Teacher Barricades Himself at School
Uli Seit for The New York Times

Police officers escorted 1,200 students from the building housing New Millennium Business Academy Middle School after a bomb threat on Friday.

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By JENNIFER MEDINA and AL BAKER
Published: April 24, 2009

Apparently 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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Uli Seit for The New York Times

Francisco Garabitos is taken into custody in a police car after surrendering. The building in the Morrisania section also houses Junior High School 145 and the Urban Science Academy.

The man, Francisco Garabitos, 55, has been a teacher in New York City’s school system since 1981, and has been teaching computer classes for three years at New Millennium Business Academy Middle School, where he was also the chapter leader for the city’s teachers’ union.

On Thursday, the authorities said, Mr. Garabitos had a dispute with a student and apparently grabbed his neck and shook him. Afterward, Mr. Garabitos was told to report to a reassignment center on Friday rather than to the school, in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. He went to the school anyway, officials said, and when he locked himself in the classroom, he said, “I have a date with God,” according to the officials.

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.

Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, said the officers evacuated “the whole building, except for him.” With the students and teachers safely outside, officers searched the entire building.

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.

Mr. Garabitos was taken to Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center for psychological evaluation Friday afternoon.

Mr. Garabitos was charged with reckless endangerment, obstructing governmental administration and criminal trespassing. He was being held at the 44th Precinct station house at 2 East 169th Street in the Bronx on Friday night.

A spokesman for the school system said Mr. Garabitos’s service has included more than a dozen allegations of misconduct, mostly for corporal punishment of students. Two of the allegations have been substantiated and two remain under investigation, including Thursday’s incident.

Twice in the last three years, Mr. Garabitos spent time in a reassignment center for teachers and other school officials removed from the schools. He also received two unsatisfactory ratings from the principal of his school. Because of his long experience and advanced degrees, Mr. Garabitos earned $100,049 a year.

An online résumé for Mr. Garabitos states that he is a former Army officer working toward a Ph.D. in distance education and instructional technology at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

A Web site, www.detower.com, that says it displays his work, includes a plot synopsis for a book about “a nymphomaniac woman with two active personalities always in need of sexual attention.”

Another page, about his educational theories, says: “Children should not to be the center of social attention but need to be assigned a place of limited importance within the adult group. They shouldn’t get an automatic power rank like we do, because social-academic status is something humans develop into over time and only exists within the context of other adults.”

Later, it continues: “Teachers and parents should avoid any kind of hitting, slapping, whipping, kicking, punching, grabbing, pushing, or pulling for it may be misconstrued as part of aggression and could lead to physical and/or legal confrontations.”

In the afternoon, Ms. Weingarten released a statement saying the content of the Web site was “entirely inappropriate for children or educators. Teachers must remember there is no zone of privacy when someone publishes in this manner and attaches one’s name to it.”

Students at the school said that it was alarming when the teacher was barricaded, but that the reaction was calm.

Ibrahmatu Kosseh, 14, an eighth grader, said she was alerted to the situation by her principal. “This morning we were in class taking a test, and our principal came in and said, ‘Everybody to the auditorium, there’s somebody in the building,’ ” she said.

One student said that last year Mr. Garabitos was punched in the face by another student and “sometimes was too nice.”

The president of the school’s Parents Association, Doris Escalera, said Mr. Garabitos “was a person that was dedicated to his job.”

“He was a decent person as far as I was concerned,” she said. “It’s blown out of proportion; he was just trying to make a stand for himself.”

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.

Christine Hauser, Mathew R. Warren and Carolyn Wilder contributed reporting.
More Articles in New York Region » A version of this article appeared in print on April 25, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.
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