The city is paying a $275,000 settlement to two former assistant principals who had alleged a slew of complaints against the principal of John Bowne High School in Queens, including bullying, sexual harassment and retaliation for reporting students’s grades were being fudged.
Sally Maya will receive $150,000 and Maria Catenacci will get $125,000 under the terms of the settlement, according to a spokesman for the city Law Department.
“Settling the case was in the city’s best interest,” the spokesman said Thursday.
Maya and Catenacci, who resigned from the Department of Education, will also drop their claims against the embattled principal, Howard Kwait, who the city had declined to represent in the suit.
Kwait is still the school’s principal despite being disciplined for cursing at employees, taking food from the cafeteria and going on a European vacation with a school aide. A probe of their relationship was prompted by a photo circulating of the pair shopping for lingerie at Victoria’s Secret, the Daily News previously reported.
The city had previously settled a discrimination suit in 2012 in which another assistant principal, Miriam Zambrano-Lamhaouhi, claimed that Kwait discriminated against her while she was pregnant, including monitoring how often she went to the bathroom to urinate, according to court papers.
The DOE had no immediate comment on whether Kwait remains the subject of pending investigations.
“The ladies are happy that the matter has been resolved expeditiously, and that they can move on with their lives,” said lawyer Steve Morelli, who represented the plaintiffs.
With Ben Chapman
