NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Katherine A. Umbro, a Personnel Assistant in the Civil Service Department of the City School District of New Rochelle, working under Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Joseph Williams was fired Friday after failing a drug and alcohol test administered earlier in the week, sources say.
Umbro has a long history of being drunk on the job and has reportedly been in and out of rehab 7 or more times. She was drunk on the job several months ago and was escorted about the building by Assistant Superintendent for Business & Administration Jeff White. She is one of several District employees with a long history of showing up for work drunk.
Umbro showed up drunk at work at City Hall again last week, according to multiple sources. Other employees complained to Williams about Umbro. She was ordered to undergo urine testing. On Friday, she was called into Williams office on Friday, told the results were “positive” and that she was being terminated. Williams then took her keys and school ID and escorted her out of City Hall. Umbro was scheduled to “retire” next month.
For years, Umbro’s job was to approve the paper time sheets filed by employees to approve regular pay, overtime, and to charge sick days, vacation days and personnel days to their file. Umbro is alleged to have routinely manipulated those records to pay employees for hours they did not work, approve overtime pay to which employees were not entitled and not charge sick days, vacation days and personnel days to employee accounts. Her manipulation of time sheet records likely cost the District well over $100,000 a year, by some conservative estimates.
Umbro has, for many years, been a leading figure in the District’s “friends and family network”. A number of her families work for the District.
In one case, Talk of the Sound obtained records documenting how Kathy Umbro approved hours for Amanda Umbro, her daughter, a part-time employee in the Buildings and Grounds Department, resulting in thousands of dollars in unearned payments to the younger Umbro. Soon after our story ran on massive time-theft orchestrated by the Umbros, Amanda was given a full-time job with benefits as a laborer in what was seen by many as a final favor by John Gallagher of Aramark, soon after he was removed from working in the New Rochelle school system.
The daughter of a woman working in the Civil Service Department of the City School District of New Rochelle submitted dozens of time sheets to the District claiming hours that she did not work, based on records obtained by Talk of the Sound including time sheets obtained under a Freedom of Information request.
Based on a review of these records, Talk of the Sound conservatively estimates that over the past 14 months Amanda Umbro was credited for working at least 400 hours that she did not work. At a wage of about $18.50 per hour she would have been paid close to $7,500 worth of time — and possibly much more. The amount may be larger because Amanda Umbro was employed by the District for at least a year prior to the time period of the records obtained by Talk of the Sound.
According to public records, Katherine A. Umbro was paid a base salary of $89,492 in 2015.
School officials did not respond to repeated requests for information.