The "MURPHIA" - Corruption in District 75

I had heard that if I wanted to get ahead in District 75, I had to become active in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a Catholic, Irish-American Fraternal Organization founded in New York City in 1836. For years, I saw administrators who were not Irish-Catholic give their wholehearted support to the Board of Education’s Hibernian branch. I never realized the corruption behind this “old-boys” network until I met Mr. McCormack.

Kevin McCormack proved to be totally inappropriate for the Manhattan Occupational Center. He did not relate well with the students or fully understand them. His training had been with teaching the Hard of Hearing school population. He was totally unprepared for meeting the needs of the students at our school. The MOTC had been set up to provide job training for students with very limited abilities. Several times I had to tell him not to ask teachers “how retarded” they thought a student was right in front of the students.

I had to call him away several times when he’d be tearing into a teacher with a class of lower-functioning and emotionally-handicapped students. Verbally abusing their teacher in front of this type of student upset their already fragile trust in both the teacher and the school itself.

Parent support is important in meeting the needs of any school population. Such support is critical with Special Needs students. Study after study has proved that parental involvement can make the difference in a student’s achievement, indeed the success of the school.

Early on there was a meeting to set up a Parents’ Association at the MOTC. Under prior administrations there had been intense parent support for our activities. Parents had been a vital force in the school-based management teams that had helped run the school prior to the arrival of Kevin McCormack.

Kevin McCormack finally did set up an early-morning meeting suppossedly to reactivate our P. A.

About 10:30 AM I saw the principal escort the parents who had been chosen as officers to help run and expand the association into the teachers; lounge. Kevin McCormack asked the parents to take a seat. He said how busy he was running the school so they should wait there till the end of the school day. He promised he’d be back at around 3:30 with some legal papers they had to sign.

He then walked back. I came by the lounge an hour later and saw this group of dedicated parents who had taking time off from their jobs or their younger children to come to this meeting still sitting there. Finally as teachers filed in to eat their lunch, they realized that McCormack really meant what he had said - one by one they got up and drifted out of the room.

Weeks later at our teachers’ monthly after-school conference, Kevin McCormack boldly complained that he had tried to set up a new parents’ association - but though several parents had shown up - none of them would give it their active support!

How did this man get this job?

The committee to choose a new principal for our school met with the administrators at the District 75 Office. They were told they had to select Mr. McCormack. They objected because they had a better qualified candidate in none of our assistant principals. They were very disturbed that this man had never worked with a mentally-retarded population.

They were told that he was only going to be at the school a few years and then he’d be moving up to the a job at the district office and that would be good for the school!

Each time I was assaulted he had to cover up the crime Two gay-bashings would not look good on his resume. Kevin McCormack, was up for tenure and he did not want any of this to show on his record. He was also due his next promotion as soon as he put in the minimum amount of time as a principal.
He knew he could get away with not following the Chancellor’s Regulations and violating NY State Law because the same cronies in city government who were running patronage schemes in District 75 would protect him. After all they had been setting him up promotion after promotion.

Kevin McCormack also has a reputation for being a “very loose cannon“: his buddies had to protect him worried about what information he might let slip about how they operated behind the scenes in the district as a way of saving himself.
The reason an investigation is important at this time is that it will help expose the systematic corruption in School District 75. It was set up as the “Chancellor’s District” to keep it free from the politics in community control. Instead people like Kevin McCormack get almost automatic promotions and are appointed to posts over better qualified candidates.

How did this patronage scheme work? There was a system of quid pro quo skillfully managed by men in the Hibernian Society.

I only had the stomach to attend one Hibernian function. I was dragged there by a woman who wanted to get ahead in District 75,but also I really wanted to see this one! The disgraced Mario Biaggi was their Man of the Year. This St. Patrick’s Day gala was dedicated to celebrating his early release from prison on corruption charges!

After eating the obligatory corned beef and cabbage. I wandered around the large banquet hall. There in a secluded alcove sat the Man of the Year himself. A large group of Hispanic textbook salesmen were lined up to pay homage. I saw one after the other kneel and kiss his ring and then one knelt and placed his hands between Mr. Biaggi’s hands - as in the ancient gesture of pledging fealty to a medieval lord.

After that, someone tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had no business there. I left. However, later many of these salesmen were implicated in a scandal. So, this system of corruption is now clearly multicultural. Like any other pathogen this system of corruption has learned to mutate and change in order to adapt to more challenging environments.

When I first got this appointment to the District Office I was at a family gathering. An Irish aunt dragged me into an empty room. She was a long-time school secretary. She stared at me coldly: “I understand you are now working at the District 75’s central office.”

When I started to tell her about my job making training videos, she stopped me and warned me about the “Murphia”. I laughed because her last name was Murphy and thought she was joking. She gave me a sharp jab right to the center of my chest and said: “Keep your guard up, Larry! They pretend it is something cute they are pulling off there, but there is nothing cute about corruption. ”

After years of torment trying to get someone in New York City government to look into Kevin McCormack’s cover up of my assaults, nothing has happened. Complaint after complaint gets cutely side-tracked. My latest complaint and sworn affidavit have now made another set of rounds from bureau to bureau. It has wound up again in an office where they can do little about it!

I think I need somebody outside of New York City government to look into the corruption in District 75, the New York school system and the government itself.
I have seen reform after reform try to eliminate corruption in New York.

After they make reforms on the top and put tight controls as to what happens with then people who deal directly with the public, the corruption goes on. It is like dry rot. The top surface is clean, the bottom clear, but in the middle layers there is corrosion and decay. You have to understand that all the corruption that remains in New York City lies deep in the hidden levels of middle management the public rarely sees.