A paraprofessional at a Queens elementary school used a database of emergency contact numbers for parents to deal with her own urgent need — peddling insurance policies.
Maria Salazar, a school- system employee for more than two decades, had a side gig as an insurance agent for Primerica.
She admitted that last February, she accessed confidential student records at PS 127 in East Elmhurst to get their parents’ phone numbers so she could sell them insurance.
“I subsequently visited the parents of the two children at their homes and attempted to sell them Primerica insurance products,” Salazar said in a settlement with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board.
“They did not buy anything from me,” she added.
It’s not clear how many parents Salazar contacted.
The settlement mentioned only the parents of two children, and the ethics board and the Department of Education declined to provide the total number.
Raiding students’ confidential data for private purposes is “exceedingly rare,” according to a source familiar with such matters.
But it’s far from the first time a city employee accessed official records for their own personal gain.
In December 2015, a Civilian Complaint Review Board investigator trying to get a job as a cop was fined $4,275 for accessing and revealing confidential police data taken from CCRB’s database.
Human Resources Administration employees also have been busted for pulling private benefits information on several occasions.
In 2008, one HRA employee obtained his ex-wife’s confidential records in a failed attempt to cut his child-support payments.
In Salazar’s case, the Conflicts of Interest Board initially set her fine at $2,500, but knocked it down to $600 due to “financial hardship, including her current extended leave from DOE to care for a sick family member and attendant expenses.”
Salazar, who earns $34,492 a year, has worked at PS 127 since 1996.
According to the city Department of Education, she is still employed there, but received a letter of reprimand from the department for lifting the sensitive data.
Salazar’s lawyer and Primerica did not return calls.
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