Cop's son shot in a ride-by near Maspeth High

  

NY Post

The teenage son of an NYPD cop was shot across the street from his high school in Queens Wednesday afternoon, police sources said.

The 17-year-old, who was hit in the left arm, ran bleeding into Maspeth High School in Elmhurst after the 1:40 p.m. incident and was taken to Elmhurst Hospital as the youth’s girlfriend looked on and was “crying,” according to witnesses and law enforcement sources. 

The teen, a student at the school, was expected to survive, according to police.

The suspects fled down 74th Street on scooters and were arrested shortly after, cops said. 

The shooter was also a student at the school. 

One student, Isaiah Perez, told The Post the victim was with one of his friends and was on the way to the gym. 

“I was inside school on the second floor and they ended up locking the building down completely…I saw [the victim’s] girlfriend crying,” Perez said. 

“I went up to her and asked what was going on. I saw him on the stretcher with the patch on his arm so he was shot in the arm.”

Perez said he was “surprised” because the victim was “not that kind of person to go out and cause trouble like that. I wouldn’t see anything like that happening.”

Seven years of severance pay for shitty shady prinicipal

NY Post 

A Queens principal accused of using fraudulent schemes to boost his school’s graduation rate can never again work with city students — but will get a $1.8 million desk job, The Post has learned.

Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir, who was removed as principal of Maspeth High School last July, won’t return to any city school as a principal, according to a settlement of misconduct charges. But he can stay on the Department of Education payroll for another seven years.

Under Abdul-Mutakabbir, Maspeth HS created fake classes, awarded credits to failing students, and fixed grades to push kids out the door, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools found, confirming exposès by The Post.

Instead of trying to terminate Abdul-Mutakabbir, as city investigators recommended, the DOE settled the charges on Jan. 25 by fining him $12,000  – and barring him from working as a principal.But under the sweetheart deal – which DOE officials kept hidden for months – the disgraced educator, now age 47, will sit in an office until he “irrevocably” retires on Nov. 30, 2029.

He will pocket his current $187,043 annual salary, and get all union-negotiated pay raises for principals. He will also enjoy paid vacations and holidays, plus full health and retirement benefits, which will cost at least $78,558 a year in addition. The total cost will come to more than $1.8 million.

City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens), who first called attention to Maspeth HS malfeasance after meeting with a group of whistleblower teachers three years ago, was outraged to learn of the golden parachute. 

 “Nothing is more absurd in city government than rewarding dishonesty and cheating,” Holden said, calling Abdul-Mutakabbir’s lucrative deal a huge waste of taxpayer funds.

Chancellor David Banks, who promised to cut waste and bureaucratic bloat when he took the DOE reins on Jan. 1, would not comment on Abdul-Mutakabbir’s case. 

“When I see evidence of egregious actions amongst a small number of individuals in our schools, we will move aggressively and expeditiously to remove those people from our schools and payroll permanently. We seek the best outcome for students and taxpayers,” he said in a statement.

Teachers told investigators that Abdul-Mutakabbir pressured teachers to pass students whether they learned anything or not, the SCI said in a report completed last June.

“I don’t care if a kid shows up at 7:44 and you dismiss at 7:45 — it’s your job to give that kid credit,” Abdul-Mutakabbir was quoted as telling a staffer. He said the school would give a lagging student a diploma “not worth the paper on which it was printed” and let him “have fun working at Taco Bell,” the report said.

 

High school teacher and dean fired from Maspeth High School that is under investigation by the feds

NY Post

A Maspeth High School math teacher and dean who students say gave them answers on Regents exams and texted with them has been removed, The Post has learned.

Danny Sepulveda was escorted out of the Queens school in late December “due to an ongoing investigation,” the city Department of Education confirmed.

DOE officials said the investigation was “unrelated to academic fraud.”

But Sepulveda, 30, is one of several teachers who gave kids answers during Regents exams, according to statements given to investigators.

One student wrote last year that Sepulveda re-read the questions at the end of the exam: “But while he was reading it he was only saying the right answer choice, and this made me uncomfortable because it showed he didn’t believe in me to pass the exam.”

Another student wrote that during a math Regents exam in June 2018, Sepulveda and math teacher Chris Grunert “helped me and other kids in my room with answers.”

Grunert and others accused of academic misconduct have not been removed from the school.

NY Post

The feds have started looking into allegations of widespread academic fraud in New York City schools, a Queens lawmaker says.

City Councilman Robert Holden met this month with officials in the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York after his call for a federal probe of “deep-rooted fraud” in the city Department of Education.

“I’m encouraged by my meeting with the US Attorney. His team is taking this seriously,” Holden told The Post.

FBI agents have already contacted several whistle-blowing teachers whose names he provided, Holden added.

A spokesman for US Attorney Richard Donoghue declined comment.

Holden sent a letter in November to Donoghue in Brooklyn and US Attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan, saying “an apparent pattern of conspiracy to cover up” grade-fixing, cheating and other wrongdoing might warrant an investigation under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which covers criminal enterprises.

In Atlanta, eight educators were convicted under a RICO statute of manipulating student test scores and sentenced to prison in 2015.

Holden turned over records compiled by former and current faculty members at Maspeth High School in Queens, where teachers say administrators encouraged cheating on exams, enforced a “no-fail policy,” and retaliated against staffers who didn’t play ball.

Mayor de Blasio blew off Maspeth High School cheating scandal

NY Post


Mayor Bill de Blasio was personally alerted to evidence of grade-fixing and fraud at Maspeth High School in mid-August, but ignored pleas to remove the school’s allegedly crooked leaders before the new school year, The Post has learned.
“It was like I had witnessed a crime,” said City Councilman Robert Holden, who demanded to speak with the mayor after meeting whistle-blowing teachers with documents showing a culture of cheating at the highly rated school.
“I wanted him to put it on the fast track. I wanted him to step into this and get those people out,” the Queens lawmaker told The Post.
But the mayor did not act with urgency, Holden charged, prompting him to go public and to meet with acting Queens District Attorney John Ryan, who has launched an investigation.
Maspeth HS, awarded a National Blue Ribbon in 2018 for a near-perfect graduation rate, enforces an unwritten “no-fail policy,” even when kids do little or no work, eight teachers have told The Post.
Assistant principals strong-armed faculty members into passing students no matter what, they said. Some teachers helped kids cheat on Regents exams or fixed wrong answers. Failing grades were changed to a passing 65, which kids call the “Maspeth Minimum.”
Even chronically truant, drug-addled students got diplomas — some of them pushed out the door months early, as former student Thomas Creighton and his parents came forward to confirm. But last week his father, Daniel Creighton, said the family had not heard from any investigators.
“If that doesn’t prove there’s no urgency, I don’t know what does,” Holden said. “Not only did they steal city money meant to provide services, but they stole the education from these students.” 

 A de Blasio story is not complete without another display of his vulgar arrogance:

 After two weeks, when no investigators had contacted him, Holden emailed de Blasio on Aug. 13, a day after the mayor returned from Iowa for his now-defunct presidential campaign.
The subject line: “Need to talk.”
The mayor called back the following evening. Holden went over the litany of alleged misconduct at Maspeth HS, including grade-fixing, Regents rigging, fake classes to give students credits toward graduation, and intimidation of teachers who didn’t play ball.
“They’re gangsters,” Holden said he told the mayor. “They should not be in there one more day.”
But de Blasio seemed more concerned about Holden, a fellow Democrat, going to the press.
“It’s good that you gave it to me, but if you want to be on my team you have to play like a team member,” Holden quoted him as saying.
The mayor noted that Holden was fortunate to speak with him. “You have your district. I have to run the whole city. I’m the big leagues.” he said, according to Holden.

It's becoming more clear that Maspeth High School discriminated

The principal

From the NY Post:

A Queens public high-school principal excluded 500 Catholic-school kids from a list of 4,000 students applying to get into his school, raising cries from furious parents of foul play.

While more than 4,000 eighth-graders applied for a seat in the school, its principal failed to forward all 500 applications from Catholic-school kids to the Department of Education for possible placement.

Maspeth HS is a “limited unscreened” school — one of 225 in the city — which gives admission priority to students who live nearby and attend its information sessions or open houses.

These schools send a list of those applicants to the DOE, which gives them priority in a “random” lottery.

The system is ripe for abuse by principals who want to exclude certain students or favor others, critics say.

Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir told parents at a Juniper Park Civic Association meeting on March 16 he made a “clerical error” in omitting all Catholic-school kids from the list.

But Abdul-Mutakabbir told civic leaders in a prior phone call that parochial applicants pose a “problem,” Juniper Hill president Bob Holden told The Post.

“He said, ‘In all honesty parochial schools are a problem because many of the students opt out and don’t go to my school. That leaves a seat [empty] and it costs the school funding,’” said Holden, who called for an investigation.

Maspeth High School refuses to take local kids

Well I have been getting a flood of emails from parents of kids who applied to get in to Maspeth High School this September. So far it's been confirmed that NONE of the kids attending parochial schools in the community board 5 area were accepted to the school and those monitoring the situation are having trouble finding public school kids who got in as well. When the school was built, there was controversy over it in part because the DOE would not guarantee admission to local kids. They did say that the school would take students who reside within school district 24 before accepting kids from outside of it. Maspeth, Middle Village, Glendale and Ridgewood are part of district 24 along with Elmhurst and Corona. Although the DOE claims it chooses the students by lottery it seems implausible that every kid within CB5 would be so unlucky.

Has this happened at high schools in any other community or is this another form of retribution from de Blasio?