IN RE: Yuvraj VERMA (2021)

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Debra A. James, J.), entered July 28, 2020, denying the petition to annul respondents' determination, dated November 29, 2018, which terminated petitioner's probationary employment as a teacher, and dismissing the proceeding brought pursuant to CPLR article 78, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

“A probationary employee may be terminated without a hearing for any reason or no reason at all, as long as the dismissal was not unlawful or in bad faith” (Matter of Childs v. Board of Educ. of the City Sch. Dist. of the City of N.Y., 176 A.D.3d 560, 108 N.Y.S.3d 846 [1st Dept. 2019]).  Here, the record shows that petitioner's dismissal was made in good faith, and was based on his declining performance evaluations and incidents of disciplinary misconduct.  Petitioner's assertion that he was terminated in retaliation for his reporting that a co-teacher allegedly engaged in corporal punishment against a student on October 1, 2018 is speculative, given evidence of his deficient work performance and his disciplinary misconduct, which the school administration began to document several months before the October 2018 incident (see Matter of Johnson v. City of New York, 281 A.D.2d 322, 722 N.Y.S.2d 156 [1st Dept. 2001]).