A former West New York assistant principal can be demoted over fabricating the reason why she fell down a staircase back on February 12th, 2020, overturning a lower court’s ruling from August 2022.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
The Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division ruled that an arbitrator could not demote former Memorial High School Assistant Principal Amada Sanjuan, who got her job back on appeal, since he “lacked the statutory authority” and therefore could only reduce her salary.
The state’s highest court agreed that she could continue working for the West New York Board of Education, but could only do so as a teacher as opposed to an assistant principal.
“The Appellate Division determined that the language of N.J.S.A. 18A:6-16 constrains the arbitrator to impose only the penalties of dismissal or reduction in salary, not demotion,” Associate Justice Lee A. Solomon said in delivering the opinion of the court.
“We disagree and hold that N.J.S.A. 18A:6-16 provides the basis to refer a case to arbitration but does not limit an arbitrator’s authority to impose penalties.”
Sanjuan’s slip-and-fall incident took place at Memorial High School on February 12th, 2020, about six months after being to promoted to assistant principal, where she was discovered by a custodian and a teacher.
While she told the board’s benefits coordinator that a piece of paper caused her to fall, surveillance footage from the incident showed that she placed the paper on the stairs after the fact before returning to the spot where she had fallen.
As a result, on August 31st 2020, the board of education certified tenure charges against Sanjuan, alleging conduct unbecoming of an employee and issuing a 120-day suspension without pay.
The commissioner of education reviewed the charges and said they were enough to “warrant dismissal or reduction in salary,” but still sent the case to an arbitrator – who ruled that she should be reinstated as a teacher rather than being dismissed.
The state Supreme Court further determined that while the Tenure Employees Hearing Law (TEHL) limits which cases can go before an arbitrator, it does not limit what actions they can tak.
“If the Legislature had wanted to limit the possible penalties that a tenured employee could face under the amended statute, it could have done so,” the decision says.
“Instead, the Legislature included in the TEHL only the conditional ‘if x, then y’ jurisdictional trigger of N.J.S.A. 18A:6-16 that informs the Commissioner when a case must be submitted to binding arbitration. Although the legislation limits the cases that reach the arbitrator, it does not limit the remedies available to the arbitrator.”
They conclude that the arbitrator “correctly determined a penalty tailored to this case,” therefore, the appellate division’s decision is reversed and remanded in favor of reinstating the demotion.
Amada Sanjuan Should be Fired! Pay back her stolen gains from WNY Tax payers.
Not only shouldn’t she be working as a public employee, anywhere, she should be prosecuted for trying to defraud the school system.
And this is the problem of being leaving in a country full of lefties, how I can trust the education of children to a non ethical teacher that try to take advantage of the system ? Of course courts they only see the benefits of the bad people
She should be fired.
She will never be respected by anyone in that school, in that town or in that area.
Assuming she had lots of education, she doesn’t know there are cameras everywhere?
She showed you who she is.
She should be fired and arrested for theft of honest services. A greedy pig, whose intent was to steal by going out on accidental disability which would have been tax free for the rest of her pathetic life.
This lying, unethical, chimosa cerdo has a history of making anti White racist comments. Plus, she’s another fake, phony and fraud who lives in a White neighborhood, but tells people how she’d rather have her children go to school in Hudson County and then sent them to an affluent school district for their entire childhood. We know her personally. She’s a very jealous, lazy, hateful clown.