Employee terminated after being found guilty of inflicting corporal punishment on pupils
2015 NY Slip Op 05787, Appellate Division, First Department
The New York City Chancellor of Education's Regulation A-420 prohibits inflicting corporal punishment on a student. Corporal punishment is defined as "any act of physical force upon a pupil for the purpose of punishing the pupil."
An individual [Petitioner] employed by the New York City Board of Education was charged with, and found guilty of, inflicting corporal punishment on pupils by the arbitrator and the penalty imposed was termination from service.
Petitioner challenged the arbitration award and Supreme Court vacated the penalty imposed and remanded the matter “for determination of a lesser penalty.”
The Appellate Division unanimously reversed the Supreme Court’s decision, on the law, and entered a judgment confirming the award.
The court said that the “penalty of termination does not shock our sense of fairness,” noting that Petitioner had committed four separate acts of corporal punishment, in violation of Chancellor's Regulation A-420, three of these acts having occurred after he had been formally warned that any recurrence of his misconduct would result in further disciplinary action and he had been referred to a mandatory training workshop on "appropriate behavior intervention strategies." The court also that the pupils who suffered the corporal punishment were “non-verbal autistic children, incapable of protecting themselves or reporting what happened to them.”
The decision is posted on the Internet at: