The Department of Education finally revealed this week that it had substantiated charges against a Brooklyn principal for fudging the transcripts of high school students by giving them credits for health and gym classes they never took.
PS 27 principal Sara Belcher-Barnes, who has worked in the city’s public schools system since 1982, agreed to retire from the kindergarten-through-12th grade Red Hook school last month when faced with charges that included assigning instructors to teach out of license.
She could not be reached for comment but denied tampering with at least 19 student transcripts, according to the Office of Special Investigations report.
However, one teacher told investigators that Belcher-Barnes had instructed her to “enter passing grades for all of the students who were missing grades for health and physical education” toward the end of the 2007-08 school year.
The unearned credits wouldn’t just help kids graduate on time but would also boost the ratings of the school and principal.
The lengthy probe by the DOE’s internal investigative arm also continues a trend where some cheating probes involving principals inexplicably drag on for years.
Allegations of impropriety were made against Belcher-Barnes in February 2009, and the OSI report indicates that interviews of witnesses were conducted the following month.
Yet a report detailing the findings wasn’t issued until a year-and-a-half later, on Aug. 30, 2010.
In addition, repeated inquiries made by The Post about the status of the case in December 2010 and January, March and May 2011 went unanswered by the DOE’s press office.
A spokeswoman did not reveal that the charges had been substantiated until June 10, 2011 — nearly 10 months after the case had actually concluded.
She did not respond to questions yesterday seeking an explanation for the slowness of the probe and for her delay in confirming its status.
“I’ve long been concerned about the length of time cheating investigations are held open,” said Panel for Educational Policy Manhattan-appointee Patrick Sullivan. “There appears to be no rational explanation except that the DOE seeks to avoid the embarrassing news that a closed case would potentially bring.”
In other drawn-out cases, Lehman HS principal Janet Saraceno has been under investigation for transcript-tampering since October 2009 and Theatre Arts Production Company HS principal Lynn Passarella has been probed for grade-fixing since January.
OSI also took three years to clear two others principals of cheating — in one case attributing a six-month delay to a misplaced file.
Additional reporting by Lachlan Cartwright