You Remember Your Middle School Teacher’s Name . . . Who Will Remember Yours?
And if you scare half the city by barricading yourself in a classroom, you get even better name recognition:
Posted: April 25th, 2009 | Filed under: The BronxApparently distraught over being removed from a school in the Bronx, a veteran teacher barricaded himself inside a classroom at the school on Friday morning, claiming that he had planted a bomb in the library and threatening to blow it up, the authorities said. About 1,200 students were evacuated, and within three hours, police officials escorted the teacher from the building and said his bomb claim had been false.
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Mr. Garabitos’s bomb threat sent educators and police officers from the Emergency Services Unit scrambling to take precautions and assess the threat. The Police Department dispatched several officers, hostage negotiators and bomb squad technicians to the building, which also houses Junior High School 145 and the Urban Science Academy.
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During negotiators’ talks with Mr. Garabitos while he was barricaded in the classroom, Mr. Browne said, he admitted that he had planted no bomb, but said he had undertaken a hunger strike over the way a disciplinary case against him had been handled. He also said he wanted to see the principal “ousted,” Mr. Browne said.
Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said that Mr. Garabitos called the city union’s central offices on Friday morning and asked to speak with Randi Weingarten, the president of the union. After he was told she was in Washington (she is also the head of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union based there), he later spoke to another union official who, with the guidance of police hostage negotiators, assured him that he would be safe and urged him to leave the building.
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At a news conference on Friday afternoon, Ms. Weingarten, the union president, said: “No grievance is redressable in this way. We do not condone this behavior at all.”
She said that a list of concerns prepared by Mr. Garabitos was turned over to the Education Department by the union and that she hoped they would be addressed later.