Students and former teachers are tired of the lack of implementation of policy at the Newburgh Enlarged City School District.
Chris Eachus a former AP Physics teacher at Newburgh Free Academy watched from the inside and the outside as policies set in place have gone unimplemented. According to Eachus the attendance issues at Newburgh Free Academy go far beyond student athletes. They extend to all students.

“I was there during the basketball scandal. We were told the school district would take action to prevent this from happening, I believe they did,” said Eachus. “They set new policy, set stricter requirements, more reporting by faculty staff, and teachers. What you need are people at the school building level who will comply to those policies set by the board and that is clearly not happening. It didn’t happen back when I was there either but that’s why they came up with new policies.”

Eachus’s daughter was a day-to-day substitute teacher at NFA Main and NFA North teaching AP Physics and Regents Physics classes until Friday April 5, when she was fired, by a principal at NFA Main. Eachus found no coincidence in the fact that her firing came one day after the District Attorney’s grand jury report was released unveiling an attendance scandal with student athletes and misuse of the school’s APEX online learning program. At his request, she is not being identified by name in this story.

When putting in her final grades Eachus’s daughter requested her referrals, in regards to action taken by the school’s administration regarding unexcused absences, class cuts, or behavioral issues that took place in her classroom. The only difference his daughter made between the release of the grand jury report and the date of her firing was the fact that she requested her referral slips.

“My daughter needed to know if the students had the right to do a make-up exam,” said Eachus. “She needed that back to see if she was going to do grades or testing on a student, the administration at NFA Main ran her around in circles never giving her a single write-up back. This never occurred at NFA North.”

Eachus is not asking for his daughter’s job back or vindication for her firing, he is asking for implementation of school policy across the board evenly at all schools with all students.

“In my opinion this is a case where those write-ups were not properly acted on by the administration and have since disappeared or dare I say thrown away,” said Eachus. “I did not check if these were athletes or not. I am concerned about students, all of them. So although the District Attorney’s report may reference the student athletes, my intent was to let the board and the superintendent know that it’s not just student athletes the administration is not doing the proper actions with.

Tatiana Gabriel, a former student and current substitute teacher at NFA, verifies what Eachus said. She never had to issue a write-up in any of her classes but says it was known at NFA that policies were not used evenly on all students.

“Who is to blame, I think it’s on a multi-systemic level to blame, that can be on the student level, on the teacher level at the administration level,” said Gabriel. “At the end of the day something needs to happen, because from what I’ve seen right now it’s not moving forward it’s just staying right there and nothing is happening.”

Gabriel was reprimanded when she skipped class, yet she saw her peers skipping class without any issues.
“For me it would annoy me because we’re a low income urban school, instead of trying to correct these actions they would allow these students to abuse the system,” said Gabriel. “The art people would get in trouble and have to miss their play for skipping class but the football team still got to play.”

Gabriel is not afraid to speak up because she is a substitute and is not looking for future employment in the district. She noted that in her opinion, some teachers are silenced or fearful to speak up.

“That’s one of the problems, those teachers that care, they either get silenced in an under the rug type of way. I feel like you have two different types of teachers at NFA you have the teachers that really care but are exhausted by the system,” said Gabriel. “For me I’m speaking from a level of privilege because I never had to deal with any of that stuff it’s just a disservice because now you see those kids who were involved in this that were put as an athlete before a student and it shows. They could have gone on and been paid to play sports that they are so good at but are doing nothing at all.I am speaking on this so that moving forward something can happen and in another 6 years you won’t see this in the Newspaper again with a systematic error. It’s like if you need accountability let’s move forward so that no other teacher or student to blame has to suffer through this.”

The district gave no comment regarding the firing of the substitute teacher, and after many attempts, the Newburgh Teachers Association did not return calls for comment.