The Board of Education has axed a top employee and disciplined another for letting nearly 150 students attend classes for a year in an old Brooklyn factory that did not meet city safety standards.
City-As-School, an alternative vocational program, was moved into the factory’s second floor at 1495 Herkimer St. without a signed lease and without approval from building inspectors.
A board official arranged for the high school kids to use the East New York textile plant last September after making a deal with the owner to rent the space for $26,000 a month, sources told The Post.
“This was sloppiness at best and incompetence at worst,” said one board employee close to the rent snafu.
Board of Ed spokeswoman Karen Finney said one board employee, a leasing agent, was disciplined last fall for moving kids into the space without a lease and quit earlier this month after facing further punishment.
His boss, the director of leasing, was fired for the same reason.
The former employees could not be reached for comment.
The space-squeezed board kept kids in the school all year without paying rent.
But board brass did not find out until last week that the space was not approved by the Buildings Department, the source said.
The board has rented the first floor of the factory for $350,350 a year since 1994 to house the East Brooklyn Congregation for Public Service, another alternative high school, with 287 kids.
The board spent an additional $3.5 million to renovate that space.
But even though the first floor had been approved for school use, the block-long building has not had a certificate of occupancy – a city document that would show a structure has passed safety inspections – since 1997.
Finney said the board, until told by The Post, had no idea the entire factory did not have a certificate of occupancy.
The board is trying to secure a certificate but is having difficulty because the factory is in court-ordered receivership, Finney said.
The second floor would require a massive renovation to be used legally for a school, another source close to the problem said.