A male teacher touched middle-school girls, stroked their hair and told one, “You’re so beautiful.” A special-ed instructor smacked children with a broomstick. A second-grade teacher had kids wash their hands in the toilet.
All kept their city jobs — as did many others found inept, dishonest or potentially dangerous.
The city recently blamed the United Federation of Teachers for a backlog of 400 educators the Department of Education has shoveled into termination proceedings. In a lawsuit, it charged the union has dragged its feet in a joint task to select more hearing officers to conduct trials.
But the DOE has a lackluster 38 percent batting average in firing teachers and administrators it does get to trial, records reviewed by The Post show.
In 72 decisions issued so far this year, hearing officers found misconduct or incompetence in 68 cases, but agreed to fire just 28, the department said.
And fired teachers don’t always stayed fired. A court last month ordered the reinstatement of Damian Esteban, a recovering junkie who taught at Williamsburg HS for Architecture and Design in Brooklyn, despite his bust for bringing heroin to jury duty. The city is appealing.
State law requires that an independent hearing officer decide whether a tenured educator is guilty of charges and, if so, set the punishment.
Among those spared the ax:
- Peter Klueber, a phys-ed teacher at Aspire Preparatory Middle School in the Bronx, made several girls uncomfortable by touching their bodies, in one case coming from behind and grabbing a girl by the waist to “show her how to shoot a foul shot.” He slid his fingers through another girl’s hair, saying. “I like your hair, it’s really pretty,” the arbitrator found. Klueber, who insisted it was all innocent, had previously been warned and removed for six weeks after an allegation of “inappropriate touching and comments.” Despite the repeat offenses, the hearing officer imposed a six-week suspension again, mandated courses on avoiding sex harassment, and warned that another misstep “may very likely lead to dismissal.”
- Mohammad Khawaja, English teacher and head football coach at Automotive HS in Brooklyn, stashed two knives — 8 ¹/₂ inches and 2/1/2 inches long — that a football player brought to school. He let the kid join the game, and returned the knives to the boy without alerting officials. Despite his “extremely serious misconduct,” Khawaja was remorseful and “sufficiently chastened.” Penalty: a $15,000 fine.
- Lynn Passarella, principal of Theatre Arts Production Company School in the Bronx, falsified student transcripts and gave credit for courses not taken, inflating the school’s graduation rate and awarding unearned diplomas. The arbitrator agreed Passarella should never serve as a principal again, but ordered her assigned to an administrative job at the same $145,493 salary.
- Stephen Hudson, a hulking dean at George Westinghouse HS in Brooklyn, brutally roughed up a scrawny kid who disobeyed him in the cafeteria. Hudson failed to report the incident, until a video on YouTube showed him grabbing, swinging and slamming the boy into tables. He insisted it was self-defense. The hearing officer called it a “momentary lapse in judgment.” Penalty: a $10,000 fine and an anger management course.
- Evelyn Taylor, a veteran teacher at PS 12 in Brooklyn, admitted she had her second-grade class wash paint off their hands in the toilet because the water pressure in the sink was low. The 7-year-olds kneeled at the bowl and rinsed. Taylor said she was ashamed, and “acknowledged she had betrayed the trust of parents.” The penalty: a 30-day suspension.
- Craig Knight, an English teacher at the Brooklyn HS for Law and Technology, gave a lesson on the Smart Board, using his own laptop. Up popped porn showing a nude woman performing oral sex on a man. The ninth-graders giggled. Knight apologized. The hearing officer agreed the “accident” should not cost Knight his job. Penalty: a $1,500 fine.
Betsy Combier, a paralegal who helps teachers in disciplinary hearings, said the city loses its bid to fire many teachers “because the charges don’t warrant it.”
“The DOE makes mountains out of molehills,” she said. “It wants to terminate everybody. Most arbitrators disagree, and find a penalty that fits the proven offense.”
The terminated include a special-ed teacher who called students “monkeys” and “retarded;” another who twisted the arms of autistic kids; a teacher who couldn’t control her class and sprawled on the floor asleep; a teacher who gave a girl student marijuana and liquor in his car; a high-school teacher who sexually molested a student.
A DOE spokesman said, “We seek termination when we strongly believe that an educator is no longer fit to be in the classroom. It is disappointing that even in the most shocking and well-documented cases of misconduct or incompetence, arbitrators still deem many of the defendants fit to work with children.”
In their rulings, arbitrators explain they refrain from firing if they believe an educator can be “rehabilitated.” Some say the purpose of the hearing is “corrective, not punitive.”
These teachers weren’t fired for:
Hitting a kid: Shenequa Duke, Henry Hudson Intermediate School, IS 125
This tenured vet smacked a student with a broomstick and told one student to “get out of her f–king classroom,” a hearing officer found. While working at a Bronx middle school, Duke broom-whacked a student on the hand so hard he began crying. She denied it, but conceded the student asked her, “Why are you always hitting me?”
Duke was also overheard threatening to clock a student’s mother in the face, saying, “I hate these f–king kids.” The hearing officer decided Duke’s offense was “mitigated” by “13 years of service.”
Penalty: 45-day suspension without pay, sensitivity training.
Ragging on an autistic student: Varsha Sankar, PS 141
Sankar, a Brooklyn special ed teacher, joined a group of colleagues in ridiculing an autistic student in March 2012, asking, “Who brings you to the bathroom? Does President Obama take you to the bathroom?” When the 7-year-old boy responded, “Yes,” they laughed in his face.
The boy’s mother learned of their bullying by hiding a recording device in the lining of her son’s jacket. Sankar, who denied the Obama put-down, also dissed the boy’s mother as “Puerto Rican ghetto” in the classroom, an investigator found.
“She’s never worked a day in her life,” Sankar said of the mom.
She admitted to making “inappropriate comments” about the mother, but the hearing officer deemed firing unfair … given the nature of the misconduct proven in this case.”
Penalty: A reprimand and a $3,600 fine.
“Thrusting or grinding” near a colleague: Robert Maniaci, Staten Island Technical High School
Maniaci, a gym and health teacher, was accused of rubbing his junk against paraprofessional Josepha Corselli’s butt in front of colleagues.
Corselli stormed out of the gym office. Maniaci bragged to a co-worker that she sat in his lap and put her “a– in his face.”
“I’m just joking. I’m just joking,” he said. Later that day, he offered another excuse: “I have [attention deficit disorder]. I didn’t take my medicine.”
The hearing officer found Maniaci not guilty of making motions against Corselli’s body, but “while standing next to her.” She said termination wasn’t warranted because “other arbitrators” handling similar cases didn’t decide that way.
Penalty: $10,000 fine and five-month suspension.
Promoting a student fight-club: Joseph Gullotta, PS 65
As two of his elementary school-aged charges duked it out in class, Gullotta did exactly what every parent would not want a teacher to do.
“Fight, fight, fight,” he chanted, according to one witness.
One of the boy brawlers suffered a bloody lip. Gullotta instructed him to tell the nurse he got it banging into his opponent’s head when he “bent down to pick a pencil,” according to the boy.
Gullotta denied encouraging the fight and telling his students to lie.He blamed their injuries on “horseplay.”
The arbitrator refused to fire Gullotta because of his “years of successful service.”
Penalty: $20,000 fine.
Encouraging suicide: Kourtney Carter, Felisa Rincon de Gautier Institute for Law and Public Policy
After a student revealed to her and the class that he once attempted suicide, the Bronx science teacher told him: “Keep trying, you may succeed,” an arbitrator found.,
She apologized to her class, saying later she thought the student was making light of suicide and the classic “boy who cried wolf.” But Carter’s pattern of behavior was disturbing, a hearing officer found.
Still, the hearing officer ruled against firing Carter, saying humiliating students was not her intent. “She still has the best interests of her students at heart.”
Penalty: Semester-long suspension.
Overtexting a student: Jennifer Aniello-Flanders, Life Academy High School for Film and Music
She exchanged more than 3,000 text messages with a student — a relationship the Department of Education described as “some sort of obsessive relationship where they need to speak to each other constantly.”
Though a sexual relationship was never proven, an arbitrator found Aniello-Flanders also engaged in 16 phone conversations with the student after 11 pm, and 475 in total.
The teacher claimed the boy’s mother gave her permission to “make any and all decisions deemed to be in [his] best interest.” The hearing officer noted that Aniello-Flanders had 15 years without problems.
Penalty: $6,000 fine.