In a cartoonish act of mischief, six Department of Education employees took valuable seats away from homeless kids to take their own children and grandchildren on multi-day taxpayer-funded trips that included Disney World, according to a report by a city schools task force.
The mastermind appears to be Linda M. Wilson, a DOE supervisor of “temporary housing students,” who allegedly took her own two daughters on the trip and encouraged her coworkers to do the same, then tried to cover it up and instructed her coworkers to lie to SCI investigators.
The ruthless gang received a $300,000 federal grant from the National Center for Homeless Education and between 2016 and 2019, forged permits listing the names of impoverished children “living in shelters, cars, parks and abandoned buildings” and forged parent signatures so Wilson's handpicked employees could claim their children.
Homeless kids missed out on opportunities for their well-connected classmates to visit places like Washington, D.C., New Orleans and Boston.
The whistleblower alleged that “only a small percentage of the homeless students listed on the documents actually took the trips.”
“Stealing candy from a baby” is old-fashioned in comparison.
SCI recommended that Chancellor David Banks fire all six employees and demand that they pay compensation.
One of the six, Shaquita Boyd, actually argued that Wilson “encouraged it and had no reason to believe it was a violation of the rules.”
The rules Allow Stealing from the homeless.
But an anything-goes mentality pervades the city's public school system, and is fostered by a general lack of accountability.
Look at former Department of Energy executive Eric Goldstein, who accepted bribes (reportedly millions of dollars) from Soma Foods to put chicken contaminated with metal and plastic fragments on public school children's plates and received only a two-year prison sentence as punishment.
Or Amanda Lurie, a top bureaucrat in the Office of the Student Registrar, who barely showed up to work and sold clothes online during work hours, was rewarded with a promotion and a $9,000 pay raise, according to SCI.
this The incident ended with all six staff members leaving the Department of Energy. Finally: The SCI report was only completed in January 2023, many years after the fact, leaving many people evading full compensation payments.
All of these are last What the Big Apple school system cares about are the kids.
