After deferring an evaluation Tuesday that could have decided the fate of Victoria Greer, the school district superintendent, the Cambridge School Committee has set itself up for a dramatic turn from March to April.
The controversy that drew nearly 30 residents to speak against Greer at the meeting – the employment of Graham & Parks elementary school principal Kathleen Smith – will be decided by Greer on March 31, when Smith’s contract expires and may be renewed. The timing of an external investigation of Smith ordered by the district is unknown despite the looming deadline.
Two days later, April 2, the committee votes on a $268.3 million budget that remains roiled by the question of higher pay for classroom paraprofessionals. A hearing held as part of the meeting was filled with speakers saying the district is not paying a living wage.
The committee deferred Greer’s evaluation to the same day, April 2.
“We wouldn’t be here for long enough, so we decided to load it up,” member Elizabeth Hudson joked dryly after Tuesday’s three-and-a-half-hour meeting. “We can stay here all evening.”
Member Caroline Hunter recalled a session in the 2000-2001 term that kept the committee in chambers from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., and she shuddered at the idea of beating the record.
Yet the committee agreed unanimously at the start of the meeting, before a house packed with speakers prepared to explain their disappointment and anger around Greer, to defer the evaluation. Mayor E. Denise Simmons made the motion without explanation, but she, Hudson and member Richard Harding explaining the thinking later: “We have three new members,” Simmons said, and with the committee just seated in January, they wanted more time to assess the work Greer has done. (Harding and Simmons have served on the committee in years past and have returned; this is Hudson’s first term.)
“There has to be sufficient time to have the right conversations,” Harding said. “Hopefully we can come even better prepared to speak to not only how we think we’ve done over the past nine months, but also how we think we can do better moving forward,” Hudson added, calling a referendum on Greer also a referendum on the district.
The members said they expected to hold a closed-door session to discuss “what we believe the future leadership needs to look like, needs to be like and what we can invest in moving forward for the kids,” Harding said.
Diminishing evaluations
The notice for that executive session could offer a clue if it’s truly for an evaluation, or negotiations of a departure for Greer.
Her tenure began as interim superintendent in July 2021, stepping in for Kenneth Salim when he stepped down two years before the end of his contract. Greer’s position was made permanent Feb. 2, 2022, backdated to Jan. 1. Her contact runs through June 30, 2025.
A 2022 evaluation of Greer deemed her “proficient,” while the 2023 evaluation by the committee aired some of the first official criticisms, ranking her overall performance as “needs improvement.”
Problematic hiring processes
There were more biting criticisms of Greer during public comment about “botched hiring practices” and a lack of transparency and community engagement, items that speakers noted were listed as areas of improvement from the previous evaluation – one that cited problematic hiring processes at the Fletcher Maynard Academy and the Morse School. That evaluation also worried that “buy-in from staff is lacking, and some feel mistreated. [There are] questions about the effectiveness of the superintendent’s management style in keeping, inspiring and working with the leadership team to improve our school system,” but survey results released recently showed well-being among district educators, administrators and staff under Greer as dragging along the bottom ranks of school districts nationwide.
Parents say that’s a problem at Graham & Parks too, in part because the principal’s past is repeating. The hiring of Smith had “major issues seemingly missed or inexplicably ignored by Dr. Greer, Dr. Madera and HR,” resident Laura Clawson said, referring to how a previous probe into a “toxic” work environment and legal settlement was uncovered by parents and not Greer, assistant superintendent for elementary education Michelle Madera or the district human resources department. The hiring was “rushed,” didn’t “include the community” and resulted in “a single candidate at the eleventh hour,” parents said.
An inhumane process
The audience was filled with angry G&P parents. Yet several of those spoke to the “inhumane” feel of the meeting – Cambridge Education Association president Dan Monahan agreed – with person after person rising to criticize the person sitting quietly at the far end of the room.
“This doesn’t feel like a humane process. And I feel a little bait-and-switch by the change in topic,” said Dan Farbman, referring to the committee’s vote to delay the evaluation. “I feel a little bit as if the caregivers are being asked to speak when the School Committee has chosen not to speak. And it’s a little hard.”
Still, he had criticisms. “We should be hiring the very best,” Farbman said. Instead, “the lack of community engagement, the lack of trust, the lack of a sort of transformative, real vision for what education should be in this district frankly, I think, reflects badly not only on the district but on the School Committee.”
Tense, sad and angry
Parent after parent spoke of feeling betrayed by the district’s lack of response to calls for help from within Graham & Parks and the messages that flowed from it that seemed to belittle their concerns. “They don’t want to hear from us. They want us to sit down and be quiet,” parent Becca Lester said. “People who are trying to make our school and our district better shouldn’t be shamed and silenced and accused of having selfish motives. I think we need new leadership at the district.”
Maia McAleavey, the president of the Friends of Graham & Parks, said the situation at the school was so tense that “even a cheerful joiner like me doesn’t really want to go to community events.”
“They’re not fun. It’s tense. It’s sad … people are really angry with each other, with the district, with primarily the principal. And it’s such an uncomfortable situation,” McAleavey said. “Dr. Greer had the power to make this difficult situation easier by engaging frankly with our community from the beginning. Instead of open discussion, caregivers have been met at every turn by top-down decrees and resistance to genuine dialogue.”
There was a single speaker in support of Greer. Tara Edelschick spoke online to say that with Greer’s focus on results, “I have never felt more confident with the superintendent at the helm.”
A stronger
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Why would you hire a person to run your school system who has been here before and messed up a program and left ? I retired from the school department in January I have never seen it run so bad with incompetent people as heads of department it’s sad they keep hiring folks to do nothing and get away with it
I agree with you! A lot of bad decision-making.
She hired a 25-year-old with zero experience for a senior management position (when other more qualified candidates applied)
It looks like she is hiring friends instead of qualified people.
Amen boss210.
Greet and Smith were both fired from their last jobs and should be let go from there current ones as well. This is an embarrassment. Give their ridiculous salaries to the paras.
“make it great!” could a slogan be more tone deaf on the MAGA era?
Horrible place to work now. Everybody on edge, disrespected by the hiring of “friends”, students out of control, fights, assaults on staff/students, students in and out of the building during class time breaking security rules. We can go on and on and on
I wanted to float two ideas:
1) Promoting one of the better **teachers** to act as interim super, or working with the CEA.
2) Given the large immigrant community, hiring an administrator either from abroad, or at least who went to university in a significantly different culture (Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, or Africa), ideally one with a highly-regarded well-run school system.
The core thing we need to do is reform the corrupt, opaque culture in the central administration. For that, we want an external hire to the problematic CPSD administrative culture (which is mirrored in many other school administrations Massachusetts-wide).
Here are some notes from a phone call between a member of the GP Caregiver Coalition and the president of the teacher’s union in Newton about our new principal’s time in the Newton public school system. We have already seen this playing out in our school.
People “crawled into holes” because they were so afraid of KS.
KS hired all new people because a bunch of teachers left (either transferred or quit) due to her behavior. Within a couple of years the new people were all terrified of her.
Eventually the union got about a dozen people to talk. When they started telling their stories we thought these were abuse stories. It was awful, just awful. She would publicly shame people.
Don’t remember many specifics, but a few:
One of the reps was overweight – KS made disparaging comments about that in the open.
She would publicly shame people. It was an “abusive style of managing people – management by intimidation.”
At one point Mike told her she cannot lead by intimidation and she responded “How else do you lead them”?
People would talk about their experience in the same way an abuse survivor would talk about an abusive partner. They would sort of defend good qualities – like he beats me but at least he brings me an ice pack. On that level, it was really bad.
They didn’t know that another way of being managed existed. It was really horrific. Particularly among young staff that were just hired.
Union brought people in and they testified to us. We all looked at each other afterwards and we all agreed it was an abuse survivor situation.
Mike was a parent who had 3 kids who went through that school. They kept her career alive. He said he is “still torn apart by this – that she was allowed to continue” as a principal.
At the time, Newton had a policy that didn’t require you to be in a protected class to file a harassment complaint. So we got about 30 people to file a complaint that she had harassed them, including former teachers.
The Superintendent wanted someone to do the investigation pro forma, but we knew the HR Director didn’t like KS and she did the investigation.
Mike sat in on meetings conducted by HR Director. It was an open and shut case.
After that, she was removed from the system, and shortly thereafter the HR Director was fired too.
Mike thinks he knows what they saw in her – she was crazy about data. But that superintendent would not fire other administrators. The union tried 2-3 times but he wouldn’t do it. We chased her out and the district moved her to another school to avoid a lawsuit.
Mike didn’t know anything about reference practices.
Someone Mike respects a lot (but wouldn’t feel comfortable revealing her name and isn’t in contact with her anymore) followed Cynthia Paris to Lawrence. When she found out that Cynthia was bringing KS along, she was appalled.
Superintendent did a good job hiring people in Newton but wasn’t willing to deal with mistakes he made.
Mike is willing to coordinate with Dan Monahan, absolutely. Mike didn’t know how much Monahan was aware of the situation in Newton, if anything.
Mike would need to consult with union counsel about giving us his meeting minutes.
BUT, Mike is willing to look over his notes and send us anonymous details to help us. [We’ll follow up about this.]
Mike will also look back at people who gave testimony to the union and see if there’s anyone who might be willing to speak with us.
Many parents wrote letters / emails to the assistant superintendent for elementary education over the years but nothing was done until union filed “class action complaint” – a bunch of teachers stating she was creating a hostile workplace.
After the complaint was filed, KS was on her best behavior. But Mike believes if she had stayed, the district would have had no choice but to let her go.