Some folks like to complain that teachers, with their summer vacations and school breaks, get too much vacation. But many teachers would heartily disagree. To wit: Hot on the heels of the teacher who allegedly faked their daughter's death for vacation time comes the story of Mona Lisa Tello, a Manhattan science teacher busted today for claiming she had jury duty when she didn't [PDF]. How'd they catch her? Well, it didn't help that she spelled "trail" instead of "trial," "sited" instead of "cited" and "manger" instead of "manager" in a letter she forged to her boss. Whoops!
Tello was caught when the principal at the High School of Graphic Communication Arts lodged a complaint with the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District after he noticed odd errors in a letter Tello said was from the Superior Court of New Jersey excusing her from work—despite the fact he knew she had deferred jury duty. Also suspicious? The address on the letter was wrong and the telephone and fax numbers were fake. Oh, and so was the bar code on it.
Tello was arrested on Monday and charged with three counts of forgery by the Manhattan DA's office. She has agreed to retire at the end of the week and reimburse the city the $3,374.88 that she was paid over the 15 now-unexcused absences she took between September 2010 and May 2011 for "jury duty."
Tello, the News points out, was "one of a dozen or so bilingual science teachers who were recruited in Puerto Rico [in 1993] to teach New York City kids whose first language was Spanish."
