‘Scrooge’ NYC DOE sends holiday invoices demanding cash from unvaxxed employees fired during COVID
The city Department of Education has turned into Scrooge this holiday season, demanding cash from staffers it fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Social worker Diane Pagen, terminated three years ago for violating the city’s vaccine mandate, received an “invoice” after Thanksgiving from the DOE seeking $2,290, a sum covering her salary for 10 days in 2021 when she was ordered not to work.
Pagen, 54, called it a “shameful extortion” and “a shakedown.”
“What kind of upside-down clown world has NYC’s Department of Education become? This agency refused to allow me to go to work … and now wants to bill me,” she told The Post.
Pagen is one of 1,780 city employees — including 1,100 in the DOE — forced to leave on Oct. 4, 2021, because they would not comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.