The teacher who was terminated for having students write get well letters to, Mumbia Abu-Jamal, says she vows to fight for her position.
Marliyn Zuniga told a group of supporters that she will fight for her post as a teacher stating “the fight is not over.” Zuniga spoke to several dozen supporters at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Newark Thursday during a meeting of the People’s Organization for Progress, a civil rights advocacy group.
“We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen at the end, but we do know that the fight and the struggle is not over for this case,” she added.
A third-grade teacher at Forest Elementary School in Orange, NJ, Zuniga has been suspended with pay for letting students write get well letters to Mumbia Abu-Jamal, who is serving a life sentence for the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Abu-Jamal has been hospitalized with complications from diabetes.
On Wednesday the Orange School board voted to terminate her employment. There was much confusion but in an email sent to NJ.com, Orange superintendent has confirmed Zuniga has been terminated.
In a phone interview, Zuniga’s attorney, Alan Levine, said that by firing her, school officials “abdicated their responsibility to the community and to the children of the school district.” “They lost a teacher that everybody agreed was a remarkable teacher,” Levine said. “There isn’t a school district around that wouldn’t be happy to have Marylin Zuniga teach in it.”
Zuniga is now considering legal action to challenge her termination, which could take the form of an arbitration proceeding or a lawsuit.
