Lawsuit: Discrimination at Malverne schools

Two African-American teachers and an African-American school administrator have filed a suit against the Malverne school district, saying there is a "pervasive atmosphere of racial discrimination that extends through all levels of administration and teaching" there.

In the suit, filed in federal court in Central Islip last week, a former assistant principal at Malverne High School, Betsy Benedith, claims her onetime boss, who is also African-American, acknowledged he discriminated against her because he "didn't want to seem like he was playing favorites" with someone of his own race.

Benedith, 41, of Brooklyn, also asserts Malverne High Principal James Brown, a defendant along with other school officials, often gave her "advice" based on her racial background.

"You're black, you're a woman, you're smart and you're beautiful, and they [the white staff members] are not going to like you because of that," Brown said, according to the lawsuit.

A spokeswoman for the Malverne Unified School District said officials there had not yet been served with the suit.

"We believe the claim is without merit," said Superintendent James Hunderfund in a statement. "As this is a pending legal matter, we can provide no additional comment."

Benedith filed suit with two other African-American Malverne high school teachers, all of whom said they were treated unfairly there.

"The common thread here is that these are all minorities who have been treated with disrespect, humiliated and put in a position where they had no choice but to address the matter in a court of law," said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Steven Morelli of Garden City.

Sherwyn Besson, a business teacher at the school, said in the lawsuit that he was retaliated against and made part-time after he spoke at an Oct. 13, 2009, school board meeting to object to the hiring of Hunderfund as the superintendent.

Kenneth Smith, 46, of South Hempstead, a math teacher, said he was retaliated against by being transferred to the middle school after he was wrongly blamed for writing an anonymous letter to the state Education Department claiming that teachers at the high school were giving improper assistance to students on their Regents exams.

While Besson and Smith said their claims do not directly involve race discrimination, they said in interviews Thursday that they believe they were targeted because they are black.

"They think it's easy to bring us down because we'll just run," said Besson, 43, of Malverne. "Well, we're the three that didn't run. We stood up."

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, said Morelli.