Maspeth High School has a new leader after a grade-fixing scandal that dragged on for two years.
Selin Alicanoglu, 35, an assistant principal at Flushing HS, was named acting principal of Maspeth pending a final selection.
She replaces Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir, who was removed on July 8 and charged with extensive academic misconduct after a Department of Education investigation that started in September 2019.
Selin Alicanoglu has been named acting principal of Maspeth High School.
In a scathing report in The Post that month, whistleblower teachers told how administrators pressured the faculty to pass failing students, staffers gave answers during Regents exams, and kids did little or no work in phantom classes.
They called it “the Maspeth Minimum.”
Abdul-Mutakabbir faces a disciplinary hearing. “We are urgently pursuing his termination,” said DOE spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon.
But only Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir has been charged with misconduct, although teachers also blamed assistant principals Stefan Singh and Jesse Pachter. They are still listed as Maspeth administrators.
“They were the ones who essentially carried out the planning and the implementation of all of the things that Khurshid was terminated for,” one teacher said.
Alicanoglu got her education in Queens public schools and Queens College.
At Flushing HS, where former teachers also complained about grade-fixing, Alicanoglu “fostered a collaborative and rigorous academic culture and created an advanced literacy curriculum that helped increase the ELA Regents passing rate by 31 percent,” O’Hanlon said.
