By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

NEW YORK – A Bronx school teacher and union representative is suing her formal principal because the principal allegedly made her sit in a storage room.

United Federation of Teachers representative Virginia Barden, 65, contends Fordham High School for the Arts Principal Iris Blige targeted her when she taught at the school, after Barden became a chapter leader with the UFT in 2006, the New York Daily News reports.

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Blige allegedly forced Barden to sit in a storage room facing a blank wall after she was given numerous negative reviews, according to the news site.

Barden allegedly spent a week in October in the storage room, where she continued to challenge the principal.

“I moved the desk,” Barden told the Daily News. “She ordered someone to move it back.”

Blige was at the center of a 2011 city investigation that found she instructed assistant principals to issue unsatisfactory ratings to some teachers before conducting observations. She was fined $7,500 for the incident, allowed to keep her job, and admitted only that her instructions were misconstrued in a settlement with the city.

“(Blige) is extremely unscrupulous in the way she does her job,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew told the Daily News in 2011.

That may be true, but she’s certainly no match for Mulgrew, who is the master of fighting dirty to put the interests of employees over student learning.

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We suspect the hostile and adversarial relationship between employees and administrators – fostered by the union – has taught Blige to fight fire with fire. Perhaps Blige believes the only way to get through to the union is to employ the same type of “unscrupulous” tactics the union itself uses.

Or maybe Blige is just a meanie.

Whatever the situation, a one week stay in detention hardly seems like a lawsuit-worthy offense, and we think the litigation has more to do with political payback than any real suffering or trauma experienced by Barden.