The Vail-Deane School - Elizabeth & Mountainside, NJ Why Employers Should Think Twice Before Hiring Former Vail-Deane School Faculty Members Mountainside New Jersey

 I have a question about the drug abusing bus driver and his nasty girlfriend, later wife, that worked at that accursed school. Their name was Gibson. They treated me terribly. After I left the school a Vail-Deane teacher who was friends with my mother told us that the reason the Gibsons were so impossible was probably because they were active, unrepentant, habitual drug abusers.

Both were in their 30s at the time, not kids, but a grown man and grown woman and both were violating the law in their use of illegal substances - then he was DRIVING CHILDREN on a bus. Over the years, every time I meet up with a former Vail-Deane teacher, and I've met up with three of them, I asked about the Gibsons, and the former teachers ALWAYS say, "Oh them, they were on drugs! Everyone knew it!" So apparently the entire faculty of that place knew they were on drugs - and that the man was driving kids on a bus!

Didn't anyone stop to think that there could have been an accident and it might have resulted in dead kids? It's outrageous beyond belief! Why weren't they fired on the spot and stopped if everyone knew? I want to know what was going on there that all those other adults knew drug abusers were driving a bus and did nothing whatsoever to put a stop to them!

Why was EVERYBODY covering up for those two insufferable born losers? And may I add that I fully agree with whoever first wrote this report - employers REALLY ought to think twice about hiring ANY jerk who has "Vail-Deane teacher" on their resume. Those who cover up the drug abuse of a school bus driver can't possibly be decent people and certainly aren't worth anything.

Far too many stories are coming out about sick situations in private schools because for some reason, probably because they don't have the higher standards of public schools about hiring teachers with the right qualifications, they let the wrong kind of people in the doors.  DIG A LITTLE DEEPER!  And don't think pedophiles are only always men either....

I'm not sure if what I'm about to say here has any relevance or not. I don't want to mention names but in light of the way the Pingry School was found to have child molesters on the faculty I do want to just put this out there. One lower grades female teacher who was at Vail-Deane and ended up later working for other private schools was very, very strange. She was always shaking her upper torso - and the protuberances she had up there - in people's faces, including in children's faces. She talked like she was trying to sound like Marilyn Monroe in a seduction scene from a bad movie. If I had to put a soundtrack to her jiggling and wiggling it would be boom-boom-va-va-voom. This was in the 1970s and I hear she stayed at the school almost until it closed. I can't say for sure what all of her gyrations were all about. Did she just have an odd way of walking and talking or was she deliberately trying to be seductive? Was it was the latter? Someone should have looked into whatever was going on with her, I always thought so. If she was trying to be seductive around little kids, to what purpose? Again, I have no proof of anything but it's hard not to wonder when you consider some of the stories that have come out about other private school teachers.  I thought of this just the other night and a lightbulb went off in my head.  Maybe she was a predator.

This is what I'd like to know, and what I have wondered for decades about Vail-Deane: How do the Vail-Deane faculty members STAND themselves?

Truly, how do they do it?  How can these sadists stand themselves?  How can they wake up in the morning, knowing they're nothing, absolutely nothing, but child abusers, and face their own visages in the mirror?  How do they justify their disgusting and appalling behavior? 

It may not have been all of them but it was enough of them and it was sick.  My parents were literally paying for abuse by sending me to that school.  I was constantly told what a low-life I was, consistently treated as if I would never amount to anything, put down, sneered at, treated horrifically.  My parents weren't paying for that, but that's what we got.  It's a violation of a sacred trust parents and students give to teachers when teachers treat the children as badly as that.  The only reason I've ever been able to come up with for the hideous way I was made into a scapegoat there is that my mother and father weren't impressed with the place and weren't giving Vail-Deane piles of money like some of the other students' families.

I agree with the report on here.  I would be extremely cautious at hiring anyone who worked at Vail-Deane because it was a bad place run by a sick regime.  This is especially true of those who worked at Vail-Deane in the 1970s.  Sick places don't become sick places without plenty of sick people to run them. 

I'm very happy to hear Mr. Morgan is no longer among the living.  Among his many other scams I understand that he had an unholy arrangement with a child psychologist where he would feed parents a line their child had "a problem," refer the children to a particular psychologist - and then get a kickback.  He was a terrible man.  His middle name which he would never reveal turns out to have been Johnson which, given its slang connotations, was perhaps the only thing about him that was appropriate!  :-) He should have been kicked in his middle name.

Ding dong, Mr. Morgan's dead! 

I am writing this for every student of that hideous Vail-Deane school and any other school where Morgan worked whose life was impacted for the worse by Vail-Deane's sick drunken headmaster Jesse J. Morgan, Jr.  He's dead, he's gone, he's off the planet, and he can't do anything to any of us any more, ever! Pingry trained him.  Let the devil now claim him!

The reign of terror is over!

But let his life be a lesson to you, if only of a bad example of what not to be.  If you live your life the way he did, the "legacy" you'll leave behind won't involve tears of sadness by those who remember you when you're gone, just tears of a profound amount of relief.  I'm glad the world is rid of him and he can't hurt any more families and children with his drunken disregard of anyone else's rights or dignity any longer, ever!  So long, Scumbag!  Pardon me if I'm not in mourning for the likes of you! 

In the 1970's of course there were less than ideal situations at this school.  It was run by a drunkard who belonged in psychiatric treatment.  He had no business running a school, let alone hiring teachers, several of whom were less than ideal people, or trying to influence students.  He belonged in the Betty Ford Clinic.  When he got out of the Betty Ford Clinic he should have been placed in a sheltered workshop run by Goodwill Industries for people without any brain cells left since he had destroyed them all.  I have never understood how he got the job in the first place or why no one tossed him out on his ear when they saw what he was like.  It's an atrocity to let such a man lead a bunch of children.

The first report is clearly about Vail-Deane in the 1970's.  I remember very well the girl who was hit in the face with the pie.  A bully wanted to cut her hair as a prank.  The administrator said he'd be expelled if he did that so he said what about a pie in the face and the administrator said she hadn't heard that.  The teachers were ALL outside along with the students on the last day of school cheering on the bully when he threw the pie - to cheering. 

The administrator had a screw loose and so did several of the other staff members.  The headmaster was a drunk and that might explain why the standards of the place were so low and why he hired such bottom feeders to work there.  I think he was not looking for teachers, he was looking for drinking buddies.  Well he found them!

I would definitely hope that anyone who plans to hire a teacher with Vail-Deane on their resume finds this report and reconsiders.  DO - NOT - HIRE!   Several of the teachers I had there (though not all) were nothing but glorified child abusers.  I've often wondered where the worst of those teachers are now and how they manage to live with themselves. 

I can't tell if the writer of this report is much younger or much older than me but this report does not sound anything like the school I went to for 7 years.  I just happened upon this report when doing a search for something else and I have to say it perplexed me.  I am glad to see that it doesn't seem like much attention was paid to it because it would be a terrible shame if some of the people who were teachers during the time I attended the Vail-Deane school were denied employment because of it.  I have fantastic memories of most of my teachers from that time.  To this day I consider some of them to be the smartest, coolest, most inspirational and just plain finest individuals I have had the opportunity to interact with in my life. 

I have never heard the stories about the girl who had a pie thrown in her face nor the teacher who was fired for having a relationship with a student.  These things sound so unbelievable to me but since I do not have first-hand knowledge about them I will not speak to them.  The only thing that sounds remotely familiar is the drugged-up bus driver.  I remember a bus driver who may have been from the south who was very fired-up and preachy; in fact I think he WAS a preacher.  Yes, he was scary, but he was a busdriver.  I never considered him a teacher nor did I pay him much mind.  Other than him I do not recall EVER being spoken to about nor guided into any particular religious or spiritual ANYTHING.  The best teachers I had at Vail-Deane, and there were several like this,  ALWAYS encouraged us to explore the world and think for ourselves. 

I am sorry your experience at Vail-Deane was so traumatic.  I feel very lucky to say this was not the case for me.  I have old classmates who I am sure would agree with me.  Of course there is no perfect school nor person.  We all had our own traumas and challenges, mainly because, well, we were teenagers.  I have a tank full of other positive things I could say about the school but since it is no more I guess it would be pointless.  My only hopes here are that prospective employers would not automatically write an ex-Vail-Deaner off just because they are an ex-Vail-Deaner and that any ex-teacher who might happen upon this report would know that this is not how many of us remember you.