Metro

Bronx principal probed over iPad raffles

The former principal of a Bronx high school is under investigation for conducting raffles in which students won iPads, iPods, mini-laptops, sporting goods and other prizes.

On the day before Christmas break, Arisleyda Urena of the Academy for Language and Technology gathered all students in the auditorium for a raucous raffle.

Kids cheered as staffers held up the electronics and Urena pulled tickets from a jug, a 2011 video posted by a student news club shows.

“Every student in attendance that day got a free ticket, including students in severe academic jeopardy,” one former teacher said.

Close to 50 gifts were raffled each in 2011 and 2012, with 10 iPads as grand prizes and about 20 iPod Touches and 15 small Dell laptops, another teacher told a Department of Education investigator. Other prizes included basketballs, soccer balls, backpacks and Nike bags and coupons.

Another video shows Urena pulling tickets to give out two gift baskets.

The DOE permits parent groups to hold raffles and sell tickets under strict conditions, but students under 18 are barred from playing.

DOE spending rules limit prizes for students.

“Only moderately priced incentives given to students as part of an officially sanctioned incentive program such as dropout prevention, honor roll, attendance, etc. are permitted,” they state.

The Morris Heights school serves 300 Spanish-speaking students.

A DOE spokesman would not say whether Urena’s raffles were approved or explain how she paid for prizes, saying only that it is under investigation.

“She gave out a whole bunch of stuff she bought. She went shopping,” a former teacher said. “She parked in the lot. We had to lug the stuff upstairs.”

Another teacher told investigators that prize iPads and laptops were stamped “Property of the DOE.”
Urena’s DOE-issued credit card shows thousands of dollars in purchases from the Apple Store, Modell’s, Frank’s Sport Shop and other merchants.

An ex-softball coach said the school lacked supplies.

“It was always a struggle to get the right equipment, things like bases and enough bats,” he said.
Urena and then-Assistant Principal José Vinales, who helped in the raffles, did not return calls. Vinales is now interim-acting principal.

Urena left the school Nov. 1 and took a DOE job writing “quality reviews” of schools. Her salary is $143,780, but with overtime she took in $154,638 in 2013, records show.