A Queens elementary school teacher had her class of fifth-graders send holiday cards to her jailed boyfriend – a felon with a taste for child porn.
Melissa Dean instructed her students at P.S. 145 in Corona to draw holiday cards – and include their home addresses for John Coccarelli, an inmate at the high-security Groveland Correctional Facility in Rochester, New York.
Authorities said at least two youngsters included their names and addresses in the cards, including one 10-year-old boy. Students told investigators they believed the cards would be sent to ill people and others living in city homeless shelters.
“She told the children it was a nice thing to do,” a source close to the investigation said.
A guard at the upstate jail disagreed with that logic and intercepted the 27 letters mailed in December.
“She didn’t have the school’s permission,” city Special Commissioner of Investigations Richard Condon said.
Condon has recommended that Dean be fired for the deed, which she failed to share with school administrators and parents.
“She didn’t have the parents’ permission. The children didn’t know they were sending these cards to someone who was an inmate in a correctional facility,” Condon said.
“She was exposing these children – their names and addresses – to someone who was in prison. It was bad judgment.”
Court records show Coccarelli was arrested in May 2010 after he texted a threat to his ex-wife, threatening to kill her. Coccarelli said in the text, “At least I will be going away for a good reason,” the records state.
Coccarelli was also charged with possessing dozens of sexually explicit images of young children on a floppy disk and laptop recovered by investigators from his home in Port Washington, Long Island.
City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott called Dean’s actions, “totally ridiculous, absurd,” and said, “We’re not going to tolerate this.”
Walcott called for Dean’s termination and said, “It’s something that’s totally unacceptable. I heard about it and I can’t say…what I said to myself, because I just find it mind-boggling,” Walcott declared.
Dean sent her own card to Coccarelli, signed “from your Wifey”, decorated with a red heart next to the name, authorities said.
Dean was immediately transferred to a Department of Education (DOE) “rubber room” in Long Island City, where she will continue to receive her $75,000 a-year salary until DOE officials decide her fate.
