Teacher Claims Blacklisting For Exposing School Woes; Got 'U' After Years of A's
By DAVID SIMS
A 10-year veteran Special Education Teacher claims that she has been blacklisted after blowing the whistle on an incompetent Principal and exposing mistreatment of special needs students within her school.

CARMEN APPLEWHITE: Spoke up, now can't get a job.

Carmen Applewhite, who taught at P.S. 304 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was given a "U" rating by her Principal at the end of the 2007-2008 school year. The school has since shut down and she is without a job as the new term begins.

'Kids Out of Control; Teachers Out'

The crux of Ms. Applewhite's repeated complaints against her Principal at P.S. 304, Laverne Robinson, was that a special needs class was left without a Teacher for most of the past school year. "Kids were out of control, being injured and being hurt," she said. The first Teacher of the class left after one day, and the second one, hired in November, left in January because "[She] couldn't take it anymore. When that Teacher left, the kids were without a Teacher ... the Principal was breaking up the class and putting them into general ed. classes, which is illegal."

Ms. Applewhite said another Teacher was hired for the class in January, but because the classroom was "total chaos, every day" with kids "throwing chairs ... and walking out of the building," that Teacher was removed by April and worked as a day-to-day sub elsewhere in the school from then on. She said the special needs children were "assigned to myself and others ... the Principal started harassing me, trying to force me into taking the most disruptive kids in the classroom."

"Every day I came to work, my schedule would be switched, or they would give me the most disruptive kids in the classroom," she said. "Nobody else could handle these kids. [The Principal] would have the kids go into her office and play on her computer. They went onto a porn site, they would run through the building, they would fight all day."

Union Unable to Help

Ms. Applewhite, who had been a United Federation of Teachers chapter leader at P.S. 304 for eight years and won the union's Tratchenburg award for activism, said that she "went to the union" and that "they claimed they were working on it, they were doing their best ... but still nothing was being done." She also went to State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, filing a formal complaint saying that "children with special needs in my school were denied their rights to a free and appropriate education."

Mr. Mills sent a representative to inspect the school in May, who "questioned other Teachers in the school, met with the Principal and the Superintendent," according to Ms. Applewhite, before sustaining her claims. On June 20, Ms. Applewhite was given a "U" rating by Ms. Robinson, after having received an "A" rating in previous years. She charged the downgrade came in retaliation for whistle-blowing. "I got a U to shut me up, basically, and I won't shut up," she said.

Ms. Applewhite has filed a petition with the Public Employment Relations Board to overturn the U rating, and has been provided with an attorney by the UFT. Union President Randi Weingarten "is supporting me in terms of the PERB charge ... she is really the most compassionate union leader I have ever met," she said.

'No Job Because I Told Truth'

But due to her U rating, Ms. Applewhite has been unable to find another teaching job. "I'm floating," she said. "I'm a senior certified Teacher, I'm floating with no job, but people who are brand new to the system are being given jobs in my district. I don't have a job because I told the truth."

Two new schools are opening in the P.S. 304 building, the Young Scholar Academy and Brighter Choice Community School, but Ms. Applewhite has not been hired by either, or by any of the other 40 schools she has applied to. "I've gone out my way to raise the level of intelligence of my students, and I don't appreciate being treated this way," she said.