A former New Jersey yearbook adviser claiming she was ordered to censor a student’s Donald Trump T-shirt says her principal and superintendent should be fired for an alleged coverup that was “basically just a conspiracy” to scapegoat her for a national controversy.

In her first interview about the 2017 incident, Susan Parsons told NJ Advance Media she was shocked Wall Township School District administrators blamed her for making an edit she says was demanded by the school secretary, a proxy for the principal.

Now, Parsons, a veteran digital media teacher, wants school officials punished for the lie fed to the media and community, she said.

“If you have any teacher that lied, withheld evidence, conspired to hide the truth… they wouldn’t have a job,” Parsons said. “How is it that this isn’t applied to administration as well?”

Censorship of the Trump shirt generated national headlines in June 2017 and fueled conservative outrage, especially in Wall, where Trump carried nearly 63 percent of the vote in the presidential election earlier that school year. The district quickly admitted a student’s navy blue “Make America Great Again T-shirt” was edited in his yearbook photo to appear as a plain blue shirt, but superintendent Cheryl Dyer said the district administration and student yearbook staff played no role in the change.

Instead, the blame was directed at Parsons, who was subsequently suspended and resigned as yearbook adviser in 2017. A tenured teacher, she continues working at Wall Township High School making $92,000 but says students and colleagues have never treated her the same.

She voted for Trump, she said, and didn’t think the T-shirt should be edited. Yet she’s been subjected to vulgar threats and harassment and has become a paranoid recluse who fears leaving her house in the township, she said.

“My life has not been the same, and I don’t think it ever will,” said Parsons, who filed a lawsuit against the district last month. “For two years I’ve been living under someone else’s lies.”

Susan Parsons, the former Wall Township High School yearbook advisor, claims she was forced to censor a Donald Trump campaign T-shirt in the yearbook and scapegoated when the story made national headlines.

Parsons’ lawsuit against Dyer and the Wall Township Board of Education is seeking damages for a pay increase that was withheld, emotional harm and other damages. In addition, she’s asking for a policy that prohibits employees from doing interviews without the superintendent’s permission to be eliminated.

Parsons was free to speak with NJ Advance Media as long as she made it clear she was not speaking on behalf of the school district or Board of Education, her attorney Christopher Eibeler said.

In a statement, school board attorney Adam Weiss said the district won’t engage in a public debate over the yearbook controversy and will defend itself in court. The district remains committed to ensuring students are free to express their personal views and beliefs, he said, in response to a request for comment from Dyer and principal Rosaleen Sirchio.

Cindy McChesney, the secretary Parsons said ordered the censorship, has since retired. Reached by telephone, she said she has no comment on Parsons’ allegations.

In a nearly hour-long interview, Parsons presented her side of the story for the first time. Calm but firm, she reiterated many of the claims in her lawsuit and described herself as a dutiful employee defeated by years of forced yearbook edits and fearful of challenging the administration.

Parsons’ version of what transpired hinges on what she said was a verbal order from McChesney as the secretary flipped through the yearbook proofs and ordered changes.

“That’s got to go,” Parsons recalled McChesney telling her as she pointed to the T-shirt in December 2016, just before the yearbook deadline.

Though Parsons did not agree with the order, she did not think the decision was politically motivated, she said.

“It was just controversial,” Parsons said of the T-shirt.

Parsons said McChesney was an authority figure in the school who had “carte blanche” over the yearbook pages and routinely communicated orders from Sirchio, the school principal. The school has always forced Parsons to edit yearbook photos to avoid anything controversial, including photoshopping shirts onto students on a beach trip and blurring a feminist sticker on a laptop, Parsons said.

Following McChesney’s order, Parsons went back to her classroom and reluctantly made the change, she said.

Even after the student’s father started giving news interviews about the yearbook, Parsons didn’t realize how much trouble she would be in, she said.

Then, Sirchio approached Parsons during a Saturday detention she was supervising and asked to speak to her in a back office away from security cameras, Parsons said. The principal asked to see any documentation of the edits and told Parsons “you should have never listened to Cindy," Parsons said.

“And that’s when I thought, ‘Oh my God, you’re kidding me, right? You’re just going to bold-face lie?" Parsons said. “And that’s when everything started falling apart.”

The following week, Parsons, a teacher at the school since 2003, was suspended and promptly escorted from the building by a union rep and assistant principal.

Parsons’ name surfaced in news reports as Dyer assured multiple media outlets that the administration had no knowledge of the censorship. Meanwhile, Parsons was reminded of a district policy that prohibits employees from speaking to reporters without permission from the superintendent, she said.

“(The superintendent) can craft whatever statement she wants, and like she did here, mislead not only the school, the town but the world,” Parsons said.

The fallout made Parsons akin to “some scourge," she said. She was flooded with hate mail and voice messages, her personal swimming lesson business received negative online reviews after the controversy and she no longer felt safe leaving her quiet street to run errands in the community.

A life of bike rides, walks on the beach and family parties morphed into Parsons holed up at home, missing events with her two children and grandchildren, she said.

What hurts the most about the experience, Parsons said, is that her character has been scarred.

“Even though this information is coming out, not everyone is ever going to be told the truth,” Parsons said. “Most people don’t care. They’ll just remember ‘that woman, that nutcase, who did she think she was?’"

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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