YONKERS, N.Y. – A recently published video by undercover journalist James O’Keefe highlights exactly how some teachers who physically abuse students are able to avoid or minimize the consequences for their actions.

The video posted to YouTube last week by O’Keefe’s Project Veritas is shot from a hidden camera as an undercover operative posed as a teacher to solicit advice from teachers union in Yonkers about bloodying a student in racially charged attack.

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The undercover “teacher” told Yonkers Federation of Teachers president Patricia Puleo and Vice President Paul Diamond that after the incident he fled to Mexico for two weeks without informing school officials.

“I can try to be as honest as I can, but …” the undercover teacher told Puleo in the video.

“You don’t have to be honest, I mean I can talk in theory,” Diamond said. “I can just babble in theory, that way I don’t know anything first hand from you.”

O’Keefe, who posed as the teacher, told Diamond “I was not on a medical leave, I have no medical problems like that. I went away for two weeks basically.”

“Okay,” Puleo said, “Do you have a doctor who is a friend of the family?”

The video also shows Puleo advising O’Keefe to use medical leave as an excuse for his absence.

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“I’m calling this my medical leave time,” she said in the video. “I mean that’s one way of covering it up.”

Throughout the encounter at the YFT offices, O’Keefe and union officials talked in theory about his predicament and they seemingly advised him to keep his mouth shut about the alleged abuse and ride out a minimal punishment.

“If there was that, if racial slur was used simultaneous to if there was violence …,” O’Keefe said before Diamond cut him off.

“I would assume they would want you to go for racial training. I can’t think of the name of it now. Kumbaya training,” Diamond said.

“You’re just going to smile and suck it up and you don’t talk to anybody. I don’t care if it’s your best friend,” Puleo told O’Keefe. “I don’t care if it’s the phys ed teacher you went to high school with, you don’t f***ing tell anybody anything.

“And if I have to hit you in the back of the head, hit him in the back of the head if he does,” she continued. “You don’t tell anybody.”

O’Keefe goes on in the video to further humiliate the union officials by presenting Diamond with a gift – a Mexican poncho he allegedly knitted while on “medical leave.”

Other footage shows O’Keefe plotting possible excuses for the absence from his fictitious teaching job with Puleo.

“I could have a family member in Mexico,” O’Keefe told the union president.

“You could. Your parents could have been down there, or your cousin could have been down there, or your brother and they were taken by drug dealers,” Puleo offered.

The recorded encounter with O’Keefe came days after another undercover agent with Project Veritas posing as a school volunteer went to the YFT offices to report the potential student abuse.

“I’m not a teacher, but I’m a volunteer at a school and I’ve seen a couple of incidents that I’m not really sure what to do,” the female undercover agent told Diamond. “Well I have a friend who got in a little bit of a scuffle with one of the students. It was a couple of weeks ago.

“Nothing has happened since. Nobody has said anything, the kid hasn’t said anything. There’s been no parents,” she said.

The undercover agent explained that the student doesn’t seem to want to come forward, but said she believes he received bruises from the incident.

“Kids get bruised all the time,” Diamond said.

“The teacher should just call us immediately,” he said. “And the teacher should not participate in any interview or investigation. And should say the phrase, ‘I feel this can become disciplinary, I want someone from the union office.’”

The undercover sting, laid out in the 17-minute YouTube video, prompted a statement by the school board and superintendent, as well as calls for an investigation of the YFT by Yonkers City Councilman Christopher Johnson, according to the Yonkers Tribune.

“After having the opportunity to review the Project Veritas videos and subsequent interviews by Yonkers Federation of Teachers (YFT) President Patricia Puleo and Vice President Paul Diamond, the Yonkers Board of Education Trustees and Superintendent Dr. (Edwin) Quezada are appalled at what we saw and heard,” board president Rev. Steve Lopez said.

“The implication that a child’s well being is ignored or that fraud is encouraged by leaders of one of our bargaining units mandates that we pursue every legal option available; we will be guided by the law.”

“As educators, by law we are mandated reporters; it is unconscionable to think an individual may have been encouraged to ignore the law,” Quezada said. “I will continue to work with our legal department to pursue all appropriate legal remedies.”

Local NAACP leaders have also called on school district officials to hold a community meeting about the union, according to the Yonkers Tribune.

City Council Members called on Diamond and Puleo to resign, and for an inspection into the apparent corruption by the inspector general, News 12 reports.

Mayor Mike Spano suggested the school board suspend ongoing contract negotiations with the YFT until the issue is resolved.

Earlier this week, Yonkers Inspector General Brendan McGrath confirmed to the news site that he is investigating, and could recommend the union officials face suspension or termination.

“We’re looking at this as a pattern of practice by the union, and whether or not this is something that they do as a matter of course. If there are people out there, teachers part of the 1,800 member union out there that have had an experience like this and have a conscience, they may want to come forward,” McGrath said.