Caught ‘stealing’
Kid tix go to school staffers
A Brooklyn principal treated himself and 43 on-the-job faculty members to a Yankees game with complimentary tickets meant for students, The Post has learned.
The Yankees gave 100 tickets to Progress HS for Professional Careers in Williamsburg to attend a 1 p.m. game “on the representation that the tickets were to be used primarily for students,” Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon found in a newly released report.
Despite the school’s claim that many students would attend the game, only four students went. Instead, Principal William Jusino ushered dozens of staffers onto two buses he chartered with $1,700 in taxpayer money to take them to The Bronx.
Jusino had picked Thursday, June 5, 2014, as a preferred date for the outing, knowing that all 950 students would not be in school that day. Only teachers were due in for a “professional development” day.
Jusino clearly didn’t expect many students to attend the game between the Bombers and Oakland A’s. His $1,700 purchase order stated “BUS FOR TEACHERS,” the investigative report says.
Yet in making its request, the school told the Yankees the tickets were “for students on the Progress baseball teams,” the Grand Street Campus Wolves, Condon found.
When the Yankees agreed, Jusino began “looking at the schedule” to decide what day to attend, according to an underling’s e-mail to the Yankees’ community-relations department. The Thursday game “might be better,” the school’s e-mail read. “We have two buses available with up to 100 kids and school staff.”
The Yankees tucked the 100 tickets in an envelope for pickup at the stadium box office.
Jusino told investigators that a staffer, whose name is redacted, was supposed to invite students to the game. The staffer claimed he “could not find any interested students.”
Jusino called the baseball bonanza a staff “team-building activity.”
But another Department of Education official called it a social event, “not a legitimate professional-development activity.” The pleasure trip had “no instructional impact on teachers.”
Jusino “could have canceled the chartered buses and sent the four students to Yankee Stadium by subway,” the official added.
Officials could not explain what happened to the 52 remaining Yankees tickets, which normally cost up to $100 each.
Some teachers chose not to attend the game. Attendance sheets listed 115 staff members, with 74 signing in for the day, leaving 31 who skipped the trip.
Condon recommended “strong disciplinary action” against Jusino, who has made $161,700 this year. DOE officials gave Jusino a letter of reprimand and referred the case to the city Conflicts of Interest Board, which could fine him.
“We have clear expectations for our school administrators . . . and we disciplined this principal when he failed to meet those expectations,” said department spokeswoman Devora Kaye.
Jusino generated outrage in 2010 for taking himself and staffers on a two-night, booze-filled retreat at the Mohonk Mountain House, a luxury resort in upstate New Paltz.