Dominican lecturers housed within the Pilgrim Avenue constructing have been began when a metropolis Division of Training administrator requested for hire funds.
J.C.Rice
Dominican lecturers working in metropolis faculties have been startled when a metropolis Division of Training administrator knocked on the door to their Bronx duplex final week at 11 p.m. – apparently to spherical up hire funds, sources stated.
Lecturers housed within the Pilgrim Avenue constructing recognized town worker as Daniel Calcaño, treasurer of ADASA, the Dominican-American Affiliation of Supervisors and Directors — a well-connected fraternal DOE group that supplied to recruit bilingual lecturers from Latin America to work with Spanish-speaking college students.
Calcaño, a former assistant principal working in a Bronx DOE workplace, had been accumulating month-to-month funds of $1,350 to $1,450 from every of the 5 Dominican lecturers required by ADASA to share the duplex.
When lecturers opened the door late Dec. 2, they discovered Calcaño whipping out his personal key to the residences. They blocked his entry and requested him to depart, the lecturers advised DOE and union officers in a Dec. 4 assembly, sources confirmed.
“He was attempting to open the door. They didn’t let him are available,” stated an individual who attended the assembly.
Calcaño and a spokesman for his union, the Council of Supervisors & Directors, didn't reply to a request for remark.
It wasn’t the one intrusion at Pilgrim Avenue. On Monday, an Asian man who refused to establish himself, however stated he was “answerable for the condo,” bought into the shared front room and began knocking on bed room doorways, lecturers stated. He, too, was advised to depart.
Beginning this weekend, all 5 lecturers, and one’s husband, will transfer out of the ADASA-run duplex into housing they discovered themselves or with their kin dwelling within the space, a supply advised The Put up.
Eleven different lecturers have been paying hire to Calcaño for rooms in a Baychester Avenue duplex.
One other three lecturers paid hire for a co-op on Marion Avenue to the spouse of Emmanuel Polanco, ADASA’s first vp and the principal of MS 80 within the Bronx, who was faraway from the varsity final month after an investigation started. The co-op was bought in 2006 by Polanco’s mom, who died a number of years in the past, but stays listed in metropolis information because the proprietor.
Polanco’s spouse, Sterling Báez, collected hire from the three lecturers. Per week in the past, Báez ordered the lecturers to pay this month’s hire by Dec. 6 or get out.
“It was an ultimatum,” an insider stated. The lecturers wished to maneuver, saying Polanco and his spouse barred guests and managed their mailbox.
On the assembly, DOE representatives advised the lecturers to chop off contact with ADASA, and cease paying or taking orders from members of the group.
“ADASA just isn't your employer,” they have been advised.
Ruskin Pimentel, a spokesman for Bronx State Sen. Luis Sepúlveda, stated his workplace is in contact with the DOE on its efforts to resolve the distressing issues.
“We're blissful the DOE is addressing this example. Our important concern is the well-being of the lecturers, and we're assured that, so, far, the DOE is taking the appropriate steps,” Pimentel stated.
The lecturers confronted one other menace final week. On Monday, Marianne Mason, govt director of the Cordell Hull Basis, which sponsors the trade program, despatched the lecturers an e-mail saying their visas are topic to termination in the event that they don’t give the group up to date addresses and cellphone numbers.
The e-mail got here after The Put up reported that the lecturers’ cell telephones – offered by ADASA for $60 a month– have been inexplicably shut off the prior week.
On the Dec. 4 assembly, representatives from UFT, the lecturers’ union, stated they would offer the recruits with authorized help for any issues as they sought different lodging. They met with attorneys on Tuesday.
UFT president Michael Mulgrew, at a Zoom city corridor on Wednesday, briefly talked about the Dominican “scandal.”
“We’re there for these lecturers,” he stated, “however the metropolis allowed that to occur and acts like they'd nothing to do with it.”
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