NYC pays over $1M in settlements to Black educators targeted by racist principal
Principal Minerva Zanca allegedly referred to Black employees using phrases like "gorilla in a sweater" and "nappy hair."
It looks like the city of New York is going to be shelling out over $1 million in settlements to Black educators due to the actions of one blatantly racist principal in Queens.
According to the New York Daily News, in 2016, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against New York’s Department of Education after three Black teachers and an assistant principal at Pan American High School alleged their principal targeted them.
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Faculty accused Principal Minerva Zanca of intentionally seeking to force out Black teachers by way of negative performance evaluations during the 2012-2013 school year. Former assistant principal Anthony Riccardo corroborated those accounts by reporting that Zanca pressured him to give Black employees low reviews to make it easier for her to get rid of them.
When Riccardo declined to be an accomplice in her plan, he alleges his boss retaliated by giving him a negative evaluation instead, at which time he opted to leave the school in 2013.
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https://twitter.com/Blakguy/status/1223100042543648769
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Two untenured Black teachers, John Flanagan and Heather Hightower were said to be Zanca’s primary targets. Zanca allegedly once asked Riccardo if he’d seen Flanagan’s “big lips quivering” during a meeting and compared him to a Black man in a Tropicana commercial “with those same lips.”
She also told the assistant principal that Hightower “looked like a gorilla in a sweater,” and speculated that she could “never” wear “f—-g nappy hair” like Hightower.
Both teachers left the school at the end of the school year after receiving negative reviews from Zanca.
According to a spokesman from the city Law Department, Hightower received a $362,500 payout, Flanagan got $500,000, and Riccardo received a $175,000 settlement.
A third educator, Lisa-Erika James, has not settled and plans to take her case to trial in February.
Zanca retired in 2016.
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