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    NYC School Workers’ Families Took Disney Trip Meant for Homeless Students

    New York City school employees took their children or grandchildren to Disney World and other places through a program intended for homeless students, investigators found.A half-dozen New York City school system employees took their children or grandchildren to Disney World, New Orleans and other destinations by exploiting a program intended for homeless students, investigators said in a report released this month.The trips were meant as “enrichment opportunities,” attendance incentives and rewards for academic achievement for students living in shelters and other temporary housing, according to the report by the special commissioner of investigation for the city’s public schools.The abuse of the grant-funded program was led by Linda Wilson, who at the time was the Queens manager for the Department of Education office that supports homeless students, the report says. As many as one in nine of the city’s roughly one million public school students are homeless.Ms. Wilson, who supervised about 20 employees, took her daughters on some of the trips and encouraged several workers she supervised to do so as well but to keep the activities secret, the report says.“What happens here stays with us,” she told one employee, according to the report.Ms. Wilson and others forged the signatures of homeless students’ parents as part of the scheme, and she used a nonprofit organization to arrange the trips to evade Department of Education oversight, the report says.“Few of the homeless students listed on the trip paperwork actually attended the trips,” the report says, although at least in the case of the Disney World trip, some homeless students did attend. One person interviewed by investigators told them “he had to beg” Ms. Wilson to allow him to add two of his students to the trip, the report says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    De Blasio Owes City $475,000 for Bringing Police on Presidential Campaign

    New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board said the former mayor must reimburse the city for police officers’ travel, and pay a record fine.Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York City, must reimburse the city nearly $320,000 and pay a $155,000 fine for bringing his security detail on trips during his failed presidential campaign, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board ordered on Thursday.The hefty fine and repayment — both the highest penalty and the largest amount the board said it has ever issued — may be the most lasting impact to date of Mr. de Blasio’s doomed run for president.The former mayor’s campaign lasted just four months in 2019 and damaged his standing with city residents, who griped that their mayor was making an ill-considered play for national relevance at the expense of addressing problems at home.According to the Conflicts of Interest Board, the city spent $319,794.20 in travel-related costs for members of Mr. de Blasio’s security detail to accompany either him or his wife, Chirlane McCray, on 31 out-of-state trips related to the campaign. The expenses included airfare, car rentals, overnight lodging, meals and other incidentals.Shortly before Mr. de Blasio launched his campaign, the board — an independent body with five members appointed by the mayor, comptroller and public advocate — told Mr. de Blasio that the city could pay for salary and overtime for his security detail. But it advised him that paying for the officers’ travel costs would be a “misuse of city resources,” it said.But Mr. de Blasio did not heed the board’s guidance, it said. His failure to do so was one of several issues addressed in a 47-page report by the city’s Department of Investigation, which found that Mr. de Blasio misused public resources for both political and personal purposes, including having a police van and officers help move his daughter to Gracie Mansion.Jocelyn Strauber, the investigations commissioner, said in a statement that the Conflicts of Interest Board’s order backed her department’s report and showed “that public officials — including the most senior — will be held accountable when they violate the rules.”The board, which still has two members appointed by Mr. de Blasio, ordered the former mayor to repay the expenses borne by the city and fined him $5,000 for each out-of-state trip.Mr. de Blasio’s presidential campaign reported having just $1,422.76 on hand in its last filing with the Federal Election Commission, in December 2020. A political action committee associated with Mr. de Blasio, Fairness PAC, last reported having more than $32,000 in debt and less than $3,000 on hand.Mr. de Blasio, who ran New York City from 2014 through 2021, was plagued by ethics questions during his time in office. He was the subject of a number of investigations into whether his fund-raising methods violated the city’s ethics law, a ban against soliciting contributions from people who had business in front of the city.In April, the Federal Election Commission fined his presidential campaign for accepting improper contributions from two political action committees he and others had set up.Since leaving his post, Mr. de Blasio made a short-lived run for an open House seat that ended after two months on the campaign trail. (His House campaign reported having roughly $156,000 in its coffers at the end of March, but it is not clear whether he could use that money to pay expenses associated with his presidential run.)Mr. de Blasio left politics behind and moved into academia, becoming a visiting teaching fellow at Harvard University and teaching a class at New York University.He has recently become more candid about his time in office. In an uncommonly frank interview with New York Magazine published on Wednesday, Mr. de Blasio opened up about criticisms he received as mayor, including an infamous moment when he dropped a groundhog in 2014. He also expressed some regret about seeking the presidency.“It was a mistake,” he said. “I think my values were the right values, and I think I had something to offer, but it was not right on a variety of levels.”Mr. de Blasio did not respond to a message seeking comment. One of his lawyers, Andrew G. Celli Jr., said in a statement that Mr. de Blasio’s legal team had already filed a lawsuit to appeal the ruling and block the board’s order. He accused the board of breaking “decades of N.Y.P.D. policy and precedent” and violating the Constitution.“In the wake of the January 6th insurrection, the shootings of Congress members Giffords and Scalise, and almost daily threats directed at local leaders around the country, the C.O.I.B.’s action — which seeks to saddle elected officials with security costs that the city has properly borne for decades — is dangerous, beyond the scope of their powers, and illegal,” Mr. Celli said. More