Cindy Grosz: Jewish Teacher Education Crisis In American Schools

By Cindy Grosz:

Last night I received a lengthy letter in response to a recent article I wrote and was published regarding Jewish education and secular studies.

Here is a portion of the letter:

"Dear Cindy,

I read your article in the Israel National News. I need someone like you to give me a voice, since it has long been obvious that:

1) the UFT is at best useless, and at worst complicit in the persecution of Jewish teachers

2) School administrators are destroying Jewish teachers' careers with total impunity

3) Termination hearings, which are supposed to have due process, are simply kangaroo courts - I had only 11/2 day of only principal hearing with objection to questions or presenting evidence to show this is false accusation - then was threaten: retire or be fired.

I could spend 10 pages describing to you what my career was like, actually ex-career since I am now on "irrevocable retirement" based on a sham 3020 hearing.

I will just give the highlights:

I was a successful math lab specialist in a K-5 school. There were 5 Jewish teachers when I started, but as the years went by they simply disappeared until I was the only one left.

The DOE lawyer kept pushing for immediate retirement or I will be fired. I didn't have anyone to stand up to my principal, including my lawyer. Then my lawyer remarked "So now you're going back to Israel?" After I was forced to sign an agreement for a "retirement", I asked for a copy of it. My lawyer stalled and said I would get it in a few days. I had to fight to get it NOW but he wouldn't help me. I had to fight over 2 months, after repeated haranguing, I got a copy. But it was clear the wording had changed. It was now "irrevocable retirement", something that was NOT in the original agreement.

While in a rubber room doing clerical assignments waiting for my retirement date, there were 10 other terminated teachers with me. 8 of them were Jews.

I just know that many other Jewish teachers have gone through similar things. I have learned that if I complain alone, I will not be listened to. I met a congressman who told me 30 Jewish teachers have already approached him with similar experiences.

So Cindy, I am asking you to help me. There MUST be justice."

Justice???

Where was the justice when a white, male, Jewish teacher was terminated and told by a Black principal who was under federal investigation a SECOND time that this white man was hurting “his little black children.”

Where was the justice when a principal published in staff meeting notes that teachers that take off to observe Jewish holidays risk termination?

Where was the justice when a Jewish teacher one year away from retirement was pushed into retirement to cover up another teacher’s failure to help a student with a medical need? The Jewish teacher was a scapegoat, as the teacher in charge was the principal’s best friend, and parents were suing the DOE and the school.

Where was the justice in my former school, where a principal who made a plea deal and admitted guilt for defrauding the NYC Housing Authority, announced at a September staff meeting that because of the Jewish holidays, we can’t get our reading and math programs organized on time?

Or the justice when I took an unpaid leave for my son’s Bar Mitzvah and the lost my after school job after the principal claimed she didn’t know I was not in school. She testified to that under oath, then handed in the paperwork she signed a month earlier to her own attorneys, claiming that she never heard about people making Bar Mitzvahs in Israel in conversations with staff members.

How about being asked how students dress in my son’s yeshiva?

How did schools turn staffs from merit based hirings to discriminatory hirings based on skin color, sorority friendships and political favors? Often, these choices were and are not in the best interest of students, parents and taxpayers, who foot the bill for these decisions.

As far as the 3020a hearings, they are rigged. I have the transcripts to prove it. Within my own case, by the witness testimony and the DOE documents submitted as evidence, an arbitrator actually witnessed and documented that a “toy gun used with the intention of harming students is not a weapon.” A principal and assistant principal both falsified witness statements and parent after parent admitted school safety reports, medical histories and student records were doctored up to cover up issues at home, in school and medically.

In many cases, federal and state social services laws of mandated reporting, follow up investigations and outcomes are not real.

In many cases, federal and state social services laws of mandated reporting, follow up investigations and outcomes are not real. They are tainted with obstruction of justice, perjury, witness tampering and intimidation and cover ups. Sound familiar....