Exclusive | Exiled NYC school staffers rake in fat paychecks as two-year human trafficking probe drags on

An NYC principal and his wife, accused masterminds behind a bilingual teacher scandal exposed by The Post, have raked in more than $500,000 in salary for the past two years — while the foreign educators they recruited are forbidden to visit their families back home if they want to keep their jobs.Some 20 teachers from the Dominican Republic have been barred from traveling outside the US without losing their well-paying Department of Education jobs and enrollment in a city-paid Master’s Degree program amid a federal probe of Bronx principal Emmanuel Polanco, his wife, teacher Sterling Baez, and a group of Dominican-American administrators who allegedly exploited the newcomers.The Department of Homeland Security has given the teachers, who lost their original visas in the turmoil, a “Continued Presence” status, which is meant for victims of human trafficking to remain in the US as potential witnesses to crimes.

Under the rules, they can’t travel outside the country and return pending the probe, teachers told The Post this week.“The last we heard was that they were still investigating,” one said.“Sometimes I wonder when this is going to end, because it’s been two years already, and we are still waiting.”“We don’t know what’s happening.” said another Dominican teacher who was warned she might lose her job and protected status if she visited the DR when her mother underwent cancer surgery. “We are in limbo.”A third teacher, working in a Bronx high school, can’t visit his family in the DR, though his wife and three kids have come to the US twice to see him in the last two years.“Nobody tells us anything,” he said.  “How long do we have to wait?”All three teachers asked for anonymity, saying supervisors warned them not to speak to reporters.

But they want their plight known.Homeland Security launched a probe in November 2022 amid complaints that Polanco, principal of JHS 80, led a shake-down scheme to force the teachers to rent...