From September 1977 through June 1991, Recine also taught night classes in plumbing. Thereafter, petitioner amended his petition to join respondent Recine as a party. Recine was personally served with a copy of the amended petition on August 30, 1991. Petitioner also alleges that he was not the least senior teacher in the tenure area of plumbing and should not have been terminated. Petitioner further contends that respondent Recine, by failing to challenge the reassignment and the subsequent grant of tenure, waived his right to argue that his reassignment from plumbing to diversified cooperative work study was done without his consent.
Respondents also contend that the appeal is untimely.
Section 275.16 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education requires that an appeal must be instituted within 30 days from the making of the decision or the performance of the act complained of but that the Commissioner may excuse a failure to timely commence an appeal for good cause shown. In view of this, and the fact that neither respondent has established any prejudice from the late service, I will excuse such late service. Turning to the merits, I note that ' 30.13 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education provides that, in cases involving the abolition of a position, if the individual identified as having the least seniority in the tenure area affected by the abolition has tenure in another area, or areas, he shall be transferred to that tenure area in which he has the greatest seniority and shall be retained in such area if there is another individual having less seniority than he in such other tenure area. Accordingly, Recine, whose position in the diversified cooperative work study tenure area was abolished, was transferred to the plumbing tenure area, thereby displacing petitioner. Both respondents contend that Recine continued to accrue seniority in the plumbing tenure area, after he was reassigned to diversified cooperative work study, since Recine allegedly never consented to the assignment.