Additional Grand Larceny Charges Filed Against Former Ramapo School Administrator

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe today announced additional felony charges of grand larceny and falsifying business records have been filed against Brian Miele, a former Ramapo Central School District administrator. Zugibe said Miele allegedly falsified teaching certifications and provided phony documentation in a long‐running scheme to boost the salaries of dozens of teachers.

Miele, 63, of Paramus, NJ is charged with:

“This defendant is accused of abusing his role as a school administrator by engaging in a scheme to ‘help out’ dozens of teachers in the district at the expense of local taxpayers by ‘being a nice guy’ and hiking their pay,” said Zugibe. “By exploiting his leadership position and allowing uncertified educators in the classroom, his actions had the potential to harm the academic performance of students and undermine the trust of parents who put their faith in public education.” 

As the former assistant superintendent for human resources for the Ramapo Central School District, Miele was responsible for assigning teachers to courses that they were legally certified to teach. Additionally, he determined the annual salary of all district teachers and negotiated union contracts.

According to Zugibe, the defendant is accused of improperly inflating the annual salaries of numerous teachers and through his actions enabled some teachers to collect salaries even though they lacked the legally‐required New York State teacher certification. According to the charges, Miele allegedly covered up the crimes by falsifying the records of the school district and state. 

Miele, who retired from the school district in June 2010, was formerly a Republican mayor of Hillburn and county legislator. He was criminally charged in March 2011 in a scheme to falsify the number of education credits for his daughter, a district teacher, which allegedly allowed her to improperly receive more than $40,000 in pay. The arrest of the defendant resulted from an investigation conducted by the Rockland County District Attorney’s Special Investigations Unit.

Miele faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in state prison and is scheduled for arraignment in Rockland County Court on September 24.