The city Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez’s wife, a high-ranking official with the city Department of Education, and their two daughters filed a lawsuit against the ritzy Ethical Culture Fieldston School in another instance of alleged racial discrimination at the scandal-scarred school.
The explosive lawsuit, filed in federal court by Cristina Melendez, a director with the Department of Education’s Family and Community Engagement (FACE) program alleges that her two daughters — of Dominican descent and only identified in court documents as YA and YS — were exposed to racial inequality while the private school in the Riverdale section of the Northwest Bronx “purposely, knowingly and intentionally refused to conduct proper investigations following these incidents.”
The Fieldston school, including heads Jessica Bagby and Joe Algrant, high school assistant principal Kenny Graves and ninth-grade teacher Stephanie Weber are all named as defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in June.
Rodriguez, a former council member who represented District 10 in Manhattan, was named as the city’s DOT commissioner in December 2021. Rodriguez takes home more than $243,000 per year, while Melendez makes an annual salary of $195,000, according to NYC Open Data.
In September 2017, YA, the older daughter, was beginning fifth grade at Fieldston, while YS, the younger daughter, was starting pre-K, according to court filings. Under Bagby, both daughters — along with others students and families of color — were denied the same opportunities and benefits which had been provided to white students, the lawsuit claims, thus abandoning the school’s mission to provide an equal and inclusive educational environment for students of color.
As a result, the Fieldston school became a forum for “severe and pervasive racial animus,” which took a toll on the two daughters’ self-esteem and academic confidence, along with their physical and…
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