Among the contracts and school siting proposals on the agenda for last night’s school board meeting, one unusual item stood out — an “inquest on employee termination.”
The ominous-sounding phrase meant that before the public meeting, the board met in private to hear the case of a school employee whom the city wants to fire.
Under state education law, teachers and other pedagogical staff have 10 days after being charged with incompetence or misconduct to request a hearing. Teachers and principals who do not file a request for a hearing within that time waive their right to a hearing and the case goes before the board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy.
Department of Education officials would not comment on any details about the employee whose case was heard, nor would they confirm whether the person was a teacher, principal or other staff member.
During an inquest, a DOE attorney presents the city’s case to panel members, who come back with a final decision within a few weeks, said Claude Hersh, a lawyer with the state teachers union whose office handles cases of teachers charged with misconduct or incompetence.
In a sense, the city is presenting its case for termination to the city during an inquest: A majority of PEP members are appointed by the mayor. ”The determination is always termination of employment,” Hersh said.
Hersh said that in past years, his office has received between five and 10 notices of inquests per year. Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s appointee to the panel, confirmed that yesterday’s inquest wasn’t the first the panel has heard this year.
Typically, Hersh said, teachers who fail to request a hearing claim they never received a packet with their charges, but the city rarely allows late requests for a hearing to be honored.
The PEP inquest process is an offshoot of the regular process for firing tenured teachers, principals and other pedagogical staff, which critics — including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein — complain is too costly and arduous. Since the city launched a campaign to speed the process of firing teachers for incompetence, it has successfully terminated just three teachers.
Source: Maura Walz