September 22, 2004
Former City Schools Official Admits Using False Credentials
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
From humble beginnings as a substitute teacher in the late 1970's, Joan
E. Mahon-Powell climbed through the ranks of the New York City school
system, becoming a principal, a superintendent in Brooklyn, the
superintendent of a citywide district for low-performing schools and
then chief of staff to Chancellor Harold O. Levy.
Last year, Mr. Levy's successor, Joel I. Klein, hired Ms. Mahon-Powell
as one of 113 local instructional superintendents, a new position in
the reorganized administration. But yesterday she was arrested on two
felony counts, accused of forging her credentials all along the way.
Investigators say she was never even certified as a teacher.
Last night, in exchange for a sentence of 10 days of community service
and a $1,000 fine, she pleaded guilty in Criminal Court in Manhattan to
reduced charges of presenting a false instrument. She had faced up to
seven years in prison on the original counts.
"She was successful for a long time, and really, it was a fluke that
she got caught," said Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of
investigation for the city schools, whose office conducted the inquiry.
"It's very rare that there would be any cause to go back and re-examine
a document that was produced once and accepted," Mr. Condon said,
adding that it was rarer still to double-check the credentials of
someone so high-placed for so long.
"This was old Joan," he said. "Joan had been there for 20 years."
Ms. Mahon-Powell, 48, was removed from her post nearly a year ago after
questions were first raised about her New York State superintendent's
license, and she was fired shortly afterward, officials said.
She last earned a salary of $135,200 a year, officials said, although
at one point while working for Mr. Levy she made as much as $152,500.
After she was chief of staff, Mr. Levy appointed Ms. Mahon-Powell as
his liaison to the City University of New York, working to open high
schools on college campuses.
Education Department officials said yesterday that they were
considering legal options to prevent her from collecting a pension when
she reaches retirement age.
After her guilty plea before Judge Patricia M. Nunez, Ms. Mahon-Powell
strode briskly and silently from the courthouse, accompanied by her
lawyer, Marvin Pettus, who declined to answer any questions.
In a conversation last year, shortly after she left her
superintendent's job, Ms. Mahon-Powell said that she stepped down for
medical reasons and was working as an educational consultant.
She presented herself as an enthusiastic advocate for the public
schools and the city's children and as a proponent of strong ties
between the schools and the city university system. She seemed younger
than her years, spoke comfortably in the school system's jargon and
clearly regarded herself as an insider, referring to many top school
officials as close friends.
City education officials took credit yesterday for her unmasking,
saying they "discovered this fraud in 2003" and immediately notified
Mr. Condon's office and terminated Ms. Mahon-Powell.
In a statement, the Education Department's top lawyer, Michael Best,
said: "She has been placed on the ineligible list and will never work
for the department again. Improved background procedures are now in
place to ensure that such a fraud will not occur again."
In a seven-page letter to Chancellor Klein yesterday, Mr. Condon laid
out the details of the investigation, which included a tale of deceit
stretching back to 1992, when Ms. Mahon-Powell was promoted to
assistant principal after presenting another falsified document, a
school supervisor's license.
The saga ended after city and state education officials double-checked
the credentials of officials being hired for the new local
instructional superintendent jobs.
But Mr. Condon also described a cloak-and-dagger drama as investigators
zeroed in, including a missing watermark, a handoff of documents
outside the Education Department's human resource division offices in
Brooklyn and even a secretly recorded telephone conversation.
Investigators said that Ms. Mahon-Powell had forged the school district
administrator's license by using a license belonging to Joan King, a
retired school official who worked for Ms. Mahon-Powell in the late
1990's as a deputy superintendent in District 19 in Brooklyn.
Even as investigators pressed her, Ms. Mahon-Powell insisted that the
documents were legitimate and that her original credentials had been
damaged and replaced. Investigators said that although she had put her
name on Ms. King's license, Ms. Mahon-Powell did not change the
certificate number - apparently not realizing that it is the holder's
Social Security number.
Investigators also said she had used the wrong font for her name. "The
document is smaller than the authentic certificate and is slightly
blurred, suggesting that it was scanned and altered," Mr. Condon wrote
to Mr. Klein.
"She had forged these documents," Mr. Condon said in an interview. "In
a sense it was identity theft, because she was using the certification
of another woman."
But it was not the first time that Ms. Mahon-Powell had falsified her
credentials, investigators said. And her dismissal last year also
turned out not to be the first time she was fired by the city school
system.
By her own account, Ms. Mahon-Powell grew up in Brooklyn and attended
city schools all the way through college. She said she graduated from
Hunter College in 1978 and took courses at Long Island University and
the College of New Rochelle before earning a master's degree in
education from Brooklyn College.
Michael Arena, a spokesman for CUNY, said officials could not
immediately confirm Ms. Mahon-Powell's college or graduate school
records.
But officials at Fordham University's Graduate School of Education,
where she claimed to have completed the coursework to become a
superintendent, told investigators that they had no record of her doing
so.
Ms. Mahon-Powell began her career in the city schools in the late
1970's as a substitute in District 19, which mostly covers the Bushwick
section of Brooklyn. She worked "per diem," meaning that she was based
out of the district office and not assigned to a regular school.
According to school system records, she was appointed as a regular
teacher in September 1981 but terminated in July 1988 because she had
never earned a proper teacher's license. She returned to working as a
substitute for the next four years, and then won an assistant
principal's post in August 1992 at Junior High School 292 in Bushwick,
apparently by using fake credentials.
Investigators said that state education officials had no record of ever
issuing administrator's credentials to her. In 1997, she was promoted
to principal of J.H.S. 292. In 1999, she was appointed acting
superintendent of District 19 by Chancellor Rudy Crew, who generated
controversy by firing her predecessor, Robert E. Riccobono. Later, Mr.
Riccobono filed suit charging Dr. Crew with racial discrimination,
asserting that he was fired because he was white and that Ms.
Mahon-Powell was chosen because she was black, even though she had been
principal of one of the district's worst schools.
In July 2001 she became Chancellor Levy's chief of staff.
Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.
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