Howard Simmons/New York Daily News
Five black educators say in a lawsuit that they were fired from Children’s Learning Center in Morningside Heights because of their race.
Five black educators who say they were fired from a private Manhattan preschool because of their race and replaced by white instructors have filed a discrimination lawsuit, the Daily News has learned.
The plaintiffs, all women who worked as either teachers or teaching assistants at the Children’s Learning Center in Morningside Heights, lost their jobs between 2010 and this year, after the school brought in a new head administrator, Renee Bock, according to the suit.
“They fired a lot of people and then they had to fill the ranks; from their website, you can see the staff is filled, and it’s not with women of color,” said the women’s attorney, Susan Kaplan.
RELATED: RED LOBSTER WAITRESS GETS $ 10,000 DONATION AFTER RACIST FIASCO
The suit, filed in Bronx Supreme Court last month, accuses Bock, 46, and the school of creating a “hostile environment.”
Prior to Bock’s arrival in 2010, all five educators had, at a minimum, satisfactory work evaluations, the suit says. Most had worked for years at the pricey preschool — which charges as much as $ 2,000 a month per student — and also had experience at other schools, Kaplan said. Some even had written endorsements from parents or the center’s board of directors, according to the suit. Yet Bock targeted the five black women in a way that represented “willful, knowing and intentional discrimination,” the suit charges.
One of the five, Linnette Dolle, 40, who began working as a teaching assistant at the center in 2007 and was fired in August 2012, said she was pink-slipped because Bock didn’t like how she wrote reports about students. “I asked to take a class to get better and she said no matter what I did, my writing would never be good enough,” Dolle told The News. “She said I wasn’t a good fit for the school. She made it clear she had a goal in mind, and that was me not being there.”
RELATED: UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA SORORITIES WELCOME BLACK STUDENTS
Others were harshly criticized for not turning in curriculum and other reports on time or for having a “bad attitude,” Kaplan said.
Another plaintiff, a teacher who worked for 14 years at the center, was chastised by Bock for not smiling enough, the lawyer said.
The case has not moved into the discovery phase, so Kaplan has not had access to school records. But Kaplan said that from documents she has seen, “you can’t attribute this to anything but racism.”
RELATED: ‘BECAUSE YOU’RE BLACK’: QUEENS BAKERY FINED IN DISCRIMINATION CASE
Not long after the suit was filed, Bock was apparently let go by the center or chose to leave on her own, Kaplan added.
Representatives for the center did not return calls from The News seeking comment.
Lawyers for the private preschool are currently in settlement talks with the five women, whose suit requests lost wages and benefits, and compensation for emotional suffering, Kaplan said.
Yahoo Local News – New York Daily News
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=15467
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
No comments:
Post a Comment