Former Boston principal sentenced to supervised release after misusing school funds for vacations

BOSTON — The former head of New Mission School in Hyde Park was sentenced on Tuesday for using nearly $40,000 in school funds to go on all-inclusive vacations with her friends, according to authorities.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of Massachusetts says 60-year-old Naia Wilson of Mattapan, who previously pleaded guilty to wire fraud, was sentenced to two years of supervised release, 160 hours of community service, and a $25,000 fine. The first 90 days of her release will be served in home incarceration, and she was also ordered to pay restitution and forfeiture of $38,806 to Boston Public Schools, according to officials.

For over a decade, Wilson was employed as Head of School for New Mission School and granted maximum autonomy over the school’s budget and spending. New Mission School receives a lump sum per pupil budget from Boston Public Schools during that time and school administrators decide how to spend that money.

Pilot school budgets are managed by an external fiscal agent that contracts with Boston Public Schools. The school funds managed by the external fiscal agent were held in a bank account, which required Wilson to make formal check requests to the agent to receive the funds for the school.

The DOJ says beginning in or about September 2016 and continuing until at least May 2019, Wilson requested checks from the external fiscal agent school account to be issued in the name of other individuals, fraudulently endorsed those checks to herself, and then deposited them into her own bank account without the nominee ever knowing or authorizing her to do so.

Some of those checks were used to pay for two all-inclusive personal vacations to Barbados for herself and several of her friends in 2016 and 2018. For that ruse, officials say Wilson requested that the external fiscal agent issue checks payable to other people who went on the trips and then converted that money to pay for the all-inclusive hotel and airfare.

Authorities say the Boston Public Schools (BPS) were cooperative in the investigation.

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