Maybe he teaches fuzzy math.
The disgraced prosecutor in charge of a shady charity that raised funds for Hurricane Katrina victims is a teacher at Queens Vocational and Technical HS, where he earns $61,333 a year, according to sources.
Claude Stuart, 48, became a city math teacher in 2006 — the same year state Sen. Malcolm Smith tapped him to be the director of New Direction Local Development Corp., a nonprofit that’s now under a federal probe. Smith and Rep. Gregory Meeks helped found both the charity and the Katrina fund, New Yorkers Organized to Assist Hurricane Families (NOAH-F).
The Belize-born Stuart has been in the hot seat since The Post first reported that the Katrina fund paid out only $1,392 of at least $31,000 raised for hurricane families.
Stuart’s association with the shady group and his connections to the two powerful Democratic politicos didn’t come as a shock to people who know him.
“I’m not surprised. He acts all high and almighty all the time,” a relative told The Post.
“He was very, very, very smooth,” an associate said. “He would be a very good salesman.”
Stuart, a Seton Hall Law School grad, served in the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps and joined the Queens District Attorney’s Office in 1988.
But his promising legal career crashed and burned in 2002, when he resigned after telling a judge during a murder trial that he couldn’t locate a key witness who had exculpatory evidence, even though he had spoken to her four days earlier.
He was suspended in 2005 from practicing law in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC.
“Such conduct strikes at the heart of his credibility as a prosecutor and an officer of the court,” a five-judge panel wrote in an appellate court opinion.
Shortly after resigning as an assistant district attorney, Stuart was hired in January 2003 by Smith as a part-time special assistant in the state Senate during legislative sessions that year and in 2005, earning nearly $2,000 every two weeks.
He also worked at the law firm Brand, Glick & Brand in Garden City, LI, defending clients in civil suits. He had to quit, though, when the state appellate court sanctioned him.
“I said, ‘Obviously, you can’t work with us,’ ” firm partner David Brand said.
Stuart declined to comment on his role at NOAH-F.
“From all the information I’ve reviewed and all I know of the case, I don’t see any criminal liability in reference to Claude,” his lawyer, William Keahon, told The Post.
Additional reporting by Yoav Gonen and Kathianne Boniello