After Stint at Rikers, Brooklyn PTA Thief Re-Elected at Daughter's New School

Photo courtesy of Providence Hogan

Providence Hogan, the ex-PTA treasurer at Brooklyn’s Public School 29 who embezzled upward of $80,000 from the elite elementary school and, for months, had to hide behind a hat and sunglasses when walking through Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, caused a commotion at her daughter’s new high school in the borough’s more modest Midwood neighborhood on Wednesday when she was elected vice president of that school’s PTA.

Hogan, convicted in 2011 of grand larceny and jailed at Rikers Island in 2013 for failing to make scheduled restitution payments, was once called ”the outcast of brownstone Brooklyn” by the New York Times and ”PS 29’s mom-strocity” by the local Brooklyn Paper.

Her story — that of an ailing, down-on-her-luck Brooklyn mother trying to keep her family afloat while preserving the veneer of a perfect carriage-house lifestyle — drew both sympathy and ire.

“Some members of the P.S. 29 community were furious,” one parent told the Times, “when Ms. Hogan was spotted coming out of the Union Market, a gourmet grocery store near her home.”

For the past two years , though, not much has been heard from or about PS 29’s disgraced PTA mom.

All that changed on Wednesday evening, when Hogan, now 48 years old and living in Sheepshead Bay, volunteered to run for PTA vice president at Edward R. Murrow High School’s first PTA meeting of the year.

She easily won the vote — perhaps in part because no one in that part of town recognized her as the former outcast of brownstone Brooklyn.

“The PTA I was with before raised $1 million dollars,” Hogan reportedly said at the meeting. “I don’t wish to be involved with money at this school, but I want to be involved.”

By Thursday morning, Brooklyn Paper had gotten wind of her revival.

”Mom-strocity returns!” the headline said. “Thieving PTA mom is back in office.”

Scrambling to avoid panic among parents, PTA heads at the school called Hogan and encouraged her to resign.

She did. “I certainly am happy to do that,” Hogan told Patch, “because I don’t want to cause them any trouble.”

Hogan said she only volunteered to run for vice president at the meeting for lack of other volunteers.

And although she has agreed to step down as vice president, she said she’s determined to stay involved at her daughter’s new high school.

“It’s my way of staying in touch with my daughter,” Hogan said. “My goal was only to support them. I am not leaving the Parents Association. I’ll bake brownies. I’ll support them when I can.”

The Jewish New Year this month, she said, has given her the spiritual strength to stand her ground.

“The process you go through — you apologize,” Hogan said. “I’m here to tell the world that I am home again, and I’m not going to cower anymore. I’m not going to bow down to fear.”

According to Hogan, she spent a couple hellish weeks in jail on Rikers Island before she was allowed to leave due to medical issues, on condition she enroll in a six-month rehabilitation course.

(“I’d rather be at Rikers than a PTA meeting,“ one commenter wrote on the latest Brooklyn Paper story.)

In the time since, Hogan has reopened her former Brooklyn business, Providence Day Spa, on Court Street in Carroll Gardens, and says she only has a few thousand dollars left to pay to PS 29.

She vows she’ll return to Carroll Gardens one day. “This is my home,” she said. “If anybody wants to talk to me about what’s happened, I’m here.”