Court Opinion

ID: 9818887
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:11:10.251316+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:27.877708
License: Public Domain

*534Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Geoffrey D. Wright, J.), entered December 19, 2013, granting respondents’ cross motion to dismiss the petition to annul two unsatisfactory ratings (U-ratings) for the summer 2011 and the 2011-2012 school year, to annul respondents’ determination to terminate petitioner’s probationary employment, and to reinstate her to the position of probationary teacher, and dismissing the proceeding brought pursuant to CPLR article 78, modified, on the law, to annul petitioner’s termination, to annul the summer 2011 U-rating, to remand the matter to DOE for completion of its final review and recommendation consistent with this memorandum, and otherwise affirmed, without costs.
Petitioner Diane Mendez was a tenured common branches teacher for respondent New York City Department of Education who received satisfactory ratings since February 2010. She forfeited her tenure as a common branches teacher in order to obtain a position as a special education teacher. In September 2010, she was appointed a probationary special education teacher at P.S. X017, a Bronx high school, with a two-year probationary period ending in September 2012. She received a satisfactory rating on her Annual Professional Performance Review for the 2010-2011 school year.
During the summer of 2011, petitioner received an unsatisfactory rating for her work and was suspended without pay for four days based on an incident where she was found to have engaged in a loud argument with another teacher in front of students on August 2, 2011. Petitioner appealed the rating, and the Chancellor’s Committee held a hearing commencing June 7, 2012. At the hearing, the Superintendent Representative conceded that the four-day suspension was “inappropriate” under the contract, and it was reversed because of the error.
We hold that the U-rating for the summer of 2011 lacked a rational basis and was arbitrary and capricious. Even accepting the testimony that petitioner engaged in a loud argument with another teacher about sharing a room, there is no rational basis to find petitioner’s conduct was unprofessional, insubordinate or unbecoming. Here, the subject of the argument concerned whether petitioner’s students with disabilities should share space with students that composed the art cluster or obtain a larger classroom. There was no evidence presented that the content of conversation itself was unprofessional. The simple conduct of an argument without more elaboration on *535how the subject and language of the conversation was unprofessional is insufficient to provide a rational basis for professional misconduct. While the dissent argues, in essence, that we are making a credibility determination, this Court holds that the U-rating of summer 2011 was made without regard to the lack of substantial evidence showing unprofessional conduct. Further, petitioner’s failure to admit that the conversation rose to the level of an argument is not evidence of insubordination.
As to the termination of petitioner’s employment, it is well established that a “probationary employee may be discharged for any or no reason at all in the absence of a showing that [the] dismissal was in bad faith, for a constitutionally impermissible purpose or in violation of law” (Matter of Brown v City of New York, 280 AD2d 368, 370 [1st Dept 2001]). Nonetheless, given the failure to establish a rational basis for the summer 2011 U-rating, petitioner established a deficiency in the review process to terminate petitioner’s employment that was “not merely technical, but undermined the integrity and fairness of the process” (Matter of Kolmel v City of New York, 88 AD3d 527, 529 [1st Dept 2011]). The record demonstrates that petitioner has received satisfactory ratings since February 2010, which established her professional conduct but for the alleged incident of a loud argument.
Petitioner’s challenge to the U-rating for the 2011-2012 school year was premature as she had not exhausted her administrative remedies (see Matter of Leo v New York City Dept. of Educ., 100 AD3d 536 [1st Dept 2012]). A determination of her appeal of that rating had not yet been made at the time the petition was brought.
We have considered petitioner’s remaining contentions and find them unavailing.
Concur — Mazzarelli, J.P., Moskowitz and Kapnick, JJ.