Brooklyn teacher fakes stair fall to avoid review

By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter, New York Post

Maybe she should have just called in sick.

An untenured Brooklyn high-school teacher catapulted herself down a school stairwell in a wacky attempt to avoid a classroom observation by her supervisor, a probe obtained by The Post shows.

Staffers at the HS for Innovation in Advertising and Media told investigators that first-year teacher Ilene Feldman was so petrified about a scheduled classroom observation -- coming in the wake of a poor performance review -- that she staged a clumsy pratfall in a stairwell rather than risk getting a second negative rating.

Untenured teachers can be canned out of hand if they are rated unsatisfactory after any of their first three years on the job.



Administrators at the Canarsie school -- suspicious of Feldman's injury because it coincided with a classroom-observation meeting -- handed security-camera footage to school investigators after concluding that Feldman purposely fell down the stairs.

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