The former Edison teacher participated in a "beautifully filthy" group chat with her coworkers.
A former teacher once suspended 120 days for mocking special education students and making sexual comments in what she called a "beautifully filthy" teacher group chat was hired this summer for a leadership position in the state Department of Education under Gov. Phil Murphy's administration, NJ Advance Media has learned.
Maryellen Cervenak was hired as the acting director of the department's Professional Learning Network, a $70,000 position that involves visiting schools as a representative of the state and coordinating trainings, the state confirmed.
Cervenak was terminated Friday, the same day NJ Advance Media asked state officials if they were aware of her prior suspension.
The state decided to terminate Cervenak on Thursday, said Mike Yaple, a spokesman for the Department of Education.
Yaple provided no further explanation for the decision.
Cervenak, who resigned from her teaching job in Edison at the end of last school year, did not respond to request for comment. Yaple did not say whether the department knew about Cervenak's past, only that she provided her new last name when she got the job.
The 41-year-old Cervenak began working for the state in July and is in the process of legally changing her last name, according to court records.
Cervenak did not return multiple messages left by NJ Advance Media seeking comment Friday.
A spokesman for Murphy's office deferred comment to the Department of Education.
The termination comes as Murphy, a Democrat, is already facing scrutiny for controversial personnel decisions in his education department. That includes hiring a former public official jailed for accepting bribes and abruptly firing an assistant education commissioner just hours after she was approved by the state Board of Education.
Until recently, Cervenak used the name Maryellen Lechelt and taught elementary school in Edison Public Schools, according to court records and district documents. The district unsuccessfully tried to fire her for taking part in what it called a "disgusting and unbearable" group chat during a school training session in 2014.
The case generated widespread outrage at the time.
"i like the group name 'morons,'" Cervenak, then a teacher at Lincoln Elementary School, wrote about her students, "they take the tart cart home."
Cervenak also added that she would label her lowest performing students "jesus christ, why the (redacted) did they place you with me?" according to a transcript of the chat.
She and another teacher also made numerous sexual comments, ridiculed the presenter, joked about their superintendent's sex life and suggested the district's hiring practices were based on good looks and sexual favors.
"i will be a supervisor soon -- I'm cute and blonde," Cervenak wrote.
Cervenak began teaching in Edison in 2011 and earned tenure just one month before the training session. The teachers were chatting on district-owned computers and the messages were publicly accessible to anyone who knew the name of the group conversation, according to state documents.
A teacher who was sitting behind Cervenak reported the group chat to school officials.
One of the four teachers resigned rather than face discipline, and the district filed tenure charges against the others. An arbitrator determined Cervenak was "guilty of serious misconduct" but allowed her to keep her job, in part because her record was otherwise clear.
Cervenak was suspended for 120 days and also stripped of a scheduled pay increase. She argued then that the comments were taken out of context and she was mocking terminology someone else had used about "low groups" of students.
One of the other teachers was fired and another, who said less during the chat, received a shorter suspension.
State Sen. Troy Singleton, D-Burlington, confirmed that he was the one who introduced Cervenak to Murphy's administration as "someone I thought could help."
"Obviously, I was not fully aware of the backstory," Singleton told NJ Advance Media. "Obviously, I am disappointed in that regard."
He said he met Cervenak through events they both attended.
"I just wanted to hopefully bring someone with talented to the administration," Singleton said. "I'm disappointed it ended this way. But I think the administration made the right call."
NJ Advance Media Research Editor Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.
Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.