A math and physics teacher at Fort Greene’s well-regarded Brooklyn Technical High School — attended by the the mayor’s son — pleaded not guilty today to sending a “full-frontal” photo to a 16-year-old girl. Sean Shaynak, 44, is accused of exposing himself via an “explicit photograph” to a student he’d previously bought cigarettes for and hung out with while she smoked marijuana.
“I want to poke my eyes out,” someone who saw the picture told the Daily News.
As for Shaynak, who sounds like a real charmer, he allegedly told police, “Fuck you, I’m not going anywhere!” when they came to pick him up this morning, according to court papers. A judge ordered the teacher held on $20,000 cash bail and barred him from contacting the girl, “including Snapchat or Facebook,” the New York Post reports.
Authorities had reportedly been monitoring Shaynak’s Facebook since July. Students do not seem surprised:
Update, 4:32 p.m.: “He gets very comfortable with his students, but he’s also a great teacher,” one former student, who took Shaynak’s class for multiple years, told Intelligencer. “There were definitely students who were a little too comfortable with him.”
There was sometimes “too much weird physical contact,” she said, including hugging. “After I graduated, I added him on Facebook, and he messaged me,” the student added. “It was jokingly, but he was just like, ‘Are you Facebook stalking me?’ The conversation got weird. He always felt a little too comfortable.”
“People were on one extreme or the other: You either loved him or were completely weirded out by him.”
But another student, who called Shaynak “a very knowledgeable man,” said, “I believe he would never do such an atrocious act.”
