'F' student graduates
Tatiana Reina wanted to graduate in the worst way -- and she did.
The 21-year-old was enrolled at Lafayette HS in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, for six years with a dismal record marked by truancy and failing grades. She faked her own graduation in 2007, donning a cap and gown and sneaking into the receiving line. Faced with "aging out" of the school system this year, she got a last chance and still didn't bother going to class.
"She was a no-show all year," a school insider said. Regulations call for at least 90 percent attendance to be promoted or to graduate.
But that didn't stop the principal, Jacqueline Boswell, from granting Reina a diploma.
In June, Reina showed up for the last five days and was given some health and chemistry assignments in the guidance office, school staffers said. "She sat at a computer and Googled her answers," a worker said.
Finally, teachers were pressured into giving Reina -- and a half-dozen other failing students -- minimally passing grades of 65, the equivalent of a "D," to get the credits needed to graduate, sources told The Post.
"They're giving out diplomas like it's a lemonade stand," one disgusted staffer said.
The city Department of Education referred The Post's findings to its Office of Special Investigation, said spokesman Danny Kanner.
What happened at Lafayette HS, one of five city high schools that closed their doors for the last time last week, is not a fluke, critics say.
"This is happening all over the city, especially at closing schools," said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters. "If you're a principal or a teacher and your chances of getting another job depend on how many kids you successfully graduate, the vast majority will give these kids credit, whether they deserve it not,"
That's exactly what a Lafayette teacher did, describing "coercion" by an assistant principal.
"I was told to consider raising a failing grade because the principal might not give me a favorable recommendation," said the distraught teacher, who admitted changing a final grade of 55 to 65.
The teacher also said Principal Boswell brought the student's mother into the classroom and then asked if the kid's grade would be changed. Boswell refused to speak to The Post.
Reina first entered Lafayette in June 2004. Four years later, her credits fell short. But she bought a cap and gown and "snuck into the line" to walk on stage. A staffer noticed, but told the announcer to call out her name so as not to "make a scene." Reina, like the others, was handed a piece of paper with instructions to pick up her diploma later.
Still enrolled at Lafayette in 2008, Reina flunked everything but Spanish, earning a single credit and then another in summer school, records show. She then enrolled in Borough of Manhattan Community College, a CUNY campus, but got kicked out when officials finally got her high-school transcript.
So she returned to Lafayette last year. On Jan. 12, a school day, she was arrested for buying goods at Bloomingdale's at Roosevelt Field, LI, with $400 in fake traveler's checks; the felony charge is pending.
She failed everything until the second term, when she snagged the last two required credits.
"I got my diploma!" she said last week, but didn't want to comment further.
Asked about her atrocious attendance, she explained, "There wasn't no problem. I just didn't go."
The entitlement class: will this woman ever join the work force? Not likely. While she may think the world works like the school system the private sector still needs people to perform tasks. But, I'll bet that in no time at all your tax dollars will be supporting her and her growing brood. Her High School Graduate Certificate hanging proudly on the wall of her Section 8 housing unit.
The fact that this woman could bully the educational establishment into breaking the rules to get her off their backs tells you about the integrity of the bureaucrats that operate the system, teachers and principals included. The have been pounded into losing their self respect by 60 years of failing progressive "understanding. self esteem" educational dogma.
Where, by the way, have the parents been all this time? Has the lesson they taught their daughter been that if you persevere long enough you too can scam the system?
It's also time we looked at employment statistics from a realistic point of view. How many of these people are out there who will not show up in the unemployment stats because they will never have/hold a job. What is the future for her kids?
This woman is the product of the modern progressive/liberal plantation system. The political opera is one where the select class gets subsistence from the government order to be used as the face of the evil system that doesn't care for them. The savior, leftists/Democrats who promise ever more unsustainable gifts to convince them to stay on the plantation harvesting more voters. The plantation dwellers are allowed to cause just enough social violence to keep them a visible threat . Of course the violence can be stirred by the political plantation owners when necessary.
I don't believe this woman's story is an isolated incident. It's like all industry during the Soviet era where the joke was "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work". Here it's we pretend to teach them, we fudge the numbers so we meet out quotas and in a few years we'll retire with luscious pensions. Unless there is some consequence for failure for student and teacher, nothing will change. The woman will continue to live as she now does and the teachers will be happy to survive another day in labyrinthine rathole of a system looking forward to nothing more then retirement.
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