All Dara Joseph wants to do is go back to work.

But the Greenburgh 11 school district, which has a 15-year history of union-busting, continues to ignore an arbitrator's clear-cut ruling regarding workers' compensation rights.

For five years as a teacher at the Special Act school for troubled boys in Westchester County, Joseph received excellent evaluations. She worked in a high-security locked-down cottage with 11th- and 12th-grade boys who could not attend day classes at the residential school.

Then on Oct. 6, 2008, two students started fighting. "One of the boys was in a headlock, turning blue," Joseph said. "If I hadn't gotten involved, he could have been seriously hurt."

As she and the cottage staff tried to break up the fight, Joseph was hurt and sent to the emergency room with a back injury. After several weeks of medication and physical therapy, Joseph was cleared by her doctor to go back to work as a teacher.

Administrators refused to accept her note or let her return to work, claiming she needed a doctor's note saying she was fit to "run and restrain." They defined this as "physically able to quickly intervene and respond to a crisis situation."

"Not only is this 'run and restraint' requirement non-existent in our contract," said Greenburgh FT President Jennifer Cole, "it's not being equally applied to others hired or returning to work."

Joseph, who has served as a trainer for therapeutic crisis intervention, noted many staffers at Greenburgh would not be deemed able to "run and restrain" the emotionally disturbed and explosive students. She said much of TCI training involves knowing how to de-escalate the situation, or talk students down.

"It's not like a police officer where you have to prove you're fit for duty," she said. "My job is a teacher. I'm not a security guard or a bouncer."

When Joseph used up her sick days, the union filed a grievance charging the district was improperly denying her the right to return to work and to full salary.

The union also claimed the district is ignoring an arbitrator's ruling in a similar case a year earlier, by forcing her to use her accrued sick time. In the previous case, the arbitrator ruled the district had to continue paying the teacher's regular wages if the district was not challenging the work-related nature of the injury.

In Joseph's case, a video camera captured the entire incident, and the district never challenged the work-related nature of her injury, nor her eligibility for workers' compensation.

In January, Joseph attended a board meeting with supporters and delivered a letter pleading to be allowed to return to work. The letter noted her students, who were taking Regents exams at the end of the month, were not being taught by a certified teacher. She was not allowed to speak.

For months, the 35-year-old single mother of three has barely gotten by on her $550-a-week workers' compensation.

At her workers' compensation hearing May 5, the district challenged nothing, and the board subsequently confirmed her eligibility for workers' compensation.

Greenburgh 11 Superintendent Sandra Mallah then called Joseph's home and spoke to her 7-year-old daughter, who answered the phone.

"The superintendent kept quizzing her and apparently my 7-year-old said I was 'at work at Greenburgh.'" Joseph said. "Now my daughter still believes in Santa Claus, and based on that information alone the district is saying they won't pay me because they have reason to believe I might be working elsewhere."

In fact, Joseph was not working elsewhere, and NYSUT labor relations specialist Eric Marshall said the conversation with her daughter was "totally unprofessional and inappropriate and would be of little, if any, probative value in a hearing."

"They're just trying to wear her down, but we won't give up," Cole said. "It's questionable why, at a time we're at an impasse with contract negotiations due to financial hardships, the district would choose to act in such a manner and waste so much money."