Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew called for an overhaul of the city Education Department’s employee discipline procedures in a highly critical letter sent to agency officials Friday.
In a two-page missive delivered to city schools boss Carmen Fariña and distributed to the press, Mulgrew urged Fariña to create a more fair process for probing and punishing teachers.
Proof that the current system needs work, Mulgrew writes, is a report by city investigators released last week that detailed the department’s mishandling of the investigation and suspension of a beloved Manhattan school therapist whose punishment has since been overturned.
“Students should not be deprived of able educators based on shoddy investigative work or personal predispositions, and we should never permit politics and personal agendas to matter more that truth,” Mulgrew wrote to Fariña.
In the letter, Mulgrew called on Fariña to create new, transparent and objective procedures for reviewing the findings of investigations of teachers.
He cited the case of Manhattan Public School 333 therapist Debra Fisher, who got into trouble for sending an email during work hours in October, seeking to raise cash for a needy student.
Fisher, a 10-year veteran of city schools, was suspended without pay for 30 days over the incident, fueling the ire of families across the city.
But on Aug. 18, a report from the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation found that an Education Department investigator made inaccurate statements and drew the wrong conclusions in his probe of Fisher.
Education officials reversed Fisher’s punishment four days later.
In his letter, the union chief demanded an objective review of previously closed investigations conducted by the investigator who botched the Fisher case.
Mulgrew, who has enjoyed a smooth and relatively cordial relationship with Fariña — compared to his battles with her predecessors — wouldn’t comment on the flap. Neither would union reps.
But Education Department spokeswoman Devora Kaye said the agency’s reorganization of its investigative unit is already underway.
“We hired a new director…to overhaul the division, and every case will now have an attorney reviewing and drafting the final investigative report,” Kaye said.
Fisher, who will return to work with a clean record when the new school year begins in September, agreed that the agency’s investigative process needs a fix.
“I think that changes need to be made,” Fisher said. “This system should not be hurting good people and that’s the bottom line.”
