NJ district fired teacher who accused former co-workers of ‘pedophile parties’

LITTLE EGG HARBOR — A special education teacher has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Pinelands Regional School District, saying she was retaliated for raising concerns about what she considered a co-worker’s inappropriate behavior.

Melissa Pomphrey worked for Pinelands Regional School District from March 2021 until earlier this year, though she went out on unpaid disability leave last fall.

Pomphrey, a Barnegat resident, taught a class of six students with autism, ages 16 to 21, at the high school along Nugentown Road in Little Egg Harbor Township.

Each student had an individual paraprofessional for assistance.

Before that, she worked in the Barnegat Township School District for 15 years.

The lawsuit, which was first reported by NJ.com,  accuses a paraprofessional who worked in Pomphrey’s classroom of attending “pedophile parties,” where Pomphrey said he and other faculty members in attendance would dress “as their favorite pedophile.”

The only potential evidence included in the lawsuit is a mention that a faculty member voiced similar concerns in August 2023 of a “dress as your favorite pedophile party.”

School administrators say the lawsuit is “baseless”

“The Pinelands Regional School District takes all matters involving the safety and well-being of our students with the utmost seriousness. However, we will not dignify this baseless lawsuit with a response. Our focus remains on providing a safe, supportive, and high-quality educational environment for every student we serve,” Pinelands Regional Schools Superintendent Melissa McCooley said in an email response to New Jersey 101.5.

In January 2024, Pomphrey said she became concerned with that same paraprofessional’s relationship with a teen student outside her classroom.

She said that after raising concerns with the high school principal and the director of special services, no real investigation of her accusations was done, but the paraprofessional was moved from her room to another class.

Pomphrey said as she brought up concerns several more times, she learned that the paraprofessional and principal had vacationed together in West Palm Beach, Florida, that year.

Pomphrey says her transfer to middle school was 'retaliation'

In May 2024, Pomphrey was told that her class was being eliminated, which she said in the lawsuit ”was pure retaliation.”

She was also notified she was being transferred to teach special education at the middle school level, which she considered a “demotion.”

Pomphrey calls the curriculum for this middle school classroom “insulting and degrading to the students,” in her lawsuit, and says she started to suffer “severe symptoms of anxiety and depression, including the inability to leave her home, suffering from severe nausea, and uncontrollable vomiting” all summer.

She sought psychiatric treatment and was prescribed several prescription medications.

Once she reported to work at the middle school in September 2024, Pomphrey said her emotional distress, anxiety, and depression “drastically worsened,” to the point where she was stepping out of her classroom to throw up and repeatedly left early due to feeling faint.

Teacher accuses Pinelands Regional of wrongfully firing her

She went out on unpaid disability leave of absence on Nov. 15, 2024.

This past May, the district said that her contract would not be renewed for the upcoming school year, as she “was not a good fit.”

Pomphrey is seeking her job back, along with back pay and benefits, as well as “front pay and benefits,” compensatory, consequential and punitive damages, and reimbursement for attorney fees.

She filed the whistleblower and discrimination lawsuit on Aug. 22 in Ocean County Superior Court.

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