It was a lesson in revolting against authority.
A three-year investigation into a trip to Cuba taken by New York City high school students in 2007 has concluded that the teacher who organized the trip did so despite instructions from the school's principal not to go.
The spring break trip to Cuba by students from the Beacon School on Manhattan's West Side sparked headlines when some students were briefly stopped by U.S. Customs agents in the Bahamas. Travel to Cuba for reasons outside academic coursework reasons was prohibited in 2007.
Tuesday's report from the schools' Special Commissioner of Investigation placed the blame for the trip on teacher Nathan Turner and said he should never be hired to teach in New York again.
Turner resigned in 2008 and now lives in New Orleans. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
This isn't the first time a teacher disobeys the rules for a trip; a teacher at the Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering in Harlem took her students to Long Beach--without permission slips from parents. That trip ended in tragedy, and a fired teacher.
