She is definitely a mourning person.
Since 2016, Brooklyn city classroom aide Andrea Sirico has requested bereavement leave for a shocking 21 dead relatives laid to rest.
But in most cases the only thing buried was the truth: She forged more than 12 funeral letters for services that never happened, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools found.
Sirico, 40, a paraprofessional at PS K369, said the dearly departed included her fiance, six uncles, six aunts, two grandfathers, a grandfather’s gay lover, two cousins, a father-in-law, and two relatives whose names could not be discerned, a newly released SCI report says.
Each phony funeral, SCI alleges, let Sirico get paid while skipping one to two days of work at her school, a K-12 program at various Brooklyn sites for 509 students with autism, cognitive disabilities and emotional disturbances.
Sirico, who received $55,460 in salary last school year, collected at least $1,960.95 for bogus bereavement days, the SCI tallied.
“It’s not only unethical, but she let down the special-needs kids who rely on her,” said a PS 369 teacher. “If she’s absent, the kids have to adjust to a substitute — if one is assigned.”
Besides 11 fake funerals, investigators could not confirm or refute the existence of another five for which Sirico requested paid time off because the relatives’ names were illegible.
The SCI found that five of the funerals did occur, but the agency “takes no position on whether Sirico was present at any” of them.
In its report, the SCI redacts the names of dead relatives cited by Sirico, and doesn’t say which ones actually existed and passed away.
The macabre investigation began in December 2024, when a school staffer processing Sirico’s latest “Death in the Family” leave noticed that she had requested “a suspiciously large number of such leave days.”
The staffer looked into Sirico’s letter from Cobble Hill Chapels stating that she had attended a funeral there. When the staffer called Cobble Hill, a funeral director said he had not provided services for the person Sirico listed.
The SCI found many puzzling inconsistencies in the funeral attendance letters Sirico provided under the letterheads of Cobble Hill Chapels and three other Brooklyn funeral homes, the report says.
Among them:
The last name of Sirico’s dead fiance’ and a grandfather were illegible on her paperwork, so could not be confirmed.
Sirico did not name her father-in-law. The report does not explain how she had a father-in-law if her fiance died.
The same name was listed as an “aunt” and “uncle” in separate letters.
One funeral letter listed services for her uncle, although it indicated the deceased was her grandfather. Sirico said “she had been raised by her grandfather and (the deceased) had been her grandfather’s gay lover.”
Sirico could not explain why Cobble Hill Chapels had no record of 11 of the 16 funeral services she claimed to attend there.
Finally, when questioned about two funeral letters that named the same aunt, Sirico “became combative,” called the interview unfair and ended it.
Funeral homes could not explain how anyone could have fabricated the attendance letters.
“We do not provide false funeral letters,” said Thomas Tuffey, a lawyer for Cobble Hill Chapels.
A DOE employee since 2014, Sirico had a disciplinary meeting and was terminated as of June 11, officials told The Post, adding the agency will demand repayment of the $1,960 that SCI found Sirico was paid under false pretenses.
“We always hold our educators and staff to the highest standard,” DOE spokeswoman Nicole Brownstein said.
Reached by phone, Sirico would not discuss the allegations, saying “I didn’t know I was under investigation.”
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