Congratulations and thanks are in order to Andy Levin and Jonathan Dame at the Newton TAB for their persistence in fighting for the public’s right to read the investigator’s report examining how Newton Public Schools handled to two anti-Semitic incidents at Day Middle School more than one year ago.
A new version of the report, redacts only names as is appropriate and paints a troubling picture of the way the school’s principal, the superintendent, school department and ultimately the school committee has responded.
“What is clear from my interviews is that there was no investigation that day or subsequently by either [redacted],” [investigator Ray] Shurtleff wrote in regards to the October graffiti.
“In fact, the incident was apparently treated as just another graffiti event that didn’t require any further discussion or review,” Shurtleff continued. “Given the horrendous nature of the words, it is difficult for me to understand why there was no investigation.”
Read the newly released less-redacted report here.
And for reference, here’s what the original report looked like.
Finally, here’s a TAB editorial about the report’s release.
I just read the story in the Newton TAB. I found it disturbing that the School Principal failed to take action and even more disturbing that the School Committee and/or Superintendent were not far more transparent in releasing the Report findings in a timely manner. Many lessons to be learned here.
The BIGGEST lesson learned by anyone working in the NPS is that you can do something like this and instead of being terminated you will be promoted.
Joanne,
He wasn’t exactly promoted…but he does remain the 12th-highest-paid city employee.
Thank you to Jonathan Dame for that parting gift – you will be missed! and to Andy Levin. Your persistence in getting this important document brought to light is important to Newton and highlights why local investigative reporting is so necessary.
Thanks Andy, nice work.
I have to say how disappointed I am in everyone involved. For some, I didn’t think I could be even more disappointed in him than I already was.
This will be their legacy. Their legacy wont be improving the school system with FDK or later start times in high schools, but it will be for redaction, racism and plagiarism. Nice example to set.
Just remember it’s the School Superintendent and School Committee that allows the former Principal to continue in a made school position as the 12th highest paid city employee. Time to elect a NEW School Committee this fall.
Andy- He wasn’t actually demoted either! The point is that he didn’t get fired. Do you think in the “real working world” if you or I did this we would be able to keep our jobs?
It is my opinion Brian Turner should have been let go. I did state that in a column a month or so ago.
It should be noted that last spring, both Newton South and Newton North had cuts to major departments due to budget shortfalls, leading to larger class sizes across the board this year. The money that went toward Brian Turner’s specially created job could have helped to reduce class sizes instead of protecting someone who should be out of a job.
Thank you Newton Teacher.
It blows my mind how our priorities have changed. It’s scary.
And where are our mayoral candidates on the issue? Why will our future be any different??
It blows my mind that we are protecting Mr. Turner with a highly paid position for him, while our schools suffer with increasing class size, cuts to SPED, etc. It also baffles me why we think Mr. Fleishman is a great superintendent . . . between protecting Mr. Turner and plagiarism, I do not think he is a great role model for our students.
What does it say to our students, who we expect to speak out to administrators when our students experience hate speech, and Mr. Turner is protected by Mr. Fleishman. It says to the students we protect our own. It doesn’t encourage students to speak out when they see something wrong, and that is the wrong message to send to our students.
My understanding is that there’s supposed to be a notification process in place for potential bias incidents to be reported to the police and potential district administrators. That obviously didn’t happen in this case.
I haven’t heard any information on whether this process actually exists at Day. Was it just not followed? Or was it never set up?
Either way, the most immediate concern is making sure that all of our schools have this process formalized and that staff are trained on the proper chain of information.
@Bryan: From the TAB’s synopsis of the report..
One might presume that “Redacted” refers to Turner, although we don’t know that for certain.
@Bryan – how much “notification process” is required for a principal to pick up the phone and call the police? He had staff telling him that something needed to be done, and he refused to do anything. If he had a question about how it should be handled, he could have called the superintendent’s office and asked. It’s not rocket science.
@Greg: Absolutely, something clearly went wrong that the MOU was not followed. But to me, that just highlights our lack of an internal process to ensure leadership understands their role in this process, that there’s a process for staff to report up, that central administration, the school committee, and the mayor receive these reports in a timely manner.
To be clear, I’m not defending anyone involved. I just think that we need to be thinking about this not only as a personnel issue, but also need to be reviewing our procedures to ensure this can’t happen again.
What will occur, I hope, is an evolution from a “Memorandum of Understanding” with the police to concrete policy with protocols for incidents of this type: pick up the phone and call NPD, determine whether school families should be notified (in certain circumstances they should be) and, this is key, what is the “remedy” for the incident. I think a lot of this will be spelled out when the School Committee next meets.
The problem IMHO is a systemic problem with Communication within the Newton Public Schools.
Look at the Superintendent speech issue – had the Newton South Paper not made it public we would have never known.
I have seen how communication can become poor – example Newton North – When Jen Price was Principal we were Constantly Notified – the past 2 years – communication has been not as forth coming at all.
They can make as many Memorandums as we want – but it starts at the top – The Mayor, the SC and Superintendent. If they are not communicating appropriately do you think their principals will ? Good Luck changing that culture.
The only reason that the Mayor is asking for further evaluation on this issue is that he is running for Governor and wants to clean up his resume.
This story is so disturbing, and even more after being reminded by the tab of how much these people make. Why do we elect people for administrative positions like registrar of deeds, comptroller, treasurer etc, but the superintendent can treat us like #@%^ and not be held accountable? And where is the mayor in all this? Aren’t we entitled to a response? Thank you Tab folks for bringing this to light, and please don’t let go of this story.
What Joanne said.
It’s all about a lack of accountability by the School Superintendent and School Committee. It appears the majority of the School Committee never requested to even read the Report. Why did they allow for the Principal to be given a soft landing at the Ed Center? I will be voting for a new School Committee this Fall.
@Peter: It’s one thing to say you will vote for new school committee members but as you know, you actually need candidates to run for that to be possible. Although we have a few committee members leaving (Hills, Pitter, Dector, if my memory serves me right), I’m not aware of any challenges to sitting incumbents. Are you? Is anybody?
If not how exactly do you plan on carrying our your plan?
Well said @Joanne.
Here was a real opportunity that the Charter Commission missed, or perhaps, never even considered. There is no strong reason for the School Committee to have representation by Ward.
If there were 8 open seats, and as of this election cycle, there are more than 8 candidates, let the top 8 vote getters be elected.
The current system is by Ward.
So at the moment there is no contested race in Ward 1, Ward 2, Ward 4, Ward 5, Ward 6, Ward 7 and until a candidate(s) announces for Ward 3, that seat is uncontested, or could remain empty.
There are 2 candidates who have announced they are running for the open seat in Ward 8.
So, even if the concerned voters wanted to see change on the School Committee, it’s not going to happen in time for the 2017 November election.
Unlike City Council, where citywide voting is not the case for the ward city councilor, School Committee is voted on by the entire city. I don’t see any reason in our present climate why we need 8 ward representatives on the School Committee. They do not work for or vote by neighborhood. If you look at Brookline, there are less than 8 seats, and a rolling years of terms. It is very difficult that we have voting every 2 years for a new SC. It takes almost 2 years for a new member to get acclimated to the committee.
Reading the report, I’m struck by the strong language the investigator used, referring to a “high level of incompetence and insensitivity” more than once. One gets a sense of his incredulity at the lack of response, lack of reporting upward (if not to the police, then to the superintendent’s office), and treating this like any other incident of graffiti.
In addition, it’s made clear that the Day administration wanted to cover up this occurrence, saying “… didn’t want faculty to know because some of them are parents and then other parents would know”! I find this appalling.
I urge people to read the report. It’s impact goes beyond what you get just reading summaries. And I’m stunned that so few School Committee members requested to read this.
@Jo-Louise- Newton = City. Brookline = Town. Not comparable. You want people from each ward on the SC so you have a better chance of the members understanding the issues pertaining to their ward’s schools.
The new poorly conceived Charter proposal at least left reasonable SC representation. The rest, however…very bad. Don’t let them reduce the value of your vote. Don’t allow the blatant raw power grab to succeed. Vote NO.
Why are people so confident the police need to get involved? As a student who went through the Newton Public Schools, I can promise there is loads of racist, misogynistic and yes, anti-semitic graffiti in bathrooms and scrawled on desks in practically every Newton Public School I’ve attended. Isn’t this a matter best left to the internal disciplinary process of those schools, kept between students and teachers rather than escalated to the level of criminality? There is a broad nation-wide trend of involving police forces in public schools for discipline, and this discipline typically ends up occurring along racialized and classist lines. Newton should not go down that road.
Turner was wrong to marginalize the teacher’s questions, but was right not to immediately assume the police had to be involved.
@NPS Alum – I might agree with you if there were any sign Turner tried to deal with it internally. However, if you read the report you’ll see it’s clear that the Day administration’s goal was to bury it and keep anyone from knowing this had happened.
Just so we don’t miss the forest for the trees, let’s remember that the coverup here is even worse than the crime. The School Committee and Mayor need to be held accountable. Our local government must be more transparent. Matt Hills should have faced a recall long ago, but unfortunately our Charter does not provide that option. And I’ve lost a lot of respect for Setti Warren, who has been nothing short of Hills’ accomplice, and completely failed to protect the publics rightful interest in this matter.
Interesting points, Charlie Shapiro, but no longer relevant. Elementary schools that were in neighborhoods and housed 300 – 325 students are being replaced by extra large schools that will house up to 525 students. Both the new Angier and the new Zervas are in Ward 5, so by your thinking, we should have 2 SC seats so that both of those schools can be fairly represented.
I’m not sure if you follow enrollment and buffer zone application as closely as I do. Enrollment is up, and students who might live in a neighborhood that for many years was a Countryside school, can now be going to Angier or Zervas or Countryside depending on physical capacity / number of classrooms. Similar buffer zones are being created for Franklin / Horace Mann, and Bowen / Countryside / Mason Rice. There are 8 seats, and 13 elementary schools, but there is no need for 13 School Committee seats. We can agree to disagree. The School Committee is working on high level projects, not neighborhood size issues. They are working on policy changes, budgets, facilities, social emotional curriculum, the arts, etc. Newton is big, and getting bigger. We need intelligent leadership on the School Committee, and it is really unfortunate that the same candidates get re-elected because there are not enough contested races. The Brookline SC members terms end in 2017, 2018, 2019, not like in Newton, where every 2 years, everyone is up again. I really like these bios of the Brookline SC: http://www.brookline.k12.ma.us/Page/370d Brookline is plenty big, even if it is a town, and we are a city. Currently, my alma mater elementary school, is poised to house over 1100 students, and where there were 8 elementary schools, the town is building a 9th.
NPS alum – Just because an incident is reported to the police doesn’t mean a student ends up in the court system. We need these protocols in place so teachers and students know the facts surrounding an incident. I’m sure you remember how quickly rumors spead and grow in high school. We’re all at our best when the facts are known and the rumor mill is shut down.
I, like NPS Alum, wonder why the police are involved in incidences that aren’t crimes and abhor the criminalization of high school students around the country. It’s absurd, and to me an offense that warranted firing , that a principal not only did not follow protocol but claimed to not know it exists.
Jane, are you saying without the police involved the NPS wouldn’t be able to keep the teachers and students informed of the facts around such incidences? I was assuming this was a single outlier and that the administration, principals, teachers and staff always report problems and keep the rumor mills at bay. How does calling the police add to this process? It would make more sense to me that principals would call the superintent’s office immediately and let them decide if the police need to be called. This principal didn’t even do that.
Well said NPS Alum. There’s no place for the police in these incidents. They have better things to do.
MGWA- Agreed, they should not have tried to bury it. That’s the sin.It would have passed as foolish middle school acts, not monstrous activities by future KKK.
Side bar: As a baby boomer in the Newton Schools, I was in chronically overcrowded classes and every single desk I sat at had multiple swastikas carved into them. Many lockers too. Some kids felt comfortable with very bigoted language… often.
There’s no question we live in a very different- and better- world. Bigotry is no longer socially accepted. But some kids are excited by the forbidden fruit and shock power of bad words and and try it out as a moment of power. They don’t need police, they need the helpful understanding of adults around them. Teachers, principles, guidance counselors.
Posted while DWB
Needs to be reported to the police, in part, to protect the city against liability.
Interesting Andy. Is that the legal consensus? In case someone actually takes action against Jews and we find that the kids at Day were in on it?
I’d like to know the other good reasons to bring the cops into a middle school for this ugly foolishness.
Posted while DWB
Andy, are schools required to call the police over other actions that require discipline or is it just for hate speech? How does having the police involved protect the city from liability?
Greg, I heard that the Ward 2 School Committee seat will be contested. It’s also early but I do know of some potential candidacies. At least we know for sure that there will be 3 new School Committee Members and hopefully more. It’s a start.
First of all It’s important to understand that the Newton police and the schools work as partners to help kids who need it. No one is out to get kids or make their lives more difficult.
That being said, hate language and incidents are against the law and must be reported to the police. It’s not as though kids are held accountable for their actions only the day after they graduate from high school. They need time to learn there are real consequences to bad behavior and what the consequences may involve
The schools, the police, the fire department, and myriad social services are responsible for keeping ALL kids safe, physically and emotionally. It’s a team effort, and every department needs to be a part of that effort.
I strongly recommend that anyone who hasn’t read the entire MOA between the NPS and the NPD do so. It will answer a lot of questions being asked here.
Jane, I’m not sure you are right about the illegality of hate speech.
Marti, hate language and incidents *may* rise to the level of a hate crime. According to the MOA, all hate crimes or *suspected* hate crimes are mandatory reportable events. That doesn’t mean a crime definitely occurred; that’s what the police to determine.
Personally, I think police involvement is critical. If this incident proves anything, it’s that school administration is clearly not in a position to determine what is or isn’t a serious incident worthy of investigation. Furthermore, police have far more information than the schools do about criminal behavior.
What if a seemingly isolated incident to the schools is actually part of a pattern of violent and/or bias motivated behavior?
And regardless of whether you think there should be an MOU with the police, the fact is that there was one and it wasn’t followed.
Tricia, I understand the MOA requires reporting to the police. I’m questioning whether it should. Clearly all school personnel need a refresher course on the protections of freedom of expression, both its general legality and how it applies to students.
Immediately reporting hate speech to the police, both pure speech and symbolic speech, tends to criminalize the speech not discipline the behavior – writing graffitti on school property.
An incidence of hate speech is best handled by bringing attention to it rather than attempting to suppress it—by encouraging speech that points out how out of place the hate speech was in a community that values the dignity of all.
NPS needs to recognize free speech rights but also provide a means for its community to respond. That did not happen.
Marti, have you taken the time to read the entire MOA? It covers a lot more than just actual or suspected hate crimes. Also, did you see the report in the TAB a few weeks back regarding the number of incidents at schools across the city that were reported to the police in the past year? These things are happening, and being dealt with, all over. The reason that this blew up at Day is not just because it wasn’t reported to the police – that was probably the least of it. The issue was that it wasn’t dealt with within the building, and because it wasn’t reported to the district or the police, as required by the MOA, it would have stayed that way if it weren’t for the teachers & parents who pushed it.
@Marti – to add to what Tricia wrote, it’s particularly telling that the reason it was kept from teachers (who definitely should have been told) was because some teachers are parents and they might tell other parents. In other words, not only wasn’t it dealt with, there was an active attempt to hide it.
Tricia and mgwa, I have read the MOA and the report but I’m confused about your replies. I’m not sure you read my comments. I have clearly acknowledged the way the principal hid the incidences was a firing offense and certainly the worst part of what happened at Day.
“It’s absurd, and to me an offense that warranted firing , that a principal not only did not follow protocol but claimed to not know it exists.”
“hate speech is best handled by bringing attention to it rather than attempting to suppress it”
Marti, my comments were in regard to your repeated questioning of why the police are (or in this case, should have been) notified of possible hate crimes – “Clearly all school personnel need a refresher course on the protections of freedom of expression, both its general legality and how it applies to students.” I really don’t see how that statement applies to this situation at all. What freedom of expression is being infringed upon when the police are notified of anti-Semitic or racist graffiti? And the MOA clearly states that infractions of school rules/regulations should be handled within the school as school disciplinary matters. But when there is an incident that may rise to the level of a crime, that should not be kept in house.
Marti – As a teacher, I’m not in a position to assess the legality of an incident or how it should be handled beyond the classroom. That’s why the schools work in partnership with the police, and I can attest that the partnership is a very positive one in which everyone tries to do what’s best for the student involved in the incident and the larger school community.
@Marti – I don’t equate calling the police with arresting a kid nor with suppressing speech (particularly the graffiti in the bathroom, which involved defacing public property, which is not protected). There are legitimate reasons to want the police to be aware of hate incidents, including wanting to track the numbers over time to see if there are trends.
One problem with ignoring bullying and hate speech in schools is that kids don’t learn that there are consequences to their behavior while they’re minors. Behavior that gets ignored in schools can get you fired or arrested once you’re out in the world. Better for our children to learn while they’re still in school that these are actions that can lead to police involvement (which they would if they occurred in a park on or someone’s house).
mgwa, I don’t know how you could read my comments and perceive that I think that bullying and hate speech should be ignored. I don’t. In addition, I have already said that the kids should be diciplined for writing graffiti on the wall.
I understand that the police need notification to be able to spot trends.
Jane, as a teacher I would only expect you to report what you saw or heard to whomever the protocol requires.
Tricia, it has to do with hate speech alone being protected speech and not a crime.
@Marti – this has been a long thread. I’m sorry if I missed some of what you wrote, or forgot the attribution.
Let me clarify my comment, a school adminisrator isn’t in a position to assess the legality of an incident.
I’d second mgwa’s second paragraph. We do kids a service when we teach them the consequences of their actions before theyleave high school. Every spring before graduation, the high schools experience what are called “senior pranks”, some of which in the past have been patently illegal. At a late point in their HS experience, a small number of students learned a very tough life lesson. In recent years, the HS’s have been proactive in explaining the boundaries, and consequences of crossing the boundaries, to students. Everyone’s been better off for it. The teaching/learning about hate incidents is in the smae vein, but about much more important issues.
Over the last two months, I’ve spoken publicly about the partnership the schools have with the police and various other city departments. We’re very fortunate to have a police department that wants to be proactive in preventing the escalation of consequences for students, and that sometimes means early intervention.