Holding DOE Accountable

One instance in which the Department of Education failed to respond intelligently to the needs of Teachers recently came back into focus when an appellate court ruled against its appeal of a $512,000 jury award to a special education Teacher who was assaulted by a problem student.

The Teacher, Zelinda Dinardo, a decade ago notified her direct supervisor, as well as the Assistant Principal and Principal at her Bronx school, that one 10-year-old student had become uncontrollable and should be transferred to another program. What was then the Board of Education failed to follow through on the administrative process required for such a transfer, and when the student tried to attack another student in March 1999 and Ms. Dinardo intervened, she was injured.

Rather than acknowledge liability, the school system argued that its informal pledge to secure the student's transfer was not binding and that Ms. Dinardo should have taken the initiative to ensure that the process was carried out.

A slim majority of the five-person appellate panel upheld the jury award, finding that her supervisor's telling her to "hang in there because something was being done" to transfer the student amounted to an assurance that officials were following through on her request.

Frankly, we're surprised that two justices dissented from the majority opinion. In a case where a Teacher has notified everyone in the school's chain of command including the Principal about a problem student, it seems indisputable that she has done all that is required of her to achieve that transfer. Teachers are supposed to teach; supervisors are supposed to deal with anything that poses an obstacle to their doing their jobs.

In this instance, those supervisors didn't hold up their end, and a Teacher got hurt because of their failures. This one was not a case that the city should have wasted time and money appealing once the jury rendered its verdict last April.