Some folks like to complain that teachers, with their summer vacations and school breaks, get too much vacation. But many teachers would heartily disagree. To wit: Hot on the heels of the teacher who allegedly faked their daughter's death for vacation time comes the story of Mona Lisa Tello, a Manhattan science teacher busted today for claiming she had jury duty when she didn't [PDF]. How'd they catch her? Well, it didn't help that she spelled "trail" instead of "trial," "sited" instead of "cited" and "manger" instead of "manager" in a letter she forged to her boss. Whoops! more ›

A last-minute entry in this year's pervy teacher contest comes to us from Ozone Park, Queens, where a 44-year-old physical-education teacher has lost his job because of an "inappropriate relationship" with a teenage former student. How inappropriate was it? According to Department of Education documents obtained by the Post, Mr. Gerard Cassidy was a teacher at MS137 America’s School of Heroes in Ozone Park in 2009 when he became very, shall we say, devoted to the unidentified 16-year-old, showering her with gifts—including an iPhone—and allegedly promising to marry her when she came of age. By the way, this was also around the time he was dating her mom. more ›

Angela Jewth is living a parent's nightmare. Her only son, 9-year-old Jonathan, died Wednesday—nine days after a choking incident at his Bronx school left him clinging to life in the hospital. Now she is getting ready to sue the city to find out why it appears nobody at P.S. 47 knew how to properly clear the healthy boy's airways of a rogue meatball. "If something had been done differently, my son would've been alive today," Jewth told the Daily News. more ›

Charles Oross, a 44-year-old teacher at IS 238 in Queens, has been arrested for allegedly engaging in a lengthy sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student when she attended his school [PDF]. According to the student's statements, the pair met regularly with Oross between January and May 2009 in his classroom for 6 a.m. hook up sessions that included "oral sex and physical touching" before having sex for the first time in June 2009. Oross is charged with rape, criminal sexual act and endangering the welfare of a child. more ›

Food prices keep going up, sure, but some of this is absurd! In its second audit this month related to food in the city, the Comptroller's office has called out the Department of Education for not being careful with its food contracts—with costly results [PDF]. Like, for instance, with the distributor who charged the DOE the same amount to deliver cases of "Beef - Gyro Strip" as it did to deliver cheaper and lighter cases of "Eggplant, breaded." And it goes on. After the audit, the Comptroller's office went and smacked down a Department of Education contract that inexplicably jumped $20 million dollars in a year! more ›

"These aren't marginally bad schools or non-performing schools," Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday regarding the list of schools the Department of Education wants to shut down or truncate this year. "They just don't do the job, this is no question they're not doing the job." In a two-part process the city released a list of 19 schools that are facing execution at the end of the school year—including one Manhattan school with a violent rep that included an assault on a pregnant woman—as well as six schools that may have their middle school grades removed. "This is about student performance, student outcome, making sure we improve our schools and making sure students are college ready and career ready," schools chancellor Dennis Walcott assured parents today. more ›

After CBS 2 noticed an interesting quote Michael Bloomberg gave regarding education this week (in a hypothetical world, if he could—and he can't—he "would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them, and you would weed out all the bad ones") the Mayor's office has been working hard to clarify just what he meant. Luckily, today at the announcement of a new Facebook office, Hizzoner got the chance and turned the tables, blaming the media, Capital reports. "Nothing I've said in Boston I haven't said for the last ten years," Bloomberg said. "I don't know why you have't paid attention." more ›

[Update below] Mayor Bloomberg was apparently full of interesting things to say while talking at MIT this week. Not only did he refer to the NYPD as "my own army" but he also apparently expressed a very, shall we say, interesting view on how he would fix the city's schools in a perfect world: "if I had the ability, which nobody does really, to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them, and you would weed out all the bad ones." more ›

At what point do you start teaching kids the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East and how much detail on each side do you give? That is the question brought up today by public school parent Dana Milstein, whose 10-year-old recently came home from school with what Milstein found to be an alarming, propagandist "fact sheet" on Israel. Now she's taking her concerns to the public—and she has some points. more ›

Last week we learned that students in city schools would be taught about sexual intercourse and its implications as the DOE set one semester of required cirriculum for sixth or seventh graders and students in their first two years of high school. Thankfully, parents who prefer to keep their children ignorant of the crucial details surrounding humanity's most primal and consequential activities have prevailed: some of the course work has been cut. Specifically, the "risk cards" that were to be used by middle schoolers to explain different types of sex acts and their health implications. Thankfully, a dusty VHS copy of Showgirls is willing to fill in the gaps. more ›

The new "report cards" for New York City's public high schools are out (you can read them here) and they do not paint the prettiest of pictures for our city's students, especially considering the fact that education has been one of the biggest touchstones for the Bloomberg regime. According to the data only one in four students who enter high school in the city are ready for college after four years and less than half of those that are ready bother to enroll. Shame Mayor Bloomberg can't blame this on Cathie Black, eh? more ›

Brace yourselves: sex ed arrives at the city's middle and high schools next year, and it. Will. Be. SEXY. According to the Post, high school students will note the cost of condoms and "research a route from a school to a clinic that provides birth control and STD tests." Middle schoolers will use "risk cards" to sort activities likes mutual masturbation and oral sex. "I didn't know how much detail they would get," one SoHo mother says, quaintly assuming that students don't already think and talk about sex all the time. more ›

As anyone who has seen the documentary Dangerous Minds knows, teaching is pretty difficult. But a few simple guidelines will make getting tenure easier: don't tell your students about your sexual exploits, brandishing a box cutter isn't a good idea, and cut back on the compulsive hugging. The Daily News looks into the more than 20 DOE employees who were disciplined over the last 24 months and they make our 6th grade English teacher's habit of shaving her eyebrows seem normal. more ›

The high-ranking Department of Education official who was arrested in the winter and accused of sexually torturing his wife with hammers, nails and hangers has been found guilty of sexually abusing and assaulting his wife. Official Laurence Harvey, who previously made $165,000-a-year from his DOE gig, was not found guilty of raping his wife. more ›

A Bronx elementary school teacher has been arrested and charged with sexual abuse of a boy. According to NY1, 35-year-old Tulsie Singh was suspended without pay in January and finally fired for his job at PS 306 in April. Sources claim that Department of Education officials have known about Singh's actions for "years," and he was suspended from work "more than once as a result." Singh reportedly began molesting the boy, then eight-years-old, in his classroom in 2004, and "the abuse continued until March 2007." more ›

At PS 51 in the North Bronx, students have been learning their ABCs and their TCEs. No, TCE isn't a newfangled standardized test—it's the potentially carcinogenic chemical trichloroethylene! There was already an "emotional meeting" between PS 51's parents and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott last Thursday, where Walcott apologized for the city sitting on the information for months, and pledged to relocate students to St. Martin of Tours, a Catholic school two miles away. But Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. drafted a letter calling for Walcott to "Release copies of all environmental testing, reports and data from both P.S. 51 and the new facility at St. Martin of Tours." more ›

An octogenarian teacher who says she was fired from her job because she couldn't physically take every kindergartener on a bathroom break is suing to get reinstated. And worst of all, the physically impaired 80-year-old Lillie Leon claims that the school set her up for failure: "I was expected to bathroom all of the children, boys and girls, at the same time, which is impossible. I really think it was an entrapment," Leon told the Post. more ›

Sending your teenage terror to one of the city's top public math and science high schools doesn't necessarily mean much when it comes to later standardized test scores, according to a new paper from economists at MIT and Duke. But that doesn't mean that the schools, which they refer to as "exam-schools," don't have value. Oh, they do. Trust us. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg kept saying that he wanted to make it harder for teachers to get tenure without good test scores, and he wasn't kidding. This year just 58 percent of the teachers up for the coveted job security provided by tenure got it. Last year 89 percent of those eligible got tenure. At the same time, however, fewer teachers were outright rejected for tenure than last year with only 2.9 percent getting a no compared to 3.3 percent last year. The rest of the teachers have at least another year to shape up or ship out. more ›

Still doubtful that bedbugs are taking over New York City? Try these numbers on for size: In the 2008-9 school year there were 542 confirmed cases of the pests in New York City public schools. In the 2009-10 school year there were 1,019 confirmed cases. And this year? This year there were 3,590 confirmed cases. Maybe Schools Chancellor Walcott really does need to start implementing bedbug days? Or at least outfitting teachers with those bedbug fart detectors? more ›

The Department of Education's main focus is, reasonably, educating the next generation. But it also serves another important function: feeding hungry children. And that is true when school is in session and when it is not. In fact, between the end of June and September 2 the city offers free breakfasts and lunches to any child who asks at hundreds of locations across town, no ID or paperwork required. Only problem? This year there are 100 fewer locations available than there were last year! more ›

"Touching students and whispering in their ear are acceptable practices to maintain order in the library," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Manuel Mendez ruled yesterday. And with that former Stuyvesant High School librarian Christopher Asch was vindicated after years of being stigmatized as a pervert. In 2009 the openly gay Asch had been sent to the rubber room after a student claimed he had inappropriately touched him. more ›

A Bronx teacher is suing the city's Department of Education, claiming that the principal of her school forced her to perform tasks that caused the stillbirth of her baby. Rachel Wolff, a tenured teacher at PS 246, believes that principal Beverly Miller "contributed to an environment where having a successful pregnancy became exceedingly difficult," her lawyer tells the Post. Because Wolff's pregnancy was considered "high risk," chores that involved "climbing flights of stairs, hauling heavy furniture, and cleaning the library" negatively affected Wolff's ability to bear a healthy child. The NIH classifies factors for high risk pregnancies as "young or old maternal age, being underweight or overweight, having problems in previous pregnancies," and having "pre-existing health conditions" like HIV, high blood pressure or diabetes. more ›

What if the real reason your kid hasn't had any art classes, or if his classroom has 40 people jammed into it, is just a big misunderstanding? City government just made an oopsie with $200 million that it received from the state, specifically for the purpose of backtracking on some dire education cuts, using it to replace part of its contribution to education funding instead of improving the classroom situation. Assemblywoman Cathleen Nolan is now trying to rectify the situation... with a stern letter to Mayor Bloomberg. more ›

It isn't just elementary and middle school students who need lots of remediation, the State Education Department has released a trove of data that paints a disturbing picture of our high school graduates. In New York City just 21 percent of the students who started high school in 2006 graduated last year with test scores which indicate they ready for higher education. more ›

A whole lot of elementary school and middle school students, about 50 percent more than last year, are going to be hitting the books this summer according to the Department of Education. How many? An estimated 34,000, up from 22,800 kids last year, which was already more than double the number of kids enrolled in the summer of 2009. more ›

It isn't just the New York City Department of Education that has some suspicious and very expensive contracts, the New York State Department of Education has some curious deals of its own. Like the $27 million no-bid contract the Daily News reports on which was recently given to a News Corp. company that just happens to be overseen by former city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. Nothing fishy about that at all! more ›

New York City may be home to an estimated 800 languages but when it comes to the New York State Regents exams, the only one that counts is English. Next week New York students will take Regents exams in Spanish, French and Italian for the last time. Why? The better to save $700,000, of course. Thank goodness the city is getting ready to replace the tests with new ones to better grade teachers! more ›

If Connecticut is the land of steady habits, and California is the land of milk and honey, then New York is certainly the land of the (big) apple: apples are our state fruit, apple muffins are our state muffin, and everyone here is really rooting for Fiona Apple to make another record. But according to Crain's, there's an apple conspiracy afoot, and it involves one of Glenn Beck's arch-enemies: China! more ›