A sweet song: exoneration
Music teacher cleared of 1995 assault charge

May 11, 2006

Chester music teacher Charlene Myers, with her dog Trey, spent eight years and nearly $21,000 to clear her name of allegations that she assaulted a student.

It is every educator's worst nightmare: A troubled student makes a false accusation and it takes years to clear your name.

That's what happened to veteran music teacher Charlene Myers, who was accused by a seventh-grade boy of striking him with a door, causing his nose to bleed profusely. Court testimony later showed the student actually made his own nose bleed just to make it look like Myers had struck him.

While authorities in Orange County 's Chester district apparently never really investigated the charge before settling a lawsuit by the boy's parents for $50,000, Myers was recently cleared by a state appeals court that found no truth to the student's claims.

The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court agreed with a lower court that the small school district had wronged Myers by keeping disciplinary records about the alleged assault without her knowledge and without affording her due-process protections of Section 3020-a of state Education Law.

The district has been ordered to remove the allegations from her file and pay Myers an estimated $20,460 in court costs. The court action echoes an arbitrator's ruling against the district after Myers' local, the Chester Teachers Association, filed a grievance.

Myers said the ruling highlights the importance of due process tenure rights, as well as the practice of administrators keeping secretive personnel files that can unfairly ruin an educator's career.

"There's nothing more frustrating than hearing a new teacher say, 'Who needs tenure as long as you're a good teacher?'" Myers said. "Something like this could happen to anyone. It only takes one accusation."

Warning signs

Myers' nightmare began in 1995 — repeated disputes with the seventh-grade student who harassed her, disrupted class and used to push his pencil into the palm of his hand to make it bleed, Myers said.

One day he was so disruptive she sent him and another child out into the hall. A math teacher correcting papers in the back of the classroom went to check on them, but reported the students had left the hallway.

When Myers reported the situation to the front office, she was told the substitute school nurse reported Myers had hit a student.

The youth accused Myers of slamming the door in his face, but there were no signs of blood in the hallway or on the door.

"It was all very suspicious, but nobody asked any questions," Myers recalled. "They just believed the boy."

After the student was operated on for a deviated septum, the district opted to settle a lawsuit for $50,000, Myers said.

Meanwhile, Myers was transferred to the elementary school. Three years after the alleged incident, then-district Superintendent Arnold Kaye wrote Myers that he was keeping records of the alleged assault in her personnel file.

"It was a scathing and grossly untrue letter, charging I hurt one of my students and had been absent more than 10 percent of the time," Myers said. "When it went to court, the judge was amazed that I actually only missed six days."

Most importantly, the court testimony brought forward the boy who was in the hall with the accuser. He testified that the accuser bragged he made his own nose bleed just to make it look like Myers had struck him.

Myers, now 52, said the student's lie caused her great personal anguish and made it impossible for her to get a job elsewhere. "That's why I had to defend myself, which was hard to do when Kaye's letter placed in my personnel file came nearly three years after the incident." She thanked Chester TA President Joanne Traina for her support and guidance.

To this day, Myers has no idea why the boy, now 25, made up the story. "He never said anything, never said I'm sorry," she said.

— Sylvia Saunders