Carnival Cruise Lines via Getty; timefrozen.com

Karl Browne called in sick for nearly a week while he was playing in a band on a cruise ship.

 

 

Dominique Folio quit after investigators discovered she'd taken a trip to Rome when she was granted leave to "care for her ill mother."

 

One teacher told her bosses she was caring for her ailing mother in Ohio - when in fact she was romancing an Italian boyfriend outside Rome.

Another doctored a doctor's note to get out of work, but was caught in the lie after a colleague spotted her at a political gala on television.

And an aide at yet another school called in sick for six days - but in reality, he and his band were rocking out on a cruise ship that sailed from Miami.

They are among the more than 50 city Education Department employees who have been busted for playing hooky from their jobs since 2009, mostly by fibbing about an illness or caring for a loved one.

One was lovelorn Dominique Folino, a 36-year-old former art teacher who worked at the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex in Manhattan.

Folino was granted leave from her job to "care for her ill mother" in October 2008 - but, co-workers said, she went on a Roman holiday "trying to determine whether the relationship with her Italian boyfriend would work out," according to a report by Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon.

When investigators told Folino they had travel documents proving she was in Italy, she 'fessed up and resigned.

The Daily News was unable to reach Folino for comment, but a relative said the love-struck instructor was still living abroad.

Marion Bell, a teacher at Public School 96 in East Harlem, didn't travel far from home when she falsely claimed to be out sick.

On Sept. 29, 2009, Bell was on "medically certified sick leave," from Public School 96, but a television broadcast that night showed her smiling mug at a party in lower Manhattan for Controller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

Bell had submitted a "suspicious medical note" to excuse her absence from work that day, claiming she had a foot injury.

She was granted sick leave, but that night Bell was seen standing behind Liu at a podium at a party celebrating his Democratic primary win.

As punishment, Bell received a disciplinary letter in her personnel file but kept her job at PS 96, where she earns $80,987 per year.

"I am not wiggling - this was a medical issue," Bell told The News last week, refusing to explain how she could go to a victory party when she was supposedly sick.

Karl Browne, a former school aide at Public School 91 in Brooklyn, was also out partying when he claimed to be ill, investigators said.

Browne, a jazz and funk keyboard player from Flatbush who performs in nightclubs with the Smooth Improvisation Band, called in sick for nearly a week in October 2010, claiming "he was stressed and self-treated his stress-related illness."

The moonlighting musician was actually out rocking the high seas on the Carnival Cruise liner "Liberty" - a ship whose "clubs are filled with excitement, laughter, and fun," according to its website.

Browne lost his gig as an aide because of his lies, but a woman who only identified herself as his wife insisted he was still a star to those who knew him at PS 91.

"Everybody loves and respects him, from principals to teachers, to all the way down," she said.

With Kerry Burke and Rachel Monahan