Griffin’s troubles did not go away. Less than six months out of Tarvin’s class, she complained about her new assignment in fourth-grade teacher John Williams’ classroom. At her deposition, Griffin testified that she objected to the way Williams interacted with his students, and brought her concerns to Menzies. The run-in damaged her relationship with Williams and, Griffin alleges, may have prompted him to later make a negative report that ended up in her personnel file.
The situation bothered Griffin so much that she asked for and again received a transfer to a sixth-grade class. In late 2000, she became assistant athletic director. In 2001, she was named Carlthorp’s athletic director. Griffin’s complaint alleges that the racial slurs by Tarvin continued into 2003, and that no corrective action was taken. Griffin was becoming bitter. An entry from her journal, which her lawyer would later provide to Carlthorp, reads, "I’m tired of being the token black, at a place where they smile to your face and stab you in the back."
Meanwhile, the adults at Carlthorp seemed to isolate whoever was perceived to be weak or insecure. Many day-to-day controversies seemed to arise from petty jealousies and attempts to curry favor with Menzies. Plus, with the children of celebrities on campus, there was plenty for teachers to gossip and compete over. Griffin also was about to see how quickly sixth-graders learn from their elders.
Letters from Griffin’s Carlthorp days show that students looked up to her, while teachers commiserated with her. Yet camaraderie could not save her from a sixth-grade revolt, in 2002, when a group of students, including James Worthy’s daughter, turned on Griffin. Worthy and his ex-wife, Angela Wilder, were parents of virtually the only black students at Carlthorp. Griffin had been their babysitter and driver for a couple years during the late 1990s. At first, Griffin says, she had bonded with Wilder. But in the wake of the couple’s divorce, Wilder’s mother had moved in, Griffin says. "Ya Ya," as she is known, eventually clashed with Griffin, she says, adding to tension in the household.
According to Wilder, who has a master’s degree in psychology and is the author of the book Powerful Male Syndrome, Griffin was "deceptive and verbally abusive to her children." Furthermore, Griffin owes her money, Wilder says, as the result of a murky transaction in which she bought Griffin a car, which she paid for with a cashier’s check. Griffin says it was a gift, with no strings attached. "The understanding was that she would pay me back," says Wilder. "I should have put it in writing."
Wilder takes pride in raising two outspoken and assertive daughters. Of Griffin, Sable Worthy, 14, says, "Ericka was fine at first. She was our driver and our babysitter. But she became short-tempered. My sister and I started to like her less and less. One year, the Student Council suggestion box was full of notes that said, ‘Fire Ms. Griffin,’ and ‘We hate Ms. Griffin.’ About 80 percent of the suggestions said that." In late 2002, Worthy and a group of fellow sixth-graders drafted a letter to their teacher in protest of Griffin, after they said they witnessed her degrading a student who struggled with a playground exercise.
Griffin denies she degraded anyone. But her alienation from students and faculty was becoming unbearable. Stress took its toll. She saw a neurologist. The school had begun to find fault with her, counseling her on allegations of unprofessional conduct based mostly on gossip and student complaints. For instance, several students claimed she told them she had a brain tumor, after she explained why she had to undergo an MRI. (She was suffering from severe migraines and blind spots.) One student, caught with a cigarette, said Griffin gave it to her. Others did not like the way she ran the athletic department. Then a parent threatened legal action, alleging that Griffin had disclosed his daughter’s learning disability to the class.
On March 5, 2003, she filed a formal complaint of racial harassment with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Three weeks later, Carlthorp filed its response. The next day, on March 28, Griffin was called out of class and into a meeting with Menzies and Karasik, the school’s lawyer, and put on administrative leave. Carlthorp later chose not to renew her contract.
What hurt Griffin the most, she says, was the abandonment by her allies, particularly John Baca, a teacher who was her confidant during a time of upheaval in the athletic department. "I’m down for my homie Griffin, but down for this school, you must be trippin’," he wrote to her in a rap poem in 2002. "Parents run the show, that ain’t no lie, staff screwin’ over staff to get a piece of the pie." In February 2003, Baca also left a voice message for Griffin at her house: "Big talk around school is that [you and I] don’t know what the fuck we are doing," he said. "We need to prove these fucking morons wrong." In court papers, however, Carlthorp would later point to Baca as a source of reports of "incidents of unprofessional conduct" by Griffin. Baca did not respond to numerous requests for comment.
