NEW YORK (AP) — City and federal investigators are investigating a landmark program to bring teachers from the Dominican Republic here to teach bilingual education amid allegations that some were subjected to an extortion program and threatened with wasting their visas if they didn’t pay.
As CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reports, MS 80 in the Bronx is a school in crisis. CBS2 has learned that its principal, Emmanuel Polanco, has been reassigned through Schools Chancellor David Banks as city and federal investigators examine a sea of disturbing allegations that several teachers brought here from the Dominican Republic were forced through the principal to pay extortion rent or had their visas taken away.
“I hit what I heard,” San Luis Sepulveda said Sen. Sepulveda. young people here and the lives of the teachers. “
Sepulveda talks about a one-of-a-kind program introduced through the Ministry of Education this fall that brought 25 from the Dominican Republic to teach bilingual education in the city’s schools. Ten were assigned to MS 80.
It’s a program Last year, more than 22% of schoolchildren in the city spoke Spanish as their first language. Almost 14% were learning English as a momentary language.
Sources told CBS2 that the investigation began when Sepulveda’s office communicated last month through one of the teachers assigned to MS 80, accusing him of being forced through Polanco to pay about $1,800 to hire a bachelor room or waste his visa.
Sepulveda went to the Ministry of Education, which took action.
CBS2 sources:
A spokesman for Banks, who announced the program in its first announcement, insisted that “we will do everything we can to protect our staff from employment-related abuses. “
“If the allegations are true, they create disorder for the other people who came here. These other people came here from the Dominican Republic, for a wonderful opportunity for them and their families. They left their families. They quit their jobs,” Sepulveda said. “They shouldn’t be the subject of this. “
Polanco responded to a request for comment. Neither did the organization that brought the teachers here.
The Ministry of Education has hired volunteer immigration lawyers for the ters. The firm insists it will continue to recruit bilingual ters from abroad.