Lynn school employee claims administration singled her job out for elimination

LYNN – A longtime Lynn schools department employee – who the state Civil Service Commission ruled was unfairly let go and then ordered the department to reinstate her – says she has been put into a position where she makes nearly $200 less a week and doesn’t get any benefits.Holly Shorten, 45, a lifelong Lynn resident and Classical High School graduate, said Superintendent of Schools Catherine Latham told her she was being laid off in June 2010 because there wasn’t enough money to pay for her position as confidential secretary to the district’s director of Special Education.”It’s embarrassing,” Shorten said about being laid off after working for either the city or school department since 1985. “Financially, definitely, it put a strain on my husband to work a lot of extra overtime ? It took a lot of opportunities away from me. We bought the house eight years ago with two incomes ? That made it hard.”Shorten, who was reinstated in June, said her layoff left her feeling “like a criminal.””I get different things said to me,” Shorten said about her return to work in the school district. “Like, ‘you are all right,’ like I cracked up.”Shorten believes Cheryl Meninno, Administrator of Special Education for the school district, singled her job out for elimination because the Lynn mother worked under the previous Special Education Administrator Daniel Driscoll.Shorten claims Meninno yelled at her and took away all of her duties, and then transferred her out of the department before she was ultimately laid off.”I knew it was coming,” Shorten said about when Latham told her she was laid off. “I told the superintendent I expected this and I did. She (Meninno) had moved me. My job duties were completely taken away from me. I didn’t know what was going on.”Shorten prided herself on dealing with parents of special education students before she says Meninno took that part of her job away from her.But Meninno on Thursday denied Shorten’s allegations.”None of it is true,” Meninno said in a telephone interview. “It’s too bad people have to go to these extremes.”Meninno said she had suffered a stroke and was not even in the office when Shorten was laid off and insisted they had a “fine working relationship.”But Driscoll, the former Executive Director of Special Education for city schools, said he believes Shorten was “pinpointed out to be moved by somebody who didn’t appreciate her.”He raved about Shorten’s job performance when she was his confidential secretary, saying she was “wonderful with people, with her duties and with her responsibilities.””She was the best (confidential secretary) that I’ve ever had,” he said.Driscoll said not only did Shorten work well with parents, but she had a great understanding of the department’s budget and he wonders why anyone would lay her off.”She was a math major at Salem State,” Driscoll said. “I had a $27 million budget and she could look at a spreadsheet on the page and tell me if it was $4 off. She is an absolute marvel.”Shorten’s attorney, William Appel of Lynn, said he filed a complaint with the state Civil Service Commission because the school district didn’t follow commission rules when they discharged her.”The common knowledge is you can’t lay off a civil service employee, that is incorrect,” Appel said during a recent interview in his Washington Street office in Lynn. “You can lay off and fire civil service employees, but you just have to do it according to the law. But in this case, they didn’t give her any of her rights.”In its decision issued in April, the Civil Service Commission ruled that the school district acted improperly by not allowing Shorten to “bump” other employees – the practice where more senior employees can take the jobs of less senior employees if they’re facing a layoff.The commission ordered the Lynn School district to “restore (Shorten) as an employee of the School Department” and pay her “all appropriate retroactive pay and benefits.”But Appel maintains school district officia