NYC DOE whistleblower says HS staffers helped kids cheat, neglected disabled students

Staffers at a Brooklyn high school helped kids cheat on exams and neglected disabled students, according to a federal lawsuit filed by a whistleblowing teacher.

Mark Paperno, 59, a science teacher at the High School for Youth and Community Development in Flatbush, said he now faces termination for speaking out, the suit states.

Paperno said he was forced to intervene during a 2017 Regents exam after seeing paraprofessionals helping kids with their tests to boost performance.

“Plaintiff exposed cheating and/or fraudulent conduct during the Regents exam, when he stopped paraprofessionals from providing excessive assistance to students with disabilities sitting for that exam …,” according to the Brooklyn federal court case, which did not detail the exact nature of the alleged cheating.

Paperno said he routinely complained to principal Marie Prendergast about general mistreatment of disabled kids.

One student who needed crutches to walk struggled to safely move between classes in 2018 because the paraprofessional assigned to help the child failed to show up, Paperno said.

The suit charges that the same staffer was regularly “demeaning” to the child and would often show up late to their classes.

Paperno taught in integrated classes that included both disabled kids and non-special education students.

Department of Education regulations require the presence of a general education teacher as well as a special education specialist in these settings.

But Paperno said his counterpart was chronically absent and that some of the school’s most vulnerable children lacked the essential help they needed to learn.

In an email to Prendergast, Paperno stated that his special education partner “has been out of my ICT class more than he has been in my class since the beginning of the school year. His absence has makes it impossible to meet the IEP requirements of the students in that class,” he wrote.

In October 2018, Paperno again told Prendergast that the school was flouting regulations by assigning an excessive number of special education students to single classes. One had 18 such kids when only 12 are allowed by law.

“We need to fix this so my students can get the services they need,” he pleaded in another email to the principal.

But Prendergast still failed to properly staff his classes and warned him that he was responsible for all of his students, according to the suit.

The DOE eventually substantiated his complaints and the school was forced to address the issues, court papers state.

But Paperno said his advocacy later led to a campaign of retaliation — and that he now faces termination.

Despite receiving positive reviews for many years prior to his complaints, Paperno said school administrators hit him with bad ratings, purposefully saddled him with untenable schedules and gave him inadequate resources to teach, papers state.

At the end of the 2018-2019 school year, Prendergast recommended to the DOE that he be brought up on charges that would result in his firing and the department agreed to launch the ongoing proceeding, the suit states.

In addition, an assistant principal told other teachers that Paperno’s push for reform led to a decrease in overtime and paid-per-session opportunities and that his colleagues soon “hated” him for it.

“By letter dated September 12, 2019, the NYCDOE notified Plaintiff that he was reassigned out of the classroom and reassigned to administrative tasks,” Paperno’s suit states.

He is now suing the DOE and Prendergast personally for civil rights violations.

The DOE’s education of special needs students has emerged as a flashpoint for the department as it struggles to address a backlog of more than 10,000 unresolved complaints from parents.

The city paid $285.8 million to settle special education claims in 2019 — down from $304 million in 2018.

The High School for Youth and Community development is 93 percent African American and Hispanic and graduates 84 percent of students with disabilities — well above the city average of 64 percent, according to the DOE.

The Department of Education referred comment to the city’s Law Department, which said though a spokesperson: “These are troubling but not substantiated claims. We’ll review the case.”

Prendergast could not immediately be reached for comment.

“He’s an experienced high school science teacher who experienced retaliation,” said his attorney, Laura Wong-Pan, who called the disciplinary charges against him “baseless.” “He spoke up about his concerns about the way the school treated students with disabilities.”