Fraud-promoting NYC principal removed ‘just’ two years after schemes exposed

Institute school-wide academic fraud, and the city Department of Education will rush you out the door . . . two years after the scheme gets exposed. Is it any wonder so many city-run public schools are mired in mediocrity?

That’s right: The DOE finally pulled the “Maspeth Minimum” principal, Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir, over the summer — and is trying to fire him.

It was September 2019 when The Post broke the story of the rampant fakery he ordered at the high school. Fed-up Maspeth teachers came to the paper, complaining of how school administrators pressured them into passing failing students and giving out answers during Regent exams. Even no-show students graduated via phantom classes and credits. Students called the guaranteed-graduation setup the “Maspeth Minimum.”

Slowly, so slowly, grind the wheels of . . . justice? . . . at the DOE. Indeed, as of February this year, the system’s investigators had still failed to interview key figures in the scandal.

And while a new acting principal, Selin Alicanoglu, started last week, Assistant Principals Stefan Singh and Jesse Pachter — who teachers say carried out Abdul-Mutakabbir’s bidding — remain on the job.

It’s déjà vu all over again . . . and again and again. It similarly took years for the DOE to move on a massive grade-fixing scheme at Brooklyn’s John Dewey HS.

Elaborate union and civil-service protections, plus epidemic bureaucratic foot-dragging, drag out efforts to remove even outrageously bad administrators and teachers. Too bad nothing protects the kids.