An English teacher at an Upper West Side high school claims that she was fired because of a lesson on the Central Park Five which administrators warned her would "rile up" black students.
Jeena Lee-Walker, 37, is suing the High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry after she was fired for insubordination and poor evaluations, all of which she believes was the result of her pushing back on topics like the Central Park Five.
Lee-Walker tells the Daily News that her problems with administrators started almost immediately after she started working at the school in 2013. She says she was shocked when she was told to be more "balanced" covering the case of the Central Park Five in November 2013: "I was stunned,” she told the News. "I was kind of like, the facts are the facts. This is what happened. These boys went to jail and lost 14, 18 years of their lives. How can you say that in a more balanced way?"
Although she agreed to change her approach, she felt that students had good reason to be "riled up," telling the News, "I kind of wanted to hook them in, engage them, win them over. I thought that this material was not only engaging but important...They were really moved by the documentary and rightly so. They really identified with the teenagers."
Lee-Walker argues in her lawsuit that retaliation against her "violated her First Amendment right to discuss the Central Park Five case, and that the firing violated the city’s contract with the teacher’s union because she was not given a required 60 days notice."
The Central Park Five, who were wrongfully jailed for the 1989 rape of a Central Park jogger, have received a $42 million settlement from the city in recent years. In 2014, they sued the state seeking $52 million in damages for the emotional trauma of being incarcerated for years for a crime they were coerced into confessing to.
