Nearly 900 sexual misconduct or inappropriate behavior complaints were filed against city Department of Education staffers last year, records show.
Only 157 of the 897 complaints were investigated, and just 62 of the cases were substantiated, the DOE’s independent watchdog announced in its 2025 annual report.
SCI investigated an even smaller percentage of complaints the previous year, with just 154 investigations out of 1,000 sexual misconduct complaints — producing 35 substantiated accusations, according to their 2024 report.
“These reports of sexual misconduct are deeply disturbing, but even more disturbing is the lack of investigation,” City Councilmember Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) told The Post. “A full accounting of these incidents is owed to our students and parents.”
The office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation defended its record: “All allegations of inappropriate conduct are reviewed and evaluated when received. It is not unusual to refer the majority of complaints” elsewhere.
Cases that the SCI doesn’t investigate could be referred to the NYPD, the Department of Justice or other agencies, a SCI rep noted.
SCI’s 17% investigation rate exceeds the 5% of probes conducted by the city Department of Investigation, the office contended.
The agency will decline to investigate a claim on “very rare occasions,” such as when the accused is dead, already in jail or already fired from the DOE, they added.
Of the cases substantiated in 2025, 23 involved a DOE staffers who allegedly engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a student on a personal cell phone or through social media, the report stated.
The SCI has recommended the DOE ban all employees, volunteers, or vendors from engaging with students via personal cell phone or social media.
This year’s crop of accused sleazy staffers brings the total number of inappropriate or sexual misconduct cases in the DOE to 183 since 2018.
Some of the previous accused pervs investigated by SCI include:
- Dulaina Almonte, who was axed from Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx in 2020 after texting a student 28,000 times, and defiantly told The Post the DOE could “suck a big pr–k,” and “can’t f–king touch me.”
- Three DOE staffers who were accused of having sex with students in Urban Assembly Early College High School of Emergency Medicine.
- Queens graphic design teacher Daniel Matuk, who allegedly commented on one William Cullen Bryant HS student’s “brown a–” and “little butt” in more than 700 messages between 2022 and 2023. “I blocked Daniel Matuk’s number after graduation, but have been living with trauma because of what had happened,” the victim told investigators.
- Anthony Schiliro, a history teacher at the elite Eleanor Roosevelt HS in Manhattan, who investigators said sent “excessive” late-night texts to three female students and joked about one of them having sex in front of the other two.
- Bronx music teacher Scott Biski, 50, was accused of grooming and sexually abusing a female student, and sending her nearly 700 messages, according to investigators.