‘School of No’ principal getting fired after probe
The Dept. of Education said Tuesday it will fire notorious “School of No” Principal Marcella Sills, quickly responding to a probe that found she blatantly lied about her attendance at Far Rockaway’s PS 106 — all the while collecting a full paycheck for the no-show work.
Sources said Sills was immediately reassigned pending charges and a hearing to seek her permanent dismissal from the city’s public education system.
The swift DOE action came as Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon issued a 13-page report recommending Sills get the ax and that she and an assistant principal who has since resigned, never be allowed to work for the Education Dept. again.
Condon’s investigation was spurred by The Post’s exclusive Jan. 12 report that revealed the fur-coat wearing, BMW-driving school boss was always hours late, often played hooky, and blew taxpayer dough to redecorate her office and order catered meals.
Meanwhile, her Queens students lacked basic supplies and services, including Common Core math and reading books. The had no gym class, no art, watched movies every day and lacked special education teachers.
Condon said he also turned over his findings to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown for possible criminal prosecution.
DOE spokesman Devon Puglia called Condon’s findings “disturbing” and said, “We plan on executing SCI’s recommendations.”
Condon’s investigators found Sills lied about her hours on the job, didn’t keep timecards and then tried to get underlings to cover her tracks.
“Marcella Sills [was] frequently late or absent from work, but received her full salary without any time being deducted,” the report states.
The probe found that Sills routinely showed up for work between 9 am and noon — despite a principal being expected between 7 and 7:30 am — calling a custodian from her cellphone to alert him of her impending arrival so he could open a gate for her private parking spot.
Investigators checked Sills’ cell phone records for a year — and found she only called the custodian before 9 am after The Post had outed her.
Still, Sills maintained that she arrived each day between “7 am and 7:30 am” and “pretty much lived” at her school, the report states.
The report also found that former Assistant Principal Tonya West “did not keep records and supplied recently created time cards when asked to produce documentation of her time and attendance.”
West had already announced plans to resign before The Post report.
The custodian who acted as her personal concierge told Condon’s office that Sills came late “three weeks out of four.”
Neither Sills nor West could produce time cards that showed their hours worked, vacation days and absences, the report noted and an office worker said Sills and West instructed her not to do time cards for them, and she didn’t from September 2012 through December 2013.
After The Post article, the report noted, Sills went to the employee and said, “I cannot find my time cards. Can you make some up from September 2012 to present?”
West also asked the same woman to make up bogus cards for her, investigators said.
Sills and West could not be reached for comment
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