Anthony Aldorasi visited Gazette offices to press his case. Photo Cristina Guarino Anthony Aldorasi retired 16 months early from the New York City Department of Education after almost four years of suspensions, hearings, relegation to the Council of Supervisors and Administrators’ equivalent of the United Federation of Teachers’ “rubber room” and promotions to administrative positions. The one-time principal of I.S. 141 at 37-11 21st Ave., Astoria, was removed from the school he led in February 2007. Arbitrators hearing his case on two separate occasions declared they found no basis for two separate 3020A charges, the most serious that can be leveled against a DOE teacher or principal. The first 3020A charge involved harassment of a male teacher and was dismissed by an arbitrator, who declared, “This is not a 3020A case.”

The second 3020A charges–unprecedented in the history of the DOE–were filed after the first case was dismissed and involved allegations of corporal punishment brought by three students some eight months after the incidents had supposedly occurred. Such incidents must be reported immediately; that eight months elapsed between the supposed occurrences and filing the 3020A charges cast doubt on their veracity, Aldorasi maintained to the Gazette. “After my 29 blameless years in the New York City school system, a Department of Education attorney said he would try to get me fired,” Aldorasi said. The second 3020A charge was dismissed after the three students recanted their allegations. He received a $6,000 fine and a 10-day suspension for “poor judgment” in the matter of a teacher and a missing piece of audiovisual equipment and for pushing a student by the shoulders to aid the student in improving his posture. Aldorasi was told he would return to I.S. 141, where he was first appointed interim acting principal in July 2001 and principal in February 2002. However, when he arrived at the school in March 2008, he was met by a gaggle of news media and several indignant parents, who threatened to remove their children from the school if Aldorasi set foot in the building. Aldorasi did not return to the school.

The Department of Education offered Aldorasi other administrative positions. He spent eight months as the test coordinator for Queens schools and after an appeal to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, mentored troubled principals. He ultimately retired.

“No one should have to go through this,” Aldorasi said. “I was a pawn between Klein and [then United Federation of Teachers President] Randi Weingarten. The UFT was against me because I reprimanded several teachers.” Aldorasi was succeeded as principal at I.S. 141 by Assistant Principal Miranda Pavlou.

Aldorasi is writing a book about his experiences. “Who speaks for the principal when these kinds of charges are brought against someone?” he said. “No principal should be taken out of a school unless there’s criminality involved, and certainly not on a whim because of a private verbal reprimand.”