Such a sad story, yet so important to tell.  Thank you for the article.  I'd love to see Civil Beat put out a call for stories about people who work(ed) for the DOE or one of its subcontractors and either witnessed or experienced retaliation for reporting wrongdoing.  CB would, of course, have to protect its sources. I have heard many people go before the Board of Education and tell them that there is a culture of fear in the DOE preventing people from speaking up about about anything negative, but the Board doesn't seem to believe this, and hasn't made any progress in creating policies to prevent this.  Keep in mind that retaliation takes many forms.  Losing your job is the most extreme.  One of the most common is to withdraw support (like not fixing problems with your computer or broken items in the classroom).  Another is always assign you the worst equipment or jobs -- like taking all the behavior problem children in a Grade level and dumping them in a disfavored teacher's class.