Union president at Warren County Technical School continues fight over his dismissal as coach

Thursday, September 17, 2009
By BILL WICHERT
The Express-Times

FRANKLIN TWP. | The leader of the employees union at Warren County Technical School is continuing his legal fight over claims the school board retaliated against him by removing him as varsity cross country coach.

The Warren Tech Education Association has appealed a court decision that prohibits the arbitration of a grievance between the school board and union President Edward Yarusinsky.

Yarusinsky said he wants to be reinstated as coach and receive reimbursement for the salary he has lost since leaving the position at the end of the 2007-08 school year. The school district and the union culminated more than two years of contract negotiations around the same time.

"I had one of the most successful programs in the school," said Yarusinsky, who served as coach for 27 years. "It just proves it was because of the union activity."

The school board selected another district employee to serve as varsity cross country coach in the past school year, prompting the employees union to file a grievance on Yarusinsky's behalf and later take the issue to arbitration.

In July, a New Jersey Superior Court judge sided with the school board's arguments that such decisions can't be taken to arbitration and ordered to permanently restrain the arbitration.

Warren Tech Chief School Administrator Robert Glowacky has said Yarusinsky was removed as coach as part of an overhaul of the school's athletic program. Yarusinsky said he never received a definitive answer about the reasons for his nonrenewal and that the district never claimed the athletic program was being overhauled.

Glowacky said he received no complaints about Yarusinsky as a coach, but the school district revamped the entire athletic program.

"He might be in denial. We said that in the beginning," Glowacky said. "I don't have any personal vendetta against him. I just felt I had a better candidate to go in there."

Yarusinsky questioned why school officials didn't present the argument about overhauling the athletic program to an independent arbitrator.

"To me, that was a reasonable thing to do," he said. "It would have been done and over with."

Yarusinsky, a social studies teacher, also has sued the school board and two board members for allegedly defaming him during the last round of contract talks.