This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: Fakers in Schools
Schools spend time and money keeping out strangers. There are sign-in sheets, locked doors, buzzers, visitor lanyards, and office staff who are supposed to know who belongs in the building. Every so often someone successfully strolls past it all.
This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays we look at three people who got into high schools by pretending to be someone they were not. One pretended to be a teacher. The other two pretended to be students. None of them were very good at it.
The Substitute Who Was Bored
Just a few weeks ago a woman, Amy Jones, walked into a Milwaukee, Wisconsin high school posing as a substitute teacher. Apparently she formerly attended the school. But she’s 23 now and it seems she had a grudge of some sort. The police say she overheard office staff talking about the substitute agency the school used, perhaps when she was a student. She showed up this day, claiming to be there as a substitute teacher, and it so happened there was an unfilled position. The school handed her a classroom.
A real teacher set up the room and stayed with her for about 20 minutes. Once that teacher left, things went downhill quickly. Jones started by asking the students whether anyone had marijuana or a vape pen, because class was boring. Students reported that she swore at them, used racial slurs and sexual comments, and sorted the class by race and gender. She called one student fat, asked whether students were virgins or gay, and bragged that she had felonies and was fine with going to jail. When police asked her why she did it, she said she was bored.
On some level, I get it.
The students figured it out before the adults did. They complained to the office, the principal called the substitute agency, and the agency said Jones did not work for them. Jones was charged with one count of impersonating a public officer, employee or utility worker and five counts of exposing a child to harmful descriptions (what kind of crime is that?). The principal admitted the office is supposed to confirm every substitute is in the system and assigned before letting them in, and that did not happen. Parents were not told the substitute was a fake until October 5, which is a long time to sit on that piece of news.
The 28 Year Old Sophomore
In the Bronx, New York, Kacy Claassen decided to go back to high school. According to the criminal complaint, she enrolled at Westchester Square Academy on April 13 under a fake name and a fake 2010 birthdate. She told the school she was a 16 year old named Shamara Rashad. She was actually 28.
Her cover story lasted two weeks. The principal got suspicious and did what any teenager could have done on the first day. He looked her up on Facebook. Her profile listed her real name and age, said she was from Hays, Kansas, and mentioned her daughter. When he confronted her with it, Claassen insisted she was Shamara Rashad and said she had moved to New York from Ohio with her sister.
Police charged her on April 27 with endangering the welfare of a child, criminal impersonation, and trespassing. I don’t understand why a 28 year old with a daughter wanted to sit through grade 10 again.
The Social Worker Who Enrolled Herself
The Boston case is the strangest of the three because the faker was supposed to be one of the people protecting kids. Shelby Hewitt was 32 years old when she used fake identities to pass as a student at three Boston high schools in 2022 and 2023. She got in through the student transfer process, using a different name each time.
Weirder yet, the Massachusetts child protection agency confirmed she worked for them as a social worker during part of the same period. She even received special education services while she was enrolled.
The scheme came apart in June 2023, when a man claiming to be Hewitt’s father told staff at English High School in Jamaica Plain that he was transferring her to a new school because of bullying. So the fake student had a fake dad, and the fake dad is what tipped the school off.
The case dragged on for years. Days before her trial was set to start, Hewitt pleaded guilty to three counts of forgery, identity fraud, and making a false claim to an employer. She is now barred from going near Boston Public Schools, banned from working as a social worker, and required to get mental health treatment.
Fakers
Fakers are regular fare here on Wednesdays, perhaps because of the sheer audacity. Most of us go through our professional life fighting imposter syndrome. Then there are some who seem unconcerned about actually faking it. I find this fascinating.
See you next Wednesday.
