This article is the fifth in a seven-part series on my experience as an educator in the City School District of New Rochelle where I worked for 8 1/2 years.
The Borg is an ominous entity in the universe, a collection of various species that function as drones of the Collective, or the hive. The Borg expands inexorably by forcing other species into the Collective, connecting them to the hive mind.
Their motto was, “You will be assimilated, and resistance is futile.” With that everyone became a Borg.
Star Trek fans know that “the Borg Entity” lives only in the universe first imagined by Gene Roddenberry — a sphere the size of a major planet that housed “a population of android marauders that terrorized and then took over and absorbed entire planets and their civilizations.
I, along with many former colleagues, have come to know that the “the Borg Entity” is alive and well in the New Rochelle School District.
I have always been justifiably proud of my credentials and accomplishments in technology which I have recounted in previous installments of this series. I would come to learn, to my everlasting sorrow, that among a certain person in New Rochelle those credentials and accomplishments would trigger enmity from what I came to see was a deeply insecure, maladjusted district administrator, an under-qualified person with a dysfunctional personality, lacking in even the most basic people skills, who was threatened by anyone who had even a modicum of competence beyond her own — or most every teacher in the District.
This was apparent from my first encounter with Christine Coleman who chose to introduce herself to members of the high school technology team without the smallest trace of collegiality, professionalism or respect.
After introducing herself as the head of the Technology Department, I replied.
“New Rochelle High School already has a ‘Technology Department’ that we have been working hard to build—including the creation of an ultra-professional New Rochelle High School Technology Department web site as authorized by Linda E. Kelly, Superintendent, Donald Baughman, Principal, New Rochelle High School, and Ronald Morris, Chairperson of the New Rochelle High School Mathematics and Technology Departments.”
“There is only one Technology Department in the District” Coleman snarled. “And I am it!”
Disheartened by the ominous signs, I said nothing further upon receiving a visual cue from Morris to let it be, and headed off for my day of teaching.
During the second week of school, while I was giving a lesson to my class, a man previously unknown to me, wearing blue jeans, a work shirt, and denim jacket, appeared at the doorway to the computer lab. I stopped my lesson and asked if I could be of some help to him?
“I’m from BOCES,” he said. “I’m here to do some maintenance on your computers.”
I told him none was needed and, pointing to the students, noted that I was in the middle of a presenting a lesson. I asked that he schedule a time with me during the day or come back at the end of the school day.
The man pressed his demand for immediate access to the computer lab-classroom.
I refused, telling him he was disrupting the educational process and should go away, make an appropriate appointment, and he would be accommodated appropriately.
A week later, a security guard appeared at my door. He got my attention and said I was needed for an urgent meeting with Mr. Baughman in the main office. Furthermore, a substitute teacher who knew nothing about the curriculum, computers, or architectural CAD was on their way to relieve me. When the unqualified sub arrived, I of course complied and went directly to the main office.
There to my great surprise sat Coleman.
She sat there with a scowl on her face. She made no eye contact. She offered no greeting. I could see she was brandishing a paper that she had previously circulated to the administrators in the principal’s office: Baughman, Connetta, and Morris. I was never given a copy of this document, nor were my rights under the AFL-CIO contract between the CSDNR Teacher’s Union and the District to have my Union Building Representative present ever protected by any of the administrators present at the “meeting”.
Later, Ron Morris brought me up to speed on Coleman’s allegations. He described her letter as written as a venomous diatribe in which she claimed that I had shown a wanton lack of cooperation with the BOCES maintenance man and had an uncooperative spirit. She reportedly made other false and demeaning statements about me. When I explained to Mr. Baughman and the other administrators present what had actually taken place Mr. Baughman became livid
“You know Ms. Coleman, in the very short time that you have been in this District, you have managed to alienate every building principal, including me,” said Baughman. At which point, I stood up and advised Baughman that I had been pulled from an active class and an unqualified substitute was in charge so, with his permission, I would like to return to my class. He agreed, and I left.
This meeting and the first encounter with Coleman outside the main office were mere harbingers of the Machiavellian, vindictive, and unrelenting targeting that I was to receive from Coleman, and from her accomplice Larry Swack (who did her bidding). Larry Swack habitually entered the Technology Department office and computer lab after school hours and in the evenings. During his clandestine and unauthorized intrusions, Swack made changes to the hardware and software on our instructor’s hard drives, and to the hard drives of our office computers.
The reason that I know, for certain, that this was happening was because recognizing the signs of illegal and unethical hacking on the systems, I installed a shareware, ‘keystroke monitoring program’ that ran in the background and recorded every keystroke made during a set time frame. So, I set it to run on the office computers and on the ‘instructors’ computer in the front of the lab after school had ended and checked it the next morning when I arrived.
The log records showed that Swack was coming in during the late afternoon and evening, logging on with his own name and simple password and making unauthorized changes to our hardware and software configurations — disabling some software, planting other software, and other unethical, paranoid activities—all for Coleman to build some kind of case against us/me (the ‘us’ being my senior colleague Larry Green). Nearly everyone in the building/district was scared of Coleman; except me; I had performed with excellence in the business world and in education. I believe my lack of fear of her oppressive, dysfunctional ‘leadership’ tactics whipped her into a deeper frenzy, making me more of a target for her malicious behavior.
I had worked in international marketing, negotiated with heads of multinationals, represented the Jordanian Royal Family, was friends for 14 years with the Director of the USDOC International Trade Administration, had made presentations to the World Bank, worked for NASA as a curriculum director for a global classroom project connecting 220 schools around the world, authored and landed corporate-education grants, worked with Ph.D. level collaborators on physics and project engineering courses, had won two consecutive ISTE National Appointments for Excellence in Computer Education while an Architectural Design CAD teacher at New Rochelle High School, had built the department’s web site, had successfully transitioned an outdate board drafting program to a modern computer aided design program that was receiving academic and professional accolades, and otherwise simply minding my own business.
Why should I fear the tyrannical, dysfunctional, anti-social Coleman?
That said, the fall semester of that year following the above meeting that had backfired in Coleman’s face was hell-on-earth with incessant, unprovoked attacks from Coleman. Additionally, she was determined that the Windows-based, well-functioning, little oasis of computer use in the District be was going to be absorbed into the broken, hacked, and compromised Novell system in the building.
More serious computer breaches surfaced that originated in Blumkin’s classes and directly impacted the New Rochelle High School Server that was located in the Blumkin’s open computer room accessible to both students and hallway passerby’s where he taught computer programming.
Several students in the computer science classes over a multi-year period had gotten Burt Blumkin’s administrator password to the Novell server. Using this access, they skillfully programmed “back doors” to access the Novell server at the high school from other computers in the building, and also from their home computers via the Internet. Students used this back door access to change grades, increase their GPA’s, and bully other students by using this power as a threat weapon…if you don’t pay me then I will lower your GPA, or fail you for certain required subjects! I notified Morris, but he told me to leave it alone, that “BOCES would handle it.”
There was never any relationship building, personal touch, inclusion, collaboration, joint planning, brainstorming, ideation, adherence to educational technology best practices; just Coleman’s ego-driven, insecure, dysfunctional mean streak. She sough to create the appearance that some of these attributes were in place on the District’s web site, but I knew several of the people who were supposedly serving on various committees, and the reality was that Coleman was aloof, dictatorial, and feared competent colleagues and regular meetings were never held. I was blatantly discriminated against, and never included on any technology committee despite my credentials and experience.
In early December of 2004, Swack, operating as Coleman’s henchman and ‘software engineers’ from BOCES shut down the Architectural Design computer lab without adequate notice. They took two of the computer systems off to some other part of the building, and my classes and I were set adrift in the library. Curriculum refugees banished to an unworkable situation.
The holiday recess came and went, and when we returned, Morris came without notice and got me and told me that Coleman wanted me to, “come upstairs right away and sign off on the Master Image that would be cloned onto every computer in the lab.” I refused: no educational technology professional in their right mind would take responsibility for a hardware and software configuration that they had nothing to do with; I had set up too many servers—Macintosh, WANG, UNIX, Windows, Novell, etc. in my career and knew the potential pitfalls of a bad configuration.
Morris became very upset. He was under pressure from Coleman, and had to deal with his own fear and ignorance of computer operations and network protocols and actually shouted at me for the first time, “You have to, get up there now and sign those papers!”
Again, I politely refused and Morris stalked off. Shortly thereafter, Morris returned and stated that it had been decided that he would sign off on the configuration that BOCES had created under Coleman’s direct supervision, but Coleman demanded that I come and look at the home screen. I advised Morris against the idea for his own protection, but he insisted. So, Morris and I went up to the secret room where the BOCES software engineers and technicians had been toiling under Coleman’s direct supervision for many weeks. I sat at the console, looked at the screen, opened the architectural software program and said, “That much looks good—the architectural program launches.” And, as I stood up to leave, Coleman said in a sarcastic tone, “See, that wasn’t too hard now, was it?”
BOCES used that ‘image’ (whatever it was) as the ‘Master Image’ for the entire New Rochelle High School Architectural Design CAD lab and created 21 clones: the 20 student workstations and the instructor workstation were erased and this ‘Master Image’ was put on every system. Supposedly, it was compatible with the Corrupt Novell Network administered by Burt Blumkin.
The system Coleman created did not work – in part due to her incompetence and in part to her bad decisions.
For example, when Larry Green and I put the lab back into use, students could no longer save their large CAD files to their hard drives because they no longer had access to the local hard drives. Asked about this, Coleman stated that it was necessary for security reasons. Students were told to save these very large files to the corrupted and hacked Novell server via the Novell network. The Novell network was poorly designed and maintained, had been repeatedly hacked by students and had grossly inadequate speed and bandwidth to use their alleged server space. Apparently it never occurred to Coleman that all students would be saving all files at the same time — as class ended.
The more we looked the worse it got:
- The students did not know their logon names and passwords
The person managing the third floor, general access computer labs was never trained on the Novell system. - This person did not have a listing of the 3,000+ student logons (if they even existed)
- There was not enough ‘bandwidth’ to save to the NOVELL network and server space, and;
- My students could no longer access the beautiful high speed, high resolution H-P plotter in the room, and when they tried to, their computers froze and weeks of work was lost forever.
A Novell Engineer came to New Rochelle High School to address these problems. After he had evaluated the New Rochelle High School server he expressed dismay with the configuration and offered his conclusion:
“It will be easier and more effective to simply discard your present corrupted, misconfigured server and replace it with a new, fully functional and up-to-date Novell server”. He then left.
The recommendation from the Novell Engineer on how to fix the Novell network at the high school was ignored.
From there the situation worsened rapidly – for the network and for me.
NEXT: Part VI coming soon.
