Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!

From “Recurring Nightmares: An Investigation Into the Repeated Hiring of Substitute Teachers Unfit to Care for Children,” a report released in January by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District. The report examined cases in which substitutes who behaved inappropriately were repeatedly rehired.

On May 5, 1998, sixty-four-year-old substitute teacher Hermina Brunson was assigned to a fifth-grade class at PS 127 in Queens. When the class became boisterous, Brunson, as one pupil later described it, “pulled a Jerry Springer.” Using a metal chair, Brunson struck one girl in the face and a boy in the knee. Brunson was arrested and charged with two counts of assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

Following her arrest, information quickly surfaced about Brunson's past. In 1983, while teaching science at IS 8 in Queens, she hit the students under her care with an electrical cord, causing, in one instance, welts to the body of a seventh-grade girl. The Board of Education placed her on its list of individuals who are ineligible to be hired in any capacity. However, nobody at PS 127 checked the list before hiring her as a substitute; indeed, no one even asked for references.

On June 4, 1997, Stacey Glassman was the substitute teacher for a special-education class at PS 45 in Brooklyn. After lunch, she told her students that she had a headache, and then laid her head on the desk and fell asleep. The nine-year-olds took this opportunity to use the camera belonging to their regular teacher to photograph one of their female classmates with her pants down.

Principals who had employed Glassman described her teaching abilities as “barely adequate.” Most of the schools explained that Glassman was hired on the recommendation of her mother, a former full-time teacher who was then working as a substitute, and that the two often worked in the same schools on the same days.

The allegation that Glassman had fallen asleep in class was widely reported in the local press, and the Board of Education placed her on the ineligible list. Nevertheless, Glassman was employed as a substitute at least four more times before the end of the 1996-97 school year.

On January 8, 1997, Joseph Starace was assigned to a third-grade class at PS 149 in Queens. During the course of the day, Starace tried to hypnotize a girl and performed a trick in which he put a string through his neck. He showed the students photographs of a child with a pig's head, a woman with her head in cement, and a man with his guts coming out of his body. Starace told the class that he made movies with the people in the photos.

Less than three months later, Starace was hired as a substitute science teacher at PS 122 in Queens. There Starace gave students an 800 number to call if they wanted to be in “blood and gore” movies. He told them they would have to say they were sixteen years old but that those chosen could earn $1,000 a day. Starace was also caught entering students' home address and telephone information into his laptop computer. “If I have trouble with a kid, I have to call his parents,” he explained.

Starace was not placed on the Board of Education's ineligible list after his bizarre behavior at PS 149 nor after his equally strange stint at PS 122. In fact, he was hired at various schools in Queens during the 1997-98 school year—including a two-day assignment at PS 149 in October 1997, where only ten months earlier the school secretary had written “Not to be hired” next to Starace's name on a card kept on file.

24 25 26

SEE ALSO: Public schools; Substitute teachers

Previous · Next