In separate cases at two Manhattan high schools, city investigators said Friday, two school employees engaged in consensual sexual activity with 18-year-old students.
In one case, the investigators said, a teacher performed oral sex on a student in a locked classroom during the school day.
City education officials said they were seeking to dismiss the employees, who have been reassigned to administrative offices. But neither employee was charged with a crime because the sex was consensual and the students were not minors.
In response to a question about the cases, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said New York state should adopt a law making it illegal for school employees to have sex with students, regardless of age or consent. Many states, including Connecticut, have such laws.
In one case detailed Friday, investigators said that Fernando Salvador, 54, a science teacher at City-as-School in Manhattan, performed oral sex on a female student in a locked, darkened classroom at about 1pm on Dec. 3. Another teacher walked in and reported the encounter.
Investigators said Salvador denied having sexual contact with the student and said that he and the student had gone to the room, a computer lab, to play an electronic card game.
Investigators said the student confirmed the sexual encounter and said she had participated willingly.
Police detectives turned the case over to the special commissioner of investigation for the New York City School District, Richard J. Condon, after determining that the student was not a minor and had not been forced to have sex.
The teachers' union said that a lawyer for Salvador had declined to comment.
In the second case, investigators said that Eugene Teague, 25, a school aide at West Side High School on West 102nd Street, began a sexual relationship with a student in October. Those encounters took place in a car away from the school, they said.
"Once you hit 17, we call it an inappropriate relationship," Condon said. "It is not a crime."
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