Tony is a founding Part­­ner of the firm, and has over thirty-five years of experience representing boards of education. Tony's experience includes representation in the following areas: administrative and PERC hearings, arbitration grievances, special education, budget appeals, budget and cap waiver appeals, all aspects of State and Federal mandates, State funding and school consolidations, board meetings and drafting and reviewing board policy, reviews of seniority lists and personnel matters, design of personnel policies, and negotiation of contracts of all types, including labor agreements.

 

Tony also provides legal opinions on all areas of labor relations and school district operations. Tony serves in several different roles in the area of collective bargaining or contract negotiations, including chief spokesperson, labor strategist, and salary and benefit consultant. He also participates on negotiations committees. He has experience assisting and directing negotiations with employee groups, consulting with administrators, human resource specialists, and operations managers, preparing agreements, letters, reports, and other correspondence as needed, designing and developing salary policies, salary guides, and scattergrams, handling all grievances, arbitration, fact-finding, and mediation sessions, and preparing and representing the district before tribunal agencies and courts concerning negotiations and labor relations.

 

In addition to representation of school districts, Tony teaches various courses in the certification program for School Business officials conducted by the New Jersey School Business Association.  He also served a term as Acting County Counsel for the County of Essex, supervising a staff of approximately 20 attorneys and functioning as the principal legal representative of the County of Essex. Tony conducts workshops, seminars, and in-service programs for board of education members and educational professionals on all aspects of education law.

 

Early in his career, Tony was Assistant Counsel to the New Jersey School Boards Association.  He was also Assistant Director of the Office of Compliance and supervised the Compliance Investigation Teams in the Camden, Jersey City, and Hoboken School Districts.  In this role, he supervised and directed the legal, fiscal, and educational audits of school districts that experienced difficulty in satisfying the monitoring criteria of the Department of Education.

 

Prior to his admission to the Bar, Tony served as a high school guidance counselor and as a science teacher for eleven years. In addition to his law degree and graduate degrees, he also completed an advanced Certificate Program in Labor Relations and Negotiations in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, focusing on collective bargaining, and contract administration and interpretation. In 2006, he received his Doctorate in Education from Seton Hall University. Tony has successfully completed training as a Mediator with the American Arbitration Association.

Education

Seton Hall University School of Law, J.D., 1981; Ed.D., 2006
Cornell University, Certificate in Labor Relations and       Contract Administration, 1995
Montclair State College, M.A., 1975
Rutgers University, B.A., 1972; M.S. 1976

Bar Admissions

New Jersey, 1982

U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, 1982

Memberships

American Bar Association

National Council of School Attorneys

New Jersey Association of School Attorneys (Treasurer)

New Jersey Public Employer Labor Relations Association

North American Association of Educational Negotiators

New Jersey State Bar Association

Essex County Bar Association

New Jersey Superintendents' Study Council

American Arbitration Association, Mediator