No matter how bad you think many public schools are, you are underestimating the problem:
A D.C. school librarian accused of leading elementary students in a reenactment of the Holocaust has a prior criminal record out of New Jersey.
According to records from the New Jersey State Department of Education, Kimberlynn Jurkowski lost her teaching license for three years after she was found guilty of theft and falsifying records in 2013.
Her childrens’ school district was paying for tutoring for her children and Jurkowski was found to have continued to charge the school system over $20,000 after the tutoring ended. She subsequently lost her school librarian job in Atlantic City.
FOX 5 also found court records of a cruelty to animals charge from 2019. Multiple media reports out of South Jersey say one of Jurkowski’s dogs died after being left outside in the cold.
On Monday, D.C. Public Schools refused to comment on whether the district knew about Jurkowski’s criminal past.
Ward 6 Councilman Charles Allen says he wrote a letter to D.C. Schools Chancellor Dr. Lewis Ferebee Sunday night.
“Specifically asking did this person go through a background check? Did they not discover this or have they been made aware of it?” said Allen. “I haven’t gotten a response yet, but the community and the school needs answers to those questions. I need answers to those questions.”
Go here to read the rest. More detail on this “reenactment” here. The aptly named Ms. Jurkowski was earning 91K a year for her valuable services as an instructor of the young.
I’m personally acquainted with a librarian in greater Washington who, unlike most librarians, is a trained programmer with serious IT skills used on the job. Her cash salary is 20% lower than this woman’s, and she’s never had a criminal conviction of any kind. Public institutions in DC are just a racket, but no Republican Congress has had the stones to strip the District of home rule.
Note, teachers have (and have had since I was a tyke) a bag of tricks to amuse themselves and avoid productive lessons. Role playing games and group projects are among them. Then there’s the simulacra of teaching, where time is squandered on non-academic mush. Then the administrators get into the act and hold pointless ‘assemblies’.
This woman’s a librarian and likely should not have much to do with teaching other than one-on-one tutoring on the use of reference materials.
Just to clarify matters, back in the day, newspaper style books would have insisted she be referred to as Mrs. Orion Jurkowski. Her name at birth was Kimberlynn Jenkins. Her husband is reportedly a librarian as well. Not quite sure if they’re still together. Her husband attended high school in an odd corner of suburban Chicago where the population is plurality black. She also lived in Chicago for a fat chunk of her life and once had an apartment about 2 miles away from the high school her husband attended. She would have been 29 years old the year he finished; just out of puerile curiosity, I’d be amused to know if she was employed there and poaching her charges. It’s not as if she’s demonstrably scrupulous and conscientious.
I was fond of the beagle / lab mutt I grew up with and I’m fond of corgis and schipperkes I encounter on the street. Mrs. Jurkowski puzzles me. Those of you of the dog fancy persuasion might explain to the rest of us why anyone would want five rottweilers.
Art,
Most of my male public HS teachers were WWII and Korea combat vets that used the GI Bill to get their degrees. They were serious men and good at their work. Anecdotal: my work took me in and out of Puerto Rico 50+ times over 40 years. One of the locals was a man who attended the same NYC Catholic college as me but just after WWII. He told me there were a lot of vets and they treated him [a strange kid in a big city] so nicely.
Re: Five Rottweilers (I presume no babies) – that is only one of her pathologies.
She’s a poster child for home schooling.
Most of my male public HS teachers were WWII and Korea combat vets that used the GI Bill to get their degrees. They were serious men and good at their work.
I had elementary teachers in mind, and am remembering those of my youth. The secondary teachers I had were satisfactory, though I cannot recall any veterans among them bar the athletic director.
“Did this person go through a background check?”
Every district has a factotum called a credentials analyst who is supposed to check transcripts and recommendations, but that person can’t check what’s not written down. Also, the CA makes no hiring decisions. So either (1) some of the bad stuff was never entered into the record or (2) someone in charge ignored the bad stuff and hired her anyway.
Every district has a factotum called a credentials analyst who is supposed to check transcripts and recommendations, but that person can’t check what’s not written down. Also, the CA makes no hiring decisions. So either (1) some of the bad stuff was never entered into the record or (2) someone in charge ignored the bad stuff and hired her anyway.
DC is a ‘ban the box’ jurisdiction. They’re deliberately looking the other way. I think an embezzler who collects rottweilers (she leaves out of doors in winter) is seriously creepy. Cannot imagine someone without these issues wouldn’t show up to apply for $91,000 plus bennies to work as a school librarian. Then again it’s DC. I’m wagering a quarter of the student body is incorrigible.