The New York Post Now Calls Them "Beducators"

Sooner or later it had to happen. One school that is having two concurrent sex scandals:

It seems sex education is a hands-on course at [New York City's] HS for Health Professions and Human Services - city officials yesterday revealed charges of a second affair between a female educator and a teen student at the school in as many days.

Education officials are looking to fire guidance counselor Samantha Solomon for allegedly having sexual trysts with a male student at the Gramercy Park school

Department of Education spokesman Keith Kalb said that Solomon, 29, has been working in a regional office since last month, when schools investigators began probing reports that she had a relationship with a 17-year-old male student.

Special Schools Investigator Richard Condon informed the department last week that his office had concluded that an affair indeed took place, officials said yesterday.

Solomon yesterday flatly denied that anything sexual took place between her and the college-bound student, whom she met in November, and said that investigators have not presented their case to her.

"We were friendly, just purely friendly, and we worked together on him going to college," Solomon said. "There was no sexual relationship. He was my student."

She acknowledged speaking with the boy over the telephone after school hours, but said it was common for prospective college students to call her for help.

Just the day before, authorities had revealed that Rhianna Ellis, a 25 year-old teacher at same school, had been having a long-term affair with one of her students and had given birth to a child with him:

A Manhattan high-school teacher slept with her student for months and got pregnant with his child, but gave him only a barely passing 65 in social-studies class, according to a bombshell report obtained by The Post.

The 18-year-old boy toy from the HS for Health Professions and Human Services shrugged off the grade, but couldn't forgive his teacher, Rhianna Ellis, 25, for reneging on her promise to abort the pregnancy.

The details of the sordid 10-month affair, which included romps at a Queens motel and "one last time" in Ellis' Queens home, were chronicled in a recent letter from Special Schools Investigator Richard Condon to Chancellor Joel Klein.

Investigators began probing Ellis' affair last August, when the high school's principal reported receiving an anonymous letter about the matter in her school mailbox.

In October, Ellis left the classroom on a "restoration of health sabbatical."

The district is moving to fire both employees, even though Ellis had already given her "verbal resignation" to her principal.

On his weekly radio show, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had some things to say about the situation:

"If you wrote the book, nobody would believe it," a vexed Bloomberg said on his weekly WABC-AM radio show. "If you talk about lack of intelligence, these teachers — and I'm not picking on teachers, because in any group you can find it . . . it's hard to understand what goes through their minds," Bloomberg said.

The mayor said it will probably take a few years for the city to wind through legal procedures to fire the educators.

In the meantime, he said, "They'll sit in a room and get paid . . . go out shopping and play games on the Internet."

The questions that we are asking ourselves are these: Why weren't any of these teachers arrested for their alleged criminal behavior? And what would have been the response if the teachers had of been male and the victims female?

Tipped by: TC of Leather Penguin
Other Commentary: Number 2 Pencil
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