Earlier this month, a judge ruled that one of the two teachers who were accused in 2009 of having a steamy lesbian tryst in the janitor's closet—and subsequently fired by the DOE—would be allowed to teach again. But while Alini Brito can return to the classroom, the other teacher involved in that alleged tryst won't be allowed to. Huh?
Judge Robert Torres upheld an arbitrator’s decision to fire Cindy Mauro, a former French instructor at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School, as “rational and with plausible basis.” Mauro had allegedly been spotted by a janitor half naked in a classroom lounging between the legs of a topless Brito; both women denied anything steamy was happening, with Brito insisting that Mauro was simply checking her blood sugar. City lawyers argued that there was no medical equipment found with the women, and the two had climbed six flights of stairs to get to the room, passing multiple classrooms and more than one bathroom on the way.
While Torres agreed with the arbitrator about Mauro, Supreme Court Justice Alice Schlesinger previously chastised the city for an “excessive and shockingly severe” punishment against Brito: “We have children who are deprived of a first-class, caring teacher, and a teacher who, due to one sensational, publicly exploited incident where she exhibited extremely poor judgment, is deprived of continuing a career she loves and excels at," Schlesinger wrote in her opinion. “That is not a good balance, in the opinion of this court. In fact, the imbalance is shockingly bad.” Unfortunately for Mauro, the imbalance was good enough in her case.
