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The parent of a former Skaneateles student has sued the school district, claiming staff used a different name and pronouns for the student without the parent's consent as part of a "social transition."

Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, filed the suit on behalf of plaintiff Jennifer Vitsaxaki, of Skaneateles, in U.S. District Court, Northern District of New York, on Wednesday. It accuses district staff of using a boy's name and the pronouns "they" and "them" to refer to the student, then 12, who is described in the suit as Vitsaxaki's daughter.

The suit goes on to accuse the Skaneateles Middle School guidance counselor, Christopher Viggiano, and psychologist, Vicky Powers, of instructing staff to use those terms in secret from Vitsaxaki. Staff continued to use the student's given name and female pronouns when communicating with the parent, the suit says, which happened regularly because the student was struggling with anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, the district was allegedly directing the student toward resources for making a medical transition, like local clinics, as well as sources of LGBTQIA support.

Vitsaxaki learned that school district staff were using a male name for her child about three months after they had begun doing so, the suit continues. In May 2021, the parent was told by Skaneateles Middle School Principal Michael Caraccio about the student's "gender support plan," which said that family was not considered supportive of the transition and the student was not ready to tell them.

The student then switched to online schooling, and was enrolled in private school in Syracuse the next year. The student's "demeanor and physical health" noticeably improved, the suit says. The cost of the school's tuition, and travel there, are among the damages Vitsaxaki seeks from Skaneateles as a result of violating her Greek orthodox religious beliefs and parental rights, the suit continues.

The suit says Skaneateles staff told Vitsaxaki they were following district policy. The obligation of educators to inform parents that a student prefers a different name, or is otherwise experiencing gender dysphoria, is at issue in . Many were brought by Alliance Defending Freedom, which is as an anti-LGBTQIA hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The school district's superintendent, Eric Knuth, told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ on Monday that "we are not at liberty to discuss individual students or legal matters with the press." 

However, Knuth noted that as a public school district, Skaneateles adheres to the New York State Education Department's guidance on "Creating a Safe, Supportive, and Affirming School Environment for Transgender and Gender Expansive Students," issued in 2015 and updated in 2023, as well as the New York State Human Rights Law of 2021. The department's guidance states, "only the student knows whether it is safe to share their identity with caregivers, and schools should be mindful that some TGE students do not want or cannot have their parents/guardians know about their transgender status."

"We respect diversity in all of our students and our primary concern is to ensure that every child feels safe and supported at school," he said.

Police said a man attacked a woman who was walking her dog on the side of the road in the town of Sennett on Friday morning, and was chased off by the shouts of a neighbor who saw it happening.

The Cayuga County Sheriff's Office said in a news release on Monday that the woman was walking her dog in the area of Rockingham Road at about 8:50 a.m. Friday. After she passed a parked dump utility trailer, a man jumped out of the trailer. She tried to get away from him, but he began strangling her.

A neighbor witnessed the struggle and began shouting while calling 911, the sheriff's office said, and the man released the woman and fled on foot into the Highland Park Golf Course.

John T. Netti, whom police said is a stranger to the victim, was located on the golf course by members of the sheriff's office and the Auburn Police Department, and was taken into custody. He was charged with criminal obstruction of breathing, a misdemeanor, and is set to appear in Sennett Town Court at a later date. A full stay-away order of protection was issued between the victim and Netti.

Police said that under state regulations, Netti could not be held on bail for the charge.

Another rare photo of Harriet Tubman has been released by a Maryland tour group, this one capturing her at the age of about 70.

Alex Green, owner of , told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ the 1892 photo  from an edition of The Household Magazine.

Tubman is pictured wearing a dark dress with a decorative collar and a hair pin. Below the photo, she is referred to as "Harriet, the Modern Moses, now living in Auburn, N.Y."

An article with the photo includes a lengthy quote from Tubman about her visit as a teen to the Bucktown General Store in Dorchester County, where she was struck in the head by a 2-pound weight thrown by a slaveowner at another enslaved person. The weight fractured her skull, resulting in epilepsy and what she believed were spiritual visions that she experienced for the rest of her life.

Green noted that the quote is an example of "plantation dialect," which racistly stylizes the speech of Black people. 

Tubman biographer Kate Clifford Larson posted the photo on her Facebook page on Wednesday, the civil rights icon "beautiful" and commenting, "such style!" The biographer thanked Green and his wife, Lisa, for finding the photo. In comments below her post, Larson expressed hope that the original could be found as well.

Harriet Tubman Tours previously released a rare photo of the group's namesake in December. That photo, from 1908, pictured her standing in front of her home on South Street in Auburn. 

Green said he hopes the photos generate more interest in Tubman, her life and her work to achieve freedom for all.

"I thought it'd be interesting to move the needle forward with her wonderful life," he told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ in December. "History has so much to catch up to."

Gallery: Photographs of Harriet Tubman

мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ has found no indication that the Southern Cayuga Central School District investigated a romantic relationship between a teaching assistant and a former student, who is now a murder suspect, despite being told about it several years ago by the teaching assistant's adult children. They also told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ that they believe the relationship began while the student was still in the district.

The now-former teaching assistant, Mary Ferro, testified at a Cayuga County Court hearing Jan. 19 that she began a relationship with former student Gage Ashley "sometime after 2017," the year he turned 20. The hearing concerned the legality of a police search of her Aurelius home days after the November 2019 shooting death of Joshua Poole in Auburn, for which Ashley is facing murder charges.

Ferro testified that she met Ashley in 2014, and that he lived with her at a previous home in Aurelius from February to fall 2015. However, her children believe she was having sex with him during that time, when he was 17 going on 18 and . Two years later, after witnessing that they were indeed having a romantic relationship, the children reported it to the school district's superintendent, Patrick Jensen, in an email. They noted community rumors about the relationship, and said they were worried about their mother continuing to work in the district.

"We are unsure what consequences our mother will face at this point. We are trying to allow anyone with connections to her the chance to make their own decisions before this becomes public," said the 2017 email, which was written by Ferro's daughter Jessica Kessler. "This will be and is humiliating for us, but if we can save anyone else from being blindsided with the news, we would like to."

Kessler said Jensen responded promptly, asking if the siblings had any proof of the relationship. She said they didn't, but they were willing to share what they knew with the district. Kessler also told Jensen that proof could emerge from the divorce proceedings of her mother and her father, John Ferro. In her testimony, Mary Ferro said they separated in 2015 and he filed for divorce in 2018.

Still, Kessler and her siblings never heard from Jensen again.

"I was pretty disappointed that they wouldn't even look into it, because at that point, I was like, 'If she's doing it with this kid, is there any others?'" Ferro's other daughter, Melissa Ekiert, told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼.

"Wouldn't the school want to know?"

The district was again confronted with the possibility of Ferro and Ashley having a romantic relationship in 2019, when two New York State Troopers investigating Poole's murder arrived at Southern Cayuga High School to ask why Ashley had the teaching assistant's vehicle. School Principal Luke Carnicelli covered her classroom while she spoke with the officers, she recalled during her testimony. 

Asked by мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ about the relationship and whether the school district has investigated it, Jensen has repeatedly declined comment, saying he is unable to discuss personnel matters.

Two Freedom of Information Law requests concerning the relationship were also denied by the school district, which told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ the records in question include attorney-client privileged information and records whose publication would constitute an invasion of personal privacy. The district further noted that the state Committee on Open Government and state courts allow for the withholding of records pertaining to allegations of misconduct against public employees when they "have not yet been determined, were dismissed or found to be without merit, or did not result in disciplinary action." 

The New York State Department of Education's  say that when a school receives information suggesting that someone holding a teaching certificate has committed an act that "raises a reasonable question as to the individual's moral character," that information must be referred to the department. However, when asked by мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ whether the department has received such information from Southern Cayuga, a representative said it does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations "in order to protect the fairness and integrity of our processes." 

Ferro testified that questions by reporters about her relationship with Ashley, and his "notoriety," led Southern Cayuga to ask for her resignation in December. Records show she began with the district in September 1982 and obtained her teaching assistant certification in February 1987. Ashley, who was born on Aug. 16, 1997, was a student at the high school from December 2013 to October 2015.

Now 26, Ashley will go on trial in March for first-degree murder and other charges. He was convicted of the same charges and sentenced to 21 years to life in December 2021, but the conviction was overturned after a state appeals court  the grand jury that indicted him was illegally constituted. He is one of four men charged with Poole's murder, and the other three have been convicted.

The Cayuga County District Attorney's Office has declined comment to мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ on Ashley's relationship with Ferro due to the upcoming trial.

'Inappropriate' and 'inexcusable'

Kessler and Ekiert thought it was strange when 17-year-old Ashley moved into their parents' Aurelius home in 2015.

They were told Ashley's mother was moving out of the area, they said. Because he attended Southern Cayuga and Ferro worked there, he would stay with her so he could continue attending the school until graduation. They also knew Ashley had a difficult background, and that their mother was struggling after her youngest child, Johnathan, left for college. So the children accepted it.

Once he moved in, Ashley often hovered around Ferro, Kessler said. Ekiert said her mother's behavior changed as well. She began riding the family's go-karts around their wooded property, something she refused to do previously. When Ferro brought Ashley along for the family's annual trip to North Carolina, she let him smoke in the car after years of forbidding her children from doing the same.

By July 2017, Kessler said, she had been defending Ferro against community rumors that she was in a relationship with Ashley for a couple years. Her mother denied them, and she believed her. 

Then, one night, Kessler received a call from her other brother, Robert. He and their mother were living in neighboring apartments that shared a wall. Distressed, he told his sister that he could hear Ferro and Ashley having sex. Kessler drove to the apartment, and the two siblings knocked on their mother's door. She said she was sleeping. But when Kessler opened a closet door, she found Ashley.

Ferro had lied to her children. And though Ashley was 19 years old at the time, he was still a former student at her school — one she took into her home, Kessler said.

The four siblings have not spoken to their mother since.

"There's nothing she could do, say, come back from. That's where our relationship died," Kessler said. "Whatever is happening, this is inappropriate. It's inexcusable."

Romantic partner of Auburn murder suspect says police search was illegal

The romantic partner of an Auburn murder suspect said in court Friday that she did not sign a consent form to have her home searched by police during the investigation.

A former correction officer at a state prison in central New York has been sentenced after admitting to submitting false medical notes to obtain sick leave. 

Stephanie Saber, 29, will serve five years probation after pleading guilty in November to first-degree offering a false instrument for filing. She was sentenced by Seneca County Judge Barry Porsch. 

The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which oversees New York's prisons, referred the matter to the state inspector general's office. The inspector general's investigation found Saber, who was employed at Five Points Correctional Facility in Seneca County, submitted 13 false medical notes between December 2021 and July 2022. 

Saber told investigators she filed the notes, which claimed to be from medical practitioners, as excuses for work absences. 

"The conduct of this correction officer abusing sick leave benefits is particularly egregious because she was in a prime position to know the impact that shortages in correctional facility staffing pose to the safety of staff and incarcerated individuals alike," Inspector General Lucy Lang said. "By forging these notes to justify unwarranted sick days, she betrayed not only her oath to New York state but her colleagues." 

Saber no longer works for DOCCS. The department fired her during the investigation and cooperated with the inspector general's inquiry. 

Daniel Martuscello, acting DOCCS commissioner, said the sentencing shows the department "will not tolerate fraudulent misconduct from staff." 

"As we face critical staffing shortages, this type of behavior further exacerbates the difficulties of this job and does a disservice to the hardworking staff who show up day in and day out to help keep our communities safe," Martuscello added. 

Lang thanked the state police for assisting with Saber's arrest and Seneca County District Attorney John Nabinger for prosecuting the case.