Victory! Thanks to You, Todd Friedman will return to teaching!

Thanks to you and the more than 1700 people who signed the change.org petition demanding beloved Midwood High School teacher Todd Friedman be returned to the classroom, all charges against him were recently dropped and he will return to teaching, without conditions. If it were not for the tremendous outpouring of support from students, faculty, and all of you, he might well have been stripped of his tenure and fired – for the so-called crime of selling books to his students at a loss to himself – so believe it – we have real power when we organize together on the side of what is just and right. Now, I am going to ask you to take one more action. While the charges against Mr. Friedman have been dropped, the bogus Department of Education Report finding that he violated the rules by selling books is still a matter of record. Please support Mr. Friedman in demanding that the report be expunged and Mr. Friedman’s good name cleared by signing this petition to New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina and Office of Special Investigations Director Jaclyn Vargo. Thank you for your continued support of a dedicated, rigorous teacher. This new petition should go to cgfarina@schools.nyc.gov and OSI-Inquiries@schools.nyc.gov Below is a template that you can use. Dear Chancellor Farina and Ms. Vargo, I was delighted to learn that the outrageous charges against Midwood High School teacher Todd Friedman have been dropped and he has been returned to his teaching position. However, there is still the matter of the OSI report, which must be overturned and expunged. In selling the $2 copies of Frankenstein to his AP students, Mr. Friedman was simply following a longstanding Midwood tradition of providing inexpensive books at cost to students so that they can write in them. The publisher Mr. Friedman bought the books from, Prestwick House, has stated in writing that hundreds of NYC school teachers routinely buy books from them with their personal credit cards to resell to students. Are all of these hundreds of teachers the subject of an OSI investigation? Mr. Friedman was not engaged in fundraising. The school bookstore told his supervisor that they could not get the $2 copies of Frankenstein from the publisher to sell to students. No student was required to buy the books, and Mr. Friedman sold them at a financial loss. Nor did any student complain about buying the book. Based on the overwhelming evidence that Mr. Friedman did nothing wrong, his name must be cleared by having the OSI report expunged.