Shoshana Leffler former prodigy student and chemistry teacher at a prestigious Manhattan high school alleged to have had inappropriate relationship with teen student after she was filmed having a mystery encounter in a bathroom and then handing the teen a wad of cash.
A former teacher at a prestigious Bronx, NYC high school is alleged to have had an inappropriate relationship with a male student at an elite Manhattan high school but not before the chemistry teacher taking the teen into a school bathroom and giving him a bundle of cash to keep the illicit affair a secret. So she thought…
Shoshana Leffler, 37, a former prodigy student at the prestigious Bronx High School and Princeton University graduate was caught on video in February 2023, taking her 17 year old male victim into a locked bathroom at the High School for Health Careers and Sciences in Manhattan’s Fort George — then later handing the teen a wad of cash.
7 secret minutes in a school bathroom…
‘What occurred in the bathroom can only be speculated about since Leffler resigned from the DOE without providing an explanation,’ Anastasia Coleman, the special commissioner of investigation for city schools, said in a report obtained by the nypost.
A surveillance camera in the school’s stairwell first picked up Leffler and the unnamed student ‘engaging in conversation’ at 10:35 a.m. on a Tuesday — one minute into the fourth period, when the teen ‘should have been in class,’ an internal report stated.
An assistant principal spotted the two and rebuked Leffler for the improper liaison.
But instead of ending the encounter, the educator took the boy to the building’s fifth floor, the report states.
There, they ‘sought out a private room where security cameras could not record them,’ investigators concluded — a staff bathroom with a lockable door.
Their seven-minute lavatory rendezvous ended when another faculty member arrived to use the facilities and found the bathroom locked from the inside.
What led to star chemistry teacher giving student wad of cash?
Once the interrupting staffer departed, Leffler and the teen were filmed leaving separately.
The next day, Leffler met up with the student in the stairwell again, where she was recorded ‘handing [him] what appeared to be money, him pocketing this money, and them leaving the stairwell together,’ the report says.
Investigators found no evidence of contact between Leffler and the boy in the teacher’s phone records.
The student would not testify about the incident, with department educators guessing what the money was given for.
Leffler quit while the probe was ongoing, and later refused to be questioned, leaving the nature of their relationship a mystery.
‘Likely engaged in an inappropriate relationship’
Investigators concluded the Princeton University graduate likely had ‘engaged in an inappropriate relationship’ with the boy who should have been in class at the time.
A ‘problem code’ was attached to Leffler’s DOE file, which could bar her from future employment with the city.
The internal report was forwarded to the New York state Department of Education for possible action. To date Leffler remains licensed to teach in New York, records show.
Leffler and her twin brother Abba were child prodigies at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. The siblings were once among the 300 semifinalists in the nationwide Intel Science Talent Search.
Shoshana earned a PhD in medical science from NYU with a dissertation on brain cell development.
‘These are the students who, God willing, will find cures for diseases and will be our political leaders,’ then Bronx Science Principal Valerie Reidy previously said in 2005.
In 2019, Leffler began work for the city’s Department of Education, later taking a job as a chemistry teacher at the prestigious high school in Fort George and had been there until her abrupt resignation last year.
