Budget cuts could hurt foster kid placements

CITY EDUCATORS, parents and students were sickened Thursday to hear an Upper West Side teacher found a pot of cash and a cushy job at the end of a rainbow experiment that burned two students.

Beacon High School teacher Anna Poole (inset) has landed $23,000 in raises since the 2014 chemistry accident that permanently disfigured one teen and prompted nearly $40 million in lawsuits. She’s now an instructional leader assigned to Department of Education headquarters and teaches city teachers how to perform science lessons.

New York City Parents Union founder Mona Davids was appalled. “I think that’s outrageous and ludicrous. It’s actually insulting,” said Davids. “But it’s typical DOE. That’s what they do, reward poor performance.”

Poole, 35, was a rookie science teacher on Jan. 2, 2014, when the so-called rainbow experiment went horribly wrong. “Oh, my God, I set a kid on fire,” Poole cried out, according to a Special Commissioner of Investigation report published five months after horrific blast. THE ADMINISTRATION for Children Services will seek to dramatically increase the number of foster children placed with family or close friends by 2020 — but Commissioner David Hansell warned that and other new initiatives could be endangered by threatened state cuts.

“The state budget that’s being debated in the Legislature and that will be resolved in the Legislature next week includes some drastic cuts to our child welfare and juvenile justice programs at ACS,” Hansell said.

The effort to place foster kids with family or friends is one of 16 recommendations to come out of a new NYC Foster Care Task Force. The city currently places 31% of foster children with relatives

“The DOE is helping this lady reboot her career because it was a tragic accident,” the English-language learner teacher said. “But when whistleblowers speak up, their careers are in tatters.”

Beacon students were shocked that Poole is giving city educators lessons on how to lead science classes. The classroom blast she touched off four years ago melted the ear of one student, burned the forearms and hair of another and left a third with PTSD. So “maybe continuing to work with chemicals isn’t a super responsible decision,” said sophomore Henry Pearl, 16.

Poole didn’t pick up her office phone Thursday, and her co-workers at 52 Chambers St. declined to comment. “Good luck,” said one Department of Education staffer outside Tweed Courthouse. “There’s a lot of fear here.” or close family friends, but will seek to increase that to 46% by the end of 2020.

But Hansell said the city could struggle to implement its initiatives if the state passes a proposed budget from Gov. Cuomo that ends $41 million a year in state funding for the Close to Home initiative — which places teens charged with lower-level crimes in residential facilities in the city rather than upstate detention centers.

“The state will boost funding for the city this year by $1 billion total, and if the city wanted to give money to incompetent ACS from this increase they should say it,” said Abbey Fashouer, a spokeswoman for the governor.