Brewer committee to appeal jobless award to fired teacher

BREWER – Defending a decision to fire Ed Tech III Mary Ellen Bryner last spring amid allegations she smoked marijuana with students in an alternative education program, the chairman of the Brewer School Committee announced Thursday that the group plans to appeal a decision from the Maine Department of Labor to grant the ex-teacher unemployment benefits.

Using the same news-conference format that Bryner chose last week to announce her unemployment-compensation victory, school committee Chairman Mark Chambers called the decision made by a Department of Labor hearing officer “unfair and inaccurate.

“The inconsistencies between the unemployment decision and the discharge hearing [last April] are numerous,” Chambers said in a prepared statement.

Though he did not go into much detail, Chambers said the hearing officer “erred” in her decision and that the committee felt obliged to “fully defend the decision we made on April 18, 2003, a decision we know was right.”

Bryner, who taught in Brewer’s Alternative Choices for Teens program, was discharged after a controversial hearing. Bryner and her attorney, Jeffrey Silverstein of Bangor, requested the personnel matter be aired in public.

Twenty-five students testified over three days at the emotion-filled hearing. The committee found that two of five allegations were proved by a “preponderance of evidence,” Chambers said. Specifically, the committee found that Bryner “smoked marijuana with students in the ACT [Alternative Choices for Teens] building and that she enabled students to hide or dispose of drugs and drug paraphernalia” at times when police officers came to the school.

Bryner initially was disqualified from receiving unemployment benefits because she was fired for alleged misconduct. She appealed that decision, and recently got notice that her appeal was upheld. As her former employer, the Brewer school system would have to contribute money toward her unemployment compensation.

The school committee based its decision to appeal the labor board ruling because of concern for students rather than on economics.

If the matter were only about the “relatively small amount of money, our decision might be different,” Chambers said.

“However, it is not just about money. It is about the honor and credibility of students who tearfully and somewhat reluctantly did what they knew was right.

“Therefore we will be appealing the hearing officer’s unjust decision to the Maine Unemployment Insurance Commission,” Chambers said.

Reacting to the development, attorney Silverstein said he was “distressed” at not being told of Thursday’s news conference despite “having been there an hour previously on this very case.”

Silverstein said he was concerned, “that the chairman of the school committee conducted the press conference, shedding any semblance of neutrality” in the matter.

Superintendent Betsy Webb and attorney Richard Violette attended but did not offer comments. Nobody took questions at the conclusion.

Silverstein said the committee’s attorney would be pressed to prove its point in the appeal.

“I truly believe and am very confident the decision will be upheld,” Silverstein said.