LODI — The Board of Education on Wednesday night accepted the resignation of an employee who was unnamed but widely known throughout the district to be Douglas Petty, the former schools superintendent who was arrested last year on an assault charge.

A resolution added late to the agenda, calling for the board to accept the "Sept. 30, 2022 resignation of employee 5106 and related settlement agreement,” passed 5-1, with three trustees — Jocelyn Anderson, board President Nancy Cardone and Vice President Sharon Salvacion — recusing themselves.

The decision was met with applause from the crowd of students, parents and teachers at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, where the meeting was held. Several board members joined the cheers with loud claps from the dais.

No school official would confirm that the unnamed employee was Petty.

After the vote, trustee Yadiria Jimenez read aloud a letter she said was given to each board member that night in the packets.

The letter, from an anonymous writer who signed it “parent, concerned citizen and domestic violence survivor,” referred to the arrest of Petty, who was superintendent at the time of the incident.

Petty was arrested and charged with simple assault in August after allegedly punching a woman in Seaside Heights.

An affidavit of probable cause obtained by The Record and NorthJersey.com said Petty, who was hired by Lodi in 2019 after working as a principal in Newark, was charged with assault by “purposely, knowingly or recklessly causing bodily injury ... by striking the victim with a closed fist in the head.”

Weeks later, in September, the board placed an unnamed employee on administrative leave and appointed Lodi High School Principal Frank D'Amico as acting superintendent.

A Seaside Heights Municipal Court employee confirmed this week that a decision had been reached in Petty’s case on April 11 but did not provide details. The court did not respond to a public records request on the case’s outcome before publication.

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“As a parent of a child in the district, I find it unnerving that there is a possibility of giving this man a second chance,” Jimenez read from the letter. “Would other parents agree to have a known abuser running the district? How could children be taught that bullying is wrong when their superintendent was found guilty of that exact thing … Think of the message you’re sending the community and please reconsider Douglas Petty’s resignation.”

After reading the letter, Jimenez thanked the people who came out to the meeting.

“Your presence has made an impact,” she said. “When you unite, you can make a difference.”

The Lodi Education Association, in a statement put out before the vote, asked community members to email trustees urging them to accept Petty's resignation.

"Lodi Superintendent Douglas Petty has been found guilty of assault in an act of domestic violence against a woman," the statement read. "This behavior has no place coming from someone hired to oversee our schools, let alone one who is in a profession that is predominantly occupied by females ... It's clear he's not what's best for Lodi."

Trustee Alfonso Mastrofilipo, who voted against accepting the resignation, said he did not have enough information to make a decision.

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“I just found out again there’s more information as a board member I’ve never seen,” he said. “So my vote is no because I’ve never been given any information from this board, so I’m not going to determine someone’s career off of that.”

On Thursday, Mastrofilipo, who said he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of the board, said the previous night's decision was a revisit of an April 3 vote at a special meeting, in which the board blocked the resignation in a split vote.

Mastrofilipo said he could not disclose the person’s identity because “by doing that I would be violating the confidentiality of that employee.”

He said he wasn't informed of the details of the settlement agreement with the employee.

"I wasn’t told any monetary value," he said. "You can't just throw things at people to make decisions with no facts in front of you."

Calls and emails to other board members and to Petty’s attorney, Raymond Raya, seeking comment were not returned.

During the same meeting, Salvacion stepped down as board vice president and nominated trustee Laura Cima, who will take over the role.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Lodi NJ school board accepts superintendent's resignation