In this episode of “Try to Control Your Shock and Astonishment”…
Assuming, of course, that the alleged perpetrators are Democrats.
Investigators allege that six Biden-Harris Department of Education employees used “fake permits” to take their own children and grandchildren on New York City-funded trips to Disney World and other trips intended for the homeless and disadvantaged children, such as exclusively reported from the New York Post.
The secret perks deprived some of the city’s most disadvantaged children of the chance to enjoy the Magic Kingdom – a trip that cost $66,000 for about 50 adults and children, according to one employee – and other multi-day trips from 2016 to 2019 to Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Boston, the Rocking Horse Ranch resort in the north of the state and the Frost Valley YMCA campground, according to a recently released report by the city schools’ special investigator.
Do you understand why I assume the employees are Democrats?
I know Republicans are no saints, but this kind of despicable hypocrisy reflects my long-standing mantra: The hypocrisy of the left knows no bounds.
In one example, Linda M. Wilson, a director of DOE’s Students in Temporary Housing in Queens, NY, not only took her own two daughters on several trips; she also encouraged her colleagues to take their children and grandchildren, but tried to cover up the despicable practice when the special investigator for city schools began asking questions, according to the SCI report.
Wilson reportedly told her colleagues, “What happens here stays with us.” Those colleagues later told SCI, “She told us to lie to the investigators.” Oops.
What happens at Disney stays at Disney: NYC education bureaucrats took their own children to the Magic Kingdom on trips intended for homeless students https://t.co/diuf1BNxJG pic.twitter.com/YBZCOeBMnM
— New York Post (@nypost) 15 September 2024
Here is more:
A DOE educator “had to beg Wilson to allow him to take two of his students” on a trip to Disney World, while Wilson and several staff members she supervised brought family members, according to the SCI.
“Accepting money intended for homeless students is extremely inappropriate,” said Naveed Hasan, a parent of a Manhattan public school student and a member of the city’s Education Policy Panel, which advocates for students in need of housing. “I’m shocked.”
According to Chancellor’s regulations, family members are not permitted to participate in field trips, even if the DOE is reimbursed for the costs.
Wilson and other staff members used the names of homeless students to forge permission slips and then forged parents’ signatures on the papers, witnesses told investigators.
“Few of the homeless students listed in the records actually participated in the trips,” a source told SCI.
Naveed Hasan may have been “shocked,” but I was far from it.
What kind of person whose job it is to Supervise children in fleeting accommodation, takes her own children to the Magic Kingdom and on other excursions at the expense of homeless children? This requires a “special” level of egoism and hypocrisy.
More:
The city funded the trips with a $300,000 federal grant from the National Center for Homeless Education, which is designed to provide the children with support and incentives to improve their attendance or academic performance.
Wilson supervised about 20 staff members who worked with students in transitional housing, which included those living in a homeless shelter, a car, a park or an abandoned building.
According to Advocates for Children of New York, a record 119,320 students in New York City were homeless last year, or about one in nine public school children.
Most out-of-town trips had four to six staff members supervising them and one or two buses carrying about 30 children each, the SCI report said.
The buses alone cost around $2,700 per local or regional trip. The trips to Disney World were made by train.
Any guesses as to who decided which staff members were allowed to go on a field trip? And also who assigned students to chaperone each staff member, only to then replace the spots for these disadvantaged students with the staff members’ children?
Yes, Linda Wilson.
It’s getting worse.
Wilson planned trips to universities, including Howard University in Washington DC in 2019, ostensibly so that homeless children could tour the campuses. However, she did not contact the universities to arrange visits, the SCI claims.
On a three-day trip in June 2018 supposedly to visit Syracuse University, the DOE group ate only lunch at the campus in the north of the state, the report said, before heading to Niagara Falls, more than three hours away.
School and family support worker Mishawn Jack, who took two daughters to the Broadway show “Wicked” and on a trip to Washington, DC, agreed to pay a $1,200 fine – reduced from $3,000 due to “financial hardship.”
After planning numerous trips, Wilson abruptly canceled a visit to Philadelphia in 2018 when she had to process payments for the trips directly through the Department of Energy rather than through a contractor.
Wilson, whose last salary was $99,726, took one or two of her daughters with her on trips, the SCI said.
So Linda Wilson earns $100,000 a year and yet has the shameless audacity to rob homeless and underprivileged children of the trip of a lifetime. Just imagine that.
