CHELSEA — A kindergarten teacher was hit with an $1,800 fine for accepting a laptop parents at a Chelsea school bought her after hers stopped working, city officials said.
The city’s Conflicts of Interest Board on Wednesday ruled that P.S. 33 Chelsea Preparatory School teacher Dana Kaplan — who won a Blackboard Award for teaching in 2014 — violated its rules by accepting the laptop, the board said in a release.
In September 2013, Kaplan told parents of kindergarten students at the school at 281 Ninth Ave. that she wouldn’t be able to email with them after school hours because her laptop wasn’t working, a city document shows.
When the parents heard this, they collected donations and bought her a refurbished Macbook Air.
Kaplan thought the laptop cost $650, but later discovered it was actually $881, the document said.
She used the laptop “primarily” for work-related issues, but also used it for personal “non-Department of Education purposes" at times, she told city officials.
She turned the computer over to the assistant principal at P.S. 33 in March this year, the document shows.
A city Department of Education spokesman on Thursday confirmed Kaplan had been fined after violating city regulations.
“Ms. Kaplan started at the DOE in 2006 at [Chelsea Prep] and remains assigned there,” he said. “She has no prior disciplinary history with the DOE.”
Messages left at the school for Kaplan were not immediately returned on Friday.
