I should write this post as if it were a Twilight Zone episode.Imagine if you will a young, attractive, white female, first year teacher who unravels a string of corruption at her school and is sent without warning or knowing why to the Rubber Room. Soon she is terminated whilst the principal that she exposed for financial improprieties and other not nice stuff is removed from her school and promoted. Meanwhile this young lady enters the Kafkaesque world of the NYCDOE in which up is down, good is bad, and insane is sane.Nah.....
Not knowing why she has been fired she hires hot shot attorney and commences a letter writing campaign only asking to explain to her why she has been terminated. Soon this campaign reaches the desk of Det. Barney Fife of the 84th precinct in Brooklyn. She is arrested and soon enters the Twilight Zone.
Again, this post comes to you from the files of the "You Can't Make This Shit Up," department.
I am talking of course that yet another educator was arrested and booked for daring to speak their mind as the New York Post reported this past Sunday.
Yes, add Lydia Howrilka to the list of teachers arrested by the 84th Precinct to the list, albeit small and exclusive thus far, of educators arrested for just speaking up.
What innocuous act did Lydia perform that got her locked up for over 14 hours and send to Central Booking in Brooklyn on March 4, 2014? She just sent an email asking for clarification as to why she was discontinued and asking if the issues can be resolved by getting together and talking like adults.
The Crack Team has obtained a copy of the dastardly email that Lydia sent and this is the first time anywhere that it will be published. We here at SBSB suggest that women hold onto your significant others and be sure to not let children read the email.
But seriously, a harmless young lady sends a harmless email to her former principal Arisleyda Urena and she spends 14 hours in police custody? Doesn't the NYPD have better things to do and more importantly, why aren't the detectives that arrested Lydia, as well as Francesco Portelos checking with the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office first?
Will the arrest and subsequent declining to prosecute curtail these arrests or is this just the tip of the iceberg and we can expect more arrests of whistle blowers and those that speak out? Would Francesco and Lydia have been arrested by any other detective and/or precinct or is this the act of some rouge detectives with some close relationship with the NYCDOE?
This needs to be looked into post haste. The Internal Affairs Bureau of the NYPD must be notified as well as the Civilian Complaint Review Board and of course our pals at SCI.
I believe, and I hope I am right, that these arrests were authorized by the lawyers without the knowledge of either Farina or de Blasio. I think the lawyers know that there days of running roughshod and trampling the rights of teachers are coming to an end and they are now just shooting wildly as they know they will soon be not as relevant as they used to be.
The numb nut lawyers by having Francesco and Lydia arrested did the opposite of what they had intended.
5 comments:
Or...did they know we would be public and hope it curtailed other would be whistleblowers? It might have worked. Some have mentioned "..but now I'm scared because of what happened to you."
DON'T BE WORRIED TO SPEAK UP
Just do it carefully. I wish I could tell you who to trust. Not SCI, our OSI. NYSED also seems to look the other way. We need Serpico.
I agree Portelos. Also our union is too complacent. Has Unity reach out to you? I'm sure Mulgrew and Barr all know what happened to us.
I believe that reason why legal is doing it is not because their days on the job are numbered. They are gunning it.
A parent was arrested in Newark. These incidents seem similar. I am trying to locate the link.
Be careful South Bronx Teacher! Who knows your posting might land you in the clink too! I really hope not!
I never thought that I would long for the old days of corrupt school boards and political selection of Superintendents, but these corrupt officials hiding in the shadows and hiding behind the bureaucracy are the worst we have had in the DOE since I began work in 1977. The young woman seems to be quite reasonable and articulate. I'd like to know what the charges were. I suspect that a great deal of the budget that should go to schools will go to pay her in a settlement.
In the case of Mr. Portelos it seemed like these bureaucrats were just playing idiots and pretending that they did not understand sarcasm. Maybe not. Maybe the paper pushing bureaucrats and their lowly qualified lawyers were piloting a new paradigm for dealing with teachers who dare ask questions.
If DeBlasio doesn't intervene in this case, we can expect more freedom by following Crimea's path and voting to join Russia.
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