Bully!

Principal Richard Bost has been the subject of several sexual harassment charges and is alleged to have a record of retaliating against critics. Also, DOE officials have pointed to “serious failures in leadership” as a root cause of the Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology’s placement on the state’s list of Persistently Lowest Achieving schools.

At a Fordham University principals’ conference in March, Richard Bost, the principal of Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology, complained that “there’s a large overhead in the whole Department of Education at all levels of people who maybe should be doing something else. We [can’t] afford to have people with guaranteed jobs the rest of their life.”

The comment, captured by NPR for a report on the DOE’s efforts to eliminate tenure, could easily be applied to Bost himself.

Since 2009, Bost has been the subject of several sexual harassment charges by female staff, students and parents. He has a record of taking actions that his critics allege were retaliatory. And school officials have pointed to “serious failures in leadership” as a root cause of the school’s placement on the state’s list of Persistently Lowest Achieving schools.

“Richard Bost is a bully to anyone he thinks he can bully,” said Chapter Leader Novelette Foote.

Of his echoing the mayor’s attacks on senior teachers, UFT Vice President Leo Casey commented, “Bost is trading political favors for a get-out-of-jail free card.”

Bost, in his fifth year as principal at the Fordham Leadership Academy on the Theodore Roosevelt Educational Campus, is a former meteorologist with the U.S. Air Force in Alaska, an alumnus of the first Teaching Fellows cohort in 2000 and a graduate of the DOE’s Leadership Academy.

In 2009, the Daily News reported that Bost groped his payroll secretary and repeatedly made lewd comments about her clothing and cleavage. DOE investigators substantiated the charges, but then-Chancellor Joel Klein overrode the district superintendent’s recommendation that Bost be terminated and instead sent him for sensitivity training and extended his probation for two years, the newspaper reported.

“The allegations were substantiated, and yet the secretary was transferred, but Bost stayed on,” Foote said.

In June 2010, Bost was under investigation again by the Office of Equal Opportunity for creating a hostile work environment in the school, the Daily News reported. The office was investigating additional claims of sexual harassment and whether Bost was sexually involved with two teachers at the school, sources told the tabloid.

Most recently, in January 2011, a parent filed a complaint with the special commissioner of investigations that she felt “violated” by Bost’s overly familiar conduct during several private meetings with her.

Guidance counselor Diane Gallagher, who transferred to another school in March, said she was flabbergasted that the DOE has not moved to get rid of Bost.

“Three investigative agencies have all looked into serious and easily substantiated charges against Bost, but he’s still in place,” she said.

According to several teachers at the school, Bost asked staff at a faculty conference, “Why bother reporting me, because nothing ever sticks?”

While Bost skates free, those who have spoken out against him have found themselves in the line of fire.

It’s one reason that a number of teachers talked at length about him to this reporter, but not for attribution.

“His M.O. is that anybody who crosses him gets a U-rating,” said Bronx Borough Representative Jose Vargas.

Bost stripped the head dean’s office of staff and equipment after the dean reported — as his position obliged him to do — the secretary’s complaint, according to Foote. Bost moved to terminate a math teacher who corroborated the secretary’s allegation. His appeal is still pending, said Vargas.

Gallagher’s colleagues allege that Bost went after her in what they called a “campaign of terror” after falsely alleging that she instigated a student’s sexual harassment complaint.

The veteran counselor, a union activist, received two U-ratings in a row — her first ever in her career — from Bost before transferring to another school. “One of the complaints against me was incompetence in making schedules even though I had no input into how schedules were made,” Gallagher said.

It’s not just his staffers who appear to have suffered retaliation. Bost suspended several students for “spreading libelous material” after they circulated the Daily News story about his sexual harassment of the payroll secretary with their peers. The DOE later overturned the suspensions.

Foote says that Bost habitually blames the school’s 38 teachers for its Persistently Lowest-Achieving status, but the facts tell another story.

The state and city DOE recently released a Joint Intervention Team report that named the principal the chief reason for school failure. The report excoriates Bost for “serious failures in leadership that have contributed to the low performance of students and the low graduation rate of students.”

On its most recent School Progress Report, the school received a grade of F for student performance and D for school environment.

The DOE’s Office of Special Investigations is also now looking into charges of transcript tampering, said Foote.

“He’s not just a tyrant but an incompetent tyrant who robbed our students of a rich high school experience,” said Gallagher.

Update, July 7: Some good news. Bost is gone. Sources at the school have confirmed reports that on June 27, just days before the summer recess, the abusive principal told staff he was not returning in September. The DOE would neither confirm nor deny that Bost's leaving had anything to do with the multiple investigations by the city triggered by improper conduct charges against him.