MANCHESTER, NJ — The former superintendent of the Manchester Township Schools is receiving a six-figure settlement in an agreement reached on his lawsuit over his 2023 firing.
John Berenato is set to receive $265,000 from the district's insurance company in a settlement approved at the June 16 Manchester Township Board of Education meeting, Transparency.com reported.
That settlement is in addition to nearly $500,000 in back pay Berenato received when the state Department of Education and an administrative law judge ordered Manchester to reinstate him as superintendent in October, ruling his firing violated tenure laws.
Messages to the Manchester Township School District seeking comment were not answered, but the district has declined comment in the past because it involved litigation and personnel matters.
Berenato, 41, was fired in November 2023 by the Manchester school board, just shy of two years into his time as superintendent. The firing came after a tumultuous few weeks following the publication by Patch of a lawsuit filed against him by Whiting Elementary School Principal Evelyn Swift alleging age discrimination.
He filed a lawsuit in May 2024 alleging he was fired because he is gay. In it Berenato alleged the board had been looking for a reason to fire him and that some members had expressed anti-gay sentiments about his hiring starting with the recruitment process.
In his lawsuit, Berenato alleged pervasive hostility and bias toward him from the start of the recruitment process from the community and the school district. He also alleged a denial of due process when he was fired, saying the board used a conviction for driving under the influence in 2010 as its reason to say he lied on his employment application when he said he had no criminal record.
Berenato accused all but two of the members of the Manchester school board of making discriminatory or inappropriate remarks regarding him being gay, including:
Berenato's lawsuit also cited the board's opposition to policies from the state Department of Education regarding the treatment of transgender students and opposition to designating single-occupancy bathrooms in the schools as gender neutral for students to use, while separated multi-stall bathrooms remained marked for "boys" or "girls."
"Other than Mr. Kelliher and Mrs. Pease (Lakehurst Representative), all Board members advocated for getting rid of all transgender policies in the District, as well as any other policy that were designed to protect the civil rights of LGBTQ students," the lawsuit alleges.
The Swift lawsuit set off a firestorm in the community and led to the revealing of the drunk driving conviction, , along with information showing he had omitted that conviction from his employment application with Manchester.
He was fired on Nov. 7, 2023 at a special meeting of the school board, with his termination effective immediately. The resolution firing Berenato identified him only by his employee number, and the reasons for the firing were not announced at the meeting.
The failure to report the DWI conviction and related driver's license suspension were detailed as the reason in his termination letter, according to the order to reinstate Berenato issued Oct. 20 by Kevin Dehmer, then the state commissioner of education.
Administrative Law Judge Mary Ann Bogan ruled that the firing violated the provisions of the Tenure Employees Hearing Law.
Under the law, a tenured employee must be given notice of a plan to remove them and an opportunity for a hearing. Superintendents do not get unlimited tenure in New Jersey, but tenure laws apply to them during the length of their employment contract, Bogan and Dehmer wrote.
Under tenure procedures, the school board had the options to continue Berenato's contract, to file tenure charges against him, or to pay him to do nothing for the remainder of his contract while assigning his superintendent duties to someone else, Dehmer wrote.
"The option the Board chose – unilateral termination of petitioner’s contract – was not among the Board’s legal options," Dehmer wrote.
The Manchester school board was forced to reinstate him through June 30, 2026, which was the end of his contract. It placed him on adminstrative leave at the same time it reinstated him.
Read more: Manchester Forced To Reinstate Superintendent; Board Violated Tenure Laws, Judge Rules
In the wake of Berenato's firing, three administrators he hired left the district and also sued alleging harassment related to anti-LGBTQ bigotry in the district. Bridget Antonucci, the district's former special services director, filed her lawsuit in September 2024, alleging she was harassed before her contract was not renewed. Lori Burns, who directed the district's preschool program, filed in October 2024 alleging working conditions were so intolerable she could no longer stay in the district. Morgan Capezzera, a former school psychologist in the district, filed suit earlier this year alleging she was harassed and targeted for supporting diversity.
Court records show Berenato's attorneys filed a motion on July 1 seeking to consolidate the four lawsuits into one case. That motion was denied and the cases remain separate.
Swift's lawsuit, meanwhile, was resolved through mediation and dismissed in November 2024.
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