Manalapan: Teacher admits drinking at Pinebrook school

PLEA DEAL: Substitute faces 5 years in prison, must forfeit teaching license

A substitute teacher who showed up in a Manalapan elementary school drunk pleaded guilty to a lone charge of endangering the welfare of a child and will forfeit her teaching license as part of her plea agreement.

Mary J. Kaminski, 54, of Eagle Way, Middletown, admitted to Superior Court Judge Francis P. DeStefano she had started drinking alcohol on the morning of Dec. 5, 2007, and that she arrived drunk to sit in a fourth-grade classroom at Pine Brook Elementary School in Manalapan.

Kaminski admitted she put the kids at risk of harm by her actions.

Kaminski was called in to the Pine Brook Elementary School to fill in for an absent teacher, but her bizarre behavior in the classroom prompted several students to seek out school Principal Michael D'Anna.

The students reported Kaminski fell out of her chair, had difficulty in getting up and was generally acting erratically. He immediately went to the room to investigate.

The subsequent investigation found that Kaminski had hidden the alcohol in a coffee mug that she carried around the classroom.

Kaminski became a certified elementary school teacher for students from prekindergarten through eighth-grade in New Jersey in 1986 through a reciprocal agreement with another state and recently retired from a school in New Jersey.

Kaminski faces five years in prison when she appears for sentencing on May 23. She remains free on $25,000 bail.