Former Audenried High School teacher David Pitone got a letter from the School District of Philadelphia on Christmas Eve informing him he had been fired.
It came as no surprise to him — the school district acknowledged it began the process to terminate the computer-science teacher, who taught two-and-a-half days at the school, two months ago.
At least it meant he no longer had to report to the South Regional Office every day to be banished to the basement, where he’d spend the day staring at the walls while administrators finalized his fate.
"It’s kind of like a torture," he said of the experience.
Pitone’s tenure at Audenried, 33rd and Tasker streets — which has earned a reputation as being one of the city’s worst schools — ended when he was told he could not remove students from his class as a means of discipline. The former teacher filed a lawsuit against the district, seeking a court order that would allow him to kick students out of his class, but was denied.
Pitone has made his case high-profile, even receiving national attention. He may have been fired but, he said in an interview last week, he won’t go away. He has two more suits in the works against the district and has created an organization to help parents, teachers and students who had similar experiences.
Pitone, 40, grew up in New Brunswick, N.J. He worked as a computer engineer before earning a law degree. He moved to South Philly six years ago and lives on the 100 block of Pemberton Street.
Both he and his wife, Jane Fitzgerald, are enrolled in Holy Family University’s Corporate to Classroom program, which enables those from other professions to work as teachers while earning a master’s degree in education. Fitzgerald is working at South Philadelphia High School; Pitone said she has had a positive experience teaching ninth-grade math.
Pitone’s plan was to teach while earning his degree, and then go on to become a law professor. He chose to teach at Audenried over a middle school in Northwest Philly.
As Pitone tells it, during his third day at the South Philly school, he was confronted with a student who was playing music videos on his computer. When the teacher told him to stop, the student talked back, cursed at him and became physically intimidating. He instructed the student to go to the principal’s office.
"Because of a few people, I can’t get the class in order," Pitone said. "You spend half the time or more dealing with these students that are disruptive."
Fifteen minutes later, an assistant principal returned to the classroom with the student and, Pitone said, informed him it was against school policy to send students out of the classroom. The teacher then walked out of the school.
In a four-page letter written by Audenried principal LaFra Young advocating that Pitone be fired, she said the former teacher yelled at staff in front of students and that he failed to follow other administrative procedures at the school.
Pitone has accused the district of "pulling the blinds in front of everything that’s happening."
Last year, schools CEO Paul Vallas removed former principal Millage Holloway from Audenried after a district investigation found he had not been reporting all incidents at the school. Young took over last February, and many students and staff later said they noticed a positive difference.
Meanwhile, a member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers legal staff was representing Pitone before he was fired.
PFT spokesperson Barbara Goodman — who spoke to the Review prior to Pitone’s termination — said it is the public schools’ mission to educate every student, not only those who are well-behaved.
"If it were that easy, I’m sure we’d have very high achievement rates but we’d have fewer students," she said.
Still, the union believes chronically disruptive students should be removed from classrooms, said Goodman, but she would not comment specifically about Pitone’s case. The current teachers’ contract includes a clause that holds teachers and administration jointly responsible for discipline problems.
And when a teacher sends a student to the principal’s office, Goodman said, to return him without disciplining him first undermines the teacher’s authority.
The process of firing Pitone began in November. School district spokesperson Fernando Gallard confirmed the district drafted a letter notifying Pitone of his termination and mailed it Dec. 23.
According to Gallard, the letter stated Pitone was being fired for "violation of the school laws of this commonwealth, incompetence, persistent negligence in the performance of duty, willful neglect of duty and other improper conduct."
He added it was the joint recommendation of the principal and the regional superintendent, George Schuler, to dismiss the teacher. Pitone had 10 working days to file a grievance and schedule arbitration through the teachers’ union. Accounting for the holidays, that time expires tomorrow.
Pitone said he will not file a grievance because that would preclude him from going to court — and he wants to keep this as public as possible, he said. Instead, Pitone intends to file a wrongful-termination lawsuit, citing the whistleblower statute.
"I was exposing what I thought was a wrongdoing," he said. "Because I exposed a wrongdoing, they’re retaliating against me."
He also is planning another lawsuit — his third against the district. This one is a class-action suit on behalf of all teachers, parents and students that contends the school district is violating their civil rights. The suit will ask the courts to take control of the public schools, he said.
Gallard said it is district policy not to comment on potential or pending legal action.
Pitone also joined forces in November with the Center for the Community Interest, an advocacy group in New York, to create Teachers and Students for School Civility. Among the supporters of the group is local state Rep. Bill Keller.
There needs to be "some common decency and civility in the classroom," said Keller, who has been involved with hearings at the state level about school safety and school violence. "How do you send teachers in classrooms to do their jobs if there is no sense of order?"
Keller believes Pitone’s experience is consistent with incidents that take place in the public schools every day.
"The problem isn’t that this guy shouldn’t teach," Keller said. "The problem is there is disruptive behavior in the classroom."
Pitone still intends to pursue a master’s degree and become a law professor. But now, instead of spending his days in the classroom, he spends them working on renovations to his home while continuing to take classes in the evenings.
He does not blame one person for the problems in the school district; rather, he calls it a "layer effect." Pitone believes the district will continue to keep most of its problems quiet unless people speak out.
"The only way that changes can be made is if the people involved — the parents and students — step forward."
