Posts tagged "payroll"
Into the night
September 18, 2012
Principal’s retirement seen as ‘imminent’ as grievances mount
Teachers at Fort Hamilton High School don't expert longtime principal Jo Ann Chester to return when school starts back up on Wednesday.
As more chronically underpaid teachers at Fort Hamilton High School seek redress, the school’s beleaguered principal appears to be planning her exit, according to multiple people close to the school.
As GothamSchools first reported in August, the Department of Education is investigating a cost-cutting payroll scheme engineered by Principal Jo Ann Chester, who hired teachers and paid them a lower substitute rate, even as they stayed on full-time for months. Some of the people taught for over a year.
Previously, just two of the 14 eligible teachers had filed grievances for backpay. But that number has increased in recent weeks and is likely to include even more, a union official said, meaning the school could be on the hook for up to $300,000.
Here are more details on the scheme from our August report:
According to multiple sources, Chester contrived a system to use substitute teachers for more than a year at a time without adding them to the school’s teaching roster, which would have required them to be paid more, or bumping them up to different pay rate for long-term substitute teachers.
Then, she fudged documents to make sure that the teachers did not show up in the Department of Education’s payroll system, the sources said. On daily attendance sheets and student report cards, Chester replaced each substitute teacher’s name with the last name of an assistant principal and the first initial of the first name of the sub.
The probe seems poised to continue without Chester in charge at the 4,200-student Bay Ridge school. A source with knowledge of the school said she was planning to retire and that her departure was ‘imminent’. Multiple sources said that Chester was not expected to return tomorrow when classes resume from the Rosh Hashanah holiday break. (more…)
sub-terfuge?
August 1, 2012
Major payroll improprieties alleged at Fort Hamilton High School
The principal of Fort Hamilton High School is under investigation for underpaying more than a dozen new teachers, sources say.
A scheme to underpay more than a dozen teachers at a Brooklyn high school has landed the school’s longtime principal under investigation.
The scheme, which investigators have been probing since this spring, could also put Fort Hamilton High School on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay to teachers so desperate for a position that they accepted one with low pay, no benefits, and little security.
The Department of Education’s Office of Special Investigations is in the process of investigating Jo Ann Chester, principal of the Bay Ridge school since 1999, a department spokeswoman confirmed. Sources close to the investigation say investigators have been digging into payroll practices at the 4,200-student high school since at least April. The school was already under investigation because of test scores that the city deemed suspicious.
Last week, a grievance from a teacher who had been underpaid was sustained, entitling him to back pay, union officials confirmed.
The scheme allowed Chester to circumvent three-year-old hiring restrictions and blocked the school from being assigned short-term substitutes from the Absent Teacher Reserve, the city’s pool of teachers without permanent positions. It also saved the school hundreds of thousands of dollars. (more…)
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