NJ teacher permanently lost her right to teach after shoplifting arrest
Woodbridge NJ June 20 2018Â A fourth grade teacher has lost her legal bid to to get her job back after being fired for shoplifting.
The Superior Court Appellate Division ruled Friday in an 11-page decision that the Woodbridge Board of Education, a state arbitrator and a Middlesex Superior Court judge were justified in firing and upholding the firing of Michele Schawb, a tenured teacher with 16 years experience who worked at Robert Mascenik School in Woodbridge.
The district filed paperwork in April 2016 to fire Schwab and a state arbitrator took away her tenure in Jan. 2017.
An attorney for Schwab, Edward Cridge, declined to comment Monday on the ruling.
Schwab was suspended with pay from her $95,250 per year job as an elementary school teacher when administrators learned in March 2015 that she had been arrested in Feb. 2015 for allegedly shoplifting two NY Jets sweatshirts and a hat, valued at $225, from Sears in the Woodbridge Mall.
The charge was later dropped when a witness failed to appear in court and Schwab was put back in the classroom, even though she didn’t report the incident to the district within the required 14-day window.
“We were hoping that this was a one-time incident, and we wanted to be compassionate to Ms. Schwab,” Superintendent Robert Zega testified during the arbitration hearing.
But Schwab was arrested again, 13 months later, after the owner of Song of the Sea gift shop in Beach Haven posted on Facebook pictures of a woman captured on the store’s security camera putting a $60 picture frame into her purse and walking out of the store without paying for it.
The March 2016 post was viewed more than 47,000 times, including by at least one of her fourth grade students and another teacher in the district.
Schwab pleaded guilty in May 2016 to the shoplifting charge in a deal that would allow her to have the charge dismissed if she completed one year of probation.
A psychiatrist who testified during arbitration hearings said that Schwab’s prescription drug changes and high levels of stress in her life at that time led her to act out.
