NYC School Officials Took Their Kids on Trips Meant for Homeless Students: Report

NYC School Officials Took Kids on Trips Meant for Homeless Students: Report

Six employees of New York City's public school system took their children or grandchildren on trips to Disney World, New Orleans and other locations using tickets that were meant for homeless students, investigators said in a newly released report.

These trips, intended as enrichment for students living in shelters and other temporary housing, also included excursions to Washington, D.C., Boston and Broadway shows. This was revealed by Anastasia Coleman, the special commissioner of investigation for New York City schools.

According to the report, Linda Wilson, the Queens regional manager for the office that supports students in temporary housing, took her own children on trips paid for through grants for homeless students and encouraged employees she supervised to do the same, but to keep quiet about it.

One staffer quoted Wilson as saying, “What happens here stays with us.”

Wilson denied bringing her two daughters on trips or encouraging staff members to bring their children, calling the special commissioner's probe “a witch hunt.”

The investigation began after a whistleblower brought a complaint in March 2019. The special commissioner's report, which concerned trips that took place between 2016 and 2019, was completed in January 2023 but only made public on Sept. 9.

The report details how Wilson forged permission slips to bring family members on trips and evaded city Department of Education oversight by using an outside agency to book travel arrangements.

Some of the trips were intended as college tours, but the students and chaperones never actually visited the campuses, witnesses told the investigators. For example, a group including Wilson and one of her daughters, as well as other staff members and their children, ate lunch at Syracuse University during a June 2018 trip but never toured the school. They left and went to Niagara Falls instead, according to the investigation.

The special commissioner's office recommended that Wilson and the other staff members faulted in the report be fired and that they be required to reimburse the school system for their family members' trips.

Wilson told the Post that she retired and was not fired. Department of Education spokesperson Jenna Lyle said in a statement, “All staff identified in this report are no longer employed by New York City Public Schools."