A controversial Queens principal has outraged staffers, students and parents with a bizarre painting at the school that appears to show her as a Hindu goddess.
In the gaudy hanging artwork, Rushell White was shown as a six-armed Hindu deity with five school administrators on a stage. A source told the Daily News that White ordered workers at Junior High School 226 to hang the colorful mural above the rear exercise lot.
Anger, like tone-deaf White’s ego, was spinning out of control on Tuesday. Critics said it was totally inappropriate for White, who is Christian, to portray herself as a Hindu religious figure on school grounds.
“It’s disrespectful to another person’s religion,” said one parent who asked to remain anonymous because she fears retribution from White. “You can’t be a God. Religion shouldn’t even be in the school anyway.”
White, 40, declined comment outside the school, using one of her several hands to take a business card from a reporter.
“I can’t comment on that,” she said.
While exact numbers weren’t immediately available, insiders say about a third of the students at the school in South Ozone Park are Hindu. A sixth-grade girl who follows Hinduism told The News the mural was deeply upsetting.
“It makes me feel bad about my culture,” said the girl, who asked that her name be withheld. “When I first saw it, I was like, ‘Wow, why did they do that? They should take it down.’”
The large canvas mural was installed Thursday and removed Monday after staffers complained and Education Department officials came to investigate.
JHS 226 staffers and city officials say White’s behavior as principal has been more hellish than god-like.
She was accused of cheating on state exams by multiple staffers in 2012, although an official city investigation failed to substantiate the charge. She’s under investigation by the city for failing to report allegations of child abuse and other offenses.
White is also the subject of a federal lawsuit that alleges she made anti-Semitic remarks to JHS 226 assistant principal David Possner, who also is depicted in the mural as a shrunken little man skulking in a corner of the artwork.
“The mural is basically mocking the Hindu community,” said Possner, who claimed in court papers that White called him a “bad Jew” for using his phone on Yom Kippur in 2014.
Possner, a 19-year city educator who is pursuing a transfer out of the school in addition to the lawsuit, said he’s humiliated by his depiction in the artwork.
“It was very hurtful,” Possner said. “Clearly, this is retaliation for my suit.”
The top of the artwork reads: “To whom much is given much is required,” a quote from the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament.
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Education Department officials said they are investigating White’s role in the creation of the mural, which was a student art project produced with a nonprofit group contracted to provide arts education at JHS 226.
White has a clean disciplinary history pending the outcomes of the current investigations into her conduct. She has worked in the city schools since 1998 and earns an annual salary of $140,813.
Education Department spokeswoman Devora Kaye said White removed the mural after consultation with a district superintendent.
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