MIDDLETOWN – Three African American former administrators in the Enlarged Middletown City School District have filed a federal lawsuit against the district and its Superintendent, Amy Creeden.
Omar Perez, Catherine Yaayaa Whaley-Williams and her husband, Anthony Williams, allege the district “engaged in systematic retaliation in violation of [their] First Amendment rights to free speech and association and racial discrimination in violation of [their] right, as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to equal protection of the laws.”
Their attorney is Michael Sussman of Goshen.
“These three have spoken out about racism in the school district. Mr. Perez spoke out about the district’s failure to protect women, both staff and students, from sexual assault, and the school district has apparently made the decision that they no longer want to have these three highly talented and young African American people working there,” Sussman said.
The 20-page lawsuit alleges that Perez spoke out about what he said was the district “engaging in institutional misogyny.”
He was later reassigned from a tenured house dean at the high school to assistant principal at an annex of an elementary school with 18 students.
Perez’s job would eventually be reversed by the former superintendent, Richard del Moro, who then retired, the suit alleges.
After Creeden was appointed, Perez was later for a professional development session because “several professional emergencies detained him.” It is alleged she chastised him and gave him an ultimatum – either agree to a 30-day leave of absence and get psychiatric clearance before returning to work or she would ask the school board to mandate a psychiatric evaluation of him” under a section of state education law.
He agreed to the evaluation which cleared him, but the district eliminated his deanship position.
As a result, he accepted a position in Yonkers as a school administrator.
Mrs. Whaley-Williams spoke out about the treatment of Perez and has since “been the target of hostile and adverse acts by members of the administration” of the district, the suit alleges. The court papers further allege that Creeden demoted her from district math administrator.
Whaley-Williams’ husband, Anthony, was stripped of his dean of counseling services position after his wife spoke out about the district’s behavior, the suit claims.
Following the treatment of the three plaintiffs, the lawsuit maintains the district has “recently placed several less qualified African Americans in untenured administrative positions, including the wife of a school board member who the district had repeatedly rejected for employment, to administrative positions, and promoted Caucasians to newly created administrative positions.”
The suit is seeking both punitive and compensatory damages against the district and “enter equitable relief to reverse and/or annul the retaliatory and discriminatory decisions.”
A school district spokesman could not be reached for comment about the lawsuit.
