A retired New Jersey teacher who alleged her bosses cooked up a plan to scapegoat her for editing a Donald Trump T-shirt out of a yearbook photo will reportedly get a $325,000 settlement from the district.
Susan Parsons, who used to work for the Wall Township School District, sued the school system in 2019 saying she was scapegoated and wound up getting death threats because of the photoshopping in 2017, NJ.com reported.
Parsons, who was the school yearbook adviser, insisted a secretary ordered her to edit the Trump “Make America Great Again” shirt on behalf of the principal. Though Parsons voted for Trump in 2016, she made the student appear as though he was wearing a plain navy blue T-shirt, she said.
The Wall Board of Education approved the settlement agreement Tuesday night, NJ.com reported, and the district made no admission of wrongdoing or liability.
Parsons told NJ Advance Media in 2019 the fallout from publicity about the change triggered a flood of hate mail.
“My life has not been the same” she said then, “and I don’t think it ever will.”
Parsons said the district routinely forced her to edit yearbook photos to alter anything that could be controversial. Her lawsuit says she was specifically told to edit a junior student’s “TRUMP Make America Great Again” shirt in the 2017 edition, the year Trump took office.
“That has to go,” the suit claims Parsons was told by a school secretary who reviewed the pages on behalf of the principal.
Cindy McChesney, the secretary Parsons said ordered the censorship, has since retired, the news outlet reported.
Grant Berardo, the student in the yearbook photo, said in 2017 that he wore the T-shirt because it was a “historic” statement, NJ.com reported. His father has named all his children after United States presidents, and he thought it was “pretty cool” that Trump was running at the time the photo was taken.
”If there was a problem, somebody could have just told my mom,” Grant told the news outlet. “They had a re-take day. But no one said anything.”(NEWSMAX)
