A Wrongful Termination Lawsuit
The former district clerk of the Springs School District is planning to sue the district, asserting that she had been wrongfully terminated and suffered “extreme emotional and psychological stress” resulting from a “hostile work environment.”
According to a copy of an Oct. 27 notice of claim obtained by The Star, Fran Silipo, who served from 2002 to 2015 as the Springs district clerk, is seeking $1 million in damages. The Springs Board of Education is named in the notice, as is the school superintendent, John J. Finello.
The notice states that “this hostile work environment came to a head when a FOIL request came to Ms. Silipo’s desk regarding invoices paid to an architecture firm.” Ms. Silipo states that she was “repeatedly told by Superintendent Finello to find documentation related to this request that Superintendent Finello knew did not exist.”
In an interview at her house yesterday, Ms. Silipo said the request involved a resolution authorizing the district to pay an architect who had been hired to study the school’s space needs and design plans for a possible expansion. She said she was told “to do whatever she could do” to find the resolution.
The school board president, Liz Mendelman, has since acknowledged the board did not pass such a resolution, and has called it an “oversight.”
They “were very upset about the FOIL request and being accused of not following the proper protocol,” Ms. Silipo said. “I was completely freaked out, because I knew [the resolution] didn’t exist.” She told Mr. Finello there was no such resolution, she said, but “they were insisting that I find it, and when I did not produce the document . . . it was two weeks later that they decided that I should not be the district clerk.”
Ms. Silipo said in the notice of claim that her remaining work responsibilities and records access as Mr. Finello’s secretary were later taken away from her, calling it “retaliatory conduct.”
“I was so humiliated and so degraded . . . I wasn’t a part of anything,” she said yesterday. “I questioned [Mr. Finello] in writing many times about my job description. I literally could have given myself a pedicure at my desk. It was a total waste of district money. I was given nothing to do. When I asked for work it was ignored, or I was told someone else was doing it now.”
Both Mr. Finello and Ms. Mendelman said yesterday that they could not comment on the litigation and referred questions to their attorney, Adam Kleinberg, a partner with the Carle Place firm Sokoloff Stern.
“This is a frivolous claim, and I look forward to proving that,” Mr. Kleinberg said.
The role of district clerk is a one-year appointment that is made by school boards at their annual reorganizational meetings. While the Springs School Board was within its rights to appoint someone other than Ms. Silipo to the job, she said she had never been given a negative performance review, had no reason to believe she would not be reappointed, especially since her name had appeared on the meeting agenda as the anticipated appointee, and said she has never been given a formal reason why the school board made the change.
Ms. Silipo, who is being represented by Steven A. Morelli of Garden City, has taken two leaves of absence from the district since losing her district clerk post. She took a one-week paid leave in July after the school board appointed a different district clerk, and is currently on a second leave of absence, this time unpaid, after suffering a stroke on Oct. 29 that affected the right side of her body.
Ms. Silipo said her doctors told her that the stroke was caused by work-related stress. Through physical and occupational therapy, she has regained the ability to walk, but remains unable to drive.