Crucifixion Of Dr. McCaskill

On  February 7, 2006, New York Times writer Elissa Gootman who was once called by the Jewish publication, Forward Newspaper “Our leg woman in Israel,”  gloated in a headline, Brooklyn Tech Principal Resigns After Wrongdoing Is Found. The word “wrongdoing” refers to the fact that Dr. McCaskill, and his wife,  who live in New Jersey, submitted a post-dated lease  in an effort to claim NYC residency  so that their daughter could attend public school in  New York City for free. Yet Gootman’s words, “wrong doing,” are as much a confession as a condemnation since they are critical  to distinguishing this negative article from a long list of  preceding negative New York Times articles, about Dr. McCaskill.  

In those articles no wrong doing was ever found. The frequency of these articles almost exclusively by Jews seemed to increase the more the academic performance of Dr. McCaskill’s mainly non white and mainly non-Jewish students soared. The words “wrong doing” in Gootman’s headline are crowing sounds celebrating an ethnic victory. They translate to the words “We finally nailed this Schvartze.â€? Gootman’s article is no disconnected diatribe. It is the culmination of a decade long ethnic campaign.

One of the most scurrilous of these articles  in this campaign was published, not in the Times, but in  a newspaper called The New York Teacher under the byline Jim Callaghan  in October of 2005. This article called Brooklyn Wreck, was then duplicated and distributed separately to parents of Brooklyn Tech Students on Open School Night by picketers of the historically Jewish-led teachers union, United Federation of Teachers. Despite the Irish byline the article’s chief concern is what Callaghan termed “Jew Baiting.â€? Callaghan’s article features a picture of  Dr. McCaskill’s assistant principal Ms. Tracy Atkins-Zoughlami in Muslim headgear next to McCaskill’s picture – both  prominently featured at the top of the page. Callaghan charges Zoughlami of Jew baiting because she, while serving as an English teacher, read to an English class a Poem by Amiri Baraka that Callaghan says features the lines, “Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / to stay home that day / Why did Sharon stay away?â€? Callaghan fails to mention that the poem attacks anti-Semitism, asking at one point, “who put the Jews in ovens/ and who helped them do it.”  Callaghan also neglects to mention that this same poem by Baraka laments the murder of various Jewish victims around the world with the lines “Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebnecht/Who murdered the Rosenbergs/ And all the good people iced, tortured, assassinated, vanished.â€?

Callaghan’s article quotes someone named Howard Gleich calling Dr. McCaskill “a Dictator,”  and someone named Andrew Silverman as saying Zoughlami and McCaskill “want to drive us from the school.”  The article faults Dr. McCaskill for disciplining a teacher who invited students over to his house for lunch without proper clearance from the school. Callaghan’s  article minimizes that teacher’s error as being simply  a “mitzvah he had performed for years”  Who baiting? 

The brunt of this ethnic press attack occurred over the last four years in articles published in the Times such as: “3 Say a Brooklyn Principal Sent Sexually  Explicit E Mail,â€? with the bylines of Robert F. Worth and Andy Newman, dated October 4, 2002; “Evaluating a Brooklyn Principal, Measure for Questionable Measure,â€? bylined by  Michael Winerip, dated January 15, 2003; and, “Principal Cleared of Sending Sex-Oriented E-Mail,â€? bylined by David M. Herszenhorn, dated March 8, 2003. Even though the last article exonerated Dr. McCaskill, it kept the negative talk swirling around him. One interesting thing found by investigators was that someone had hacked McCaskill’s computer. Dirty Tricks of Warfare? Another article was, “Principal’s War Leads to a Teacher Exodus,â€? (emphasis is this authors), bylined by Michael Winerip, dated January 28, 2004.

However, preliminary work in this four year attack on McCaskill appears to have been set up as early as 10 years ago in a piece  titled, “Step Up Pressure On Issue of Overcrowding”  by Jacques Steinberg published in the New York Times, January 15, 1996 . This article,  ostensibly, about overcrowding in  many NYC schools, alleges  that overcrowding was such  a big issue at Brooklyn Tech that teachers filed grievances for over 266 classes, about a fourth of those offered. The article ends with a paragraph that plays to later  union accusations that Dr. McCaskill  had destroyed several great traditions at Tech. At the end of the article Dr. McCaskill is noted as having “tried to offset increases in class size with … budget-cutting measures, like paring the number of periods that advanced placement physics meets each week (6, down from 10 last year) and eliminating fourth-year French”. McCaskill is quoted as saying finally, “I don’t like the choices.” 

Little did McCaskill know at that time that the choices in this ethnic war would only get worse. An Article titled, “A Teacher’s Compliments, Then a Sudden Critique,â€? bylined by  Samuel G. Freedman was published in the New York Times on December 21, 2005. United Federation of Teachers President, Randi Weingarten is quoted as essentially admitting  that back in June of 2005 she had white mailed Dr. McCaskill and his superiors with a draft or summary of the article that contained most of the material that would eventually appear  in the piece “Brooklyn Wreckâ€? by Callaghan.

Weingarten whose bio also lists her as serving on the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, admits that she met that June with Mr. Jean-Claude Brizard the current Executive Director of Secondary Schools for the City Department of Education. In a classic projection, Weingarten admits to using the article “as she discussed Mr. McCaskill’s (sic) use of threat and intimidation.” According to the article, when “she gave Mr. Brizard a summary of the as-yet-unpublished article. it was her hope…that the problems at Tech could be solved without the article’s going into print.” This was apparently meant to be an ADL style “horses head” offer that Mr. Brizard and Dr. McCaskill could not refuse.

However, the offer was refused. Dr. McCaskill made his choice. He would be a  Black man and a principal, not a puppet for other ethnic interests. According to the Times, “Within one or two weeks of the time Mr. Brizard received the article summary, paperwork shows that Dr. McCaskill began the process of giving the year long U (unsatisfactory rating) to Ms. Lehrman (One of his detractors in the article with which Weingarten had confronted Brizard.) He also authorized Us for two other longtime teachers at Tech who were quoted in the article, Andrew Silverman and Anastasia Visbal.

Thus Dr. McCaskill became another martyr in the undeclared and very one-sided Jewish/Black ethnic war. The fatal blow delivered in Gootman’s  “Brooklyn Tech Principal Resigns After Wrongdoing Is Foundâ€? was not the final blow. Subsequent New York Times headlines have followed. Crucifixion is big news: “Principal Named At Brooklyn Tech,â€? bylined by Elissa Gootman, was published on February 8, 2006 and revealed that  Mr. Randy Asher would take over Dr. McCaskill’s job. Another article, “Investigator Rebukes City Schools Over Retirement of a Principal,â€? was bylined by Gootman again and published on  February 15, 2006 and revealed that Special Commissioner for Investigation of the New York City School System  and former NYC Police Commissioner under Mayor Koch,  Richard J Condon  believed that Dr. McCaskill should not have been allowed to settle his “wrong doing” with a simple  resignation.

The article describes a classic case of selective investigation and entrapment. The article alleges that the investigation began because of a rumor—repeat, rumor, that had arrived to the department’s general counsel that the McCaskill’s daughter was attending a NYC public school. The article describes the Department of Investigation taking the trouble to follow and observe the McCaskills morning routine in two states. According to the Times, investigators were “watching as a green Ford registered to Mrs. McCaskill made its way from Piscataway through Perth Amboy, N.J., and Staten Island, traveling to Brooklyn over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Once in Brooklyn, they found, a girl with a blue book bag was dropped off at Ms. Sheares’ home or at the home of another nearby friend, who would drop the girl off at P.S. 29.”  Condon’s investigators and school officials did not stop there. Apparently after establishing that the McCaskills lived in New Jersey they encouraged him to provide proof of residence which was done in the form of leases signed by their friend and the McCaskills. Unfortunately the copyright on the lease forms they used, post dated the signatures. This post dating is what allowed the investigators and the reporter Gootman to refer to the leases as fake and false, etc.

Since Ms. Sheares is a lawyer Condon has said he will—Shades of Bob Abrams and Alton Maddox—forward his findings to the grievance committee of the appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court and the state court system’s ethics commission. The article further quotes Condon as saying  that the records of this investigation will be forwarded to the District attorney and as also recommending that McCaskill be placed on a list where he will be barred from future employment. 

It also quotes Condon as calling for the firing of McCaskill’s wife from her job as a teacher at Boys and Girls High School. Clearly these measures  are harsh. Take Dr. McCaskills job.  Ensure he never works again. Fire his wife. Slap him with a $19,441.00 dollar  tuition bill. Go after his friend’s license. Muddy his name in the press, etc.  Yet another article appeared headlined, “A Teacher’s Fall at a Turbulent School,â€? bylined by Samuel G. Freedman, on February 15, 2006. Here  a Jewish scholar from Columbia University, seemingly rationalizes Condon’s harsh treatment of the McCaskills. 

In the exact same edition that the Times published Condon’s harsh proposals, the Times published another story about a bipolar employee of a night school housed at Tech who sometimes worked for Brooklyn Tech as a substitute teacher and  who according to those cited in the story was treated harshly by McCaskill. This second article also implies that this bipolar ex-employee was possibly  distraught about allegedly being white listed from employment by Zoughlami and McCaskill. The article with just the most fragile of disclaimers also implies  that McCaskill is somehow responsible for that person’s subsequent suicide  back  in October of 2005! The overall implication of this four month old story coincidentally published on the exact same day that harsh punishments were  urged for Dr. McCaskill is clear.  McCaskill deserves Condon’s old time religion. Crucify him!

The hypocrisy of  proposing these harsh punishments  for Dr. McCaskill is underscored by yet another article “Schools Give Employees Amnesty Over Tuition,â€? by David M. Herszenhorn, published February 16, 2006I. In this article Commissioner of Education Joel Klein is quoted as announcing amnesty for everybody else who has a child living outside of the five boroughs but attending a New York City school as Dr. McCaskill’s  daughter did. The only requirement is that the  parent has to come forward by March 21st. The article quotes a person identified as David Cantor as stating that “It is probably not a really substantial number of people (who live outside of New York City but attend City Schools) or we would have heard about it.”

What’s the importance of offering an amnesty if there are not that many people doing it? Are Department of Education officials saying they haven’t heard any rumors about anybody from any other ethnic group? At the Jamaica Station of the LIRR every white youngster with a nap sack of books getting off those trains from remote regions of the Long Island is probably going to a New York City Public School and they don’t live in the five boroughs. Check out that rumor.  If  investigators take note of the color of their nap sacks instead of just the color their skins, if investigators follow them and their parents and apply the rules as strictly as  they did to Dr. McCaskill, then the casualty list in this Ethnic war will no longer be all Black as it now is.

With all of the venom that has been published about Dr. McCaskill there is no mention of the unprecedented academic success of students at Brooklyn Tech, during his many years of leadership. The selective nvestigation, exposure, exaggeration and prosecution of his so called wrong-doing represents raw racial politics at its worse. A man who has contributed so much to literally thousands of high school students should not be crucified on the mole hill of technical city residence. Why shouldn’t the child of two educators saving the lives of literally thousands of NYC children be able to attend a NYC school for free?

The amnesty announced by Mr. Klein  for everyone but the McCaskill’s is designed to protect whites and Jews who cannot stand up to the standard they set specifically for Dr. McCaskill to move him out of a position of leadership. Commissioner of Education Klein should be setting the example to stop blatant ethnic chauvinism that is fueling the literal pogrom against Black leadership at Brooklyn Tech and other educational institutions in this City. The majority of the students at Brooklyn Tech are non-white and non-Jewish and benefited from not only the academic leadership of Dr. McCaskill but also from the model of Black leadership and excellence that he represents. These students and their parents should not be asked to accept an ethnic hit then trust that the new principal will be just as good as Dr. McCaskill, only a little more Jewish. Mr. Asher should not have been asked  to, and cannot be expected to, fill the void of Dr. McCaskill’s absence.