By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The principal of the Harlem school where a sixth-grader drowned on a class trip in June has been removed from his position for hiring his lover to work at the school and letting her live with him rent-free, according to a report released Tuesday.
Parents and teachers at Columbia Secondary school cried foul earlier this year when Principal Jose Maldonado-Rivera was allowed to keep his job after 12-year-old Nicole Suriel drowned on a hastily arranged and poorly supervised trip to Long Beach.
But on Tuesday, Maldonado-Rivera was stripped of his title following a special investigation launched in July that uncovered "additional allegations of misconduct," Department of Education spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said.
The report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District alleges "an inappropriate financial relationship" between Maldonado-Rivera and a woman named Monica Marin-Reyes, whom he hired as a parent coordinator at the school in the spring of 2008 after she had worked as a volunteer.
The investigation alleges that Marin-Reyes provided Maldonado-Rivera with free child care, escorting his son from a school across the street and frequently babysitting him until the principal was ready to leave.
Maldonado-Rivera also allowed Marin-Reyes to live rent-free in his apartment for more than nine months in a room that he had previously rented for $700 to $1,000 dollars a month, the report said.
Parents and teachers at the school also accused the two of having an affair, the report revealed.
"Looking at the full history of Dr. Maldonado’s conduct, we have determined that his repeated failures in judgment make it inappropriate for him to continue as Principal of Columbia Secondary," Ravitz said in a statement.
Both Marin-Reyes and Maldonado-Rivera admitted to investigators that she had picked up his son and looked after him, but insisted that it was only one an "emergency basis" once Marin-Reyes was hired by the school.
Both also said that Marin-Reyes had only moved into the apartment after Maldonado-Rivera had moved in with his son’s mother.
While the two denied a relationship while she worked at the school, when he was interviewed Oct. 1, Maldonado-Rivera said the two had begun dating "in the last month or so" and now lived together in his apartment.
Marin-Reyes resigned from the DOE in July, the report said.
Gary Biester, the current assistant principal at the High school for Math and Science and Engineering at City College, is set to take over as principal on an interim bases beginning Wednesday, Ravitz said.
The phone rang unanswered in the principal’s office at the school Tuesday.
