She didn’t have a prayer.
A veteran city educator and devout Christian who prayed in her empty Brooklyn classroom claims her principal not only mocked her for her beliefs, but eventually fired her for them, too.
PS 224 assistant special-education teacher Anita Wooten-Francis, 52, claims she never hid her faith but took care not to influence kids. She worshiped in her classroom before or after students left, read the Bible on her lunch break, led other teachers in a prayer group, and played gospel music during non-instruction hours.
For 16 years she had no problem, until Principal George Andrews arrived at the Canarsie school in 2004.
“He said, ‘You can’t be praying in my school,’ ” Wooten-Francis recalled. “He said I was the ringleader in praying.”
Andrews even made fun of her for being devout, she claims.
He’d “constantly” tease her that “he was aware that she and other Christians were praying to have the demons removed from his spirit, but that it was not working,” according to a lawsuit she filed earlier this month in Brooklyn federal court.
In one instance, he criticized the disabled woman for using the elevator and told her to take the stairs. When she protested, he allegedly said, “Why don’t you just pray?” Then he laughed.
At the same time, she says, the school was going to hell in a handbasket, with school administrators charging students for bake sales “even though no charity received the proceeds,” and using money from the school’s Special Needs Funds to pay for lunches and parties, the suit claims.
After she complained, Wooten-Francis said she was fired on trumped-up charges accusing her of grabbing a kindergartner.
“Sometimes I will drop my Bible because my hands go numb and I have no feeling. How in the world am I going to grab a child?” she insisted, referring to nerve damage in her hands and feet from a host of medical problems.
“And if you look at the reports, it’s not even stated that the kids said themselves that I hit the kid,” she told The Post in her home in Tobyhanna, Pa.
Wooten-Francis, who is also a Sunday-school teacher and worked in afterschool programs for the Police Athletic League, spent several weeks in a “rubber room” for inactivated teachers and was fired last June.
The former union rep for para-professionals is appealing her termination. She is suing the city, the DOE and Andrews for religious discrimination and unspecified damages. The city declined comment.
A teacher, who asked to remain nameless for fear of retribution, described Wooten-Francis as a “fantastic lady” who “gave her life to the kids” and “wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I’m a Christian,” Wooten-Francis said. “I believe Jesus Christ is my lord and savior . . . I know that I’m trusting God, and the truth will come out.”