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Admitted Ex-Prostitute Teacher, Melissa Petro, Faces Trial

samsung1
Ohio
NEW YORK (CBS 2) – A self-proclaimed hooker-turned-teacher is facing a Department of Education trial within 60 days.
Melissa Petro, 30, was a tenured teacher at P.S. 70 in the Claremont section of the Bronx. After beginning a blog for the Huffington Post, she admitted she worked as a stripper and, briefly, as a prostitute before she got her teaching job.
Petro was hired after passing a background check. According to chancellor's regulation, c-105, the check is supposed to look for “unbecoming conduct,” specifically including prostitution or pimping. She's since been charged, administratively, with “conduct unbecoming a teacher,” and was removed from her classroom.
Education officials have yet to mention on what grounds they're able to fire Petro for from the content of her blog.
“I was a stripper in Mexico, when I was 19,” Petro said on her video.
Petro made no effort to hide her past, speaking at a 2009 event in the Bowery and blogging about it repeatedly over the last five years.
In June, Petro blogged that an administrator at the school urged her to use a pseudonym. She declined. “I've never been one to shy away from publicity. I suppose I could be fired, but for what exactly?” she said.
After her trial, an arbitrator will have 30 days to decide what penalty, if any, she should receive.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/12/02/a…

5 comments

  • Dudester
    •
    14 years ago
    Lesson one for writers-unless someone is actually paying you to write-write under a pseudonym. If you become a paid, and then known writer, what you wrote earlier can harm your career, even if it wasn't controversial or immoral. Your customers will just go away, thinking you a talentless hack.
  • vincemichaels
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    14 years ago
    Hmmmm, I need a teacher to teach me Greek. I wonder if she is fluent. LOL
  • sanitago
    •
    14 years ago
    why do I see some "concerned" parent complaining to the school administration that this woman could possibly "corrupt the morals" of her poor, innocent students?
    some folks can't just leave the past be the past.
  • georgmicrodong
    •
    14 years ago
    Hmm, if there's an employee agreement in place that states that such conduct in the past is grounds for termination, as opposed to just grounds for not hiring in the first place, the "officials" may have a case. However, if they failed, through their own incompetence, to discover her background, and she made noneffort to defraud or lie, then punishing her for behavior that happened *before* she was hired, and has no effect on her current duties, should result in her keeping her job. If she's a represented employee, she should definitely talk to her union rep. If not, a good lawyer.

    It all hinges on what, if any, agreements she signed when she took the job.
  • MisterGuy
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    14 years ago
    The fact that this is going to be decided by an arbitrator in a purely administrative process for "unbecoming conduct" as a teacher likely means that she's already involved in a union-sponsored process. It'll all depend on what the past practices, rules, and regulations are when it comes to an employee's conduct as a teacher. If she lied to her potential employer about her work history before she got this teaching job, then she is likely toast. Either way, she's a dummy for not using a pseudonym.
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