Many of you may have received an email recently inviting you to a meeting to “discuss issues with the Substitutes United of Buffalo.” This meeting is not being conducted by this union.
The organizer of the upcoming meeting, and author of the email invite, Simpson Turley, was defeated in our last election in October and is now trying to imply something improper occurred with the election, as well as improprieties regarding the removal of an Executive Committee member and charges being brought against another for misconduct.
I assure you everything this Executive Committee has done is above board and within our rights as a union to stop the spread of unsubstantiated claims, accusations and unnecessary chaos that is stopping us from doing the work of the union.
The Executive Committee did make errors during the election, but we were completely transparent about our mistake and after correcting the error, posted the information on our website, substitutesunitedofbuffalo.org.
Unfortunately, with an inexperienced election committee, the ballots were miscounted and the initial results were incorrect. This mistake was found accidentally when Ms. Salamone brought the ballots home to store in the SUB files. She noticed what looked like an uneven tally sheet, and out of curiosity, recounted and discovered that the counts were off
After the election, we discovered that Prabhu was not qualified to run for the executive Committee because he had not worked 20-days during the 2024-25 school year. In fact, according to the SubDesk, Prabhu has not worked a total of 20-days in the three years he has been employed as a substitute in the Buffalo School District.
When informed of this discrepancy, Prabhu insisted he did work and would provide proof. When we asked several weeks later for proof, he refused to speak to officers of SUB. He was asked several times to meet with officers to see if we could figure out a way to resolve the matter and he would not reply to our requests. He said he was an elected official and did not have to answer us.
At that point, he was notified that if he did not meet with the officers, he would be terminated on Nov. 1. Prabhu did not respond until a week later after we notified him that he was removed from the board. At that point, he demanded a meeting with officers at a specific time and place with two of his friends present.
Because of his unreasonable demands, not willing to work cooperatively with officers and not qualified to serve on the Executive Committee, he was terminated.
Turley and Prabhu, along with Jonathan David Swift, a current delegate on the Executive Committee, have also been involved in a conspiracy theory revolving around an arbitration fund started by SUB about 20 years ago.
They have been accusing past and present Executive Committee members, without proof or justification, of misappropriating this fund and threatening us with legal repercussions they allege will land us all in jail.
Swift, elected in 2024, has been relentlessly fixated on this fund and for more than a year has been harassing Executive Committee members and other SUB members with his theories of corruption.
The fund, which has been managed by a broker, at no cost to SUB, is invested in stocks and has fluctuated over the years. These three feel they would be better at choosing which stocks the funds were invested in and have hounded the broker for information they are not entitled to and have tried to convince our membership that the funds have been misappropriated.
We assure you that the funds are safe, the monthly statements are balanced and we are in compliance with an annual audit by the American Federation of Teachers.
However, due to the constant harassment of our members by Swift, his spreading of unsubstantiated claims both publicly and on our website, his inability to work cooperatively with the Executive Committee and our NYSUT representative, will be brought up on charges of misconduct during our January Executive Committee meeting.
This is the third time in his 1-year tenure that we have brought him up on charges. After a resolution is presented, we will vote whether to remove him from the Committee.
If he is removed from the Board, the resolution will be posted on our website for all to see, because this Executive Committee has nothing to hide.
So, whether you attend this meeting to discuss “the actions of the Executive Committee” or not, this is our explanation of our actions. Consider the sources: Turley, lost his bid for re-election, Prabhu, removed from Executive Committee for disqualification, and Swift, up on charges for misconduct.
Thank you,
Robert Jenkins, president Chris Salamone, vice president
Ambrosine Lythcott, treasurer Diana Cooke, secretary
Delegates: Maria Baker, LaGuardia Billingslea, Lynette Meyer, and Marisa Robinson,
substitutesunitedofbuffalo.com 
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