TRENTON, N.J. (Legal Newsline) - A teacher who was caught on video faking the circumstances of her fall down the stairs can be demoted but doesn’t have to lose her job, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled, restoring an arbitrator’s decision that an appeals court had vacated.
Amada Sanjuan had been a teacher in the Town of West New York since the early 1990s, rising to the tenured position of assistant principal of Memorial High School when she fell down a staircase in February 2020. The following day, Sanjuan filled out an injury report with the school district’s benefits coordinator, stating she saw a piece of paper on the stairs, bent down to pick it up and fell down the stairs, cracking her head on the concrete.
A school security camera told a different story. It showed Sanjuan fell, then reached into her pocketbook, pulled out a piece of paper and set it on the stairs and resumed her position on the floor.
In a later meeting with her union representative and school officials, Sanjuan repeated her story about the paper until she was shown the video. She then claimed to be “just as surprised as everybody else,” court filings said.
The school board placed Sanjuan on administrative leave and pursued her dismissal for “unbecoming conduct” before an arbitrator, as required under state law. The arbitrator decided her long service with the school district and “limited scope of the incident” justified a demotion, not termination.
A trial court upheld the arbitrator’s decision but the Appellate Division reversed, ruling that tenured teachers can either be terminated or have their salary cut, but not demoted. The appeals court refused to resubmit the question to arbitration, instead ordering the arbitrator to limit any decision to suspension without pay.
The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed that decision in a Jan. 12 opinion by Justice Lee Solomon.
New Jersey lawmakers set up a two-step process for dismissing tenured teachers, the court said, requiring the Commissioner of Education to first find justification for dismissal or a pay cut, then handing the matter to an arbitrator to decide.
“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 Supreme Court concluded. “Although the legislation limits the cases that reach the arbitrator, it does not limit the remedies available to the arbitrator.”