Teacher sues school district over rumors

The former dance teacher had performed nude in a show broadcast on PBS.

Arizona Daily Star

TUCSON, Ariz. — A former high school dance instructor is suing the Tucson, Ariz., Unified School District, saying district staffers are spreading rumors and undermining her shot at getting another teaching job because of a nude performance early in her dance career.

Julie Ryan Leed, who was a dance teacher at Palo Verde High School in Tucson for about three years ending in May 2005, performed nude in a 1993 segment of “The Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Promised Land,” in which dancers in a closing scene were depicted as ascending to heaven, bared before the eyes of God.

The dance show was broadcast nationally on the Public Broadcasting System’s series “Great Performances.”

The performance was filmed from above the stage, so even though it’s clear the dancers are unclothed, they were not shown in any “anatomically revealing way,” according to a lawsuit Leed filed against the district in mid-June.

Leed took in a copy of the performance to show her class. After she left the class to obtain clearance from an administrator — who ultimately decided that the clip would not be shown in class — the lawsuit maintains the students started playing it in her absence.

Leed returned and stopped the showing before the concluding scene, the suit states.

She did not have her contract renewed the following year, ostensibly for budget reasons.

According to her lawsuit, however, she was unable to get a teaching job either locally or out of state for more than two years because unidentified school district employees made statements to prospective employers that she was let go “for inappropriate conduct involving nudity and a videotape.”

Leed says she found out about the statements last summer from one of the would-be employers.

Leed’s attorney, Ethan Steele, said his client has found a teaching job in an arts program in California but wants Tucson Unified School District to tell its employees “to cool it.”

The lawsuit seeks $100,000 each for lost compensation, defamation and emotional distress.

Jerald Wilson, a private attorney who is handling the case for the school district under contract, had no comment on the case.