‘Classmates suffered’: Boston City Council to investigate 32-year-old high school imposter

BOSTON — The City Council plans to hold a hearing on the matter of Shelby Hewitt, a 32-year-old Jamaica Plain woman accused of posing as a student at three Boston high schools this past academic year.

Hewitt, a former Department of Child and Family Services (DCF) worker, is facing seven counts in connection with the fraud, including two felonies. There is no word on when she will be arraigned.

“She wasn’t trying to return to high school to relive her glory days,” said Councilor Erin Murphy, who proposed the hearing. “In my opinion, her intent was not good.”

Murphy, a Boston Public School teacher for more than 20 years, said she is concerned that harm may have come to Hewitt’s ‘classmates,’ which included students at Jeremiah Burke High, Brighton High, and English High. But determining that is made more difficult, she said, by the fact, students are now on summer break.

That is adding to the frustrations felt by some parents, Murphy said.

“She was on the basketball team, on the soccer team,” Murphy said. “Parents are calling the school department and feeling they’re not getting answers.”

Getting answers will be the goal of the City Council hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.

Murphy said Hewitt’s past work at DCF may have helped her pull off the alleged ruse -- which included a fake foster parent.

“I believe that they used the system and were able to use words like ‘safety transfer’ and bullying to try to get into other schools,” she said.

And it worked -- until, authorities said, Hewitt’s third stop, at English High. Less than a week after enrolling there, a man posing as her foster parent tried to withdraw Hewitt because of alleged bullying. That brief tenure raised suspicions among school staff regarding the parenting situation at home -- and that’s when the supposed scheme began to unravel.

‘Deeply troubling’: Former Mass. DCF worker posed as student in Boston high schools

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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