There is a great disturbance in the public service employees force. And it's emanating from Port Chester NY.

Earlier this month in the next town over from me, Port Chester NY, the village board  wishing to reduce an $800k budget gap laid off the 8 professional fire fighters that service the village and left the protection of the village to about 300 less trained volunteers. Mayor Dennis Pilla is a voting member of the board as well as the catalyst in this thuggery. This also negated the agreement the village had with neighboring Rye Brook in which Port Chester supplied one paid overnight fire fighter (Rye Brook has had it's issues with firefighters in the past. In the 90's they privatized and went with a publicly traded company for fire protection, Rural-Metro. It was a disaster).

There is talk that the village board did this because the paid fire fighters filed a labor complaint claiming the volunteers mishandled a house fire in March.

Port Chester can afford these fire fighters. The village population is almost 30k, but is almost 60% Hispanic. The Justice Department had to get involved several years ago because no Hispanics were being elected nor nominated to run for the village board.

Twenty years ago, heck even 15 years ago the only reason to go to Port Chester was if you were drinking in Connecticut in which closing time for bars was 2 AM and you wanted to continue drinking until 4 AM. Today, restaurants dot Main St left and right, the resurgent Capitol Theater is becoming a stop for the likes of Jackson Brown and Ringo Starr and there has been much waterfront development along the Byram River. 

A dad of a son my son has played baseball with just retired from the Port Chester Fire Department. He is lucky. He has a pension. For now.

The professional fire fighters of Port Chester are in same boat us teachers public service employees being blamed for the incompetence of politicians. Ironically, Rye Brook is where the Westchester Hilton is in which the UFT holds all it's "retreats." Wouldn't Mulgrew not want to worry about fire protection? In fact the closest house to the Hilton is in Port Chester, not Rye Brook (The Rye Brook fire house is near Westchester County Airport).

And guess what the Journal News reported today? Three Democrat board members who were elected in March have been removed because they;

 "failed to sign legal paperwork following this year's election wins."

This is another attack on public service employees. Port Chester is yet another municipality that can't keep it's finances in order and decides that the scapegoats must be it's public service employees and the the public it's victims.

Each and every time I get into a conversation with a sanitation worker, a parks workers, a cop, a fire fighter, etc... and share that I am a teacher and what is happening to us I tell them that they are next. Well guess what? The professional fire fighters of Port Chester have been the next ones nailed.

Our union, it's leaders, the caucus that runs the UFT has been silent. It has paid thousands to the Westchester Hilton for years to have it's retreats as well has paying hotel tax to the Village of Rye Brook (Rye Brook and Port Chester are both in the Town of Rye...not to be confused with the City of Rye)

We here at SBSB are calling for the UFT to immediately cease doing any business with the Westchester Hilton and any other businesses within the Town of Rye and the villages of Rye Brook and Port Chester until the eight professional fire fighters have their jobs restored as well as the appropriate back pay.

I have run into some really good people at the UFT in the last several months. This does not negate me from my support of MORE/New Action. But sometimes a word of support can go a long way.

God forbid if someone were to die due to inadequate fire protection. 

Rye, NY. A leafy city of about 15,000 hard by the Long Island Sound. The home of Playland, BJ Surhoff, and Wellington Mara. A city in which education is taken seriously by the community. Who would have thought that the police state of education would find it's way into Rye?

In May of 2013, 4 teachers were accused of "improper coaching" during state exams that April to a small group of students according to the Rye Patch. These four teachers then were removed from the classrooms and put on the Rye version of the Rubber Room.

Since then, the Westchester County District Attorney has investigated and found insufficient evidence to proceed.  One teacher, Shannon Gold a 4th grade teacher at Milton Elementary has resigned with neither party admitting wrongdoing. One teacher, Gail Topol, returned to school under what some are claiming preferential treatment, and two others, Dana Coppola and Carin Mehler are still reassigned not doing what they love and are trained to do.

The worst part is that Carin Mehler's daughter is a student at the Osborn Elementary School. The same one in which her mom, Carin, is a teacher.

Not only is this an awkward situation for the little girl, but worse, Carin Mehler is not even allowed to enter the school as a parent. The Rye City School District has told Carin that she cannot act as a parent and in the best interests of her child on school property. The Crack Team finds this most outrageous. Even Francesco Portelos is allowed to attend community functions at the school in which he was cast out of (He lives in the community).

But one thing bothers The Crack Team. Where was the Rye Teachers Association at the beginning of this? What did they have to say? RTA President Jamie Zung had this to say at the latest Rye City School District board meeting;

“For almost a year, I have resisted requests from the RTA to make a public statement. For almost a year, I have allowed the RTA to appear apathetic and weak in the public eye. For almost a year, I have maintained hope that the process would work. But after a year, you have failed to settle this case so I, and we, are here tonight.”

Yes, we here at SBSB do not know the inner workings the politics of the RTA, but it looks to us as a bit too little, a bit too late. This "strategy" appears to be taken from the UFT playbook, the chapter entitled, "We Don't Want Them to Get Mad at Us, Besides You Are Still Getting Paid So Shut Up and Stop Kvetching About Your Plight."

So what is a teacher with an exemplary record like Carin Mehler forced to do? Lawsuit.

Carin filed a federal complaint against the Rye City School Board, it's superintendent and her principal. When a school district becomes a police state what is one to do?

From reading the complaint, one wonders if the students in question had testing with modifications and that perhaps the students misinterpreted any involvement as "coaching." It is also reasonable to assume that the students misinterpreted or mixed up the practice tests in which the students were allowed to talk and to ask questions. One can also reasonably wonder that during administration of the test that the students were told preceding the exam to check all their work if that command was not somehow misconstrued.

Why when the Westchester County DA's office has found no abnormalities is this case still being pursued? What has the New York State Education Department's investigation uncovered? Why hasn't the NYSED or the Rye City School District been available for questions from the media?

How many hundreds of thousands of dollars will be wasted on the lawyers and possible settlements that the Rye City School District has and might in the future spend? Are such monies better off being spent on instruction and on the students?

Where is the true outrage from the parents of Rye? The Rye community is being played for suckers by administrators and board members more interested in covering their butts right now than doing the right and honorable thing.

One more thing. Were the parents of the children interviewed notified before hand and/or was permission given and parents present during the interviews?

And please do not forget to be at the board meeting tomorrow night at the Rye Middle School at 8 PM EDT

The federal complaint;