Saturday, May 27, 2023

PS 145 on the Upper West Side is So Overcrowded With Migrants, Students Are Left Without Programs and Services

 


We all know the argument. NYC is a sanctuary City where we accept any and all migrants who need safety, a warm bed, and services.

Definition of "Sanctuary City": 
  1. (in North America) a city whose municipal laws tend to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation or prosecution, despite federal immigration law.

  3. But where can citizens draw the line?

  5. In NYC, which is under one-party control (Democratic Party), there is no discussion allowed. Migrants must be taken care of, no matter what damage is done to people who already live in the City. As a matter of public policy, migrants must come first.

At least, that's what seems to be the state of affairs in New York City right now, May 2023. Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul are politically bound to care for the thousands President Biden has allowed into the United States, no matter the cost locally.

  2. And remember, there is no recall of any elected official permitted under New York State law.

  4. Balletopedia Recall overview

  6. Ok, my politics are showing. You don't have to read this blog, move on if you don't like my view. But on this issue no one who has children, works in education, and sees how NYC residents have become secondary citizens under the newly arrived migrants should stay silent. There is something wrong here.

  8. Just saying...

  10. Betsy Combier


UWS school so overcrowded with migrants that it can no longer provide popular programs: parents
By 
,
 
 and
 
, NY POST
May 27, 2023

The city Department of Education is ignoring pleas to help an Upper West Side public school so overwhelmed by an influx of migrant kids that it can no longer provide popular programs due to a lack of space, angry parents told The Post.

With 535 students currently crammed into PS 145 – nearly 100 more than what the West 105th Street school is designed to hold – parents said all students, including newcomers from Ukraine, Russia, and Latin America, are suffering for it. Last year, the school had 393 students.

Since the fall, after the city enrolled scores of young asylum seekers – many housed in a former shelter at the nearby Park West Hotel –  rooms previously used for a music program, a TV studio where kids produced videos and a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics [STEAM] lab had to be converted into classrooms.

The former school library was partitioned into multiple, tight spaces for kids with special needs to receive services.[photo: Naveed Hasan]

Science equipment, musical instruments, books, and other supplies bought with taxpayer dollars and grants now sit in a cluttered storage closet gathering dust, next to desks for displaced science teachers.

Science equipment, musical instruments, and other supplies sit in a storage closet next to desks for displaced teachers. [photo: Naveed Hasan]

With the former library partitioned into multiple, tight spaces for kids with special needs to receive services, all PS 145 students lost an after-school sanctuary for reading and homework.

“It’s just unacceptable,” fumed Anna Azvolinsky, who has a daughter in third grade and a son in pre-K. “These kids deserve better.”

Citywide, an estimated 16,000 migrant kids have enrolled in city public schools since the fall — far exceeding about 1,700 who arrived the prior academic year and started school in September.

Many PS 145 parents — who live in one of the city’s most liberal neighborhoods, overwhelmingly voting for Joe Biden for president in 2020 — insisted they welcome the newcomers, but are furious with the DOE for blowing off their repeated pleas for more space.

That includes a proposal – pitched by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and City Councilmember Gale Brewer to Chancellor David Banks – for the DOE to rent two floors available next door at the Romemu synagogue community center.

“I can’t get an answer from the city – nothing. They don’t respond,” said Naveed Hasan, the Manhattan parent representative on the city’s Panel for Educational Policy with a third-grader at PS 145. “We have the perfect space next door – get it for us.  We have a solution – do it!”

Some parents were especially peeved after city officials paraded a production crew from “60 Minutes” through PS 145 for a November news segment on the Big Apple migrant crisis that cast welcoming public schools as “the one bright spot.”

Since then, however, the city has ignored the cramped classrooms and lost programs, they said. The DOE is “not competent,” Hasan said.

In February, 207 parents signed a letter to Kamar Samuels, schools superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3, calling on the DOE to immediately re-evaluate PS 145’s “distribution of space” in light of a class-size reduction bill for Big Apple schools passed in July by the state Legislature.

The package included hand-scribed notes to Samuels from second and third-graders.


“I am happy that we have a lot of new kids, but it’s not okay that we don’t have enough space,” wrote Lucy Weingarten, 8. “Please work with our school to help get more space this year!!”

The DOE’s response: It sent “space management” and “district planning” bureaucrats who blamed the classroom crunch on PS 145, parents said because the school increased enrollment before the migrant influx by adding two highly popular programs: universal 3-K and Russian dual-language.

“They didn’t offer any solutions,” recalled Lauren Balaban, whose kindergartner is in the Spanish dual-language program, which started six years ago. “They said, ‘There’s nothing we can do about it and it’s your problem.'”

A City Hall spokesman said reps of the School Construction Authority and other officials visited the synagogue center on May 11 but “unfortunately” found the space “not viable for use” because most rooms don’t meet DOE guidelines for full-size classrooms, requiring “significant” construction.

The spokesman insisted Banks and the DOE have been “highly engaged” with P.S. 145 parents and are “committed to partnering… to alleviate crowding and support enrollment growth” at the school.

A stunned Hasan said DOE officials never told parents about a May 11 visit. “Why are we getting this information from The Post?” he said.

He questioned the DOE’s reasoning: “They come up with justification when they don’t want to act.”

The city has poured more than $25 million into cash-strapped schools hit with swelling enrollments, and promised more “adjustments.”

But parent patience hit a breaking point this month when the city began putting cots for newly-arrived migrant families in school gyms. 

(See my post: NYC Mayor Turns Over Public Schools' Gyms To Migrants -Ed.)

Amid loud protests, officials quickly rescinded the move.
at No comments:

Sunday, May 14, 2023

NYC Mayor Turns Over Public Schools' Gyms To Migrants


What an outrageous act by Mayor Eric Adams: displacing public school kids from their gym time/physical education classes, so that migrants who are entering this country without proper procedures can take valuable spaces in public schools without parents and staff allowed to say "no". We have information that the following schools have been used: elementary schools in Brooklyn. PS 172, PS 189, PS 188.


The move by the city has caused outrage in the Brooklyn neighborhood.
Paul Martinka

See here:

Students and parents protest outside Public School MS 577 at N. 5th and Roebling Sts. Tuesday morning in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Parents challenge Adams claim housing migrants in NYC public schools won’t affect students as number of schools grows to 20
Bt Cayla Bamberger and Michael Gartland, NY Daily News, May 16, 2023

Mayor Adams claimed Tuesday that his new policy of housing migrants in public school gymnasiums won’t directly impact students s — even as parents protested his latest effort to find ways to shelter the more than 60,000 migrants who’ve come to the city since last year.

“They will not be impacted directly,” Adams said during an interview on 1010 WINS. “They’re not going to be impacted. I’m never going to put our children in harm’s way.”

The Daily News reported Monday that Adams was either housing or attempting to house migrants in seven public schools, but on Tuesday he sketched out a broader plan that could potentially impact 20 or more public schools.

“This is not something we want to do,” Adams said. “What we did was identify 20 standalone gyms — this is not every gym in every school — 20 standalone gyms as one of the potential locations as we have exhausted our hotels and other locations.”

But parents disagree with the mayor’s assessment of how children may be affected.

More than 100 parents and students protested at the building that houses PS 17 and MS 577 Tuesday morning. According to event organizers there, migrants were housed in the building overnight, but cleared out ahead of the demonstration.

The city’s repurposing of the gym at the school is particularly fraught because it just opened in January, after years of parents advocating for it.

“We have a new building that we fought for so our children could have a gym,” said Stacy, whose 10-year-old son receives special education services. “They worked hard to get these activities. They have a carnival next week, and they may not have it now.”

“I don’t want my child to be locked up because he was locked up for two years,” said Melida Rodriguez, a parent and the middle school’s PTA president, referring to the COVID lockdowns. “Now’s the time he’s coming out, socializing with other kids — and then this. It’s not fair.”

The policy comes more than a week after Camille Varlack, Adams’ chief of staff, directed all city agencies to identify city-owned buildings that could be used to house migrants and as the city braces for an even bigger influx of asylum seekers from south of the border with the expiration of Title 42, a federal border policy enacted during the COVID pandemic that permitted for the expulsion of migrants coming into the U.S. from Mexico.

The schools that already have been used to house migrants under Adams’ new policy are PS 188 in Coney Island and PS 17 and MS 577. Other schools being considered include PS 189 in Brownsville and PS 172 in Sunset Park, as well as PS 18, PS 132 and MS 577, all of which are in Williamsburg.
For the second day in a row, a spokesman for Adams refused to make public a full list of the schools that are being considered to house migrants.

“As the mayor has said for months, we are facing an enormous humanitarian crisis, having served more than 65,000 asylum seekers in New York City since last year,” said Adams’ spokesman Fabien Levy. “As Title 42 lifts and we see the numbers of arrivals climb, no option is off the table. We have already opened approximately 150 sites to shelter asylum seekers in New York City.”

By 
,
 
 and
 
, NY POST, 
May 14, 2023

At least 75 migrants will temporarily stay inside the gym at PS 188 in Coney Island, two NYC councilmen confirmed — with one of the pols calling the temporary site a “puzzling” move by City Hall.  

Dozens of migrants will be housed at the gym outside the Brooklyn elementary school with no timetable on how long the building will be used as an emergency site for migrants, City Council members Justin Brannan and Ari Kagan said Sunday evening.

“Unclear how long they will need to stay. This location remains puzzling to me,” Brannan tweeted.

Kagan, a Republican, also said in a tweet there was no “timeframe when this gym would be returned to the Coney Island community.”

The school is currently in Kagan’s district, but following the redistricting of council seats, both pols are fighting for the seat that would cover PS 188.

The migrants’ arrival comes just two days after the principal at PS 188 warned the city to choose the school facility as an emergency, temporary site for migrants.

Several migrant families were supposed to be sent to the stand-alone gym adjacent to the rest of the school building late last week, but the plan was put on hold amid community outrage.

The Big Apple continues to struggle mightily to house and care for the flood of migrants arriving from across the southern border – with many of them bused from border states like Texas. Over the last year, tens of thousands of migrants have reached the city.

Migrants could be seen milling around the Sandra Feldman Gymnasium Sunday night.

Antuan, a 21-year-old migrant from Venezuela, told The Post that officials informed him and others they were only staying at the building until Monday.

“They put us here because they don’t want us out on the streets,” he explained. “They’re processing us, giving us our paperwork and then we leave.”

Antuan, who reached New York on Sunday after eight months in Texas, said all the migrants were given a psychological assessment to determine whether they were dangerous before being sent to the Brooklyn neighborhood.

Brannan said in an interview Sunday that City Hall informed him the migrants began arriving at the school gym Sunday evening.

He questioned why city officials chose the Coney Island neighborhood for a migrant site because the area lacks services for them and public transportation is poor.

“And I think overall just housing folks in a public school setting, a public school gym, is just concerning and I think the location is just puzzling,” Brannan said.

The Democratic lawmaker also criticized how City Hall has communicated to the community about the site.

“I think people in the community are obviously compassionate and understanding but the way you find out about something, that colors everything,” Brannan said.

One neighbor asked why the school was the best place to house migrants.

“Why a school? That’s the part I don’t get. There’s always other options. A lot of the buildings around here, they have fallout shelters that are spacious, and used for emergencies,” a woman on the block told The Post.

School safety agents who work at PS 188 were also concerned about what their role would be with migrants there.

“School Safety Agents are trained to protect children, not migrants. National Guard and federal assistance are needed. We protect City school children. That’s our responsibility. Not migrants,” said Local 237 Teamsters spokesman Hank Sheinkopf in a statement to The Post Sunday.  

City Hall press secretary Fabien Levy said the city is opening emergency shelters and respite centers daily, “but we are out of space” in a statement Sunday night. More than 4,200 migrants arrived in the last week with the city receiving hundreds of asylum seekers daily, he added.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams has said repeatedly the city is running out of options with even more migrants expected thanks to the end of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allowed for the quick expulsion of some border-crossers over COVID-19 concerns.

The policy ended last week.

City Hall has also faced uproar over its plan to bus migrants staying in city shelters to hotels in upstate Rockland and Orange counties. More than 80 migrants – all single men — were shipped to Newburgh hotels in Orange County, last week.

Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus filed lawsuits Friday to stop the hotels from housing migrants. 

Rockland County also took legal to thwart the city’s plan.

More than 140 sites and eight mega-shelters have been opened in the city.

***************************************************************

We are all, I guess, aware that the NYC Department of Education has very little interest in kids getting their gym time, anyway. This is what public education looks like under Mayoral control. Parents and stakeholders in public education in NYC have no voice. That is abominable and must change.

Parents in NYC want to end Mayoral control, and have made that clear for 20 years. 

Several years ago I was outraged when I attended and submitted a statement to Assemblyman Michael Benedetto at a hearing on Mayoral control, and before the parent advocates were able to give their speeches for 2 minutes or less Benedetto warned each and every person about to speak that he did not want to hear anything negative about Chancellor Richard Carranza, the person who used to be the lead "VIP" at the NYC Department of Education. But that is exactly what we were there to do, with all that Carranza did not do "right" - for the kids (and see here: Carranza resigns). We wanted him to stop playing politics and cite the reasons why the Chancellor and Mayor should continue to rule the public schools without a valid opposition - a vote on the school board.

In fact, there has not been a day since October 2003 that I have not protested the disenfranchisement of parents and stakeholders of public schools in NYC due to Mayoral control.

 In 2019, I wrote an update to my 2007 post on Parentadvocates.org:

 Editorial: Mayoral Control Of The NYC Department of Education Must End   by Betsy Combier

In this post I copied and pasted the discriminatory argument made by then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg on the reason that the vote needed to be removed from the black and Hispanic parents of NYC:

Michael Cardozo's introduction to his submission which removes the constitutional rights of NYC citizens
Pages index -11
Pages 12-25
Pages 26-41
Pages 42-58
Pages 59-80

I will highlight the claim made in the last paragraph:
"As we have demonstrated above, Chapters 91 and 123 have neither the purpose nor the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language group."

My opinion: the City of NY didn't discriminate, but took the Constitutional rights away from everyone who has been given those rights (are citizens over the age of 18). This is a crime. But someone might ask, "Well - what about the Community Education Councils, set up to encourage parental participation in public school education?"

Other posts on my website:

Betsy Combier Speaks Out on the Constitutional Mess Created by Mayoral Control of the New York City Board of Education


Editorial: The New York City Department of Education is a Sham and Mike Bloomberg is the Flim-Flam Man

NYC Department of Education Chancellor Richard Carranza Hires Cronies and Sets Up a Policy Opposing "White" People in Powerful Positions


My four children are no longer in the NYC Department of Education, thus the DOE's efforts to harm them no longer exist and I still blow many whistles of corruption. But gosh, the DOE tried.
 
My question is this: why would any parent want to give up his/her/their right to speak and be heard at the school board meetings, as is the current situation? Wasn't there a war to protect the right of "no taxation without representation"? 


Just sayin'....

Betsy Combier

By Hurubie Meko, NY TIMES, May 12, 2023




As New York City officials scramble to find housing for an expected influx of migrants, the city is planning to house them in a stand-alone school gym in Coney Island, officials said Friday.

The city alerted the principal of P.S. 188 that the school’s gymnasium would be used as a sheltering site, said Ari Kagan, a Brooklyn councilman who represents the neighborhoods of Bensonhurst, Coney Island, Gravesend and Sea Gate.

“People are really concerned,” Mr. Kagan said Friday night. “I got a lot of phone calls from concerned parents, from community leaders. Nobody, nobody expressed their support for this plan.”

No migrants were being housed in the gym on Friday night, he said, but added: “What’s going to happen tomorrow and Sunday? Who knows?” He said that the city’s Office of Emergency Management would decide when people would be placed there.

Mr. Kagan, who also criticized the plan in a video he posted on Twitter, added that the struggle to house migrants was a nationwide problem and a shelter in a gym was not the answer.

The announcement comes one day after a Trump-era immigration policy called Title 42, which allowed for the rapid expulsion of migrants, ended Thursday night. The end of the pandemic-era policy is expected to lead to a rise in cross-border migration into the United States.

The city is in the middle of a “humanitarian crisis,” Fabien Levy, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams, said in a statement Friday evening, adding: “We are opening emergency shelters and respite centers daily, but we are out of space. We will continue to communicate with local elected officials as we open more emergency sites.”

New York City, which is the only major U.S. city with a “right-to-shelter” law, has struggled to house the influx of migrants who have been bused from states like Texas since last year. Mr. Adams has proposed, pivoted from and implemented many options for housing migrants over the past year, even considering placing people on a cruise ship docked in Staten Island.

Earlier this week, Mr. Adams used an executive order to temporarily suspend some of the rules related to its longstanding guarantee to shelter anyone who needs it, including those that require that families be placed in private rooms with bathrooms and kitchens and those that guide how quickly people must be placed in shelters.

“This is not a decision taken lightly,” Mr. Levy said in a statement Wednesday night. “And we will make every effort to get asylum seekers into shelter as quickly as possible, as we have done since Day 1.”

Increasingly frustrated in recent months, the mayor has criticized President Biden and pushed for federal emergency aid.

Earlier this month, Mr. Adams said the city was projecting that it would spend $4.3 billion over the next two fiscal years to cover the costs of the migrant influx and that roughly 37 percent of that was likely to be covered by the state and federal governments.

As the mayor desperately seeks places to house the migrants who are expected to arrive in the city, he also announced plans to begin busing migrants to other counties in the state, setting off a clash with other leaders. On Sunday, he told city leaders to send him a list of all facilities with enough space to accommodate large numbers of migrants.

In an hourslong call on Thursday with more than 100 officials from across the state, Mr. Adams heard complaints that he was not working effectively, adding to criticisms that he had not planned well for a problem he himself had been warning about for the past year.
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And somehow Yahoo News got the news rather late, posting this on May 16, 2023:

NYC Mayor Eric Adams

Adams says NYC looking at housing migrants in school gyms

Julia Shapero, Tue, May 16, 2023

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that the city is considering housing some migrants in school gyms as it struggles to accommodate those arriving in the city.

Adams told New York 1 that the city is considering about 20 school gyms, each of which are separate from actual school buildings. However, he emphasized that it would be “one of the last places we want to look at.”

“We have an order, almost an order, of where we have to go as the crisis continues,” he said. “This is one of the last places we want to look at. None of us are comfortable with having to take these drastic steps. But I could not have been more clear for the last few months of what we are facing.”

Adams warned last week that New York City would not be able to handle the expected influx of migrants following the end of Title 42. The pandemic-era policy, which allowed U.S. authorities to rapidly expel asylum seekers, expired Thursday.


In the days since the expiration, however, a border surge has not materialized, and in fact border encounters dropped, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Some Republican governors of Southern states have been putting migrants on buses and sending them north in recent months, though, contributing to the influx in New York City.

Adams said Tuesday that the city has received more than 65,000 migrants. Ahead of Title 42’s expiration, the mayor eased the city’s longtime guarantee to provide shelter to all residents and also began busing some migrants to counties in northern New York.

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Saturday, May 6, 2023

Special-Education Teacher Marina Golfo Gets 3-Months of Paid Sick Leave While In Federal Prison Camp For Fraud

Special-ed teacher Marina Golfo tricked her DOE bosses into paying sick leave
during her three-month prison stint for fraudTwitter

Special Education teacher Maria Golfo evidently was found guilty of defrauding the Department of Education, and then was put into Federal prison for 3 months, but got paid by the NYC DOE for "sick leave". See the article posted below that was published in the NY Post.

 When I think about all of the wonderful, decent, honest teachers, Assistant Principals and Principals who have been charged with misconduct and then forced into a 3020-a and terminated, and then read a story like the one below, I get upset that the NYC DOE is so random and arbitrary when dealing out fines, suspensions and terminations as punishment for wrong-doing.

The Special Commissioner of Investigation Unit, SCI, is largely responsible for punishing the wrong person, or not punishing the right person.See Veronica Hernandez Case. The so-called "investigators" are anything but that, and tout themselves as "independent" from the DOE yet get paid heaps of money by the NYC DOE. Whenever someone gets a lot of money from their employer, do you really believe that they would go against what the employer wants? No.

For example, consider Gerald Conroy, Deputy Commissioner of the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District. He filed an Affirmation in the Supreme Court in a case I worked on, and he wrote in that Affidavit that he "believed" that anyone who went to Wild Child was guilty of fraud and deceit when they handed in vaccination cards 'without' (he wrote) actually getting the shot.  He was never able to prove anything against these people, and now everyone accused by him are back to work (except several who resigned and moved on to other jobs). 

Gerald Conroy's salary 2020-2021, SCI (Seethroughny.net/payrolls). In 2022 he made $190,554.

Yet no one at the NYC DOE caught Marina Golfo and her three months of sick pay while in jail?

There you are, proof of incompetency, political dumbness, whatever.

Betsy Combier

betsy@advocatz.com

Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog

NYC special-ed teacher collected 3 months of sick pay from prison

By Matthew Sedacca and Susan Edelman, NYPOST, April 22, 2023

A special education teacher tricked her clueless bosses at the city Department of Education into giving her three months of paid sick leave — while she served a federal prison sentence for defrauding taxpayers and stiffing students, The Post has learned. 

Golfo spent three months at Federal Prison Camp Alderson in West Virginia.


Speech therapist Marina Golfo, 49, collected $24,367 in salary last year while sitting in a cell at West Virginia’s all-women’s, minimum-security Federal Prison Camp Alderson, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools found. 

“You’ve got to admire her nerve, if you don’t admire her stupidity,” said Ellen McHugh, a member of the Citywide Council on Special Education.

In October 2018, Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged Golfo and seven other employees with defrauding the Early Intervention Program, which serves developmentally challenged children and is overseen by the state Department of Health.

Golfo, a Long Islander, was accused of bilking taxpayers of $156,000 over the prior three years by submitting fake treatment notes and invoices for more than 1,500 therapy sessions she never provided. Many sessions were scheduled to occur in the homes of children or caregivers.

She pleaded guilty in July 2021 to healthcare fraud, was sentenced to three months in prison and ordered to pay restitution for all the money disbursed, according to court documents. But she inexplicably remained on the DOE payroll.

Weeks after entering the clink in September, Golfo submitted an online request to her DOE managers for paid sick leave. She included a doctor’s note explaining that she was too ill to come into the office and should remain at home.  

Golfo also submitted requests to prison and court officials for “compassionate release” due to health risks she faced from COVID-19, along with her elderly parents’ need for a caretaker, according to court records. She was denied on Oct. 6, with US District Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto writing that neither her health conditions nor her parents warranted a reduced sentence.

On Nov. 1, the brazen educator asked DOE for an extension of her sick leave through Dec. 1, which was two days after the end of her prison term.

Shockingly, the city approved the request, apparently not realizing its employee was a jailbird. In total, she raked in a quarter of her $97,469 annual salary from behind bars.

But the DOE was initially well aware of her criminal case, which was jointly announced in 2018 by the city Department of Investigation and the US Attorney’s Office. A week after she was charged in Brooklyn federal court, DOE even rubber-roomed Golfo — reassigning her to a Committee on Special Education office in the Bronx while awaiting trial, according to SCI and a letter from a former colleague. 

The DOE’s Human Resources division told SCI investigators it was unaware that Golfo was requesting time off from the slammer — despite her 2018 arrest having been widely reported — because she never informed the agency or her managers about her sentencing.

Delivering a lesson in unabashed chutzpah, Golfo told SCI investigators she did not know she had violated DOE sick-leave rules, claiming that she did not think her location mattered because she could not have come into the office, regardless, due to her illness. She suffered complications from shingles, court records show.

Golfo did not return messages from The Post.

SCI said it first received a complaint about Golfo’s improper use of sick pay from a tipster in December 2022. The DOE finally fired her on Jan. 31 — about a month before SCI gave its findings to schools Chancellor David Banks on March 6.

It’s unclear whether Golfo returned to work for the two months between her prison release and her firing. The DOE would not answer any questions.

Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman recommended that DOE require Golfo to return the pay she pocketed while incarcerated. She also said DOE should bar her from any further work with the department. 

“Her actions were clearly more deliberate than she acknowledged to investigators,” Coleman wrote. 

Ken Girardin, a fellow with the Empire Center for Public Policy, a government watchdog, blasted the DOE for failing to keep track of an employee’s incarceration — and enabling Golfo to collect her salary on top of it. 

“In the private sector, three days of sick leave raises concerns. Three months should’ve been setting off flashing red lights and sirens,” Girardin said.  

DOE’s wasteful spending on Golfo’s salary outraged special education activist Fatimi Geidi, who ripped the city for failing “the students that need the most support” — even as it warns of cuts in public-school spending. 

“Everybody involved needs to be ashamed,” said Geidi, 37, the mother of two developmentally challenged students, one of whom attends public high school. “We’re arguing about the budget and you’re literally throwing it at somebody that committed fraud.”

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