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In an act of cartoonish villainy, six Department of Education employees stole valuable slots from homeless children to take their own children and grandchildren on multi-day, taxpayer-funded trips, including to Disney World, reports the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools.
The ringleader seems to be Linda M. Wilson, a supervisor of DOE’s “Students in Temporary Housing,” who took her own two daughters on the trips and encouraged colleagues to do the same, then tried to cover it up, allegedly telling her coworkers to lie to SCI investigators.
Using a $300,000 federal grant from the National Center for Homeless Education, the callous crew from 2016 through 2019 forged permission slips with the names of needy kids “living in a shelter, car, park or abandoned building” and faked parents’ signatures so that employees, handpicked by Wilson, could take their own children instead.
The homeless kids missed out while their well-connected peers got to visit Washington, DC, New Orleans, Boston and more.
A whistleblower claimed: “Few of the homeless students listed on the paperwork actually attended the trips.”
“Stealing candy from babies” is quaint in comparison.
The SCI recommended Chancellor David Banks terminate all six employees and require them to pay restitution.
One of the six, Shaquieta Boyd, actually dared to insist that Wilson “encouraged it, and I had no reason to believe that this was against the rules.”
As if the rules would allow stealing from the homeless.
But that do-whatever-you-can-get-away-with mentality is rife in the city’s public-school system, fostered by a general lack of accountability.
Look at former DOE big Eric Goldstein, who took bribes (reportedly in the millions) from Somma Foods to put chicken contaminated with metal and plastic bits onto the plates of public-school children and only got two years jail time as punishment.
Or top Office of Student Enrollment bureaucrat Amanda Lurie, who barely showed up for work and sold clothes online during work hours, according to SCI — and was rewarded with a promotion and a $9,000 raise.
This case ended with all six staff exiting the DOE — eventually: The SCI report was only finalized in January 2023, years after the fact, and many escaped paying full restitution.
It’s all more evidence that the last thing the Big Apple’s school system cares about is the kids.