ago. Gail Sheehy, a new Hillary biographer, has said, "I've heard from a number of people close to [Mrs. Clinton] that she's had a chin lift, eye tucks, and liposuction on her thighs and behind." Mrs. Clinton has a fabulously skilled makeover team in New York.
snip
For these people-the core of the Democratic party, certainly in New York-Hillary Clinton is no ordinary politician. They love her. Really, truly love her. They look at her as Randi Weingarten did: with swoony, groupie, grateful eyes. She seems to represent all their political hopes and dreams, which is to say, all their hopes and dreams. After the crowd quieted, Randi Weingarten and Virginia Fields hugged each other. "That was good!" exclaimed one to the other. Yes, from their perspective, it was. Very good.
http://tinyurl.com/8vpc8
Inside and outside the classroom, the teachers' union will go all out for Hillary. They will throw campaign contributions at her, man the phones with unprecedented zeal and instruct their students of the importance of her candidacy and election to the White House.
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Disturbing. Thanks for posting.
The real crime is that we tolerate this.
We actually believe that the police will protect our children.
They cannot. They do not. They will not.
Don't we see that the system IS the problem.
We have exactly what we tolerate every day.
Don't just sit there, do something!
Yes. People have choices.
They can pull their kids out.
They can send letters and call.
They can make themselves heard.
Too many are happy to accept one of those, "My Child is a Genius at........" (fill in the blank), bumper stickers handed out by their child's school. It makes them feel like good parents and the schools deflect any scrutiny.
Looks aside, she no doubt is an active Democrat Party supporter.
Have you seen that poster comparing Republican women to Democratic ones? It's hilarious.
Too many are happy to accept one of those, "My Child is a Genius at........" (fill in the blank), bumper stickers handed out by their child's school. It makes them feel like good parents and the schools deflect any scrutiny.
Too bad I've never seen one:).
I do agree with the rest.
In my school district/state, if you are even accused of such a crime, you're out the door. My uncle lost his teaching job despite being proved innocent (the accuse was a drug addict).
We do have good community schools where I'm from.
Are you another of those 2nd amendment mamas? I've seen a lot of good ones in the past few days. It's neat to see some good tough moms teaching passing on that heritage to their kids.
I am a strong 2nd amendment supporter, yes. Just your average kitchen militia type!
Actually, I already dig pretty deep and my local PTA does not do that at all. The community is my neighborhood and the people in it and not the nea.
That is neat that you are a 2nd amendment person. It's something I strongly support too, though I don't carry.
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