Five-Dollar Rollover
by Ron Isaac

Fresh from ripping the upholstery off the Polar Express, New York City Schools Chancellor Klein has redefined contraband as any token of love, gratitude, or holiday cheer, worth over five dollars retail, gifted to teachers by students and their parents. If no security bugs caught me secreting a Santa Claus mug into my knockoff gym bag, I should for now avoid the wrath of the Office of Special Investigations, which is the closest modern equivalent of King Henry the Eighth's Court of Star Chamber. But as a respecter of the spirit of giving, I am high-risk as a tempter of fate.

Klein has ruled that because teachers are far more prone to corruption than is the general population and can be assumed to put their souls on market for a silk tie, they must be protected from their impulses. Any seasonal gift worth more than a slice of cherry pie must be returned to the sender.

Not only does that decree assume the worst of teachers' judgment, an attitude recognized as Klein's calling card, but also it is unenforceable, counterproductive, and insulting to all. It implies that educators can be bought, that their sense of honor is apocryphal, that students and parents have no other motive than seeking to bribe or otherwise curry favor, and that a crisis of integrity has arisen across the board. Parents by their own initiative have expressed outrage at the chancellor's patronizing, paternalistic, and hypocritical fiat. The same Conflict of Interests Board that is lauding Klein for his five-dollar cap, two summers ago allowed one of Klein's senior deputies, already drawing pay equal to that of a U.S. Supreme Court Judge, to hold a different six-figure, unrelated, overlapping second job.

Is Klein for real or is he spoofing Scrooge? Is his meanness tongue-in-cheek, or is it yet another self-caricature? How do we appraise the gift? Do we send parents flyers admonishing them to attach original receipts? Do we snip the ribbon and ravage the wrapping paper in view of the child wherever and whenever presented with the gift? Was it on sale? Was it the genuine designer article or an intellectual property rights violation? This is the stuff of satire, but it also the grist for the mill of disgust.

If a confidential informant claims that there was a $7.99 price tag on a gift that you, the teacher, failed to regurgitate, you will be called down to the Office of Special Investigations weeks after being advised that an allegation of employee misconduct has been lodged against you. You will be provided no details and may stew in speculation before your hearing. It will have a predetermined outcome and be held by a retired police detective who will be prosecutor, jury, and judge. There will be no legal oversight or standards for evidence gathering or admissibility. This is no bona-fide judicial forum.

You will be provided with no copies of any written allegations, witness testimony, or other evidence whatsoever. Subpoenas, hidden cameras, undercover surveillance agents, and other techniques may deployed to nab you absconding with a your cache of donated #2 pencils.

The Chancellor has lost many of his natural allies among reformers and educational researchers and historians. He has shunned many of the finest material assets and thinkers in the professional community. He has estranged men and women of all parties, wings, factions and philosophies. Deploying troops to interdict ten-dollar bonuses of scented soap demeans him and our common cause of serving children.