NJ school workers who claimed they were fired for not being Hispanic get $219K

PERTH AMBOY — This city's Board of Education agreed to pay a total of $218,500 to settle lawsuits by two former school district employees who who claim they lost their jobs because they were not Hispanic.

Former Human Resource Manager Bernice Marshall, who is black, and former Transportation Manager Edmund Treadaway, who is white, filed their lawsuits in Superior Court in New Brunswick in 2014.

Marshall and the board last November agreed to a $170,000 confidential settlement to drop the lawsuit, while Treadaway agreed to drop his lawsuit for $48,500, according to copies of the out-of-court settlements provided this week by John Paff, an open-government advocate from Somerset County who posts public records on his blog.

About 80 percent of this Middlesex County city's population is Hispanic, as are a majority of elected officials here.

The lawsuits offered as evidence of discrimination the fact that the school board paid for administrators to travel to Puerto Rico in 2013 in order to recruit more Hispanic employees. School officials at the time said they did so because they were having a hard time finding bilingual teachers in New Jersey.

On May 7, 2014, the Board voted to abolish Marshall’s position and create a similar position, which they offered to two Hispanic individuals, she claimed in her lawsuit.

Marshall also claimed that then-Acting Superintendent Vivian Rodriguez “berated (her) in Spanish,” which board member Israel Varela said was meant to “teach (Marshall) a lesson.”

"I have been nothing less than loyal and dedicated to my job and the district, however the reward for my loyalty is to unjustly have my job abolished," Marshall said in 2014 in a statement regarding her job loss in the Amboy Guardian.

In his own lawsuit, Treadaway said multiple board members told him his “employment was in jeopardy” because he was not Hispanic.

At the time both employees were fired, eight of the nine school board members were Hispanic.

According to Treadaway's lawsuit, the board’s “blatant discriminatory practices” reached a point that members openly stated at public meetings that they expected to be sued because of their discriminatory practices. On May 7, 2014, Board Member William Ortiz stated at a meeting that the rumor was  "if you're not Latino then you shouldn't apply.”

In agreeing to settle the cases, school officials did not admit to any wrongdoing. School officials and the plaintiffs also agreed to not discuss the lawsuits.

Although both sides in the case are supposed to treat the settlements confidentially, the documents remain public records under state law.

Named in both suits were Rodriguez and the board members at the time — Obdulia Gonzalez, Dianne Roman, Kenneth Puccio, Milady Tejeda, Maria Garcia, Anthony Bermudez, Samuel Lebreault and William Ortiz.