teapartysamurai
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- Mar 27, 2010
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A veteran city educator and devout Christian who prayed in her empty Brooklyn classroom claims her principal not only mocked her for her beliefs, but eventually fired her for them, too.
PS 224 assistant special-education teacher Anita Wooten-Francis, 52, claims she never hid her faith but took care not to influence kids. She worshiped in her classroom before or after students left, read the Bible on her lunch break, led other teachers in a prayer group, and played gospel music during non-instruction hours.
For 16 years she had no problem, until Principal George Andrews arrived at the Canarsie school in 2004.
He said, 'You can't be praying in my school,' " Wooten-Francis recalled. "He said I was the ringleader in praying."
Andrews even made fun of her for being devout, she claims.
He'd "constantly" tease her that "he was aware that she and other Christians were praying to have the demons removed from his spirit, but that it was not working," according to a lawsuit she filed earlier this month in Brooklyn federal court.
In one instance, he criticized the disabled woman for using the elevator and told her to take the stairs. When she protested, he allegedly said, "Why don't you just pray?" Then he laughed.
At the same time, she says, the school was going to hell in a handbasket, with school administrators charging students for bake sales "even though no charity received the proceeds," and using money from the school's Special Needs Funds to pay for lunches and parties, the suit claims.
After she complained, Wooten-Francis said she was fired on trumped-up charges accusing her of grabbing a kindergartner.
"Sometimes I will drop my Bible because my hands go numb and I have no feeling. How in the world am I going to grab a child?" she insisted, referring to nerve damage in her hands and feet from a host of medical problems.
Read more: Assistant teacher says she was fired for Christian faith - NYPOST.com
Anyone have any doubts that if this woman was Muslim, the defenders would be coming out of the woodwork to help her?