Every year, employee turnover is high in inner city school systems like Baltimore's. Sometimes, good educators leave for jobs in suburban schools that are both easier and higher paying. Other times, they leave because they're burnt out.

Sheila Eller resigned this summer from her job as a speech-language clinician at four city preschools because she was a victim of the system's bureaucracy.

Eller, who just so happens to be the sister of former state Sen. Barbara Hoffman, retired in 1999 after 23 years as a speech pathologist, most of them at Pimlico Middle School. Under a state law that allowes retired educators to be rehired in critical shortage areas, she returned the following year as a part-time teacher mentor -- until the school system's $58 million deficit resulted in her being laid off.

In March 2005, Eller says, system officials asked her to come back yet again, this time on a day-by-day basis to provide speech services, an area where the system has consistently struggled to meet its obligations to children and has gotten in trouble with a federal judge as a result. By 2006, the system asked her to work three days every week.

Eller was concerned about whether her rehiring would interfere with her pension, since technically the state's retire-rehire law applies only to teachers, teacher mentors and principals, not speech pathologists. She says system officials assured her not to worry. But those assurances were verbal, not in writing. And earlier this year, Eller got a letter from the state retirement program. She had exceeded the $39,000 earning limit her pension allows by $5,413. She had to pay the money back.

When Eller called the state, she says she was told that she needed only a letter from the school system saying she was exempt from the earning limit and covered under the retire-rehire law. But she couldn't get anyone from the system to write that letter. In fact, system officials wrote a letter saying Eller was not exempt and should repay the money. Eller learned that a handful of other speech pathologists were in the same situation, though she did not know who they were.

In her resignation letter, dated June 30, Eller wrote to the system's human resources officer, Gary Thrift: "Your choice was for the individuals to be sacrificed, rather than the system owning up to an error that never should have been made."

Well, now, the system is owning up. "Permit me to begin by apologizing for any angst that you may have experienced recently," begins an Aug. 29 letter from Thrift to Eller. Thrift goes on to say that the system will reimburse the state retirement program the $5,413, and Eller will get her money back.

"I hope that you find this news to be a welcome relief; and I want to apologize again for the frustration that you have experienced in trying to address this problem," the letter concludes. "We greatly appreciated the service that you rendered in a time of great need."

Eller is able to continue working with her students in her new job -- for one of the system's special education contractors, Care Resources. For Eller to provide the same speech services, she says, the system pays Care about twice what it was paying her when she was on the city payroll.