Judge: Facebook Post Should Cost Job of NJ Teacher

A New Jersey administrative law judge has ruled that a first-grade teacher who wrote that she was a "warden for future criminals" on Facebook earlier this year should lose her tenured job.

The state education commissioner now has 45 days to accept, reject or modify the decision regarding Jennifer O'Brien.

The Paterson teacher posted her remark to 333 friends on March 28. But it was forwarded and several parents saw it.

O'Brien's lawyer, Nancy Oxfeld, tells The Record newspaper that her client will appeal the ruling, which was made public Tuesday. O'Brien had testified that she wrote the post in exasperation because several students kept disrupting her lessons and one boy had recently hit her.

But the judge called O'Brien's conduct "inexcusable."