A city teacher with a painful pulmonary condition says a heartless high school principal is pushing him to resign by giving him "unruly" freshmen who torture his ticker.
Monte Kuhr is suing the city, claiming that Principal Henry Rubio and other administrators at A. Philip Randolph High School in Harlem ignored his physician's request last year to give him senior classes.
The upper West Side man made the request because "upper classes were the source of fewer student behavioral problems," the lawsuit says.
Instead Kuhr, 46, received five freshmen classes in the fall of 2009, leading to "high-intensity interactions with misbehaving students," the suit says.
One disorderly frosh's outburst last January even caused Kuhr to double over in pain, prompting an administrator to rush to his aid, court papers say.
The teenagers' torments only landed Kuhr in more hot water with officials, who blamed him for not controlling his classes, the suit in Manhatan Supreme Court claims.
Administrators finally moved Kuhr to senior classes last spring, the suit claims, after his doctor wrote a second request and a colleague agreed to a swap.
Even then, Kuhr says he was unduly singled out for schoolwide problems - including class attendance - and unfairly given unsatisfactory reviews by administrators.
A former lawyer and a teacher since 2001, Kuhr claims the push to resign started after 2007, when he underwent triple bypass surgery for heart disease.
Kuhr said he received his first unsatisfactory classroom review in the fall of 2008, after years of laudatory evaluations, including a personal thumbs up from former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who sat in on his class in 2006.
In January of 2009, complications from the surgery forced Kuhr to take a six-month leave of absence for further medical treatment. But before he left, his department called him to say Rubio wanted him to resign, the suit says.
Kuhr dismissed the suggestion and vowed to return to work that September, according to the suit in Manhattan.
A white observant Jew, Kuhr is also suing over racial and religious discrimination. He claims school administrators are mostly Hispanic and have singled out him and his department's only other observant Jew for classroom-management problems.
Kuhr declined to comment on the case last week.
"It was a difficult thing for me to do," he said. "I'm just a hard-working teacher and I hope to continue my teaching career."
The Department of Education declined to comment.
Rubio did not return a call for comment.
There had to have been something besides his health that changed in the minds of the administrators over the past few years because you don’t go from receiving ‘laudatory’ evaluations to ‘unsatisfactory’ with just health issues. There has to be more to this than what is being told.
ReplyDeleteAWWW Mr. Kuhr was such a sweetheart of a teacher!
ReplyDeletei was one of his students and his heart condition was critical...he excessively apply cream to his chest easing heart burn. He was a very kind teaching sharing his knowledge with the world,and silly students take his generosity for granted. Wish you the best of luck Mr. Kuhr!
ReplyDeleteI MISS HIM!
ReplyDelete