A judge will likely allow a Montgomery County school librarian who stole $101,000 from a Gaithersburg community to serve her jail time this summer and get off with no criminal record so she can keep her school job.
Between 2003 and August 2006, Jill Delisi, 46, used her part-time position as the Bennington Community Association bookkeeper to suck dry the community’s coffers after its board of directors increased community member fees by 17 percent, according to court documents.
Since then, Delisi has pleaded guilty and is now selling her house in Mount Airy to pay back what she stole, her attorney, Patrick Senftle, told The Examiner. On April 11, she was shipped out of Brown Station Elementary School in Gaithersburg, but Kate Harrison, Montgomery County school spokeswoman, declined to comment on her new post. Delisi had been serving as a media assistant in the school’s media center, the modern-day school library.
Delisi has been banned from Bennington by a restraining order and many children from the community attend the elementary school.
Earlier this month, Montgomery County Circuit Judge Eric M. Johnson said he will grant Delisi probation before judgment so she’ll have no criminal record and sentence her to jail over the summer so she won’t miss work.
“If we can put you in a position where you can keep your job and make payments, the better it’s going to be for you and your victim,” Johnson said at the time. While Delisi prepares to sell her home, she’s paying Bennington $100 a month, Senftle said. She’s already paid $10,000 of the debt from her savings and $50,000 using the community association’s employee-dishonesty insurance, though she must repay a portion that, too.
Senftle said he blamed Delisi’s decision to become a thief on an “intense desire to be economically independent.”
A second sentencing will take place June 27, 10 days after school ends. She’ll likely be told she’ll be spending a brief stint in jail.
“If the court treats this like a criminal case … she’s going to be a felon,” Johnson said. “The school system is probably going to fire her and there goes your restitution right out the window.”
