Dr. Kathleen Smith, who served as principal of Underwood Elementary School in Newton from 2011 to 2019, “destroyed the community,” said the President of the Newton Teachers Association, Michael Zilles. In an email to Graham and Parks parents, Zilles stated that the staff who came forward “would talk about their experience in the same way an abuse survivor would talk about an abusive partner.”
Dr. Smith was hired as Graham and Parks’ principal last year, and controversy around her hiring has been rising. “Complaints about Smith began to surface during her second year at Underwood and she was permitted to stay for another six years, resulting in a large number of experienced teachers leaving the school,” parents in a newly formed Graham and Parks Caregiver coalition wrote in a January letter to the School Committee. While Dr. Smith is currently in the midst of an investigation, her contract was renewed for the 2024-2025 school year this March.
It is unclear whether Superintendent Greer was aware of this history when hiring Smith; the 2019 HR Investigation Report of Dr. Smith’s practices, which uncovered that Underwood School “employees were in fear for their position.” Newton’s Superintendent, who should have been contacted via typical Cambridge hiring procedure, stated in an email to parents that CPSD never contacted him.
“It doesn’t seem like the district bothered to do due diligence on her hiring,” Laura Clawson, a Graham and Parks mother, told the Register Forum, explaining that the process was rushed; former principal Tony Byers announced his resignation before the start of the 2021-2022 school year, but selections for the hiring committee overseeing new candidates were only sent out that April, months later. While three candidates were eventually scheduled to be put before a community vote, by the time of the event, two of them had dropped out due to faster offers from other schools, leaving Dr. Smith as the only option.
According to anonymous statements released to the School Committee, some teachers at Graham and Parks state that they “no longer feel safe attending any meetings alone with Kathleen.” Another parent who spoke anonymously with the Register Forum started the interview by saying, “I have seen enough from the principal to know that she has a retaliatory nature, so I don’t feel safe identifying myself.”
From what caregivers can tell, she has also ended Graham and Parks’ long standing practice of having parent advisory boards during educator hiring processes. This has resulted in at least two teachers with problematic records being hired. “My child’s physical boundaries were violated by a teacher,” one anonymous parent told the Register Forum. “That teacher also said something highly inappropriate while doing that.” After being removed from their old school, this teacher was hired under Dr. Smith.
Since these complaints, Dr. Smith has taken some steps to enact change. She has worked to reinstate intern classroom aides after complaints at her removal of them, and has created Community Circles to attempt to remediate staff and family issues with the school climate. Families have also praised Dr. Smith’s focus on racial equity—African American caregivers had some of the most favorable responses to the School Climate Survey.
Regardless, some parents are still unconvinced. “To move forward with Dr. Smith, this principal would have to take a major commitment to pro-restorative practices,” Clawson told the Register Forum. “But right now, what we see is the opposite. And that just makes me feel like—can there be an answer with this leadership in place?”
This article also appears in our April 2024 edition.
