A former student prodigy turned New York chemistry teacher resigned last year after engaging in an “inappropriate relationship” with a student at the Manhattan school where she taught, an investigation has found.
Shoshana Leffler, 37, was once a star student at the Bronx school, where she and her twin brother Abba were both among 300 semifinalists in the national Intel Science Talent Search competition.
Ms. Leffler was, however, filmed in February 2023 taking a 17-year-old student into a bathroom at the school where she taught, the High School for Health Careers and Sciences, in the Fort George neighborhood of Manhattan.
A surveillance camera located in the school’s stairwell initially filmed Ms. Leffler and the student – who has not been identified – “talking” in the corridors of the establishment at 10:35 a.m. , i.e. one minute after the start of classes. The teenager “should have been in class,” notes the special commissioner responsible for investigating the city’s schools, Anastasia Coleman, in a report of which the New York Post obtained a copy.
Seven minutes in the toilet
A deputy director then saw them and reprimanded Ms. Leffler for this inappropriate tête-à-tête.
Rather than end the encounter, the teacher took the boy to the fifth floor of the building, according to the report.
There, they “searched for a private room where security cameras could not record them,” investigators concluded. They finally found a staff bathroom, which had the unique feature of being able to lock.
Their seven-minute bathroom date was interrupted when another faculty member arrived to use the facilities.
Once the latter left, Ms Leffler and the teenager were filmed leaving the premises separately.
“What happened in the toilets can only be speculated,” says the commissioner. Indeed, Ms. Leffler resigned from the Ministry of Education without providing an explanation.
The next day, Ms. Leffler encountered the student again in the stairwell, where she was filmed handing him what appeared to be money,” adds the report, which further specifies that the teacher and the student left the room together.
Investigators found no evidence of contact between Ms. Leffler and the boy in the teacher’s phone records.
The student did not want to testify about the incident.
Ms. Leffler resigned while the investigation was underway and later refused to be interviewed, leaving the nature of their relationship shrouded in mystery.
