At  the Highland Park Board of Education meeting on May 5th, 2014, according to official district minutes, Deana Frayne, a first-grade teacher at the district’s Irving Primary School, was unanimously approved for tenure, documented on page 9 under Approval of Tenure Appointments. [Note: Highland Park has removed the 2014 Board Minutes from the district’s public website. ]

On May 4th, 2015, also recorded in official minutes (pages 13-14), Frayne was unanimously re-appointed  by the Board as a tenured teacher upon the recommendation of Interim Superintendent Israel Soto under the action item, “Re-appointment and Setting Salaries of Tenured Professional Staff.” She had a fully executed contract for the upcoming school year 2015-2016.

On June 24th, 2015, just as Frayne was packing up her room for summer break, the Irving Primary School principal came in and said that she would be teaching kindergarten in September. Then she received a phone call from the local teacher union president who told her to proceed directly to Soto’s office. There she was presented with a document titled “Agreement and Mutual Release,” which described her as a ten-month employee, i.e., not tenured. The agreement stipulated that if she promised not to sue the district, she would receive $10,869.60. Shocked, she asked “why?” In response, according to Frayne, Soto said, “I don’t have to answer your question.” 

Frayne refused to sign the agreement or agree to accept the check. The district never filed tenure charges, as it is required to do when firing a tenured teacher, which can only be done, according to NJ’s teacher tenure law, for incapacity, inefficiency, or unbecoming conduct (with the exception of lay-offs).

On June 25th, Superintendent Soto sent a 60-day termination letter to Frayne’s house, treating her as a non-tenured staff member: the 60 day termination rule applies to non-tenured teachers, not tenured ones. Despite her pleas, she says, both NJEA and the local teachers union representative refused to help so Frayne was forced to hire an attorney and file a lawsuit in Superior Court of Middlesex County Court. But, she says, the Highland Park School Board attorney “rerouted” her complaint in 2017 to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL), which does not handle tenure cases. The OAL, without any material evidence, made an initial decision that Frayne was time-barred based on the word of the district. Then-Commissioner of Education Lamont Repollet affirmed that decision in August 2018, ruling, “In response to petitioner’s argument regarding the lack of a single document stating that petitioner is not tenured, the Board argues that there is no statutory requirement that a teaching staff member be notified in writing that she does not have tenure in order to trigger the 90-day limitation period.” Repollet, alleges Frayne, made this decision without consulting the public school board minutes confirming her tenured status and reappointment and was led to believe Frayne never received tenure. 

When Frayne entered a plea of equitable estoppel— which means legal relief for someone who was not treated fairly, like having the district make false representations or concealing material evidence —Repollet denied the motion. 

For the last eight years Deana Frayne has continued to fight back. “The Highland Park Board of Education fired me,” she explains,”without giving me my due process rights as a tenured teacher.” 

Yet for the last three years the matter has rested with Judge Alberto Rivas of the Middlesex Superior Court. (Worth noting here: Rivas has been officially censured by the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct for “his inappropriate courtroom remarks in a dispute over nude photos,” which were “aggravated considerably” by his past receipt of two private reprimands. One of those was issued July 2013 for his conduct in two separate matters in which he displayed “an injudicious demeanor towards litigants appearing before him.” The other, in October 2014, was for his “discourteous treatment” of a criminal defendant.”) 

In Judge Rivas’s last ruling, at the suggestion of  Highland Park attorney Eric L. Harrison,  he ordered a stay of the trial in order for New Jersey’s Commissioner of Education to rule on the question, “was Deana Frayne a tenured teacher when she was terminated by the Highland Park Board of Education?” Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan has not responded to Judge Rivas’s order. Subsequently Frayne filed a Motion for Judicial Notice, which was denied by Judge Rivas. The case is at a stand still. 

Yet there’s one other wrinkle: Israel Soto, former interim superintendent of Highland Park who “fired” Frayne, has been working at the Department of Education for the last 11 years.

Highland Park’s current superintendent, Kristina Nicosia, declined to comment for this article.