Death In the Science Classroom

DEATH IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM

A Rick Podowski And The Hefty Trio Amateur Detective Novel

Robert Miller

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Robert Miller

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Rick's Favorite Wineries And Recipes With Wine Pairings

The Wineries

The Recipes

About the Series

Discover other titles in the Rick Podowski series

Murder Before The Bell

The Fishy Chips

The Winning Certificate

Death of a Foster Child

Once a student makes an allegation against a teacher, the presumption of innocence - central to American jurisprudence - vanishes. The impetus of proof falls on the accused. Proof of innocence is held to a higher standard than the evidence needed to file criminal charges. Olson, M and Lawler, G, Guilty, Until Proven Innocent. p.xiii

.

Dear Reader,

The public has very high expectations for our teachers. Unlike other jobs, they are on stage directing twenty to forty students per class six hours a day, five days a week for ten months of the year, during which time they may be ill, face personal crises, or simply be overwhelmed by professional problems arising from simple mistakes or inappropriate comments, particularly around stress periods such as that of annual testing. And always there is the risk of creativity resulting in innovations, which may draw the unwelcome attention of parents and administrators.

Two examples come to mind, the first of which involved career goals. These were especially important in my classes since I taught in a minority school where the vast majority of the parents were unskilled laborers. My students and I worked together exploring interests using all of the academic, vocational, and military resources available. Each student ended the assignment with a ten-page plan. The only restriction was that the students could not write about being a professional athlete or music star because success in these fields is limited to so very few. As you can imagine, I had to endure many parent conferences because of these two restrictions.

In another case, as part of an innovative final exam, a language teacher had the students videotape and then describe their bedrooms in Spanish. One student had a marijuana plant in his room and when the teacher refused to show his videotape to the class, the parent complained. The school principal had to convince the parents that it was a good idea to remake the video because not all fathers and mothers were as enlightened as they.

Sometimes teachers are put in a very difficult situation when students make false accusations that lead to the teacher being forced to defend his/her actions and in some cases this sort of thing sometimes proceeds to trial. Ironically, although presumably, as American citizens enjoying the right to be innocent until proven guilty, far too many teachers are punished by losing their positions, even after being cleared in an investigation.

This novel explores a tragedy which need never have happened, an example of the repercussions which can result when a teacher is falsely accused, repercussions which can be devastating enough to cause a member of that profession to commit suicide, or lead another to use those false allegation to justify committing murder.

Happy reading.

Bob Miller

Grievance Procedure

Each school in any district where there is a teacher's union will have a grievance representative, and there will usually be one person who coordinates grievances for all of the schools in the local union. In larger school districts this person usually has some released time, paid for by the union, to carry out the duties associated with this position.

A grievance is a formal written allegation by a bargaining unit member or the union acting on behalf of a named bargaining unit member(s) that there has been a violation, misinterpretation, or misapplication of the specific provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Chapter 1

Rick Podowski glanced at his watch, and shifted about in an attempt to get comfortable as he sat in one of the chairs at the long table in the very narrow Principal's Conference Room.

It's good to be back at North High School, Rick said. I was last here about two years ago and the place is exactly the same. It still needs a paint job.

Budget problems, James Elliot, the school principal replied, but I'm going to use my connections with the NFL to get donations so the school can be painted next year.

Right, Ed Smith the school grievance rep said. Just like you were going to remodel the science labs.

All of our schools are having problems, Rick said trying to reduce the obvious tension between these two African-American males.

I asked Rick to be here in his role as head rep for the union because this is my first grievance. Smith explained. Dan Longreen, one of our science teachers, claims that Mr. Elliot. our principal, is harassing him. Just as soon as he gets here, we can hopefully talk out the problem without going to a Level Two grievance.

Where is Longreen? Elliot said, sounding somewhat annoyed. We need to wrap this up before the end of first period. He has a second period class and I have a meeting at the district office.

Maybe we should walk over to the science classroom, Smith suggested. Since he doesn't have a class this period, he probably thought that we were going to meet there.

The door to Longreen's classroom, which was located in the next building, was locked.

I'll use my key, Elliot said. But I don't understand why...

He broke off as the door swung open, exposing the body of a man, hanging by a braided rope from the metal frame of the overhead florescent light fixture, his face dark with suffused blood and his tongue lolling from his open mouth, the stool he had apparently been standing on was pushed over and had fallen from the table to the floor.

Rick felt a sharp pain in his gut, followed by a gagging sensation.

Oh my God! Elliot muttered as he ran to the classroom phone.

While Rick waited for the emergency teams to do their jobs, he was overcome first by anger as he thought about what would have happened if a student had found Longreen's body. But then, as his rage turned to pity, he realized that perhaps this was the place that Longreen loved and he came here to say goodbye.

Chapter 2

What have I gotten myself into? Rick Podowski asked himself as he drove his 1991 Honda Civic back to the union office. As Central High School's grievance rep, a position Rick had held for seven years, he mostly worked on problems concerning evaluations, and on settling petty disputes between teachers and administrators. When Mike Duval, the head grievance rep for the union had retired last June, Rick assumed that the job would entail the same types of problems only in more schools.

At the same time, it had seemed easy to justify taking the position and, consequently, giving up his full time teaching assignment and his extra duty as co-advisor to the school's literary magazine. After all, he would still be based at Central High and would teach three classes in the morning and then take care of the grievance stuff in the afternoon. Since this was a period of relative labor calm throughout the district, he would not be dealing with grievances every day, thus he would actually have more time to work in an unofficial capacity on the magazine. There wasn't a single grievance during the first three weeks of September, so the plan seemed to be working.

But never in his wildest dreams would he have guessed that his first case would begin by a teacher hanging from a noose attached to a light fixture in his own classroom. Rick could only hope that this was not an omen of what was to come.

* * *

Chad Williams, the president of the union, greeted Rick from behind a cluttered desk. The superintendent called to inform me about the quote, unquote, apparent suicide and I'm not supposed to say anything until the police make the finding official, Chad said, redder face than usual. I'm sick of this cover-up mentality. The teachers are under so much pressure because of testing, complaints from parents and from some of these punks who claim that the teachers are abusing them. Yet, the administration doesn't support the teachers, and when one cracks up like this, they always cover it up. The superintendent said that he would ask the board to fire any administrator or employee who was involved in harassing this man. But, you watch. He'll make some excuse to absolve himself and the district from all responsibility.

I guess you're right, Rick said, deciding to play it safe since he didn't know Williams all that well. And, he certainly did not want to encourage Chad to indulge in another diatribe.

See this, Williams said, waving an inch of bound paper. It's a National Education Association report on the number of times the union was called in last year to handle administrative, parental, and student claims of abuse. In almost 90% of the cases, nothing happened but in some states the union has been forced to hire in-house criminal defense lawyers because there are so many accusations. This is happening because there are no consequences when people make false charges or when administrators harass teachers. This time, I'm going to make sure the superintendent keeps his promise.

You're right, there are no consequences, Rick said. What do you want me to do?

You have afternoons for union business. I want you to take as much time as necessary to investigate and find out why this guy hung himself. Make this your top priority. And I want the balls of the principal when you prove that his harassment caused this. I'm sick and tied of administrators like Elliot who believe that they can jack the union around. We're going to make an example out of him. Now, get back to North High and see what you can find out.

It was clear to Rick that Chad Williams had no sympathy for Dan Longreen and he was going to use this incident as a way to get even with the administration. This was the one thing that bothered Rick about unions. All too often discontented teachers populated them, whether for good reason or not they held a grudge against their supervisors and often became officials in the union. And just like Williams, they were constantly looking for ways to punish administrators.

As Rick thought about the situation, he realized that his job could become very unpleasant if he crossed Chad Williams, but he was determined to discover the truth and if that made a fool out of Williams, then so be it.

* * *

It always amazed Rick that two campuses built from the same plans could look so different. The buildings at Central were constructed of stately red brick, while those at North were light yellow brick, creating a modern look. Spanish style roofs, however, dominated both structures, and all of the classroom buildings faced a large oval shaped grassy mound, beyond which the land sloped to create an amphitheater that ended at the outdoor stage of the theater-arts building. The entire perimeter of the grass was covered by huge shade trees that were in their glory this September day. Rick found Ed, a lean, lanky African American in his classroom. It was early lunch break, and the rep was making a meal of a foot long sandwich, two chocolate cupcakes of the plastic wrapped sort Rick disdained, and a disgusting looking bottle of something that might or might not have been Gatorade.

Rick came directly to the point.

I've been doing some research on the subject of teacher suicide, he began, and went on to make reference to the number of research sources of the sort, he knew would probably impress Ed, historians always being sticklers for facts.

The point is, he continued, when he was certain that he had Ed's complete attention that teacher's don't usually kill themselves in places where there's a chance that one of their students will find them. In fact, I've only been able to find one case of this having happened. A fifteen-year veteran biology teacher in Georgia mixed a batch of hydrogen cyanide gas in a classroom storage closet and then placed a sign on the door that read, DO NOT ENTER. POISONOUS GAS. And unlike Longreen, he left a suicide note referring to personal problems. As far as I've been able to determine up to now, this is only the second recorded case of a teacher committing suicide in a classroom.

Ed pushed what was left of the foot long sandwich aside. Clearly he had lost his appetite, and Rick did not blame him. He wondered if he would ever forget the look in Dan Longreen's empty eyes as he had hung, dangling like a puppet, from that rope.

I really feel sorry for the guy, Ed said. If only he'd come to me earlier, I might have been able to do something about Elliot's harassment of him. Because let me tell you frankly, Rick, I think Longreen was pushed into it by Elliot as surely as you and I are sitting here now. That guy has gone so far toward destroying the morale of the staff that most of us hate him.

Rick understood completely. Whereas, outside of the school atmosphere, it took a lot to rev up something even approaching hatred toward someone, in the close quarters provided by a school, strong emotion was easy to come by. However, his own experience as grievance rep had taught him that you had to approach everything as pragmatically as possible.

Hate is a very strong word, Rick said. Besides, I'm not so sure it was Elliot's fault. Many of the principals are basically nice guys, but they're often put into impossible situations.

I have no sympathy for them, Ed said impatiently. They make our lives miserable with their incompetence. Look at Longreen. He was so frustrated that he didn't leave a suicide note. By the way, is that common?

According to the research, Rick said, only about twenty percent of the people who commit suicide leave notes.

Enough about the research, Ed replied. All I know is that this was Longreen's third year of teaching and he was a loner. Usually, he would eat lunch in his classroom and when he came to faculty meetings, he wouldn't say much. Since I'm in the history department, I've never bothered much with the science people. Besides, as you know, their office is on the other side of campus. But I'm sure of one thing. Longreen wasn't a troublemaker or anything like that. Elliot caused him to commit suicide.

People that keep to themselves usually don't file grievances, Rick said, having decided to not make any judgments about Elliot until he had more information. That is until they can't take something anymore. What was the grievance about?

I'll be honest with you, Ed said. I feel really guilty because I didn't follow the procedures we learned in the grievance training. I've been so busy with my own classes that I didn't ask any questions. I figured it was more of Elliot's bullshit. The last grievance rep was so busy with the crap that he burned out.

Rick gained in his respect for Ed. Not many men would take responsibility for not doing their jobs. Rather, most would blame someone else. Also, Ed realized that he needed help and he asked for it.

It's a hard job, Rick agreed, and you did what you could. After all, being a grievance rep is a volunteer position. What happened next?

Longreen called, Ed said, and asked if I would accompany him at a meeting with the principal. He said that he would do all the talking and he just wanted me there to observe. I wasn't sure what to do because I'd just been elected to the position. That's when I asked you to accompany me. The last thing I want is for a grievance to be screwed up because I didn't know what to do.

Great, we're both in the dark, Rick said. The union president's goal is to hang Elliot if the harassment caused Longreen to commit suicide. I think that he agrees with you. Tell me about this guy.

Elliot's a jock, Ed said. He likes to hire teachers who can coach and he doesn't have a lot of use for people like Longreen whose extra duty involved being the science club advisor. He pressured me for a long time to coach basketball, but I refused because I don't play very well.

You're a tall thin African-American and you're not a basketball star? Rick said laughing.

Actually, Ed told him, "I spend my free time naked dancing around bonfires, holding a spear. Seriously, if you're a jock at this school, you're fine. The rest of us get screwed. An inordinate amount of money goes to the athletic program, and the art, and science programs are under funded. That bastard Elliot bought a high tech