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An Omaha educator is suing her employer and her boss — Omaha Public Schools and Superintendent John Mackiel — over the loss of her previous job.
Vanessa Marisett, now an administrator with the district's early-childhood Head Start program, filed a lawsuit in Douglas County District Court last week against OPS and Mackiel.
She alleges that Mackiel removed her from her previous position as principal because of her race.
OPS believes the lawsuit is without merit, Elizabeth Eynon-Kokrda, the district's attorney, said Thursday.
From 1999 to Jan. 22, 2009, Marisett was principal of Miller Park Elementary School.
According to the lawsuit:
Marisett says that around Jan. 20, 2009, Maddie Fennell, then-president of the Omaha Education Association, and a local resident met with Mackiel.
Fennell told Mackiel of an incident in which she alleged that two crying kindergarten students were waiting outside Miller Park in "bitterly cold weather" without coats.
Fennell told Mackiel that Marisett had said the kids could not go inside the building until they walked around to the back of the school.
The day after the meeting, on Jan. 21, 2009, Marisett was advised that she was being removed as principal. OPS officials were evasive about the reasons, according to the lawsuit.
Marisett alleges that her removal was done to discriminate against her "because of her race." The lawsuit states that Marisett is black, Mackiel is white and that her then-replacement was white.
It is the second lawsuit Marisett has filed regarding her removal as Miller Park principal.
In 2009 she sued Fennell, the Omaha Education Association and OEA's then-executive director, Dennis Gehringer.
In that lawsuit, Marisett alleged that Fennell, in the meeting with the superintendent, made "untrue accusations concerning (Marisett's) performance as principal and her treatment of teachers who reported to her and students within the Miller Park Grade School."
That case has yet to be settled.
Contact the writer: 402-444-1074, jonathon.braden@owh.com, twitter.com/jonathonbraden
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