By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

TRENTON, N.J. – Seven months ago, Steven Roth was suspended from his job as a special education teacher after he was caught on video threatening to physically attack a 15-year-old student.

Roth called the student a “‘tard” and said he would kick his “a** from here to kingdom come,” reports NJ.com.

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Earlier this month, an administrative law judge ruled that while Roth was guilty of “bullying and intimidating” a student, he did not deserve to lose his teacher tenure. Instead, the judge ruled that Roth “should forfeit 120 days pay and be suspended for the remainder of the current school year,” be denied pay raises for two years, and complete anger management training at his own expense, reports the Gloucester County Times.  District officials say they’ll ask the state’s education commissioner to dismiss Roth when the case comes up for review.

Another case of teacher bullying occurred earlier this year when an audio recording revealed that a 10-year-old autistic student was mocked and neglected by his teacher and a classroom aide. The aide was fired, but the teacher has tenure and is still employed by the district.

New Jersey State Sen. Dianne Allen, a Republican, thinks stronger and swifter punishments are needed to address such situations, and has proposed a bill that would streamline the process for removing bullying teachers.

Under Allen’s bill, “there would be a brief investigation by the anti-bullying specialist at the school,” reports NJ.com. If the investigation yielded evidence of teacher bullying, the school board could then file tenure charges, and send the case to the state’s education commissioner for a decision.

“My process would take under two months,” Allen told the news site.

The New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, wants teacher bullying cases to be decided by an arbitrator. The NJEA says arbitration would be faster and less expensive to settle such cases.

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That sounds good on the surface, but anyone familiar with the arbitration process understands that arbiters who want to stay employed need to keep both school and union officials happy, at least some of the time.

That means arbiters have a financial interest in “diversifying” their decisions, which strikes us as an inadequate way of handling the serious problem of teacher bullying.

Clearly, some type of reform is necessary. The current process for firing a tenured teacher in New Jersey takes from two to five years, with teachers remaining on the district’s payroll for most of that time.