A hulking teacher’s union honcho whose big mouth got him bounced by cops from an Albany restaurant after he complained his quail was too small was previously reprimanded as a teacher after being accused of brazenly helping test-taking students cheat, officials said today.
Food-lovin’ lobbyist Paul Egan was named in a scathing 2000 report by the Department of Education investigator as helping a group of Bronx middle-school students taking a city-wide math exam get the right answers to the test by using “several different methods to cheat.”
The then-investigator, Edward Stancik, said Egan while proctoring the 1999 exam “purposely displayed the answers to the first 11 questions by leaving them unguarded on his desk for the students to find,” and that he urged students to check individual answers after seeing they had gotten them wrong.
“Don’t tell anyone that I helped you or you’ll be the ones that will be into trouble,” Egan told the class as they left after the test, according to Stancik’s report.
Stancik recommended that Egan be dismissed from his social studies teaching job at IS 113 — but the portly instructor was merely issued a reprimand after spending just five months in a so-called “rubber room” for teachers being probed in disciplinary actions.
Eleven years after that embarrassing incident, Egan — who is now the political director of the United Federation of Teachers — is making headlines again with news that he was bellicose, belligerent and bombastic during a Valentine’s Day quail quarrel at an upscale Albany eatery.
Egan, 43, is even catching heat from Albany’s mayor, a former teacher himself, who called his conduct “unacceptable.”
But Egan today claimed that his big ol’ self was the victim of “late and rude service, drinks hot and cold spilled by waiters and uncooked meals.”
Police said that the super-sized squabble began after Egan — who earns $150,000 from his union gig — had dined Monday night at the upscale bistro Marche with 24 colleagues.
At about 9:52 p.m., an employee of 74 State — the downtown hotel containing Marche — called police to say that a man was “yelling and refusing to leave,” police sources said.
“Two officers were sent and when they got there they encountered a gentleman who said he was with the United Federation of Teachers,” sources said. The man and his group “were refusing to pay the bill.”
“The gentleman” — Egan — “who spoke to the officers was agitated and loud. He was told he would have to pay, that it was a civil matter if they had any questions with the bill,” sources said.
“Eventually the staff accommodated them with a reduced bill and they paid it,” police sources said.
“They were then escorted out.”
That reduced bill totaled about $1,500, sources said.
Albany Police Department spokesman Detective James Miller said, “We don’t get situations like this involving a large group very often. There’s a proper way to handling a situation like this and that’s in civil court if someone feels they have a case against a restaurant.’’
But Egan gave a very different version of the food fight when he sent a letter to Marche today — after a press account about his quail-fuelled meltdown in Marche.
“I write to make you aware of an incident on February 14, 2011 at your establishment,” Egan wrote.
“The circumstances are these:
On the night of February 14, 2011, I hosted a dinner for 24 colleagues. A number of untoward incidents occurred, including half the party not getting served for an hour and a half, late and rude service, drinks hot and cold spilled by waiters and cold and uncooked meals.”
Egan continued, “Despite the rudeness shown to us by restaurant employees, and their refusal of my repeated requests to speak directly to the manager on duty, I paid the bill in full — even though the first bill presented to me was for 30 meals rather than the 25 guests who actually attended.”
“Let me add that the problems of that evening were entirely uncharacteristic of what my colleagues and I usually experience at your restaurant, where I generally find the food excellent, the service first-rate, and the atmosphere more than hospitable,” Egan concluded.
The UFT, which represents the city’s teachers, sent the letter to The Post, but a spokesman there declined to make a comment.
But Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings, who spent 21 years as a popular teacher and high school administrator, said “As an ex-teacher I certainly would hope that all of our teachers and their representatives would be a better role model for our kids than these people apparently were.”
“This kind of behavior, as described to the police, is unacceptable, especially coming from representatives of a teachers union,” Jennings said.
Egan was listed in the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records for longest recorded after-dinner speech — a Nov. 19-21, 1988 stem-winder that lasted 34 hours and 16 minutes at University College in Dublin, Ireland.
The record book did mention what, or how much Egan ate either before or during that speech.
Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg