Name: [name redacted]
email: [redacted]
Anonymous: Yes
Post: Yes
State: New York
County: Nassau
District: NYC
Story:

Hello. I need all sorts of help in my PTSD chronic and severe state. I am a totally disabled 54-year-old man. I have been somehow

surviving in poverty for many years on SSD only for several years. I am in immediate need of legal smarts, laws. legal presidents, etc, specifically for those totally disabled with chronic and severe PTSD from school related horror...people who can help me take me on both NYC and the NYC Board of Education.

What I have to tell you is that I'd appreciate if this story can also be circulated somehow to anyone who can help. Also, What I will say here is the God's honest truth. I have been ignored and shunned by society, spare a few people, cast away like dirt...Someone who knows my story is real, but is not representing me, due to my impoverished state is [name redacted]. Again, he just knows my full story, but doesn't represent me, because of my inability to pay...and he has many of my Xeroxed copies of documentation as a courtesy...he handled my divorce and home sales many years ago. He will speak to appropriate people about my story and about helping me.

In my 23rd teaching year in the NYC school system, I was sent to the " battle-front", due to union rules and excessing from another school. Overall, I spent close to a quarter century career as a high school music teacher with required music listening classes. That 23rd year was in the ghetto of Thomas Edison Vocational and Technical High School, Jamaica, NY in excess of 50 plus per class in 1991-92, my last active year. I ran away on sabbatical, traumatized from the abuse. I endured so much from malcontented students intent on doing me harm during my 23rd active year, especially.

I could never return to the classroom...Eventually, the NYC Board of Ed. cut off all salary and benefits to me, by the fall of 1994. I was a wreck from Edison Vocational HS in Jamaica Queens, my last workplace. Frankly, many of the students I had in that basement classroom were intent on hurting me every day.

I had filed 14 incident and accident reports, but was a really victim sometimes as much as 5 or six times any in one 45-minute period. I estimate over 90 incidents of harassment and perpetration towards me, including threats to my life, being pushed, punched from behind by a crowd, pushed down steps, having to dive away from metal and glass chucks thrown full force at me during the classes, having the intercom ripped out by students, were committed in just the spring of '92 alone.

The kids were just really troubled and took out their aggression on me, I, who had to teach alone in a basement room isolated from everyone.

The NY State mandated course of study was called "Music in Our Lives" The course, designed by NY State Regents, was mostly a listening course to mostly classical music-styles...it was mostly a listening course based on the masterpieces of western music. The kids demanded rap, etc...It was not the coursework.

The new young Principal, Alan Feuer, who has been out of NYC schools for good for years, not wanting to make waves, passed the buck. The new Superintendent. Margaret Harrington, refused to suspend any students at all in all Queens High Schools most of the first half of that school year, 1991-2 to prove she, Ms. M. Harrington, was better than her predecessor. So the kids were left without any means of being removed from the school, and the discipline with an average of 54 collapsed despite my sending letters home and writing referrals. The union rep was unable to remedy the situation due to archaic and steadfast UFT class size rules which discriminated against music teachers only.

I was ultimately found by proper hospital Psych. Units, like North Shore Hospital's adult Psychiatric units, and the anxiety disorder department under Dr. J. [name redacted], to have workplace induced chronic and severe PTSD, among other injuries, directly related to my classroom experience. I am on SSD only now, unemployable, in poverty.

I went homeless for part of the mind 1990s...terrified of everyone around me; from the PTSD...I was penniless, living on cans, and credit cards debts, which I mounted.

I have never been a drug taker, never ever...never smoked pot nor cigarettes, don't drink...I am the good American boy who got his ass kicked by society...

I filed grievances against the NYC Board of Education, claiming I should be classified "injured in the line of duty." They ignored my requests...After a many year lengthy grievance procedure, the required administrative remedy, and the process out-of-court. The grievance procedures concluded in the late fall. of 2000.

The UFT has refused to go to arbitration, and that's that. Grievance over. I out of luck in administrative remedies, Exactly what the UFT wants, due to the financial implications of any victory I might have achieved through administrative remedies concerning the other 75,000 NYC teachers...

However, that administrative course, the required administrative remedy before I could even go to a regular NY State Supreme Court to claim damages vs. NYC and the NYC Board of ED Education doesn't end things.

I now, with all my administrative remedied exhausted, have proceeded in a Long Island court -supreme court, for damages (Long Island only is where I’ll get a fair hearing, where I reside...Any Hearing in the 5 boroughs will be slanted towards the residents of NYC, because when the horrors realize the financial implications of giving me a victory they'd never allow it- the case must be on LI)- The award I might get, including back pay/damages, etc., damages to my two daughters who were severely afflicted, other ancillary damages to me, and the implications of my psychiatric injuries towards other NYC teachers who might wish to proceed down a similar path as I have to get damages could be total unbelievable in terms of dollars.

To make matters worse, the NYC Teachers Retirement System will, I understand, will deny me my regular earned pension at age 55 unless I no longer have a medical dispute with the NYC Board of Education. No medical dispute means no law suits. I'm not dropping the suits. so they refuse to pay me a pension which will be considerably less than one where if I can show I was indeed injured in the line of duty, they would owe me years of back salary, benefits, with punitive damages of all sorts. They seem to be saying that I have no right to sue if I expect my regular pension until this is all resolved. It appears to be some constitutional or other law breaking in their part...the 14th amendment to the constitution say life, liberty and property...my pension is my earned property and I think they are stealing from me if they refuse paying me my regular pension starting thus summer when I turn 55. I might have to go into federal court on my own to start another suit, or does anyone have any other ideas about any of this?..It is all a nightmare!

I need ideas, laws. legal cases to back my claims, etc. Anything protected under the DAD? Any cases for ADA people? The City wants to claim that under their Education laws, I had only a three month window from the "Incident which caused ny injury" to let them know via a "Notice of Claim" Yet, the PTSD I have was from the daily prolonged bombardment.

I need legal precedence which shows their laws and regulations illeal, backwards, unfair, discriminatory, and unconstitutional, that Prolonged Duress stress is a type of PTSD, that my hospital diagnosed chronic and severe PTSD and Generalized Anxiety disorder which I have was due to NYC Board of education negligence in providing me with a safe environment to work in, and I was target of the malicious inner city students.

Though I filed only 14 incident and accident reports, there were so many more times I just sought to get the hell out as fast as possible each day, and I just couldn't write these out., I do also have a huge stack of referrals to the dean during that year for other disciplinary reasons. I also have written a 468 page book on word 5.1, unpublished, called "Blackboard Bungle-Destruction of a Teacher" about my dangerous career in NYC...

Anyone who will speak to me [name redacted], who knows my story in full for further info, would be appreciated...

I had been homeless, then lived in single rooms in some houses on Long Island. I lost my family, marriage, and only fairly recently have started a better relationship with my frown daughters. I am now long since divorced. My daughters also suffered form my ordeal greatly.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Sincerely,

[name redacted]