New York City ‘Blue Ribbon’ Principal Accused of Fraud to Bolster Graduation Rate Removed from Post but Given $1.8 Million ‘Desk Job’

A Queens, New York City, high school principal who had been removed from his post after accusations he padded his school’s graduation rate, has received a “sweetheart” settlement deal that allows him to have a “desk job” with the city’s Department of Education and ultimately pocket more than $1.8 million, the New York Post reported Saturday.

Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir, former principal at Maspeth High School, which was conferred the federal “Blue Ribbon” award in 2018, demanded his teachers pass students and allow them to graduate regardless of their academic performance, the Post revealed in reports over the past several years.

A settlement of misconduct charges allows Abdul-Mutakabbir, who was removed from his post in July, to remain on the city’s Department of Education payroll for another seven years.

“Maspeth High School created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate – ‘even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,’ an explosive investigative report charges,” Post journalist Susan Edelman wrote in September 2021.

That report, sent in June 2021 by Anastasia Coleman, a New York City Special Commissioner of Investigation for school districts, to Meisha Porter, former chancellor of New York City Public Schools, said an investigation “substantiated” the claims that Abdul-Mutakabbir and other Maspeth High School officials “committed various acts of malfeasance,” among them that they “attempted to have students with attendance, behavioral, or other issues graduate early.”

Despite the recommendation of the city investigators that the Department of Education try to terminate Abdul-Mutakabbir, 47, the department instead quietly settled the charges in January by fining him $12,000 and prohibiting him from working as a principal again…. (Excerpt from the Virginia Star)