Ex-district official sues school board after firing

A fired Parsippany school district official is claiming that several school board members conspired against her after she pushed the board to drop the bus maintenance services provided by a garage owned by board member Michael Strumolo.

In a lawsuit filed this week in Superior Court, former transportation coordinator Kathleen Warrick said Strumolo, who was not on the board at the time, engineered her firing by taking advantage of alleged friendships with board members Anthony Mancuso, Lou Valori and Alan Gordon.

The suit names the Parsippany school board, Strumolo and Hiawatha Towing as defendants.

Strumolo, Mancuso and Gordon declined to comment yesterday about Warrick's allegations, and Valori could not be reached for comment.

The board voted Nov. 4, 2008, to fire Warrick, who had been with the district for more than three years, according to the lawsuit. Warrick's attorney Jon Green said yesterday that she never received a reason why the decision was made.

She remained on the payroll through Jan. 9. For much of Warrick's tenure with the district, Strumolo's Hiawatha Towing held the maintenance contract for the district's fleet of buses. During that time, according to the lawsuit, Warrick had complained that Hiawatha Towing did not bill the district in a timely fashion and that the service station was too vague about the maintenance work being done.

She also told her superiors that Hiawatha Towing's work was shoddy, Green said.

In the months before her firing, Warrick said in the lawsuit rumors surfaced about Strumolo telling the district's drivers and vendors that Mancuso and Valori would "make sure" she would be gone.

The conflict reportedly came to a head last summer when the school board revisited a rejected change in the maintenance policy that Warrick had suggested in 2006. It required all inspections and maintenance to be conducted by two full-time certified mechanics in indoor garages -- conditions that Strumolo's company was unable to meet, the lawsuit said.

Hiawatha Towing, which had the maintenance contract for most of the past two decades, did not bid for it after the change was approved, and the work was awarded to On-Site Fleet Services of East Brunswick.

Green said Warrick is asking for the earnings she lost from being fired, as well as compensatory damages. He could not say how much that was, and he could not provide any information about Warrick's contract.