This teacher may have to change her Facebook status to “fired.”
Veteran Brooklyn teacher Christine Rubino is fighting for her career after she vented her frustration with unruly fifth-graders by referring to the shocking death, the day before, of a 12-year-old Harlem school girl who drowned on a class trip to the beach.
“After today, I’m thinking the beach is a good trip for my class. I hate their guts,” Rubino pecked on her BlackBerry last June, moments after leaving PS 203 in the Flatlands neighborhood.
Minutes later, a Facebook friend asked, “Wouldn’t you throw a life jacket to little Kwami?”
“No, I wouldn’t for a million dollars,” Rubino replied.
Rubino, 38, who has a master’s degree in math education and has taught at PS 203 for 15 years, admits she made the insensitive comments “out of pure anger” at her students’ rowdy behavior last June 23, but maintains the online outburst was private — unseen by pupils or parents.
A fellow teacher – one of 11 school staffers among Rubino’s Facebook “friends” — copied the steam-blowing remarks and showed them to an assistant principal, who alerted the principal.
A bad situation got worse. After a probe by schools investigator Richard Condon’s office, Rubino was confronted for the first time about the Facebook remarks six months later in December, she said. Rubino told officials that others had access to her Facebook account. A longtime Rubino pal, who did not work at the school, later claimed that she had logged on as Rubino and posted the wisecracks.
Rubino insists her friend acted alone in trying to protect her: “We did not make up this story together and discuss what she would say.”
But investigators didn’t believe it. In termination hearings, Rubino is accused of “conduct unbecoming a teacher” and witness tampering.
Marshall Bellovin, a lawyer who specializes in teacher rights, said Rubino’s case raises questions of privacy.
“There’s an expectation that this posting is to be shared with friends, not the general public. Therefore, any severe measure taken against a teacher, in my opinion, would be unfair.”
The city Department of Education has no policy or rules on teachers’ use of social networking sites, though it fired at least three educators last year for improper contact with students on Facebook.
An assistant principal at PS 253 in Far Rockaway, Fred Iorio, was only reprimanded when he posted a furious rant on Facebook – humiliating a young teacher who had dumped him as a lover. Elsewhere, a Pennsylvania sociology professor was booted for joking on Facebook about wanting to “kill” students, including this comment: “Does anyone know where I can find a very discrete [sic] hitman? Yes, it’s been that kind of day.”
Rubino’s rant came a day after the June 22 drowning of sixth-grader Nicole Suriel, one of a group of students from Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering on a trip to a Long Island beach, which was closed and had no lifeguards on duty. Nicole was swept out to sea on a riptide, and found 90 minutes later after a frantic search.
Of her rant, Rubino told The Post, “It was something I said out of anger. I would never take my class to the beach. I would never hurt them.”
Rubino said her class was “out of control” that week, their last in elementary school, “spitting on each other, kicking each other, putting gum in each other’s hair.”
Without telling Rubino, fellow teacher David Senatore copied and e-mailed her spur-of-the-moment tirade to assistant principal Bryan Sadowski. Senatore declined to comment pending the DOE hearing.
Rubino, whose salary is $78,885, was yanked from the classroom last month, pending a Department of Education hearing.She contends the charges are retaliatory, stemming from a 2009 grievance she filed against Principal Lisa Esposito. Esposito denied Rubino’s request to teach remedial math full-time, a job she had done part-time for six years.
“It’s a witch hunt,” a distraught Rubino said. “I like my job. I’m good at it. That’s all they should worry about.”