Hudson school officials suspended after personal relationship details surface

The superintendent and board secretary of the Hudson County Schools of Technology have been suspended with pay following allegations that the two engaged in a consensual romantic and sexual relationship for nearly eighteen years.

Amy Lin-Rodriguez did not disclose her relationship with Joseph Muniz, the longtime board secretary, when she was hired as superintendent in 2018, according to a lawsuit filed against the school district and Lin-Rodriguez on Friday.  At that point, the two had been having an extramarital affair for almost twelve years.

The suspensions follow a heated blowup between the two on November 25.

School officials are expected to email parents, faculty, and other employees today to notify them of the situation and assure them that the school’s day-to-day operations will not be interrupted. The Board of Education will hold an emergency meeting at 9 AM Sunday at the Earl W. Byrd Center in Jersey City and launch a search for an interim superintendent.

The situation will likely spotlight the politically charged school district, which operates five vocational and technical high schools, a middle school, a post-secondary school, an alternative school, and an early college program in Hudson County. The schools have roughly 2,500 students and over 200 teachers.

The Hudson County Schools of Technology has been an adjacent operation of North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco’s political organization; the superintendent who preceded Lin-Rodriguez was Frank Gargiulo, a former assemblyman who spent 38 years as a North Bergen Town Commissioner allied with Sacco before retiring last year.

In his first year in office, Hudson County Executive Craig Guy moved to lessen North Bergen’s hold over the schools of technology by removing North Bergen Commissioner Hugo Cabrera from his seat on the Board of Education and replacing him with Denise D’Alessandro, the director of the Hudson County Department of Roads and Public Property.

Muniz acknowledged the affair in his legal action, saying the two initially began meeting at hotels for “trysts” and that he paid using cash, and later his credit card.  He said Lin-Rodriguez, as superintendent, would arrange for adjoining hotel rooms while the two attended the annual New Jersey School Boards Association convention in Atlantic City.

He contends that Lin-Rodriguez pressured him to leave his wife, leading to “bitterness and acrimony” that ended their relationship in April 2024.   Muniz’s lawsuit says that that led to accusations of discrimination and retaliatory actions.

Muniz alleges that in 2020, Lin-Rodriguez began asking him for money and that he wrote thirty checks payable to cash – endorsed by her when she cashed them – totaling $42,000.

An attorney representing Muniz, Mark Tabakin, claims those requests were “inherently coercive” and that Lin-Rodriguez failed to disclose that income on her personal financial disclosure required under the School Ethics Act.

Lin-Rodriguez has been employed by the Hudson County Schools of Technology since 2002, first as a teacher and, from 2013 to 2018, as a principal.  Muniz joined the school district in 2004 as a purchasing agent and then became assistant business administrator in 2005; he has been board secretary and purchasing agent since 2014.

Muniz declined to comment, and Lin-Rodriguez referred questions about personnel matters to the board attorney.