Federal officials should consider criminal charges against six NYC employees who took their own kids and grandkids to Disney World and on other costly trips meant for homeless students, an education advocate is urging authorities.
“This appears to be a criminal use of federal funds for homeless students, involving forgery and fraud,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters.
As first reported by The Post, Linda M. Wilson, a Queens manager of “students in temporary housing,” and five employees she supervised used “forged permission slips” to take their daughters, sons and grandkids to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and upstate Rocking Horse Ranch Resort, among multiple locales.
“What happens here stays with us,” Wilson allegedly told her colleagues in what investigators called a cover-up.
Haimson said she wrote last week to the US. Department of Education’s inspector general, the office charged with investigating civil and criminal violations of federal funding, to call for a probe.
Employees said a $300,000 federal grant was used to fund the trips.
The city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools did not refer the employees for criminal prosecution.
A spokesperson cited a “lack of available documentation.”
But Haimson noted the SCI’s report cites “much documentary evidence, including witness statements, dozens of photographs, and falsified permission slips.”
The city Department of Education would not answer questions about the cost of out-of-town trips for homeless kids, or explain how they are funded.
DOE spokeswoman Nicole Brownstein also refused to say whether any employee paid restitution, but confirmed Friday that all six cited by the SCI were “ terminated, resigned, or voluntarily retired.”
Wilson, 63, who collected $97,700 in city paychecks last school year, told The Post she retired.
She denied taking her daughters on trips and any other wrongdoing.
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