Current and former Middletown school administrators file racial discrimination lawsuit against district

MIDDLETOWN − One current and two former Middletown school district administrators of color are suing the district and Superintendent Amy Creeden over alleged racial discrimination and retaliation.

Former dean of students at Middletown High School Omar Perez, current district coordinator of mathematics Yaa Yaa Whaley-Williams and former Middletown High dean of student support services Anthony Williams filed the lawsuit through Goshen-based civil rights attorney Michael Sussman on Tuesday morning, July 26, in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

They are seeking a jury trial and hope to win compensatory damages from both the district and Creeden, and punitive damages from Creeden for her "wanton violation of their civil and constitutional rights."

Creeden said in an emailed statement on Tuesday evening that the district believes the complaint is “without merit and will be vigorously defended in court.”

The three all previously had publicly supported or were publicly associated with calls for more diverse hiring practices in the district and better treatment of employees of color. The lawsuit alleges the district responded to these employees' advocacy by retaliating in various ways, violating both their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to freedom of speech and equality. These retaliatory actions led to forced resignations, job terminations and humiliation, according to the lawsuit.

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The lawsuit

In August 2021, Perez − a tenured employee who, according to the lawsuit, had previously been praised by district leadership for the “quality of his leadership” − publicly said he was transferred out of the high school after he reported sexual misconduct by a non-instructional district employee.

His new position, an assistant principalship at the annex to the Truman Moon Elementary School, would take Perez away from the hundreds of students he worked with at the high school and place him in a school with 18 students, the lawsuit states.

During board meetings in August and September 2021, numerous members of the community showed up to support Perez and protest alleged mistreatment of district employees of color.

Co-plaintiff Yaa Yaa Whaley-Williams was among Perez’s supporters and spoke publicly about how the district creates a hostile work environment for minority educators.

Perez’s reassignment was ultimately reversed and former superintendent Richard Del Moro abruptly resigned. Despite calls from the community for a nationwide search for the next superintendent and more diverse hiring, the district named longtime district administrator Amy Creeden superintendent in March 2022.

Only days later on March 18, according to the lawsuit, Perez arrived late to a professional development session due to several work-related emergencies. He was then told to either agree to a 30-day leave of absence and acquire psychiatric clearance before returning to work, or the school board would mandate Perez to be psychiatrically evaluated, according to the suit.

Perez complied with the evaluation and was cleared to return to work, the lawsuit states, but the district eliminated the position he had held for years.

Creeden “implemented the district’s practice of retaliating against administrators who dared to speak out about the racial bias which permeates the school district as Perez had done in August 2021,” according to the lawsuit.

Perez recently accepted an assistant principal position in Yonkers, Sussman said.

Co-plaintiffs Whaley-Williams and Williams, the lawsuit alleges, were also retaliated against for their association with and support for Perez.

On July 7, according to the lawsuit, Creeden denied Whaley-Williams tenure “without any basis or cause” and offered to extend Whaley-Williams' tenure review period.

"Creeden refused to support Whaley-Williams bid for tenure because of the (her) advocacy for racial justice in the district and the strong support she and her husband (Anthony Williams) had garnered from the community for their advocacy," according to the lawsuit.

Only a few months after Anthony Williams received tenure and following the public comments of his wife, Whaley-Williams, regarding the treatment of employees of color in Middletown, the lawsuit alleges that Creeden and the school board stripped Anthony Williams of many of his job duties and created a new position to run counseling programs at the high school. Prior to this he had only received praise for his work in the district, the suit states.

Following this demotion, according to the lawsuit, Creeden and the board told Williams he did not have all of the necessary state certifications for his current position, the same position for which he had been tenured just months before, and required him to obtain these certifications or be fired. According to the suit, he was given an unrealistic timeframe to obtain the certifications and Williams was ultimately fired "for a pretextual reason."

According to Sussman, Middletown's treatment of employees of color will ultimately make it very difficult for them to hire a more diverse staff in the future.

"The record that it has is going to become well-known," he said. "And then fewer young, talented administrators or teachers will make the choice to go to Middletown and go somewhere else without this track record. Not that there are that many places without it, but this is pretty blatant. In my view, it's going to make it much harder for them to recruit people and keep people and it'll signal to the broader community to what they're about."

Erin Nolan is an investigative reporter for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach her at enolan@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Current and former Middletown school employees of color sue district