The Two Faces Of Barbara Gsovski Of E4E

I noticed a lot of familiar names attached to the teacher evaluation manifesto that E4E put out the other day. Of course, E4E blog monkey™ Ruben Brosbe was amongst those names. But one name  did raise the eyebrows, in a Spock like way, of the crack team here at SBSB. Barbara Gsovski. We wondered here at SBSB, just who is this Barbara Gsovski?

According to the Viva Project, which Ms Gsovski is part of...

Barbara began her forty years career in education in a northeast Washington, D.C public school as the third 2nd grade teacher of that class mid-year. She worked as an early childhood teacher in private settings (NYC and Brooklyn), for the next 20 years. She now serves as a remediation specialist at the Northside Center for Child Development.

So if we look at her Linkedin page, Barbara who graduated from the elite George Washington Universitty in 1971 taught, at the crack team's estimation for four years in a public school setting. For twenty years hence, Barbara worked in private school settings. Surely, these settings did not have the curse of overcrowding in their classrooms.

In 1996 Barbara went to go work at yet another private instituiton, the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Day School as a resource teacher, and since 2008 has been in the employ of the Northside Center for Child Development as a remediation specialist. While we applaud her for working at MAPD, surely the issues she faced in such an exclusive setting on the Upper East Side has disallowed her from seeing things as they truly are, especially with a tuition of $16,750 a year.

But this is not what is truly bugging us abut Ms Gsovski. Rather it is questionable ethics as a landlord which has raised the ire of the crack team here at SBSB.

According to the New York Times of April 25, 2008 a young couple expecting a baby, and with a child in tow in 2007 wished to rent an apartment in Park Slope. The couple passed the credit test, but were denied rental of the apartment. Why? Because they had children. The landlord of the apartment? None other than Barbara Gsovski. But when separate undercover teams were sent to speak to the broker, one with kids, the other without, the team without the kids were able to rent the apartment.

What was Ms Gsovski's involvement in all this? Ms Gsovski in the Times said, "had problems with previous tenants with children," and went on to say that, “I have two young children myself.”

We find it curious that Ms Gsovski in 2008, when she was approximately 63 years old, was the proud parent of small children. All the more curious because Ms Gsovski served on the PA at Stuyvesant High School in the 2003-2004 school year. Surely, overcrowding is not a problem at Stuyvesant. Is it?

This makes one question the ethics and the wisdom of Ms Gsovski. Surely the organization she is with now claims on its web page that its mission that it;

fosters the healthy development of children and families and seeks to empower them to respond constructively to negative societal factors including racism and its related consequences.

Yet, Ms Gsovski has no problem living the spirit of this statement by discriminating against a young couple with children. Is this truly how she feels about children? According to NYC tenant's rights;

Landlords may not refuse to rent to, renew the lease of, or otherwise discriminate against, any person or group of persons because of race, creed, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, marital status or familial status.

 But more to the point. Here we have a person that has not taught in the public sector, has taught in exclusive private settings for over 35 years, and she is sitting in judgement of teachers, of the profession? Oh yeah, there is that pesky Ph.D. that Ms Gsovski has. Rah-rah. That and a pack of Newports ain't going to help when reality comes knocking on the door.

But it seems that Ms Gsovski is an opportunist that creates reality as it will fit her world. That she will twist and turn things to her own perception of how things shall be, and what she wants them to be. It is one thing to not have ever walked the walk and to decide what is best for others. I mean, I was once a good Stratego player. Should I be advising generals at the Pentagon how to fight a war? Certainly not!

But to discriminate. To purposely lie and create a falsehood is reprehensible. What we as teachers do is to teach students to accept each and every person for what they are. Ms Gsovski went completely against what we as teachers try to teach, to set an example of every day, but she did far worse. Ms Gsovski has done damage to the entire peoples not only of NYC, but of the United States of America. We are a great country. I am quite saddened to know that discrimination still lives in my world.