Concord Elementary Art Teacher Back In The Classroom: Follow-Up

CONCORD, NH — An elementary school art teacher under investigation after a parental complaint was allowed to return to the classroom this week.

Silas Allard, an elementary school art teacher at the Christa McAuliffe Elementary School, who was removed from classes last month after a complaint by a parent about his crossdressing and the emergence of past lewd and creepy sexual comments on Twitter, was back in classes Tuesday.

On Monday, the school board held its monthly meeting, and dozens of parents and supporters came out to support the teacher as well as those concerned with the comments he previously made. The board met in a nonpublic session as part of the meeting to discuss an employee issue, but it is unknown if Allard’s employment was discussed.

The show of support for Allard, an organized effort that had been going on for weeks, started after Michael Guglielmo, the parent of a former McAuliffe student, filed repeated complaints against the teacher’s crossdressing while also having a beard, something he said his daughter found confusing. He claimed the acceptance of Allard’s clothes by the district and the school’s principal was indoctrinating “social ideology,” which was not the responsibility of the school district.

After an interaction at the school, with accusations made by Allard and Guglielmo, the teacher filed a restraining order that was withdrawn later.

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Guglielmo and his supporters arrived in Concord District Court to fight the restraining order but were told it had been dropped when they arrived. They later went to the school district’s central office unannounced to file a complaint with School Superintendent Kathleen Murphy, which led staff to pull a panic alarm sending police to the office.

At the meeting Monday, Guglielmo came dressed as Julius Caesar, saying that despite what he was wearing, he was not the long-dead Roman leader or a woman.

Many of Allard’s supporters also attended the meeting, holding signs and speaking out about the issue.

The full meeting can be found here on YouTube.com via Concord TV

After the meeting at the central office and Allard being placed on leave, many members of the Concord community rallied around the teacher, claiming Guglielmo and others were haters for raising the cross-dressing issue. He had previously been asked not to wear his F--- Biden hat on the McAuliffe campus and also made comments online that were described as threatening.

Allard’s supporters called for “love for all” and said the teacher should be put back in the classroom. Most either pooh-poohed or ignored the Twitter comments, claiming they were made by a teenager who may have possibly been under 18 at the time they were published in 2017. Allard holds a beginning educator license and a visual art education endorsement with the state. Both were issued to him in August 2021 and can only be given to adults who have finished college. The comments on Twitter were made in 2017, or when he was about 20.

Allard’s supporters were also critical of Guglielmo for his past criminal history, including shooting at police in Manchester in the 1980s in which he served nearly two decades in prison, something he had not shied away from talking about.

But they also raised issues about more recent criminal activity that remained in the public domain despite charges being resolved years ago, according to court documents.

One case involved simple assault, disorderly conduct, criminal threatening, and two sexual assault charges, after an October 2015 incident at O Steak and Seafood on South Main Street in Concord, where he was accused of pinching a teenage girl’s butt — leading Allard’s supporters to call him a child predator. Due to Guglielmo's priors and his work collecting bone marrow samples after the death of his son, which led him to become a semi-public figure, the arrest made the nightly news and the front page of some newspapers. He, however, denied pinching the girl but admitted to touching her back during the incident.

Ultimately, Guglielmo pleaded guilty to simple assault in March 2016, received a suspended sentence, and paid a $40 fine. All the other charges were dropped.

A second case, from December 2019, involved domestic violence-criminal threatening, criminal threatening, disobeying an officer, domestic violence-obstructing report of a crime-injury, and five domestic violence-simple assault charges after an incident in Manchester. Guglielmo was held in the county jail for about two months, which led to him losing his cabinetry business.

Fifteen months later, he pleaded guilty to disobeying an officer and three simple assault charges, receiving a suspended sentence and paying a $795 fine.

The lingering reports on news outlets led to a flipping of the narrative, of sorts, away from discussing what was an acceptable dress code of an elementary school teacher and whether an educator should be held accountable for Tweets as a young adult.

One of the Tweets described taking a waffle iron to his girlfriend’s vagina to engage in oral sex with maple syrup for Sunday brunch as one of his “life hacks.” Another appeared to joke about child sexual enticement, with the statement, “picking up boys 101,” and a message which could be considered grooming language written to a social media account with a picture of a boy on the lap of a man.

Patch cannot publish the more than a dozen screenshots from Twitter due to potential copyright infringement but can confirm they exist. The tenor of the Tweets raised the ire of We the People and other activists, including those who were conservative or right-of-center.

A Facebook group was then started to support Allard. Educators in the SAU 8 school system also came to the teacher's defense.

Some Facebook group members were also critical of the coverage despite it being overwhelming tilted to their side — with some of the media coverage failing to mention the specific content in the Tweets.

One commenter wrote, “(the Boston Globe) gave the haters too much voice and the article was not clear on a stance against hate … Bummer all these articles slant that way.” Another commenter replied, “Can journalists make a clear statement against hate? … I’ve had this experience with this reporter before. Her intention is to put these people on blast so everyone can hear how ridiculous they sound. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks they are ridiculous.”

The reporter, Amanda Gokee, has worked for several news outlets, including New Hampshire Bulletin, a Patch news partner. Her role as a moderator in the 2022 election cycle with NHPR drew a bit of controversy due to her previous work with leftwing outlets, including the now defunct Bitch Media, as noted by New Hampshire Journal, another Patch news partner.

Another McAuliffe parent, however, sent out an anonymous letter to the district, calling it problematic that SAU 8 appeared to lack the ability to perform thorough background checks on potential educators — including a review of social media accounts, something employers in the business community had been utilizing for years.

“Considering past incidents in the Concord school district and the Concord community, these complaints should not be dismissed,” the writer stated.

The writer noted recent cases against district employees and other residents, too, including the Primo “Howie” Leung student-teacher case, a beloved teacher and distinguished educator accused of child rape in Massachusetts and kissing a student in Concord; the hiring of Joshua Harwood, who pleaded guilty to human trafficking and possessing child sex abuse images in 2021; and the Joshua Pincoske case, a coach who faces dozens of rape and child sexual abuse image charges outside of his former college coaching commitments.

At issue, too, was the lack of an official dress code for the Concord School District — although, in some situations, students are banned from wearing certain items, such as flip-flops, due to safety issues. Some high school students have been targeted for revealing clothing — spaghetti straps on girls are reportedly still not allowed.

One student professing support for gun rights by wearing a “1776” hat was also targeted even though other students were allowed to affirm their support for liberal or left-of-center issues without investigations by the district or school board or complaints by conservative students.

In Spring 2021, a thin blue line police memorial flag was removed from a criminal justice classroom at the Concord Regional Technical Center after complaints by two students who did not attend the classes. They claimed to be triggered by seeing the flag in the classroom and on sweatshirts worn by students.

The New Hampshire Department of Education does not have a dress code for educators; the department has limited influence over issues like dress codes inside schools due to local control.

State employees in the department do, however, as an example, have a personal appearance policy that requires its employees to take pride in how they look and exude professionalism during working hours.

“To assist its employees,” the policy stated, “the department offers the following as examples of unacceptable attire: clothes that state or describe profanity, vulgarity, or illegal activities; sweatpants/jogging suits; clothing with holes or in disrepair or unclean; clothing that is unduly revealing.”

The policy was established in the mid-1990s.

On Tuesday, Murphy informed parents and McAuliffe staffers Allard had returned to his position, saying she “appreciated” all the letters and emails. After an investigation, she, however, “found the social media complaints against Mr. Allard to be unsubstantiated,” and his attire “has, at no time, been an issue for the district.” Murphy added she rejected “all forms of hatred and discrimination in our schools and community” but needed to investigate complaints with due diligence regardless of personal opinion.

Supporters of Allard were elated by his return to classes. A picture of him being hugged by students outside the school was posted on Facebook and shared by supporters.

In an email to the press, Guglielmo said he was disappointed with the decision to allow Allard to return.

“(The decision) edified the social ideology of the progressive parental minority espousing the education of non-binary sexuality to children,” he wrote in an email. “Thus, the Concord School District is allowed to teach fiction, not facts; lies, not truths, and that a man with a full beard with a shaved head in a dress is a woman, not a man. And we ‘silenced’ opposing (the) majority of taxpayers are paying for it.”

Guglielmo added, if all the parents who opposed “this educational indoctrination of the progressives' lies pulled all of our kids out of public school and homeschooled them, then this albatross of an education system we pay for would work itself out of a job by virtue of its non-sequitur ideology.”

The education department, which will not confirm whether there was or is an investigation of Allard, refused an email request for an update on Tuesday.

Patch previously confirmed the department investigator requested documents as part of the complaint and there was an investigation of Allard.

Guglielmo had also filed complaints with the state against Murphy and Kris Gallo, the principal at McAuliffe.

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