School district leaders in Cambridge are keeping on for now the principal of the Graham & Parks School, despite a recent lawsuit alleging disability discrimination that adds to years of turmoil. On Thursday, the last day Kathleen Smith would be given a nonrenewal notice for her position, a Cambridge Public Schools spokesperson said there were no immediate signs a change was coming.
The district was sued in November by a volunteer who says Smith blocked her from assignments because she uses a wheelchair, and that officials backed that decision.
That case is still in court, and district officials cannot discuss litigation or active personnel matters, spokesperson Jaclyn Piques said. There was a basic fact she could address: District staff’s to-do list as of Thursday does not include finding a next principal at Graham & Parks.
“We’re hiring for principals at CRLS and FMA currently, along with two assistant superintendent positions, but the position at Graham & Parks has not come across my desk,” Piques said. “Smith is scheduled to be the principal for next school year.”
A couple of School Committee members contacted for this story confirmed that they were unaware of any imminent change at G&P. But one, Elizabeth Hudson, also pointed out that the superintendent makes change at his discretion, and a renewal date passing without notice is not more meaningful than in any other hired role.
A renewal date passing “does not constrain the school from coming to a negotiated agreement,” Hudson said, speaking to general management practices. She pointed to district rules against discussing legal and personnel issues and said that a lack of public notice is only that – and can’t be read as “no action is being taken or is being contemplated.”
Fourth year of turmoil
Graham & Parks is a 323-student elementary school at 44 Linnaean St., Neighborhood 9.
Smith arrived at the school in 2022 as a hire by former superintendent Victoria Greer, who was ousted in 2024 by the School Committee in part due to complaints about hiring practices.
Some Graham & Parks parents were upset to learn details about Smith that they felt should have prevented her from being hired. They found that in a previous principal posting in Newton schools, Smith was investigated and found responsible for creating a toxic work environment, leaving the system shortly after the report’s findings became known. A group called the G&P Caregiver Coalition said another toxic work environment was gripping their own school.
An external investigation into Smith in the first several months of 2024 found there wasn’t “credible evidence” of toxicity at G&P, said David Murphy upon replacing Greer. Yet in retaining Smith in August 2024, he also announced a series of measures to heal the school, including a “town hall” meeting, small group discussions with staff and parents and placement of a special adviser on campus to watch over it.
Discrimination lawsuits
There is another echo in the filing of discrimination lawsuits. Smith was involved in one in Newton that led to a $315,000 settlement to a teacher with fibromyalgia; the filing in Cambridge in November was by Sarah Heine, a 12-year volunteer who said she was frozen out of assignments by Smith, according to reporting by Claire A. Michal in The Harvard Crimson. CPS made a motion to remove references to the 2019 discrimination lawsuit in Newton and 2024 investigation in Cambridge, but a judge rejected it, the Crimson said in February.
An email that is part of Heine’s legal complaint shows Smith telling district officials that because Heine is in a wheelchair, Smith was blocking her class assignments as she’d been advised to do for substitutes “that have not created a safe learning environment for students.”
In a response email included in the complaint, district director of equity Leslie Jimenez Sandoval is shown thanking Connie Moniz of G&P for “blocking Sarah Heine.”
A lawyer for Heine declined Thursday to speak about the case or related topics.
School council member resigns
The lawsuit was cited in a Thursday resignation from the Graham & Parks school council, which is made up of administrators and staff, teachers and parents. Lilly Havstad, a recent candidate for School Committee whose son is in the third grade at the school, had been on the council for two years after becoming distressed over Smith’s approach to leadership.
“This spring I learned of the lawsuit filed by a beloved member of the G&P community,” Havstad said in her letter, continuing:
“I cannot in good [conscience] continue working with principal Smith based on what the lawsuit reveals about her and her values. I know I am not alone in feeling strongly that principal Smith is not a good fit for our school, and I believe the lawsuit makes that extremely apparent. As one G&P educator said to me, distraught over what happened to Sarah Heine, if we are to celebrate and value diversity at G&P, then we must expose our children to all kinds of people of all kinds of backgrounds and abilities, and to actually value all the ways our diversity brings us together through our shared humanity. To block Sarah Heine from subbing and volunteering in our school on the grounds that she is in a wheelchair does not align with our school’s values. It does not align with mine.”
Havstad wrote that she was resigning “with sadness and frustration that after four years under Smith’s leadership, our school community is broken with no pathway to healing in sight.”
The school has sunk to the bottom of the family choice system from the top in Smith’s four years, Havstad said, and has seen frequent turnover, including four assistant principals in as many years, social workers, teachers and paraprofessionals.
“It makes me really sad what’s happened to our school under principal Smith,” Havstad said. “I am at a loss as to what our school district leaders think they are accomplishing by keeping bad actors around.”
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