Judge Overturns Firing of Teacher Who Faced Drug Charge
A judge overturned New York City’s firing of a tenured public school teacher who was arrested and charged with bringing 20 small packets of heroin into a Manhattan courthouse last year.
In a decision this week, the judge, Manuel J. Mendez of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, ruled that the termination of the teacher, Damian Esteban, was “excessive and shocking to this court’s sense of fairness.”
He overturned an arbitrator’s decision allowing the city’s Education Department to fire Mr. Esteban and sent the matter back to the department with orders to impose a lesser penalty.
“The arrest was not for conduct at the school site, or involving any of its students,” Justice Mendez wrote in his six-page decision, issued Monday.
New York Times Unbelievable. Anyone in the private sector would have been fired for the same actions and rightly so.
