The New York City Public School system is in the news again – this because of the elaborate, and less than well thought out, ways that a few teachers have attempted to get some extra time off. In the spotlight is teacher’s aide, Dawn Singletary, who told her school that her mother had passed away, even producing a flyer for the funeral. The flyer was her first misstep, drawing suspicion because she mis-typed the word “cemetery,” spelling it “cemetary.” The real give away, however, was when Singletary was seen bowling with her very much alive mother in the Bronx.
Singletary was dismissed shortly after the incident came to light, and she didn’t contest the action. ”There’s nothing to defend because what I did was my fault,” Singletary told The Post. “The only person that got bit in the butt was me.”
Singletary is one of several New York educators who have been caught out over the past two years faking sick days to take vacation. Another employee got caught after posting pictures of the cruise she took during sick days on Facebook and a young couple was let go after it was discovered that they faked illnesses to take a honeymoon. The 13 or so teachers who have been caught are drawing scrutiny from the press, and even from Mayor Bloomberg.
The question that may come to mind for many of us is, “What’s the big deal”? While lying is never the right thing to do, it’s a rare professional who hasn’t faked a sick day at some point in their career. These teachers may not have covered for their extra days off very well, they might even deserve to be let go, but the issue hardly seems worth the official and press attention it’s getting.
As Diane Ravitch, an educational historian, put it in an email to Yahoo’s, “The Upshot” – “New York City has 1.1 million children in its public schools, and about 80,000 or so teachers. The article identifies 13 out of 80,000 or so teachers who used sick days for vacation time. Why does this get turned into an indictment of all teachers? The ongoing attacks will serve only to demoralize them, drive out good teachers and hurt kids.”
It seems likely that the reports are receiving attention more because the city is trying to over correct for the criticism their so-called “rubber room” has received this year. The city has eliminated the practice of keeping suspended teachers on full pay, but doing nothing in a holding office, but they’re clearly still deeply concerned with saving face with the press.
