New York City public school teacher faces termination after being paid nearly $6,000 in city money for tutoring a 15-year-old homebound student who had already died, officials said yesterday.
Cheryl Edwards, 37, a fifth-grade teacher at PS 288 in Brooklyn, was paid for tutoring the boy a total of 154 hours between Jan. 23 and June 12, 2006, said Richard Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for the city school district.
The boy's family, however, had returned with him to their native Vietnam in mid-January of last year, and he died in a hospital there on Jan. 29, 2006, Condon said.
"She [Edwards] thought she had a great scheme because this kid's mother was never going to call up and complain that she had not been there, because as far as the mother was concerned, she had told her she didn't need her," the commissioner said.
Condon's office began investigating in October after another mother called the Education Department to say that Edwards had not shown up to tutor her 11-year-old son. Investigators found that Edwards had submitted paperwork for six sessions between Sept. 28 and Oct. 11, while the boy said he had never met her.
Condon has referred his findings to the Brooklyn district attorney's office, and the city Education Department is taking steps to terminate Edwards, said its spokeswoman, Dina Paul Parks.
"We will not tolerate the theft of resources intended for the benefit of our students," Parks said.
Edwards could not be reached for comment, and the attorney who represented her during the investigation, Michael Spiegel, declined comment. A NYC homebound teacher had a great idea--bill the city for tutoring a dead kid.
No C-6 assignments, no miserable principals, no lessons, no tests,no discipline troubles, no stress. Only problem, she got caught!!! Not only did she blow her gig, she will probably face jail time. This is the kind of teacher that makes us all look bad. If the article is true, I hope they throw the book at her.
10 comments:
Sounds like a desperate woman. Although I did look at my stack of referall slips, and realized I could have a free period if I gave referalls to all 30 of my students. Thankfully I was smart enought NOT to do that one... :)
While this idiot ripped off the city for around $6,000, her Tweed-based bosses, KleinBloom et al are ripping off the city of MILLIONS of dollars via their no bid contracts with shady consulting firms such as Alvarez Marsal. KleinBloom also rips off the city using no bid contracts with mega educorporation publishers such as Pearson, who ate educational textbook publishers such as Prentice Hall, AGS, Scott Foresman, Globe Fearon, Modern Curriculum Press, Addison Wesley,and Longman. The quality of their textbooks, judging by the Pearson Prentice Hall Math A textbook, is poor. For $70 a pop, those texts were glitzy but virtually useless. Cheryl Edwards was a jerk, but what can we say about KleinBloom who must be competing with the real Boss Tweed for the most corrupt New York City administration ever?? Maybe Ms. Edwards was emulating her "education" leaders.
What she did was stupid, small-scale, and victimized but a few. What DoE has done and continues to do is massive, mean, and victimizes all (including its own principals, but primarily students, teachers, and parents. Ellie nailed this one.
It's teachers like this that undermine our struggle to earn public respect. Shame on her.
I agree with ms. whatsit. The media loves to air anything that makes us look bad.
I do agree with Ellie and Jonathan but, their wrongs don't make her any more right.
It's true her crimes pale in comparison with those of the ruling class, but I hate it when people like this become teachers.
And while we all know it wasn't a teacher who hired this woman, who gave her tenure, and who failed to discern her utterly amoral nature, you won't be reading that in the tabloids anytime soon.
No one is saying that KleinBloom's wrongs make Edwards less wrong. The problem is that the media is focusing on one individual who is a petty criminal but they fail to focus on leadership who victimizes the entire city with corruption, harrassment of undeserving staff members, and contempt for the hardworking people who send their children to New York City public schools.
I agree with you, Ellie, the teacher is always portrayed as the bad one!
I agree with both of you. My point is they're always quick to vilify teachers, all of them, for things that are truly beyond their control. I'm beginning to detect some considerable chinks in Mayor Mike's teflon, though, and that's a good sign.
I was very adamant last June and July about REFUSING to see the Cameron Diaz movie "Bad Teacher"....
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