Cesspool Education

I could not imagine fate pulling another joke on me : in response to my summer job application, the Superintendent's Office sent me a letter assigning me to Middle College Summer School, supervised by ... Wiltshire and Ira Weston, Principal, Paul Robeson High School, another hopeless "brother".

Fuming with rage for being exposed as a cheat, a revengeful Wiltshire refused to give me a teaching program despite the shortage of math teachers they were grappling with.He hired substitute teachers with no math background -- thus,children were penalized, money was wasted for personal vendetta. I refused to leave because he had no valid justification to object to my assignment. Besides, the payroll secretary (Ms. Rivera, from Paul Robeson HS) confirmed I was on her list and gave me a time card. I spent the whole day in the teacher's lounge, surfing the internet, doing personal work,etc. Reality was catching up on him : student registration kept swelling, Weston did not understand why a tenured teacher was sitting idle and get paid. The situation became untenable : I was given a program on 7/8/03 : M$2, M$3 and M$5. However, Ms. Adonai, AP math, in her unwelcome visit to my retreat, told me ominously, "If I were you I would have left."

Three days before the end of the summer session, I was accused of (what else? ) corporal punishment !

On 8/7 at around 12 :30 , a loud announcement interrupted my instruction "Mr Fofana, please report to room 126 immediatement." Moment later, the chapter leader, Mr Lingaya, came in to replace me. Weston and Adonai were already waiting for me in room 126. Right off the bat, he said : "The Superintendant [Gloria Buckery] asked me to remove you immediately from the building for saying to students that they are "stupid" and their mothers should have 'abortions'. He left out the customary "allegedly", because he is a man of conviction, a-no-nonsense brother from the hood. I protested : " You cannot do that. There is a procedure. It's all in the Chancellor's Regulations A-420 and A-421, dealing with such allegations. " He ignored my remark and said : "you will be escorted out of the building immediately. If you come back, you will be arrested for trespassing". I need a copy of the letter or fax you received from the Superintendent, I said. There is none : it was all verbal. I asked him to put the instructions he received in writing. No, he said. Then, I asked him to give me a letter ordering me to leave the building and the reason. Once again, No. I replied : “then I won't leave”. At that point, he called security in and asked him to escort me to the classroom so I can to pick up my personal belongings and leave the building. Uneasy, Mr. Williams, the security guard , told me that he was doing his job. I replied “ I will leave the building at the end of the day like everybody.” Weston gave in, but told me shortly before I left : "If you come back tomorrow , I will call the police and you will be arrested for trespassing." I replied : "I will be back tomorrow accompanied with the media to get arrested."

Knowing she was wrong, and probably nervous about being the focus of the media attention barely two months into her new position, Gloria Buckery called me at 4 PM at home, admitted for instructing Weston to kick me out of the building, and asked me to return the next day : she would be in the buiding to discuss the matter. "Are you not aware of the Chancellor Regulations that govern allegations of corporal and verbal abuse ?" She would not answer, simply repeated "I'll see you tomorrow." And yet she did not show up ; instead she instructed Weston to follow the procedure outlined by the DOE bylaws : step 1 was this letter.
Wiltshire, coming from a short break, refused to get involved :" I won't investigate anything because I was not in the building." The West Indian probably smelled an ambush : he did not get along with his African American counterpart, I was told. I was amused. No "investigation" was conducted. They are accountable to nobody.

In September, Charley Turner, Brooklyn Borough UFT representative, advised me to contact Angela Santoro, Region 6 Personel Director, Regional Operations Center (Staten Island), to discuss my "dangling" situation. After I explained the situation to her, she asked me to wait for her to inquire about my "status" with the DOE general counsel office. It took her the whole school year to send me back to Middle College High School (September 7, 2004): in effect, I was a rubber room "honorary guest" from September 2003 to August 2004.

I resumed teaching on September 7 -- the mother of all semester. It was retribution time : on December 7, I was removed from classroom for yet another "corporal punishment". The bogus charge was the culmination of the harassment Wiltshire staged methodically with his minions' help : arbitrary modification of my teaching program ; four lesson observations (two in one day !) rated unsatisfactory ; an avalanche of letters put in my file; refusal to address egregious instruction disruption duly documented : an incentive the perpetrators did not miss ; etc...