POUGHKEEPSIE – Suspended Poughkeepsie High School Principal Phee Simpson has filed a notice of claim against the Poughkeepsie City School District demanding payment of damages, including punitive damages, over her suspension and subsequent public dissemination of information about it.
The legal papers were filed in State Supreme Court in Poughkeepsie on April 19.
They allege that she was damaged because of the “violation of her tenure rights, violation of statutory rights, defamation, damage to reputation, loss of face in [her] communities, emotional distress, humiliation and damage to [her] career, office and profession, denial of [her] due process rights, illegal interference with, illegal punishment/discipline of [her].
On January 22, 2018, the school board voted in public session to charge “Employee Number 2376 with disciplinary charge pursuant to Education Law … and placed the same employee on administrative leave in the same resolution.”
The suit said on the same date, a news release authored by Board President Felicia Watson identified Simpson as the employee. It said that newspaper articles and social media posts “falsely set forth that Mrs. Simpson awarded diplomas in 2017 to approximately 41 students who were not entitled to graduate.”
The suit also charged that on February 12, the school district “illegally and maliciously released an unredacted draft, attorney-client privileged report.”
“The respondent (school district) intentionally created a defamatory, unsavory, false general and specific impression among staff and community members and made statements in Mr. Aldinger’s draft report that Mrs. Simpson either incompetently and/or intentionally permitted 41 students to improperly graduate in order to allegedly boost her own evaluation rating” and said those allegations were “malicious and demonstrably false.”
Simpson is represented by attorneys for the School Administrators Association of New York State.
