Michael Hicks
Grady HS
Grady HS (benny j. stumbo)
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He needs to be taught a lesson!
An outraged UFT chapter leader yesterday called on union boss Michael Mulgrew to step down if he traded away his members’ rights to school officials who hushed up his alleged classroom affair with a guidance counselor.
The startling accusations came in a federal lawsuit filed in Suffolk County that names Mulgrew, the United Federation of Teachers, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott.
Jeff Kaufman, a union chapter leader at Aspirations Diploma HS in Brooklyn, said he and other teachers “would expect him to resign’’ if he’s guilty.
Kaufman, an outspoken member of a faction that opposes Mulgrew, said, “We have an election next year, when a group of us will be mounting a battle to unseat him, and if we find there’s anything suggesting any proof to the allegations — that he gave up something to suppress the story — we’ll be all over him for it.
“The question is whether stories like that were suppressed and something was given for it.’’
The suit by Manhattan math teacher and union member Andrew Ostrowsky claims Mulgrew had sex with colleague Emelina Camacho-Mendez in the woodshop at William Grady HS in Brooklyn in 2005 when they both were working there.
It charges he and his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, who was grooming him for the top job, gave away their members’ hard-won protections in contract talks with the city to keep the tryst quiet.
“All of a sudden Mulgrew was sitting at the table . . . Most people didn’t even know who he was,” said Kaufman. “He just slipped in as VP, and then it was just a matter of time before he absorbed the presidency.”
Mulgrew became UFT president in 2009 when Weingarten took over as head of the American Federation of Teachers. Anti-Mulgrew activists say the married Camacho-Mendez was also rewarded.
They pointed to a series of cushy union gigs that Camacho-Mendez landed — despite having no background or training in labor relations.
When Mulgrew became a district rep, she was given a part-time union job in addition to her guidance gig. As her mentor moved up in union ranks, she followed him.
She eventually became a full-time union employe and was named liaison for special education.
Mulgrew’s opponents said her “patronage’’ jobs are proof the union cares more about sustaining itself than about fighting to protect its members.
Even a former UFT staffer was outraged.
“I’m hoping this story eats away at the belief or the reliance on Michael Mulgrew that he is indeed putting members first,’’ said parent advocate Betsy Combier. “I think it certainly lends itself to people thinking maybe he’s not — so that has to hurt him at the next election.”
Mulgrew dismissed the lawsuit in an e-mail to union members, noting it was filed Joy Hochstadt, “an attorney who has previously been sanctioned and fined for bringing frivolous legal action.”
“It is unworthy of serious consideration, and our attorneys will be making that point to the court.’’
In 2010, Hochstadt was fined $21,000 for filing a suit with “numerous causes of action without any basis in law [or] fact.’’
Weingarten said, “We live in a country where people are allowed to file crazy lawsuits. I’ve read through the allegations, and while they could be part of some fictional novel, they are utterly baseless in fact.”
Even Hochstadt admits she doesn’t have hard proof that Mulgrew and the counselor were caught in the act — or that an investigation was thwarted by union horse-trading with the city.
“Everyone has only hearsay knowledge, but almost everyone in the school talked about it,” the suit reads.
But it insists, “Mulgrew was embroiled in a meretricious scandal for which anyone else would have been fired, ending his career as an educator,” the suit claims.
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh and Dan MacLeod