A former probationary gym teacher at the Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy in The Bronx, says she was fired because she refused to have a girl-girl-guy threesome with another gym teacher and the teacher’s boyfriend last year, according to a new lawsuit.
Carisa Gaylardo claims the teacher, Sofia Memos, propositioned her by text messages and in person, seeking “to engage in an inappropriate romantic and salacious relationship with her and her boyfriend,” says the suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Gaylardo spurned Memos’s alleged advances. But one month later Memos and another gym teacher took revenge, joining in concocting a false story about Gaylardo exchanging “inappropriate texts” with a female high school student, the lawsuit alleges.
Gaylardo’s suit admits there was a series of texts between herself and the female student.
But the suit does not detail the number or content of the texts — only that the allegedly vengeful fellow gym teachers gave them to the office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation, which issued a report finding the texts were inappropriate.
Gaylardo was fired based on “simply on the frequency of communications she engaged in” with the student, she complains.
“No student reported any inappropriate relationship … other than the two teachers with a substantial motive to lie against [Gaylardo],” she alleges.
Gaylardo’s suit demands that the Department of Education reinstate her job, and that the city pay her back pay plus unspecified monetary damages.
“We will review the lawsuit and respond accordingly,” a Law Department spokesperson said. [NYP]
