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Teacher Shares Joys of Music - Gets Life Destroyed in Return
| Does Anyone Care? Even the
NYC Teachers Retirement Refuses Help! |
Name: *************
email: *************
Anonymous: Yes
Post: Yes
State: New York
County: Nassau
District: NYC
Story:
Hello. I need all sorts of help in my PTSD chronic
and severe state. I
am a totally disabled 54-year-old man. I have been somehow
surviving in poverty for many years on SSD only
for several years. I am in immediate need of legal smarts, laws. legal
presidents, etc, specifically for those totally disabled with chronic and severe
PTSD from school related horror...people who can help me take me on both
NYC and the NYC Board of Education.
What I have to tell you is that I'd appreciate if
this story can also be circulated somehow to anyone who can help. Also,
What I will say here is the God's honest truth. I have been ignored and
shunned by society, spare a few people, cast away like dirt...Someone who
knows my story is real, but is not representing me, due to my impoverished
state is ***************. Again, he just knows my full story, but doesn't
represent me, because of my inability to pay...and he has many of my Xeroxed
copies of documentation as a courtesy...he handled my divorce and home
sales many years ago. He will speak to appropriate people about my story
and about helping me.
In my 23rd teaching year in the NYC school
system, I was sent to the " battle-front", due to union rules
and excessing from another school. Overall, I spent close to a quarter
century career as a high school music teacher with required music
listening classes. That 23rd year was in the ghetto of Thomas Edison
Vocational and Technical High School, Jamaica, NY in excess of 50 plus per
class in 1991-92, my last active year. I ran away on sabbatical,
traumatized from the abuse. I endured so much from malcontented students
intent on doing me harm during my 23rd active year, especially.
I could never return to the
classroom...Eventually, the NYC Board of Ed. cut off all salary and
benefits to me, by the fall of 1994. I was a wreck from Edison Vocational
HS in Jamaica Queens, my last workplace. Frankly, many of the students I
had in that basement classroom were intent on hurting me every day.
I had filed 14 incident and accident reports, but
was a really victim sometimes as much as 5 or six times any in one
45-minute period. I estimate over 90 incidents of harassment and
perpetration towards me, including threats to my life, being pushed, punched
from behind by a crowd, pushed down steps, having to dive away from metal
and glass chucks thrown full force at me during the classes, having the
intercom ripped out by students, were committed in just the spring of '92
alone.
The kids were just really troubled and took out
their aggression on me, I, who had to teach alone in a basement room isolated
from everyone.
The NY State mandated course of study was called
"Music in Our Lives" The course, designed by NY State Regents,
was mostly a listening course to mostly classical music-styles...it was
mostly a listening course based on the masterpieces of western music. The
kids demanded rap, etc...It was not the coursework.
The new young Principal, Alan Feuer, who has been
out of NYC schools for good for years, not wanting to make waves, passed
the buck. The new Superintendent. Margaret Harrington, refused to suspend
any students at all in all Queens High Schools most of the first half of
that school year, 1991-2 to prove she, Ms. M. Harrington, was better than
her predecessor. So the kids were left without any means of being removed
from the school, and the discipline with an average of 54 collapsed
despite my sending letters home and writing referrals. The union rep was
unable to remedy the situation due to archaic and steadfast UFT class size
rules which discriminated against music teachers only.
I was ultimately found by proper hospital Psych.
Units, like North Shore Hospital's adult Psychiatric units, and the
anxiety disorder department under Dr. J. *************, to have workplace
induced chronic and severe PTSD, among other injuries, directly related to
my classroom experience. I am on SSD only now, unemployable, in poverty.
I went homeless for part of the mind
1990s...terrified of everyone around me; from the PTSD...I was penniless,
living on cans, and credit cards debts, which I mounted.
I have never been a drug taker, never
ever...never smoked pot nor cigarettes, don't drink...I am the good
American boy who got his ass kicked by society...
I filed grievances against the NYC Board of
Education, claiming I should be classified "injured in the line
of duty." They ignored my
requests...After a many year lengthy grievance procedure, the required
administrative remedy, and the process out-of-court. The grievance
procedures concluded in the late fall. of 2000.
The UFT has refused to go to arbitration, and
that's that. Grievance over. I out of luck in administrative remedies,
Exactly what the UFT wants, due to the financial implications of any
victory I might have
achieved through administrative remedies concerning
the other 75,000 NYC teachers...
However, that administrative course, the required
administrative remedy before I could even go to a regular NY State Supreme
Court to claim damages vs. NYC and the NYC Board of ED Education doesn't
end things.
I now, with all my administrative remedied
exhausted, have proceeded in
a Long Island court -supreme court, for damages (Long Island only is where
I’ll get a fair hearing, where I reside...Any Hearing in the 5 boroughs
will be slanted towards the residents of NYC, because when the horrors
realize the financial implications of giving me a victory they'd never
allow it- the case must be on LI)- The award I might get, including back
pay/damages, etc., damages to my two daughters who were severely
afflicted, other ancillary damages to me, and the implications of my
psychiatric injuries towards other NYC teachers who might wish to proceed
down a similar path as I have to get damages could be total unbelievable
in terms of dollars.
To make matters worse, the NYC Teachers Retirement
System will, I understand, will deny me my regular earned pension at age
55 unless I no longer have a medical dispute with the NYC Board of
Education. No medical dispute means no law suits. I'm not dropping the
suits. so they refuse to pay me a pension which will be considerably less than
one where if I can show I was indeed injured in the line of duty, they would
owe me years of back salary, benefits, with punitive damages of all sorts.
They seem to be saying that I have no right to sue if I expect my regular
pension until this is all resolved. It appears to be some constitutional
or other law breaking in their part...the 14th amendment to the
constitution say life, liberty and property...my pension is my earned
property and I think they are stealing from me if they refuse paying me my
regular pension starting thus summer when I turn 55. I might have to go
into federal court on my own to start another suit, or does anyone have
any other ideas about any of this?..It is all a nightmare!
I need ideas, laws. legal cases to back my
claims, etc. Anything protected under the DAD? Any cases for ADA people?
The City wants to claim that under their Education laws, I had only a
three month window from the "Incident which caused ny injury" to
let them know via a "Notice of Claim" Yet, the PTSD I have was from
the daily prolonged bombardment.
I need legal precedence which shows their laws
and regulations illeal, backwards, unfair, discriminatory, and
unconstitutional, that Prolonged Duress stress is a type of PTSD, that my
hospital diagnosed chronic and severe PTSD and Generalized Anxiety
disorder which I have was due to NYC Board of education negligence in
providing me with a safe environment to work in, and I was target of the malicious
inner city students.
Though I filed only 14 incident and accident
reports, there were so many more times I just sought to get the hell out
as fast as possible each day, and I just couldn't write these out., I do
also have a huge stack of referrals to the dean during that year for other
disciplinary reasons. I also have written a 468 page book on word 5.1,
unpublished, called "Blackboard Bungle-Destruction of a Teacher"
about my dangerous career in NYC...
Anyone who will speak to me ****************, who
knows my story in full for further info, would be appreciated...
I had been homeless, then lived in single rooms
in some houses on Long Island. I lost my family, marriage, and only fairly
recently have started a better relationship with my frown daughters. I am
now long since divorced. My daughters also suffered form my ordeal
greatly.
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
Sincerely,
*************
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Page established: 01/17/03
Last revised: Friday, January 17, 2003 02:24:19 PM
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