Graham & Parks School needs a new principal, and our education leaders need to act on it now
The Graham & Parks Elementary School is in crisis. In just 18 months, our principal, Kathleen Smith, has divided and alienated staff, students and families and thrown our community into disarray. More than 100 caregivers signed a petition outlining concerns over her leadership. Yet, for more than 100 days and counting, Smith has ignored the petition. The city hired an outside law firm to investigate after learning that a prior employer, Newton Public Schools, found Smith created a “toxic work environment” at Underwood Elementary and G&P staff members anonymously reported mistreatment. Parents have flooded the district and the School Committee with complaints. Multiple G&P staff members have filed formal complaints. Yet our city leaders have not stepped up.
Smith is the wrong person to lead Graham & Parks, and we demand immediate action from superintendent Victoria Greer and the School Committee to prevent Smith’s contract from automatically renewing March 31. Greer and her team have minimized our concerns and defended Smith in the face of strong evidence that they failed to properly vet Smith. Similar stories have emerged of botched principal hiring across the district under Greer’s leadership. As a global education hub, Cambridge can and should hire leaders who bring people together and elevate our students – not leaders who divide, alienate and diminish the community they serve.
In 2019, more than 30 current and former teachers and staff brought a complaint alleging Smith engaged in a yearslong pattern of bullying and intimidation at the Underwood School. Newton Public Schools issued a report finding that Smith had created a “toxic work environment” and recommended the school find new leadership. Smith left the district weeks later. The investigation report described accounts of “harassment and intimidation,” “retaliation against staff members who disagree with her,” “explicit or implicit threats” and “inappropriate and manipulative communication about staff members.” According to the Newton teachers’ union president, Smith “used intimidation as her supervisory technique.” As a result of this mistreatment, many teachers – the people who teach our children how to be kind and treat each other with respect – left the school.
Weeks prior, Newton settled a federal lawsuit accusing Smith of disability discrimination and retaliation for an astonishing $315,000. How many teacher raises, classroom supplies, paraprofessional salaries and student enrichment programs could have been funded with that money?
Greer and assistant superintendent for elementary education Michelle Madera hired Smith despite this documented history of failed leadership. The district claims to have a robust reference check process, but when we emailed the Newton superintendent who supervised Smith, he told us that nobody from Cambridge contacted him.
Unfortunately, Smith is continuing her toxic leadership approach at G&P. As the Cambridge Education Association union president Dan Monahan confirmed to Cambridge Day, staff members have experienced “retaliation and retribution.” (“Graham & Parks principal draws an investigation when parents see echoes of problems in Newton,” Feb. 7.) She has wrongfully disciplined excellent and well-respected teachers at G&P, and some are considering leaving the school. Some teachers have filed formal complaints, but others will not speak up because they fear retaliation.
We are aware that some staff members are having a good experience with Smith. But when there are credible allegations that Smith is continuing her pattern of mistreating teachers at G&P, it is a weak defense to argue that she is not mistreating all of the teachers. Nor is this the inevitable discomfort that comes with positive change, as others have suggested. Instead, we are experiencing the chaos of bad leadership, which makes positive change impossible.
Smith’s response to caregiver participation at school has been hostile. She has ignored a petition from 116 caregivers (now 127) to restore basic democratic norms to the school. She stonewalls caregivers and engages in intimidation tactics such as calling district officials into meetings without notifying caregivers. She accused a parent of trespassing and threatened to call security on another. When caregivers ask questions in public forums, she often won’t answer them. She has ignored the district practice of including caregivers on hiring committees. She is dishonest with caregivers. She could not manage to attend a single family breakfast, a twice yearly tradition at G&P to showcase student work, for her first year on the job.
Greer and Madera have not taken responsibility for the negligent process for hiring Smith – the same hiring practices that the School Committee criticized in Greer’s most recent performance review. Instead, Greer and other district leaders have attempted to cover up their mistake by throwing their full support behind Smith and minimizing our concerns. Greer has not responded meaningfully to our petition, and she refers to us as a “small yet vocal” group. District leaders are at meetings, speaking on Smith’s behalf and shutting down caregiver questions.
In an ideal world we would wait for the investigation to wrap up before weighing in. But we have not received assurances that the investigation will be complete before the contract deadline, and the city is under no obligation to share the report with Greer before she makes the contract decision, so we feel the urgent need to speak out now. We are at serious risk of losing high-quality teachers if Smith stays for another year. We also believe Smith has lost the confidence of enough caregivers that true repair of our community is impossible as long as she is at the helm.
Graham & Parks is in crisis, and we need help. We cannot endure another year under Smith. Some of our School Committee members have been responsive, but we urge every member to act with the urgency this moment demands.
If Smith’s contract is renewed, the message will be clear: Cambridge welcomes failed leaders forced to leave other districts and will defend them even as they alienate and divide the community they serve.
The G&P Caregiver Coalition
Members of the coalition are school parents who say they need anonymity because they fear retaliation from administration members. The senders of this letter say it has been approved by more than 40 members.
Something I know from talking to other G&P caregivers is that while it might seem like there’s a lot here in this letter, it’s barely scratching the surface. But the biggest concern is always for our amazing educators — and they need protection from someone with a documented record of retaliation.
It is a sad comment on the state of our schools that a principal whose mandate is to educate our children refuses to engage with 127 parents and caregivers who came together for no purpose other than to make Graham & Parks a better place for everyone.
As the Newton report and investigation make clear, this antidemocratic impulse is part of a long pattern going back years. It is not an isolated complaint. It is Smith’s leadership style.
Newton already decided it could no longer afford to keep Smith employed. Why should Cambridge get stuck with other cities’ problems?
It makes no sense to connect a decision on Principal Smith’s contract renewal to the results of the outside investigation. The investigation is looking into legal and policy violations only. It is not looking into whether Smith is doing a good job, or whether she is right for the community – nor should it! Alienating, dividing, and losing the trust of the community (or a large portion of it) does not violate any law. Nor does refusing to lead, to articulate a vision for our school, to engage with parents, or to divide professional staff into an in-group and an outgroup.
Whether Smith is a suitable leader for G&P is a question we as a community, and CPS leaders, need to answer now. We cannot hide behind an investigation of limited scope to answer that question.
Thank goodness for the wonderful, thoughtful, conscientious, and truly dedicated teachers who have remained throughout this crisis. Seriously. Thank you.
Dr. Greer’s ineffective leadership and poor hiring process is to blame for the crisis at Graham & Parks. The hiring process was botched from the beginning – Dr. Greer waited until the last possible to moment to post the job (by the time she began many other Districts had already given out offers to candidates), and we were left with a terrible pool of applicants. The job application did not even mention our school’s project-based learning focus, and, unsurprisingly, did not attract candidates with knowledge of that pedagogical approach. Parents and teachers raised the alarm at the time about these issues with the hiring process, and Dr. Greer ignored their concerns. Then, she presented only one candidate to the community: Dr. Smith. Even though Dr. Smith’s pattern of creating a toxic workplace and retaliating against teachers was well documented, Dr. Greer failed uncover it during her vetting process.
The situation has also given parents G&P a disquieting view into the way Dr. Greer deals with her mistakes: she doubles down and does not fix them. We are now dealing with the catastrophic outcome of a bad process. Dr. Smith transformed a school that was a warm and welcoming environment into place filled with tension, where teachers are afraid to talk to parents, teachers and staff are crying at school, parents feel unwelcome in the building, and teachers Dr. Smith doesn’t like feel targeted, unsupported, and under resourced. Our amazing staff and teachers are trying to shield the students from this chaos, but we know that many of our beloved, experienced staff will leave if Dr. Smith stays on. Hiring one new principal to replace Dr. Smith is a manageable project; hiring 6 or more high quality teachers to replace the ones Dr. Smith will drive away from the school if her contract is renewed is a Herculean task.
Parents are holding out hope that Dr. Greer can recognize her mistake and tell Dr. Smith her contract with not be renewed by the March 31st deadline. If Dr. Greer refuses make this simple correction – and time is running out – the School Committee must remove her. No superintendent should double down on a bad hire like this. The School Committee must buy out her contract effective immediately before irreparable damage is done to G&P and across the District.
Congratulations to G&P for being recognized for highest growth overall in mCLASS literacy assessment for K-2 (including highest growth for students who had ‘well below’ on the fall assessment, and highest growth for students who received Intervention) in CPS! Our teachers, literacy coach, interventionists, and Dr. Smith should be proud of this accomplishment.
As a soon-to-be CPS elementary school parent, I have to admit I’m totally perplexed by all the coverage of this story, including in the Globe today. It’s incredibly unclear in story after story what is actually being alleged of Principal Smith.
This letter is a great example: a lot of vague euphemistic statements, but few concrete complaints. Can someone in the comments at least anonymously fill in a bit more of the detail to help outsiders to the Graham and Parks community make any sense of this?
As far as I can tell, the only serious complaint alleged here about Smith’s behavior at G&P is that she’s not letting parents continue participating in teacher hiring? I could see many good arguments that parents are not those best positioned to be making good HR decisions for their children’s schools.
Many of the other complaints seem to be along the lines of “she’s not as accommodating to a subset of busybody, overbearing parents as past principals were.” I could also easily see that reducing the role of busybody helicopter parents, with no direct expertise in education, in the educational policy decisions made at a school, and instead giving more of that authority to trained experts (e.g., the principal), could in fact be a great net positive for educational quality for the average student.
Is that what the real complaint is here that the vague euphemistic language is masking? Is this real malfeasance or a subset of particularly busybody parents pissed that their ability to intrude into the policy-making authority of CPS staff is being curtailed?
@lu55 Before this principal, parents didn’t strike me as particularly overbearing on how the school was run. My daughter was there for 3 years (she’s in middle school now), had wonderful teachers, and parents seemed pretty happy and fairly chill about how the school was run. G&P was much better at day-to-day communication with parents than my daughter’s previous school, which was very nice.
As far as I can tell the general unhappiness with the principal is at least partially coming from teachers (and see also the last section of https://www.cambridgeday.com/2024/02/07/graham-parks-principal-draws-an-investigation-when-parents-see-echoes-of-problems-in-newton/), and I suspect the parents are responding to that.
The information from the principal’s Newton tenure suggests that the issue is indeed with her.
Well lu55, it seems like you already have you very strong opinion, and that you didn’t truly read the letter.
You already called a group of very concerned parents “busybodies” and you decided we are all helicopter parents.
Congratulations, you are qualified to work under Superintendent Greer at CPS.
If you truly cared about anything, you would learn that Principal Smith has created a toxic environment at G&P, exactly like she did at Underwood.
She creates division in our school where groups of teachers and parents don’t speak to each other out of fear and distrust.
Some experienced and well-loved teachers are considering leaving G&P because of her.
None of that happened before she came to the school. So you can believe in a cosmic coincidence, or you can open your eyes and see the causality.
And your professional statement that parents should not be on the hiring committee, well, this is how things are run at many schools. The final decision is always the principal’s, but a good principal values community input.
If you truly care to learn the facts, reach out and we can give you many more details. but if you already decided that this group of busybodies should mind their own business (and that their kids’ education is NOT their business), then have a wonderful life.
lu55: Email [email protected] and ask for a copy of the complaint filed against Smith by multiple teachers, and the report that Newton Public Schools that concluded she created a toxic work environment. You can decide for yourself whether those complaints are too “vague” and “euphemistic” for you. While you’re at it, ask yourself whether CPS itself would have hired an outside law firm to investigate only vague, euphemistic complaints.
These are serious issues with actual consequences, in the form of human suffering. Your remarks are misguided.
@lu55 You’re absolutely right! Very little specific is alleged in this letter. It’s an opinion piece.
I’ll give two examples:
1) School councils are elected public bodies. My understanding is that Smith assigned members to it, rather than holding an election. My understanding is this is a felony under state law, no different than if the city manager assigned people to the city council, or the governor to the state legislature.
2) The SIP budget, recently released to the school community, was mostly stipends and other payments to insiders, lavish conferences for the same, food, and similar. That’s perhaps legal, but misappropriation of public funds. Those should go to classroom supplies, field trips, and other things which actually help students. And it’s supposed to be drafted together with parents.
There are a lot more specifics, but it’s not clear a letter like this needs specifics. That’s more for the investigation and for investigative reporting.
The bigger problem is that many of these problems are district-wide. The difference is the G&P has activist parents who knows when things are going wrong and organize. It’s not unique to there.
Unfortunately, the use of the word “caregivers” in the title “GP Caregivers Coalition” is misleading and disrespectful to the students, their parents, mothers and fathers and guardians. The term caregiver usually refers to someone who works in a hostice or other end-of-life facility, a nursing home or institution caring for people who are chronically unable to care for themselves; not students who are just starting out in life. What is the problem with the terms “mothers” , “fathers” or parents and “guardians”? In common parlance we usually say, “Did you get a note from your mother?” regarding
school absences or, to be more broad without becoming meaningless, your parent or guardian? Since these students aren’t in a hospice or institution why mischaracterize their status or mislead readers about their identity?
eliza, I agree with you about the fact that better titles exist, but this is the terminology chosen by CPS. When I went to pick up my daughter from middle school (so not G&P), I was greeted by “Oh, you’re ***’s caregiver”.
There is nothing disrespectful about that. “Caregiver” encompasses all families and guardian types since it is defined as “a person who provides direct care (as for children, elderly people, or the chronically ill)”.
See here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caregiver
Unfortunately this is a group of white parents whose persistent opportunity hoarding has crowded out the voices of black and brown families for nearly two decades. The truth? They’re upset because this principal is prioritizing equity for a school that is ranked in the very bottom of the district for black and African American children. When white power is threatened, you can expect white tears.
@Caregiversandchildrenofcolor I’m really saddened to read your comment because it’s exactly what Principal Smith has sought to make people believe about the Coalition but it is not at all rooted in reality.
The Coalition is not all white. Yes, many of us are white. But it is a more diverse group than you suggest.
Furthermore, your comment speaks to the harmful way this district, and Principal Smith, has weaponized the language of equity to silence voices–of all backgrounds–who are invested in the real work of breaking down historical barriers to Black, Brown, English Learner, and special education student success.
If you want to have this important conversation, I’d welcome it and would encourage you to email the coalition at [email protected] . We are eager to connect and share experiences, perspectives, and talk about what we think supporting all students for more equitable learning conditions and outcomes can and should look like.
Toward that end, I encourage you to look into the conservative right-wing investments and roots of MCAS/standardizing education in the name of “equity” in MA. The Pioneer Institute is an important player in this story, and has clear ties to the Koch Brothers:
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pioneer_Institute_for_Public_Policy_Research
https://pioneerinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/PNR-548-MCAS-NAEP-Accountability-WP-v04.pdf (2024 white paper promoting MCAS as a tool for equity when it has done little to actually move the needle on closing entrenched “achievement gaps”)
and their work goes beyond education: https://commonwealthbeacon.org/uncategorized/pioneer-institute-letter/
I’ll just add that I don’t understand why folks who are quick to dismiss the Coalition and question their motives are so quick to also overlook the fact that, as confirmed by the head of the teacher’s union, Principal Smith has been actively retaliating against staff members that she does not like, making their already difficult jobs all the more difficult. These are people working directly with scholars on a daily basis. Experiencing real harm.
Can equity work not be done without creating a safe, supportive, and warm environment for our educators and scholars?
The research is pretty clear: equity-minded leadership MUST invest in creating safe, supportive environments. Smith is incapable of doing that for our educators and scholars. And she is going to drive educators out of our school if she stays much longer.
relevant reading: https://www.doe.mass.edu/edeffectiveness/equitableaccess/default.html
@caregiversandchildrenof color
What do you mean by prioritizing equity?
Were the Black (nb) and African American students being penalized in some way? If so,
why was that happening? Were the teachers
discriminating against those students? Do you think the teachers at the school were or are racist?
If the principal is now prioritizing equity for those students, doesn’t that mean that other students will not receive what the Black and African American students are receiving? If so, do you consider that racist?
I know a student “of color” at G&P. Her parents have told me that she is getting an excellent education. They are hoping to send their other children there. Of course, these are only two parents. Perhaps, for some reason, there was no racism involved in their situation.
Wow caregiversandchildrenofcolor, so you know all the members of the Coalition and know that they are all white? Because they’re not.
And just like anyone else who has only feelings but zero data, you focus on the messenger and not the message. Even if it was a group of white parents – so what? Does that automatically mean they’re wrong?
How about you try to learn some of the facts?
Do you claim that fewer adults in the class is only good for white kids? Children of color will not benefit from a 2nd adult in the class?
How about hiring only inexperienced teachers while pushing experienced ones out? How does that help children of color?
Or maybe the toxic work environment helps children of color thrive?
Learn the facts. Read the Underwood report or the lawsuit in which Newton Public Schools had to pay $315,000 because of Kathleen Smith.
And while you’re doing some homework, try to find a single piece of evidence that she helped increase equity at G&P. It’s very easy to claim that this is your goal, but where are the results?