Teach aide booted after lying about mom's death to miss work

A staffer at a Bronx elementary school lied about her mother dying to cover for missing three days of work -- but got canned after probers found mom alive and bowling at a local Thursday night league, The Post has learned. 

To document her days absent from PS 55, school aide Dawn Singletary submitted a pamphlet announcing her mom's funeral at a fake South Carolina cemetery -- and then maintained the ruse by accepting a $150 gift that was collected by concerned staffers, schools investigators found. 

But among the dead giveaways that something was awry were documents Singletary submitted to the school that misspelled "St. Mary Cemetery" as "cemetary" and named the nonexistent Cunningham Funeral Home in Salters, SC. 

After she was confronted by the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation, Singletary copped to the grave deception -- and to bowling with mom weekly at Ball Park Lanes in The Bronx. 

She was given the boot shortly after the never-made-public probe was completed. 

"There's nothing to defend because what I did was my fault," Singletary told The Post when asked about the incident. "The only person that got bit in the butt was me." 

Actually, though, Singletary was among more than a dozen city school workers who have been terminated since January 2009 after documents they submitted to excuse sick or bereavement days were exposed as flimsy fakes. According to investigators:   

Queens school aide Teresa Mandalas was recommended for termination from PS 143 earlier this year after she submitted a medical note with a co-worker's name crossed out and her own name scribbled in. 

Grace Lebron, a school aide at IS 190 in The Bronx, also suffered a medical-scam snafu when she left a blank Mount Sinai Hospital doctor's note sitting on a copy machine shared by school staffers. 

After school supervisors and investigators matched the blank note to Lebron's file of medical excuses, they identified eight fakes over a two-year period. 


LINK TO PHOTO:

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