TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – A media outlet has posted a draft report on the Newark School of Global Studies’ ethnic climate – the source of two years’ mystery and secrecy – was posted on its website here Jan. 13.
Chalkbeat.org, while making public a copy of the 39-page Creed Strategies report, said that it was not the final version delivered to Newark Public Schools Superintendent Roger Leon and the Board of Education in May 2023. Creed’s study, record of incidents and recommendations confirmed what NSGS community members had been telling NPS educators in board meetings and in court since 2022.
The report said that there had been a pattern of “anti-Black,” anti-gay, anti-religious and anti-female slurs made by “non-Black and non-Arab Muslim” students and staff going back when the magnet high school had opened in the former Gladys Hillman Jones Middle School at 24 Crane St. in 2020. The report also cited how school and district administrators had fallen short in correcting the incidents and the educational climate.
Current and former NSGS community members, the Newark Teachers Union and NAACP Newark Branch President Deborah Smith-Gregory had asked for the final report’s release in 2023. Leon, calling the report an internal document, denied the request.
NSGS is an immersive magnet school for those pursuing international business and/or diplomatic careers through second-language instruction and exposure to various cultures. Creed, however, found that the proportion of African or African-American students had steadily declined through transfers over the years compared to other NPS magnet high schools.
Creed’s interviews with students, staff and administrators, classroom observation and record keeping found that NSGS had 22 bias incidents 2021-23 – mostly by passing remarks made in the presence of teachers.
School administrators’ bias response ranged from students writing apology letters to suspension. Its principal at the time held a school-wide assembly during the 2022-23 school year, declaring that using “N_____” is grounds for suspension. Leon himself held a similar assembly for NSCG juniors, saying that those who do not feel comfortable at the school “basically they can leave.” Outgoing students and teachers have said that their complaints were being dismissed – and some teachers said they had no communication on the incidents before the November 2022 school board meeting.
IRVINGTON – The last chapter of Paul Thomas Maceluch, Irvington High School Class of 1965, was written here in Cedar Knolls Jan. 5.
Maceluch, 78, died in the Morris County home he had moved from his family’s township homestead in 2022, died that Sunday morning. Paul, who was born in Newark Dec. 8, 1946, his parents Theodore and Evelyn Maceluch and his younger sister, the future Noel Ann Wannamaker, moved to 36 Harding Terr. here in 1962.
Maceluch, who developed a lifelong love for photography while at IHS, enlisted in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve in 1966. Although he served during the Vietnam War, he was stationed at South Korea’s Camp Casey.
Upon his 1972 honorable discharge, Maceluch started working for Western Electric as an installer. He stayed with Bell System’s AT&T and Lucent companies before moving to Alcatel and retiring from Nokia in 2010.
Nephew Warren Wannamaker and niece Virginia Daku are among his survivors.
Maceluch’s respective visitation and prayer service were held at Union’s Lytwyn and Grillo Funeral Home Jan. 9-10. Burial was then held at the nearby Hollywood Memorial Park.
EAST ORANGE – County homicide detectives’ investigation of Alex Jr. Cruz’s Dec. 22 death here continues after the Newark man’s Jan. 6-7 last rites.
City police officers told ECPO detectives that they had responded to a car collision at New Street and North Arlington Avenue at 8:16 p.m. Dec. 22. They found Cruz in one of the cars, suffering from a gunshot wound. Cruz was rushed to University Hospital, where he died at 9 p.m. There was no further word of any other occupants abroad either of the two involved cars.
Parents Alex Cruz and Adamaris Martes, grandparents Susana and Bienvenido Cruz, grandmother Luz Rodrigues and eight siblings are among his survivors. Cruz’s Jan. 6 visitation and Jan. 7 funeral were held in Newark’s Alvarez Funeral Home, followed by burial at Kearny’s Arlington Cemetery.
39 Residents Without Heat Since Jan. 4
Residents of the apartment building here at 168-70 S. Clinton St and the city’s Code Enforcement Department are hoping that they will be provided with at least a temporary boiler when you read this.
Tenants of the four-story, 39-unit building told code inspectors and a reporter Jan. 19 that they have had little or no heat or hot water since Jan. They can only use a space heater in each unit; any more would blow the electrical circuit.
They said that the manager, West of Hudson Properties, of Hackensack, told them that they are awaiting the arrival of replacement parts “soon.” A city spokeswoman said that the manager had been fined “multiple times” and had been order to get a temporary boiler on the 1928-built, .38-acre site “immediately.”
ORANGE – Dunkin’ Donuts corporate office and the Orange Planning Board may have the answer to, “When does a renovation become a replacement?” here at 529 Main St.
529 Orange LLC, in its recently approved site plan application, said that it wants to remodel the former Orange Circle diner site into a new “Dunkin’ ” It has revamped DDs at 140 Central Ave. (one of the 1948-founded chain’s first stores here) and at 523 Central Ave in East Orange plus 13 Court St. in Newark’s Nevada Court Mall.
Dropping “Donuts” from the “Dunkin’ ” name is part of a corporate “We’re just not for breakfast anymore” rebranding and remodeling that shifted into high gear in 2019. It had first stopped baking its namesake Dunkin Donuts – plain donuts with handles for dipping into coffee – and baking on-site since 2003.
Dunkin ‘, in its planning board application, said it wanted to move the store footprint further north on Main and South Jefferson street’s .34-acre northeast corner lot for improved parking. The board’s approval, however, led to the store’s demolition by Jan. 2.
The levelling exposed where the donut shop and predecessor Orange Circle diner had stood for the second time in 67 years. The diner opened as part of the White Circle System chain, replacing a Hudson car dealership, in 1957. Owner John Whiteker, of Livingston, however, left the chain and renamed it the “Orange Circle Diner” in 1961.
The Orange Circle sold steamed hamburgers, ice and Texas wieners until the diner was moved to W. Palm Beach., Fla. by 1998. VCR Bakery built the first DD there the next year and sold it to 529 Main LLC for $1.238 million in 2015. VCR had kept a framed color photo Orange Circle portrait by the cashier’s station.
WEST ORANGE – The R.H. Macy department store’s parent will be closing its outlet store here at the Essex Green Shopping Center and – for the second time – leave the “Local Talk” area.
Federated Department Stores, which has owned Macy’s since 1986, released a list of 65 “underperforming” stores across 17 states that will be shuttered before April 1. Federated intends to channel its resources on the 350 remaining nationwide stores as part of a restructuring plan that goes back to 2018.
Macy’s Backstage, here at 395 Prospect Ave.’s main building northern end, is the only New Jersey store to close. Federated’s hit list includes the former John A. Wanamaker Philadelphia Center City flagship store (FDS bought it from Hecht’s) and the 60-year Queens (NY) Plaza anchor store. Essex Green has not said who will move into the 100,000-square foot store as that space’s fourth tenant.
Essex Green opened with an Arnold Constable department store here in 1957. Constable was replaced by a Stern Brothers store in 1971. Federated absorbed Stern’s and put Macy’s there in 2001. It was revamped to become a Macy’s Backstage off-price outlet in 2015.
Federated first closed Macy’s in downtown Newark in 1992. That square block building opened as Louis Bamberger’s flagship store and headquarters at Washington, Market, Halsey and Bank streets in 1912. The store where radio station WOR had started once had its own post office and Newark Public Library branches.
R.H. Macy’s heirs bought out the Bamberger, Fuld and Frank families in 1929. Federated rebranded all of the said stores to Macy’s in 1986.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Part of the legacy of a Columbia High School teacher who had sexual relations with her students in and out of the classroom in 2014 are eight lawsuits facing the South Orange-Maplewood School District which has so far cost the school system $550,000.
The $550,000, as stated by Transparancynj.com Jan. 9, comes from a settlement SOMSD had reached in two of the suits brought by Nicole Dufault’s victims, their families and their attorney. The two suits allege that the Ninth Grade language arts teacher had abused the plaintiffs and that the district had known about the August-September 2014 incidents but failed to act until suspending her on March 1, 2015.
The two suits, filed by Thomas Ashley, Esq., of Newark, allege that Dufault had taken advantage of two African American male students who were “intellectually disabled” and had “academic and social development levels lagging behind their chronological ages.” The settlements – one for $200,000 made on July 8 and the other for $350,000 Nov. 4, 2024 – were drawn from the district’s insurance carrier and do not constitute an admission of wrongdoing by the district.
A third case, settled last year, is pending a final agreement. The other five cases, which had been consolidated, are being appealed by the plaintiffs over a recent court ruling that SOMSD was not “vicariously liable” in three of the cases.
Dufault, who was accused of having relations with the students in her classroom, in her car on CHS property and at a nearby fast food parking lot, was sentenced to a three-year suspended custodial sentence on March 11, 2021. The tenured teacher, who served 33 days’ jail detention in 2014, had her sentence put on hold pending successful compliance in Megan’s Law registration and lifetime parole supervision.
The Bloomfield native, who was arrested at her Nutley address Sept. 14, 2014, had pleaded guilty to three amended third-degree charges of aggravated criminal contact. She had surrendered her teaching certificate and had paid $4,505 in fees and assessments.
BLOOMFIELD – The ownership transfer of the Brookdale ShopRite from one long standing family to another here Jan. 8 may have been less subtle than the simultaneous changing hands of Newark’s ShopRite.
Neil Greenstein closed the ShopRite of Brookdale here at 1409 Broad St. for 24 hours 6 p.m. Jan. 4. The supermarket, when it reopened by the same time Jan. 5, was sporting Glass Gardens signage and its beer refrigerators emptied.
Greenstein, on Jan. 8, made his retirement from the grocery business and his transfer of both ShopRites to Terry Glass official. The transfer is considered to be a change of one ShopRite Wakefern member to another. Wakefern, of Woodbridge, is the parent of a cooperative of 50 supermarket families holding 365 stores under ShopRite and six other brands among nine Northeast states.
Greenstein was the third generation of what started out as Dorothy and Louis Druian’s Brookdale Gardens grocery here in 1952 and joined the ShopRite cooperative that year. Its current supermarket replaced the 1962 building in 1999. Greenstein, who joined the family business in 2000, had it remodeled in 2022.
The departing grocer also opened the ShopRite of Newark, 206 Springfield Ave., in 2015. The Springfield Avenue Marketplace anchor store was built in the center of the Central Ward’s “food desert.”
Greenstein’s closeout means that Terry Glass and his family now has 13 stores in New Jersey and New York – but there are only two in Essex County. The third-generation owners date back to when Abe and Irv Glass brought their Rochelle Park store under the ShopRite umbrella in 1955.
It is under the impression of “Local Talk” that ShopRite of Brookdale had returned their liquor serving license to the Belleville Alcoholic Beverage Control board.
MONTCLAIR – The township government, since June, has the rare and dubious distinction of being sued by its former affirmative action officer on charges of discrimination by retaliation.
West Caldwell attorney Mark Mulick, who represents city resident Bruce Morgan, said that they and the township have a remote case management hearing with State Superior Court-Newark Judge Joshua Sanders Jan. 16. Montclair Township had filed a Dec. 2 lawsuit response denying that Morgan’s “work performance had met reasonable expectations.”
Morgan, who was first hired in 2010 as its housing officer, was handed AAO responsibilities in 2013. The township suspended Morgan Oct. 2, 2023 and terminated him Nov. 13. A complaint was filed that he had used a municipal office photocopying machine to reproduce the one-page syllabus of a business law college class that he was teaching.
Morgan and Mulick, on Jan. 2, that there was more to his firing than that. Morgan said that he had filed a report in March 2022 after investigating the June 2021 Montclair Fire Department promotional exam. This was the exam which two African American firefighters said were biased against them in its creation and scoring.”
The resident said that he had found “disparate impact on minority test takers” and “a few disturbing issues as to how the MFD is managed on a daily basis.” (The then-fire chief, John Hermann, retired last year.)
Morgan also investigated CFO Padmaja Rao’s claims of the then-Town Manager Timothy Stafford creating a retaliatory and hostile work environment – which he had confirmed in his Aug. 29, 2022 report to the Municipal Council. (Montclair and Rao came to a $1.25 million settlement last year.)
After those two reports were filed, Morgan said that the interim town manager Brian Scantlebury and current manager Michael LaPolla stripped him of his AAO duties and held meetings with his own staff without his knowledge.
“The affirmative action scheme they had set up was a farce,” said Mulick. “As soon as they found out that they were liable for discrimination, they fired the person who found them responsible.”
Montclair’s website has Alisha Dawkins, its human resources director, currently handling AAO duties. The township had outsourced the duties between Morgan’s dismissal and Dawkin’s assignment.
GLEN RIDGE – Members of Christ Episcopal Church will be holding a memorial service for one of its own, Priscilla King Arnold, here at 11 a.m. Jan. 22.
Arnold, 95, died on Jan. 1. in Maplewood, was the church’s junior warden and a vestry member while living here 1957-2023. She was among the recipients of the Newark Episcopal Diocese Rev. David P. Hegg II Lifetime Achievement Awards – bestowed to members at least 60 years old, had been a longtime active church member and had contributed to the church and/or yeh diocese.
Born Priscilla King March 3, 1929 in Oak Park, Ill., Arnold came east for higher education. The Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. Masters School and Norton, Mass Wheaton College graduate married Henry Jerome Arnold in 1953. They moved to Glen Ridge in 1957, after six years in Moorestown, to raise Henry, Mark, John and Caroline.
Priscilla, while here, was also a member of the Women’s Club of Glen Ridge, a Welcome Wagon Hostess 1984-94 and a member of the Junior League of Montclair-Newark.
Four grandchildren are also among her survivors. Her beloved Henry – himself a Christ Church vestryman and treasurer and Hegg Award recipient – had died Aug. 28, 2018. Sister Barbara MacFarland had also predeceased her.
Memorial donations may be made “to a local charity of your choice and/or performing random acts of kindness of which she was so fond.”
BELLEVILLE – A township woman will be making a return to State Superior Court-Hackensack in the near future for a first appearance hearing regarding charges of theft of the bank she had managed by deception.
Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said that Amira T. Darby-White, 43, had surrendered to his detectives Jan. 8. She was released after being charged with two counts of third-degree theft by deception.
Darby-White is accused of steaming almost $70,000 of possessions and proceeds from the bank she was managing in Bergen County. She is accused of taking $54,648 from some of the bank’s cash deposit boxes that she had maintained. Darby-White is also accused of diverting approximately $15,000 from an elderly depositor’s account to her own cash box balance “to conceal the ongoing theft.”
Darby-White’s surrender ended a 10-month investigation by BCPO Financial Crimes Unit Investigation. They were first called by the bank last March.
Darby-White, according to Spokeo.com, had previously lived in East Orange and Bloomfield. Neither Musella nor BCPO had named the affected bank branch.
