Former PTA Official Jailed After Failure to Repay Funds in New York

FROM http://www.nytimes.com


Still owing more than $17,000 to the Parent-Teacher Association she stole from for two years, Providence Hogan, a former PTA treasurer at Public School 29 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, was taken back into custody on Wednesday after she failed to make scheduled payments.

Ms. Hogan pleaded guilty in 2011 to embezzling $82,000 while she was the treasurer of the PTA, which serves one of Brooklyn’s most sought-after elementary schools. She used the money to help shore up her failing Boerum Hill spa business in Brooklyn, cover her rent and pay for fertility treatments. As part of a plea agreement, she returned $50,000 in 2011 and has since paid back more in installments, but is still short about $17,700, according to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.

“The judge felt that she would come up with the money if she was in jail,” Ms. Hogan’s lawyer, Stephen Flamhaft, said.

He said Ms. Hogan would be released next week. Ms. Hogan could still face the full sentence of two to six years if she does not make the full reimbursement by January 2014. Even if she does, she will be on probation for five years.

It is the latest episode in a story that has left scars on both Ms. Hogan and the P.S. 29 community.

Ms. Hogan filed for bankruptcy in January, the same month she closed her business, Providence Day Spa, blaming the bad economy. The PTA has asked the bankruptcy court not to eliminate her remaining debt to the group. Maura Sheehy, one of the presidents of the PTA, said the remaining $17,000 could be used for a variety of purposes, like professional development for teachers, arts enrichment or simply softening the impact of more than $1 million in budget cuts the school has faced over the past five years.

The $17,000 is roughly equivalent to the salary of an assistant kindergarten teacher, she said. The PTA collected about $200,000 in donations last year, according to tax records.

Mr. Flamhaft, referring to the other P.S. 29 parents as “parasites,” said he believed they had “no compassion.”

“They’re taking advantage of a downtrodden woman,” he added, “who’s battered and sullied by many things that went on in her life.”

Since pleading guilty, Ms. Hogan, whose daughter was in fourth grade at P.S. 29 at the time of her arrest, has been divorced and has suffered from what Mr. Flamhaft called “severe illnesses, womanly illnesses” that left her “on her deathbed.”

Told of Mr. Flamhaft’s comments, Ms. Sheehy said, “I think people hold a wide range of feelings about the situation, including an enormous amount of sympathy for Ms. Hogan’s tragic situation.”

In a blog post on her spa’s Web site, Ms. Hogan wrote: “Some transitions were not so wonderful. Illness, loss and complicated times.”