{"id":9082,"date":"2016-08-06T00:19:43","date_gmt":"2016-08-06T04:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=9082"},"modified":"2016-08-06T02:17:51","modified_gmt":"2016-08-06T06:17:51","slug":"brick-school-officials-uszeski-termination-charges-were-drawn-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/08\/brick-school-officials-uszeski-termination-charges-were-drawn-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick School Officials: Uszenski Termination Charges Were Drawn Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brick<\/a>

Brick Township Board of Education\/Schools (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>In a response to a complaint filed by Shorebeat to a state agency, an attorney for the Brick school district acknowledged that his office had drawn up termination charges against suspended Superintendent Walter Uszenski.<\/p>\n

Previously, James Edwards, business administrator the district, had denied a request made by Shorebeat under the state\u2019s Open Public Records Act, claiming the documents did not exist. After a review of legal services invoices revealed entries related to the charge documents have been created, Shorebeat filed the complaint with the state Government Records Council which, in turn, required the district to respond.<\/p>\n

Ryan Amberger, an attorney with the firm of\u00a0Montenegro, Thompson, Montenegro & Genz, which represents the district, said in the response that \u201ca draft document of termination charges was prepared by counsel in response to the Board of Education\u2019s instructions to report back with options regarding termination of Walter Uszenski\u2019s contract.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though records show that the document was created in January, Amberger wrote in the response that the charges have \u201cyet to be presented to the Board of Education.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe final decision on whether such charges will be filed lies with the board, and a decision has yet to be made,\u201d Amberger went on to say.<\/p>\n

The fact that the documents physically exist \u2013 however, have not been formally presented to the Board of Education despite an apparent review by the Interim Superintendent of Schools \u2013 justified the denial under the pretext that the documents \u201cdo not exist,\u201d Amberger argued.<\/p>\n

Though the district ultimately acknowledged the existence of the documents in its response, they maintain the charges should not be made public because the document is deliberative material and subject to attorney-client privilege since the filing of charges would likely lead to litigation.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Montenegro, the district\u2019s attorney, said at a Board of Education meeting last week that Uszenski would be entitled to return as superintendent and qualify for back pay if he were to be acquitted of pending charges or if the charges were dropped.<\/p>\n

Uszenski is accused of official misconduct and theft for allegedly providing education services to his grandchild, for which the child was not eligible to receive. The case has yet to go to trial.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a response to a complaint filed by Shorebeat to a state agency, an attorney for the Brick school district acknowledged that his office had drawn up termination charges against suspended Superintendent Walter Uszenski. Previously, James Edwards, business administrator the district, had denied a request made by Shorebeat under the state\u2019s Open Public Records Act, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[24,1870,2264,1281],"class_list":["post-9082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brick-schools","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-nicholas-montenegro","tag-termination-charge","tag-walter-uszenski"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSC_0004.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-2mu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}