Former director files suit against school

June 21, 2012 at 6:30p.m.

Youngstown

The former short-term executive director of Millcreek Children’s Center has filed a lawsuit against the school, citing breach of contract.

Michele D. Grant of Boardman filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court seeking unspecified damages against Developing Potential Inc. and Sister Jerome’s Schools, doing business as MCCC.

Atty. Martha Bushey, a member of the center’s board of trustees, said the board hasn’t been served with the lawsuit and declined to comment.

Grant was hired in October 2010 as the center’s executive director and was terminated “without just cause,” the lawsuit says.

She accepted the job and resigned from her position as associate director of development at the Rich Center for Autism.

Grant says in the lawsuit that she entered a verbal employment contract with the center in which she was promised that she would hold the executive director position.

“From the outset of her employment with defendants, however, it was apparent that [Grant] was to be, at most, an apprentice to then Executive Director Sr. Jerome Corcoran, and that defendants, through their executive director, had no intention of turning over the executive directorship” to Grant, the lawsuit says.

After completing her orientation, Grant was only permitted to engage in minimal duties, it says, and any of Grant’s efforts to interact with staff were met with “anger, intimidation, bullying and interference by defendants, acting through Sr. Jerome.

“Moreover, it has become apparent that, despite defendants’ representations to [Grant] to the contrary, at no time did Sr. Jerome intend to resign and relinquish her position as executive director to [Grant] or anyone else.”