OAN Staff Abril Elfi
1:00 PM – Sunday, September 15, 2024
Six New York City Department of Education (DOE) employees used Disney World tickets and other excursions meant for homeless students on their own families.
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According to the New York Post, the Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI) for New York City schools has released a report alleging that the workers’ actions robbed disadvantaged children of the opportunity to go on trips between 2016 and 2019.
The trips included Magic Kingdom, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Boston, Rocking Horse Ranch Resort in upstate New York and Frost Valley YMCA campground.
The NYC DOE region manager, Linda Wilson, who oversaw the children in temporary housing in Queens, took her two daughters on city-funded excursions while encouraging her colleagues to do the same with their families.
While some students were brought on these trips, investigators claimed that spots were filled by employees’ family members. Employees are not permitted to bring family members on DOE-funded trips.
The report continued stating that Wilson would “forge permission slips in the names of students.”
Wilson planned some of these trips with the expectation that students would be visiting colleges, according to the report. Instead of visiting schools, the investigation discovered that Wilson would travel to other locations.
In June of 2018, Wilson had allegedly gone to visit Syracuse University with some of the students. However, the university later said that she never toured the school. It is alleged that she instead took a detour to Niagara Falls.
According to the report, Wilson learned in 2018 that someone informed others within the DOE about their actions, prompting her to cancel a visit to Philadelphia. She then allegedly said to her colleagues, “What happens here stays with us.”
Workers have blamed Wilson for informing them that they could bring family members on these trips; one employee told the Post that Wilson instructed them “to lie to investigators.”
“She said everyone should stick to the same story that we did not take our children on the trip,” the employee said.
The other Students in Temporary Housing employees accused of bringing family members on these trips are Program Manager Shaquieta Boyd, Family Assistant Joanne Castro, Family Assistant Mishawn Jack, Family Assistant Virgen Ramos, and Community Coordinator Maria Sylvester.
The SCI concluded its investigation in January of 2023 and recommended to Chancellor David Bank that all six employees be fired, and restitution be paid to the DOE.
A SCI spokesperson said that the cases were not referred for criminal prosecution due to “the lack of available documentation.”
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