Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for February 8, 2007 UNRESPONSIVE STUDENT

...as in DEAD!

You know, there have been days in the classroom when I wondered...

Nah, ain't gonna go there!

From the New York Daily News...

She faces rap for teaching dead kid

BY MELISSA GRACE and CARRIE MELAGO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

A callous Brooklyn teacher pocketed nearly $6,000 for home-schooling a student - even though the teen had been dead for months, school officials said yesterday.

Cheryl Edwards, 37, claimed she spent 154 hours and 30 minutes tutoring the sick 15-year-old at his home between January and June last year.

But Schools Investigator Richard Condon said that wasn't possible because the boy - identified by sources as Kiet Ly - died at a Vietnamese hospital on Jan.29 last year.

The Department of Education is moving to fire Edwards, a full-time teacher at Public School 288 in Coney Island who was paid an extra $37.96 an hour to home school chronically ill and disabled students.

"We will not tolerate the theft of resources intended for the benefit of our students," the department said in a statement.

Edwards' alleged deceit was uncovered in October, when the mother of an 11-year-old fifth-grader complained the teacher had never shown up to tutor her son, according to the report.

Home Instruction Schools Principal Richard Cooperman told Condon's investigators that Edwards denied the allegation, submitting time reports for six visits.

Investigators then discovered that Edwards also tutored Ly. During the second session, Ly's mother told Edwards "she was taking her son back to Vietnam to die," the report said.

The boy's family left for Vietnam in mid-January, and the child died from an undisclosed illness at Cho Ray Hospital in HoChi Minh City.

Still, Edwards submitted documents requesting payment through June 12, 2006.

Edwards denied the charges yesterday.

"That is not true," she told the Daily News. "I tutored the kid and that never took place."

Edwards' attorney, Michael Spiegel, declined to comment.