LAW PROTECTED PERV TEACHER

Thomas Gibbons, a tenured special-ed teacher at William Taft HS in the Bronx, was accused of having sex with a student for years, starting when the girl was 15.  He admitted it on tape in 1995 but he is still teaching in a New York City public school.  In 1996, Gibbons was tried before arbitrator Margaret Leibowitz, the tapes in which he talks about sex with the girl were the smoking gun.  But Leibowitz, found the evidence insufficient and did nothing.  He now teaches at John F. Kennedy HS in the Bronx.  Leibowitz remained an arbitrator for city schools another three years after the Gibbons fiasco.  But a source at the Board of Education said the system stopped using her after she took nearly two years, from December 1997 to September 1999, to decide a corporal punishment case that was supposed to take no more than three months.  The teacher was dismissed.  But because of Leibowitz, he stayed on the city payroll an extra two years.

(New York)