Danvers Schools Leadership Changes Talk, Possible Vote Scheduled

DANVERS, MA — The Danvers School Committee will meet for a "discussion and potential vote" Thursday night on new leadership after the district said Superintendent Lisa Dana was taking a leave from her post after 17 years on Tuesday.

The agenda for the meeting includes an executive session and said the move will be for "temporary changes to the administrative team."

The past 18 months have been difficult on Dana and the district with a long list of hate and bias incidents on school and town grounds. Among the challenges facing Dana were investigations into accusations of racial and homophobic locker room hazing within the high school boys hockey team, charges that Dana and the School Committee were not transparent enough during the multiple investigations into the hockey allegations, graffiti including three swastikas found in middle school and high school bathrooms and the temporary suspension of the high school wrestling program after an investigation into a fight among wrestlers revealed a team Snapchat group that included racial slurs.

Dana resisted initial calls for her to take a leave when graphic details of the hockey accusations were revealed last month but admitted at a subsequent School Committee meeting that the incidents and public backlash were hard on her and her staff.

"When the recent media created a firestorm of opinions that we legally aren't allowed to comment on it became an increasingly difficult situation," Dana said during a Dec. 13 School Committee meeting. "One that has taken a toll on students, staff and me, as well as a community as a whole.

"As the superintendent, I understand attacks are going to come my way, and — right or wrong — I've tried to shield my team from them while also making changes. For the protection of my own mental health, I quickly had to learn not to look at the social media comments, while at the same time take a critical look at how the situation was handled."

The School Committee met in executive session and chose to take no action on Dana, while issuing a collective statement that the "community has been traumatized."

The town has issued several joint statements from school and town officials about the disturbing string of hate incidents — most recently about "reprehensible" homophobic graffiti found at the Pickering Street softball field — and made clear the issues facing the town go well beyond the schools and Dana's leadership.

"We are acutely aware that this most recent incident fits into a broader pattern," officials said after a second swastika was found in a Holten Richmond Middle School bathroom within a week last month, "both within our schools and within our broader community that includes allegations of racial profiling at a local business, an apparent noose left outside a local church, an investigation into racist and homophobic behavior last year by student-athletes, a Confederate flag flown in our downtown as part of a political rally and a swastika discovered in the woods behind the middle school.

"We want to be clear in our condemnation of these acts, actions and allegations. Individually, they are ugly, unacceptable and have no place in Danvers or any other community. Collectively, they are proof that there is much work to be done."

Dana touted the district's efforts to create adult workshops to discuss anti-racist curriculum in the elementary schools and a six-week Intergenerational Holocaust Symposium as recently as last week in one of her weekly communications with the school community.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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