A charter-school advocate wants to close a loophole that allows predatory teachers fired by the city Department of Education to land classroom jobs in charter and private schools.
James Merriman, CEO of the nonprofit New York City Charter School Center, said his organization has reached out to the DOE to talk about “this critical issue” following The Post’s coverage of a fired French teacher who found work at a Bronx charter school.
Dulaina Almonte, 33, was fired for texting a student 28,000 times at Truman HS in the Bronx, but landed a teaching gig at the privately-run AECI 2: NYC Charter High School for Engineering and Innovation.
She was let go by the charter school last week after The Post published a front-page story exposing her prior alleged misconduct and her defiant reaction, “You really can’t f–king touch me.”
The CEO for the charter school suggested administrators weren’t privy to the teacher’s past at the point when they hired her.
This is a “matter of student safety — charter schools at the very least deserve access to knowledge about teachers on the ‘do not hire’ list,” Merriman said. “We’ve contacted the DOE and they have indicated a willingness to restart discussions about this critical issue. They fully understand the stakes and the need to put student safety first, and I’m confident that we can quickly get to yes.”
But DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer insisted the DOE does not maintain “a do-not hire” list and does not share information with charter schools voluntarily. But, he said, the agency does “place a problem code on employees that are terminated for various reasons.”
The agency does respond to “all requests from other schools when they do a background check.” But without a signed waiver from the fired teacher, he added, “legally we can only provide title, date of employment and general responsibilities.”
Teacher misconduct won’t show up in a fingerprint analysis unless the behavior resulted in an arrest. And that was the excuse AECI 2 CEO Derick Spaulding used when asked how the school could have hired Almonte.
“All employees have to get fingerprinted,” he said. “If there was something in a person’s background that was worthy” of not hiring them, “that would show up” there. That’s the state’s way of stating this person’s allowed to work” with children.
The Charter School Center has previously sought more information-sharing from the DOE, without success.
“We approached the DOE about precisely this issue during the de Blasio administration, but were unable to resolve legal and privacy concerns,” Merriman said.
Styer said he could not address what happened during a prior administration.
