It's one thing to give out holiday cards with donations to a fake charity, and it's an entirely other thing to fake your own daughter's death. A former city school employee has been accused of perpetrating just such an elaborate ruse in order to extend her Costa Rican vacation in March 2010—and she allegedly had her daughters help with the plot. more ›

The Department of Education, meant to be one of the defining triumphs of Michael Bloomberg's mayoral career, has become a "fiscal black hole" with a serious consultant problem to the tune of $982 million, according to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. That title comes after yet another consultant-related financial scandal came out of the department. Turns out the former Chief Financial Officer of the DOE, George Raab, and several consultants used their time their to plot Raab's exit to a private financial firm, according to a report [PDF] from Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for the city schools. more ›

While the political battle over charter schools rages on between hedge funds and Senators, a damning report by the city's Special Commissioner of Investigation alleges that disciplinary abuse has been going on at one such school in Manhattan. The report states that students at Opportunity Charter School in Harlem were punched, thrown to the floor and dragged around by their hair, in what "could be considered condoned assaults and abuse of schoolchildren," that was covered up by school officials. more ›

Gross! A former assistant principal at I.S. 72 in Staten Island is accused of asking a 12-year-old student for massages - and then trying to buy her and her mother's silence with promises of private school payment! Lawrence Siegel was put in a district office job - not his usual gig at Rocco Laurie Intermediate School - while the Department of Education investigated him after a DOE parent support coordinator, per the Staten Island Advance,... more ›

It is near impossible for the Department of Education to fire a teacher easily, but when it comes to a principal allegedly using chicken blood in a Santeria ritual to cleanse her high school, that's another story. The DOE says it will reassign and later fire Matritz Tamayo, the principal of the Unity Center for Urban Technologies, a Manhattan high school in Soho, for coercing staff members to participate and help pay for a number of Santeria rituals. more ›

We love stories about public school teachers and sick days: There was the guy who wanted some time off to serve a jail sentence, the principal who was actually conducting an orchestra, and, our favorite, the teacher who took sick days when performing as a wrestler for the WWE. But we would never have dreamed that Lynne Stewart, the controversial lawyer who was convicted of aiding terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman while he was in prison, would even be involved in one! more ›

Yikes! The Department of Education claims that a teacher charged the city for tutoring a child who was dead. According to the DOE, Cheryl Edwards said she spent 154.5 hours tutoring a sick 15-year-old student between January 23 and June 12 and received $5,864.82. The catch: In mid-January, the boy's mother took him to Vietnam (their native country), where he died on January 29 after 6 days in a hospital. more ›

Uh-oh - a teacher's attempt to make Newton's Third Law of Motion ("For every action force there is an equal, but opposite, reaction force.") more understandable may have backfired. The Daily News reports that 18 year teaching veteran Leonard Brown has been suspended from Benjamin Cardozo High School after a female student says he touched her breast.

He asked the student - from Cardozo's elite Da Vinci Math Science Institute - to hold her hands up against his and lean against his hands with all of her weight, he said. He also put his hands on her shoulders before the demonstration. more ›

the conviction - not just because of the conviction itself. And Special Commissioner of Investigations Richard Condon says, "If he had come up with a good reason, even if it wasn't true, but one that passed the smell test, he probably would have been home free." more ›

wants to get you worried about the idea that your children may be sleeping with their teachers! more ›