Say Custodian Helped Employee Get $14G After He Left System

The Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools has found that a Custodian created false time records to pay $14,000 in Department of Education funds to someone who had stopped working there.

Multiple witnesses at P.S. 84 in Brooklyn told the SCI that they had seen Kim Tatum punching a timecard on a number of occasions despite not being required to use one.

He Left, Timecard Lingered

Complaints said that the timecard was registered to Dwight Beharrie, who had worked at the school for about two months in the beginning of 2006 but had not been seen by any employee after that. According to timecards and paychecks, Mr. Beharrie had worked for the DOE from January 2006 until January 2008.

Investigators then interviewed with Xenia Beharrie, Mr. Beharrie's estranged wife, who said that he "only worked part-time and left the cleaner job to look for steady employment with benefits."

In a separate interview, Mr. Beharrie confirmed that he was employed by a window company in Trenton, New Jersey, but said that he worked on the side at P.S. 84 and had always punched his own timecard.

Later comparison between Mr. Beharrie's two paychecks, from P.S. 84 and the window company, indicated that he had allegedly been working in both places at the same time.

Ms. Tatum, who has worked for the DOE for 27 years and at P.S. 84 for more than three years, said that she had never punched anyone's timecard.

In a letter, SCI Commissioner Richard J. Condon recommended to Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein that Ms. Tatum be fired and that the matter be considered if she ever applied for a job in the city's school system, as well as recommending that steps be taken to recoup the stolen funds.

The matter was also referred to Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes for possible criminal prosecution. D.S.