Teachers who had sex at school not bad role models: judge
Cindy Mauro and Alini Brito may have thought it was a good idea to have sex on a classroom floor of their Brooklyn high school — but that doesn’t make them bad teachers, a judge said Wednesday.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Alice Schlesinger on Wednesday dismissed a finding by the Department of Education that Mauro had “failed as a role model,” ruling that a two-year suspension issued to the teacher should be reduced to one year.
The sapphic sweethearts had been caught in flagrante delicto by a security offcier at James Madison HS in 2009, with the married Brito lying topless on the floor while Mauro was seen “kneeling between her legs,” according to reports.
In her written explanation for cutting the teacher a break, Schlesinger said the DOE was wrong in its report on the issue when it called the women bad role models.
“Both women had unblemished records,” wrote Schlesinger, who also slammed the “over-the-top media attention” of the in-school sex romp.
“The activities, sexual in nature, between two consenting adults involved no students. Nor were any students closer than two floors away from the third-floor classroom where this conduct occurred,” the judge declared, even though the DOE found the teachers embarrassed the Midwood school, which soon became known as “Horndog High.”
The teachers had been hoping to have their suspensions overturned. They got mixed results: Although Mauro’s two-year ban was reduced by half, Brito’s one-year suspension was upheld.
DOE hearing officer Michael Lazan found that “Ms. Mauro failed as a role model, that she invented an entirely false narrative [and] that she . . . showed no remorse.”
Brito’s attorney chalked up the tryst to no more than a “misuse of a classroom,” “an isolated incident” and a “one-time mistake, highly unlikely to occur again.”
The teachers had a dinner date on the evening in question, with Brito throwing back an appletini and tequila.
They teachers have since returned to the classroom, with Mauro filling in as a substitute in various schools and Brito working at the Urban Assembly School for Criminal Justice in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
Because of the ruling, the women will lose a year’s pay. Mauro earns $79,000 a year while Brito makes $66,000.
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