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School regulators are asking the DOE to ban texting between teachers and students

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Electronic sexual grooming by educators poses a persistent threat to students in New York public schools, despite dozens of requests from school investigators to the DOE to stop cell phone contact between students and teachers, experts told The Post.

Since 2018, the city schools special investigator has filed at least 41 formal recommendations calling on the Department of Education to ban teachers and staff from contacting students’ personal cell phone numbers and social media accounts – most recently in a case filed on March 16. was submitted in April. Records show.

But the Energy Department has refused to pay attention, relying instead on toothless “social media policies” that “discourage” but do not prohibit such interactions.

SCI found that Joseph Canzoneri had committed “numerous inappropriate acts” involving teenage female students.

“There is no reason why teachers should contact students privately through their private emails, their private cell phones and especially through their social media,” Dr. Elizabeth Jeglic of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who studies institutional sexual abuse and sexual grooming.

Jeglic said texting is “part of the grooming process,” a uniquely intimate form of contact that abusers use to “usurp parental guardianship.”

Over the past five years, SCI has verified at least 89 cases in which DOE employees used private text messages or personal social media accounts to have inappropriate, often sexually charged conversations with students, the Post’s review of records shows.

Casual text messages exchanged by teacher Natalie Black with a 17-year-old male student quickly turned sexual. youtube.com
Over the past five years, SCI has proven at least 89 cases in which DOE employees used private text messages or personal social media accounts inappropriately. Bits and Splits – stock.adobe.com

The top-ranked Townsend Harris HS in Queens was rocked by scandal in 2021 when student journalists revealed that then-53-year-old teacher Joseph Canzoneri had committed “numerous inappropriate acts” involving teenage female students, including sexual intercourse and oral sex – all of it, according to the SCI starts with flirty texts and Instagram posts.

“Canzoneri’s behavior toward these students indicates a pattern of ‘grooming'”. . “this endangers the well-being of these and other students,” Special Commissioner for Investigations Anastasia Coleman wrote in her report.

That same year, casual text messages exchanged by Natalie Black, 26, a teacher at Hillside Arts and Letters Academy in Queens, with a 17-year-old male student quickly turned sexual, as Black sent at least 15 raunchy photos and videos of himself. “in lingerie or (in) naked” to the boy, which led to her firing, The Post reported.

Text messaging is “part of the care process,” Dr. Elizabeth Jeglic.
CUNY.edu
Since 2018, the Department of Energy’s Special Commissioner for Investigations has reportedly submitted recommendations asking city schools to prohibit teachers and staff from contacting students’ personal cell phone numbers.
Helayne Seidman

In 2022, then-19-year-old paraprofessional Aaliyah Paul exhibited “predatory” behavior toward a 15-year-old male student at the Manhattan School for Career Development, SCI found, by texting him 90 times in 20 days and calling him ” “her” called. Babyboy” after serving as a substitute at his school for less than a week. She was fired, according to the DOE.

Sexual abuse of minors is “often an insidious process that involves desensitization,” said Erinn Robinson of RAINN, the national anti-sexual violence organization, adding that texting is increasingly playing a central role.

“It can start with inappropriate conversations that progress to more sexualized conversations” once the perpetrator has “tested the waters,” she said.





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