The Sayreville (N.J.) school district’s board of education unanimously voted Tuesday evening to uphold the suspension of five football coaches due to a hazing scandal that emerged earlier this month.
Head coach George Najjar and four other assistants, all of whom are tenured teachers at Sayreville War Memorial High School, were suspended with pay beginning last Thursday, according to NJ Advance Media’s Vernal Coleman. Board President Kevin Ciak said the suspensions, which are indefinite, were “consistent with an ongoing and not-yet-completed investigation,” per Coleman.
According to Brian Amaral of NJ Advance Media, the board will not file tenure charges against the coaches while the investigation is ongoing. The board also reduced each coach’s stipend for coaching duties.
That wasn’t the only story of note to come out regarding the Sayreville hazing scandal this week. On Monday, Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey told CBS 2’s Christine Sloan that he’s weighing whether the seven players charged with sex crimes—all of whom are juveniles—should instead be tried as adults.
“We look at the seriousness of the crime. We look at the history of the juvenile involved—as in the defendant. Is this a first-time arrest? Has anything like this happened before?” Carey said. “We also take very seriously the wishes of a victim in a case like this.”