A lovesick Brooklyn teacher who stalked, assaulted and threatened another teacher for refusing to date him can keep his city job, The Post has learned.
Salvatore Sparacino, 46, a gym teacher at It Takes a Village Academy HS in East Flatbush, vented his fury at a colleague when she spurned his romantic advances, according to testimony.
“I’ll show you, you f--king bitch. You’ll pay for this,” he yelled.
Despite finding that Sparacino had terrorized the woman both in and out of school, Joshua Javits, a hearing officer who decides cases against tenured teachers, barred the city Department of Education from firing him.
J.C. Rice
Salvatore Sparacino
Instead, Javits slapped the crazed coach with a transfer and a $20,000 fine.
The trouble started when Sparacino and the colleague “became friends” in the 2010-11 school year. They went out to lunch and dinner, but the woman told him she wasn’t interested in a physical relationship, she said.
Undeterred, Sparacino showered her with favors and gifts. He gave Regents study aids and tennis lessons to her teenage daughter. While helping the woman move books in her classroom, he tried to touch her hand, she said. She told him not to.
After Sparacino paid $800 for tickets to Cirque du Soleil, the woman refused to go. He then bombarded her with angry phone and text messages, one day calling 18 times, she testified.
“I was crazy for you,” one said. “I was the jackpot because I would have done anything for you.”
The colleague tossed his letters without opening them, including one containing the circus tickets. Sparacino barged into her classroom, screaming. “It’s the end. You think you can throw me away,” she testified.
Sparacino then chased her around the desks. When she tried to get him to leave, he shoved a door that struck and bruised her forehead. Shouting “F--k you” and waving his fists, he followed her outside, slammed his body against her car and blocked her from leaving.
He then tailed the woman home and parked next to her car, so she could not leave with her daughter, according to testimony.
“I will kill you, bitch. I’ll sue you,” she quoted him as saying.
She called 911. Sparacino was arrested for second-degree harassment but pleaded guilty to a non-criminal violation. Under the deal, he had to do three days of community service, take an anger-management class and obey an order of protection to stay away from the woman.
He denied ever harassing or hitting the colleague, claiming he only wanted his money back for the circus tickets.
Hearing officer Javits called that excuse “absurd,” citing Sparacino’s “romantic desires.”
But Javits took pity on Sparacino, refusing to allow his firing after 15 years on the job.
“His stalking conduct and harassing behavior, while completely unacceptable, do not automatically render him completely unfit to return to his teaching career,” Javits wrote.
Sparacino, who makes $82,100 a year, is now assigned to a pool of substitutes who go to different schools each week, the DOE said.
susan.edelman@nypost.com
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