New York Teacher
DOE BOSSES SAID- GIVE US THE TAPE
Mar 15, 2007 4:11 PM
Madeline Appell resigned three weeks into the school year the day after Pakter made a videotape showing white grammar school students from another school getting music lessons in the building while his mainly black and Latino students were denied such a class, even though Appel received $75,000 in arts monies. At the 30-20A hearing, the DOE lawyers could not produce any regulation that Pakter needed permission from the parents to videotape.
It was the contents of the video, Pakter claims, not the tape itself that caused concern among school brass. Indeed, a few days after he was ordered to surrender possession of the tape to Appell, school officials offered a deal to then-UFT vice president Frank Carucci. “They said if he returned the tape, they would drop any insubordination charges and give him a wish list of four things he could see happen at the school,” Carucci recalled. “But they also wanted him to sign a paper saying he had no other copies of the tape.”
In October, 2003, Pakter wrote a three-page letter to Klein, detailing what he said were civil rights violations against his mainly black and Latino students. Klein never answered the letter but turned it over to Chad Vignola, his chief counsel. Vignola sent Pakter a vitriolic letter which did not address even one issue raised by Pakter. Vignola later resigned in disgrace when his involvement in the Diana Lam scandal became public after release of a report by the Special Commissioner for Investigations Richard Condon.
Pakter’s complaints to Klein about his students being shortchanged are also reflected in a letter written by a student, who said what she learned in just four weeks in Pakter’s class was more than “I could ever acquire anywhere else during the same time period.” She, too, complained about students being academically shortchanged.
Pakter also thought it was ludicrous to ghettoize his
Spanish speaking students by teaching
them a language they already knew in their native tongue. He purchased books
“French in Ten Minutes a Day” and used them in an enrichment program. The
principal Appel accused him of selling books to the students, “as if I was
trying to make a profit,” Pakter said.
