Posted on 06/26/2002 3:35:24 AM PDT by kattracks
Daniel LaBianca, chief of outside funding for School District 14 in Brooklyn, pleaded guilty in 1999 to helping private school officials embezzle millions in federal aid for poor children.Three years later, he still holds his New York public school job — and has a $10,000 raise to boot.
A Daily News review of the seven cases since 1999 in which the Board of Education filed to terminate tenured school teachers or administrators with criminal convictions found that in every case, the crooks stayed in the school system.
The reason, say school officials, is Section 3020a of the state education statute, which requires private arbitrators to decide each case and gives the teacher's union equal say in picking the arbitrator.
In its latest contract negotiations, the union agreement preserves the use of outside arbitrators, ensuring the union a continued voice, but would shorten and streamline the process.
Teachers voted to ratify the 30-month contract last week.
LaBianca's case illustrates how difficult it is for school bosses to remove criminals from the payroll.
From 1993 through 1997, LaBianca justified inflated federal aid by adding fake numbers of boys to student enrollment at Beth Rachel, a private all-girls school in Williamsburg.
Since the 1970s, LaBianca's bosses had helped the principal, Rabbi Hertz Frankel, pad the school's payroll with dozens of no-show female employees from Frankel's Hasidic community.
Firing Bid Rebuffed
A year ago, the arbitrator assigned to the case, Richard Adelman, rejected the Board of Education's request to fire LaBianca.
Dumbfounded, board lawyers appealed.
Last month, a Supreme Court judge ruled Adelman had overstepped his authority. The court ordered LaBianca's case to go before a new arbitrator for a new hearing — a process that could take months.
LaBianca's lawyer had no comment.
Although some tenured teachers have agreed to leave their jobs to avoid ugly termination fights, other attempts to fire tenured employees for criminality have hit a brick wall in arbitration.
One teacher escaped board discipline after falsifying an auto accident insurance claim on a 1991 BMW. The Brooklyn district attorney convicted him and persuaded a court to seize his car.
The arbitrator assigned to his case didn't see how the fraudulent claim affected the teacher's classroom work.
Still another teacher, Derek Tolbert, concealed his arrest for harassment from school officials, used obscenities in class and lived with a former student who bore him a child.
Tolbert was not convicted of harassment, but it turned out he had concealed a previous arrest record when the schools hired him in 1985.
The arbitrator's ruling: a one-month suspension.
A spokesman for Tolbert's union lawyer said, "There was no credible evidence to merit dismissal."
In another case, three teachers were convicted of tenant fraud by pretending not to have their union teacher paychecks while applying for publicly subsidized housing.
The board wanted them fired. Arbitrators said no.
One drew a four-month suspension, the toughest recent punishment meted out to a convicted criminal in New York City schools. Larisa Yevtushenko, a Russian immigrant, was ordered by a court to pay $39,000 in restitution for concealing her teacher paycheck while receiving public housing subsidies between 1986 and 1997.
"It was an honest clerical mistake on my part," said Yevtushenko, who teaches English as a foreign language.
Union President Randi Weingarten rejected the idea that arbitrators give bad teachers an easy ride.
"I find it hard to believe that respected arbitrators are giving our members more benefit of the doubt than anyone else," Weingarten said. She said the outcome of cases is as much related to the quality of prosecution by the school system.
Under the new teachers contract, arbitrators in tenure discipline cases would be selected from a panel of 20 arbitrators, rather than from the pool of 200 to 300 now used.
The new contract also would require cases to be heard and decided within 90 days — or 60 days in cases involving employees with convictions — as opposed to the average 18 months it takes now to close a case.
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