According to officials, Disney trips intended for homeless students went to the children of NYC school employees

NEW YORK — Six New York City public school employees took their children or grandchildren on trips to Disney World, New Orleans and other locations using tickets intended for homeless students, investigators said in a recently released report.

The trips, intended to enrich students living in shelters and other transitional housing, also included field trips to Washington, DC, Boston and Broadway shows, said Anastasia Coleman, the special investigator for New York City schools.

According to the report released this month, Linda Wilson, the regional director of the Office of Assistance for Students in Transitional Housing in Queens, took her own children on trips funded by grants for homeless students and asked her staff to do the same but keep it quiet.

“What happens here affects us,” an employee quoted Wilson as saying.

When asked by the New York Post, Wilson denied taking her two daughters on trips or encouraging staff to bring their children. Wilson called the special counsel's investigation a “witch hunt.”

The investigation began after a whistleblower filed a complaint in March 2019. The Special Commissioner's report, which covered travel between 2016 and 2019, was completed in January 2023 but was not published until September 9.

The Special Commissioner's Office said in an emailed statement that the report was not published due to pending administrative procedures.

According to the report, Wilson forged permits to take family members on trips and evaded the oversight of the city's Department of Education by booking the travel arrangements through an outside agency.

Some of the trips were intended as university tours, but the students and their companions never visited the respective campuses, witnesses told investigators.

A group that included Wilson and one of her daughters, as well as other staff members and their children, ate lunch at Syracuse University during a June 2018 trip but never toured the university, witnesses said. According to the investigation, they left the university and drove to Niagara Falls instead.

The Office of the Special Counsel recommended that Wilson and the other employees accused in the report be fired and that they be required to reimburse the school system for travel expenses for their family members.

Wilson told the Post she had retired and was not fired.

Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said in a statement: “All employees named in this report are no longer employed by New York City Public Schools.”