Editor's Note: This report is a collaboration between NEPM and The Republican.
In a recording circulating on social media, Springfield’s departing school superintendent can be heard characterizing the family of an elected city official as “freaking scumbags.”
The comments by Superintendent Daniel Warwick appear to have been captured in a voicemail message he did not intend to leave. Warwick refers by name to the family of LaTonia Monroe Naylor, a member of the Springfield School Committee.
In the 1 minute, 56 second recording Tuesday, Warwick refers to the “crazy Monroes.”
“These people are freaking scumbags,” Warwick says in the recording.
Warwick confirmed Wednesday the voice in the recording is his.
“Yesterday … a conversation between myself and a colleague was somehow recorded. I am mortified,” he said in a statement provided by the school department, after being asked about the recording.
“The remarks that I made were the result of total frustration with some of the issues we have been dealing with to uphold School Department policies,” Warwick said.
“However, this is no excuse. It was never my intention to hurt anyone, and I would never expect it to be captured and shared. I sincerely apologize for the disparaging characterization it casts on School Committee woman LaTonia Monroe Naylor and her family,” he said.
Monroe Naylor said she was sent a copy of the recording by an acquaintance who received it in the form of a voicemail message which, based on his statement, Warwick did not intend to send.
In an interview, Monroe Naylor, who is Black, said on behalf of her family that she is appalled and hurt by Warwick’s comments. “We have to do better, and the community deserves better,” she said.
Warwick’s statement did not identify the colleague he was speaking with. The School Department did not respond to a request to provide that person’s identity.
Monroe Naylor said the woman speaking with Warwick is Kimberly Wells, the chief schools officer for Springfield Public Schools. Wells did not respond to a request for comment.
Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno called the audio “shocking and disappointing,” adding that he has reached out to Monroe Naylor.
“These comments, even out of frustration, are totally unacceptable and unprofessional, and merits an apology,” he said.
Sarno said he has called for a retreat of the School Committee with the incoming superintendent, Sonia Dinnall.
“My hope and goal is to restore the respect and harmony that we once had not too long ago and for the betterment of our public schools system. We need to move forward with a healing process,” he said.
Longtime School Committee member Denise Hurst said Warwick’s comments prove there is a breakdown between certain School Committee members and the administration.
“We have been trying to sound the alarm for quite some time — and more recently during the superintendent search, about the mistrust and the lack of the democratic process. And we've been pretty much ignored,” Hurst said.
“The only narrative that has gotten out there has been that of the mayor’s and of our colleagues who have aligned with the administration,” Hurst said. “And so when the mayor called us petulant and childish, he modeled behavior and gave the superintendent the go ahead to say the things that he said and to say them with another leader ....”
She called Warwick’s comments “deplorable and completely inappropriate. And I can only imagine what else he has had to say about others who have not aligned with them.”
School Committee member Chris Collins said he had not heard the audio and declined to comment on it.
Call to resign
In a statement Wednesday, Bishop Talbert W. Swan II, president of the Greater Springfield branch of the NAACP, called on Warwick to resign.
Swan termed Warwick’s comments on the recording “absolutely disgusting, disrespectful and racially inflammatory.”
“There is little doubt that this conversation, which maligned the integrity and attacked the character of elected officials and school administrators and their families, is the status quo and not an anomaly,” Swan said of the recording.
Swan called Warwick’s statements callous and unprofessional and said they play on racial stereotypes.
“Labeling family members of (Monroe Naylor) as ‘crazy’ and accusing them of being thieves who ‘would steal everything that is not bolted down’ are reprehensible,” Swan said in his statement.
Swan questioned whether the attitudes expressed in Warwick’s comments have played a role in personnel and policy decisions in the district over the years. He said he intends to file a complaint with the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education requesting an audit on personnel decisions during Warwick’s tenure.
Superintendent vote
Last week, Monroe Naylor joined three other School Committee members in defeating a bid by others on the panel to select Wells, chief schools officer for Springfield Public Schools, as Warwick’s successor. Warwick is leaving the top schools job this month after holding it for more than a decade.
Instead, a majority vote endorsed the candidacy of another inside candidate, Dinnall, who most recently served as chief of family and community engagement for Springfield schools Empowerment Zone Partnership.
The search for a new superintendent divided the School Committee. Four members criticized the search process, called it “tainted,” and asked for it to be scrapped.
They demanded that the separate search committee look at all 11 applications, including those screened out because they didn’t meet published minimum qualifications. The city received a legal opinion that doing so would open the city to lawsuits if it changed the rules midstream.
Monroe Naylor said she thinks the reason Warwick speaks disparagingly about her is because he did not get his preferred candidate for superintendent – and because she was the one who nominated Dinnall.
“It felt very hateful. I think it stems from the fact that we have a superintendent who's not who they wanted and we didn't vote for her and they're not happy about it,” Monroe Naylor said. “I thought she's the right person for the job because of her credentials and because of her experience.”
Waiting list issue
In part of the recording, Warwick can be heard discussing what he claims was an attempt by Monroe Naylor to help a student – a family member but not her own child – rise up on a school enrollment waiting list.
Warwick says on the audio that he explained to Monroe Naylor that wasn’t possible. “In other words,” he said, “f— you, LaTonia.”
He also can be heard saying “but it’s not her kid, where (she’d) get priority.”
Monroe Naylor said Warwick’s suggestion that she sought to use her position on the School Committee to get a family member bumped up on the waitlist is untrue.
“That's not at all what happened,” she said. Warwick was wrong about the nature of her outreach to him. She said she was not asking for a niece to jump the list. “That is something that people have utilized, but not me,” she said.
Collins, a committee member, said the district does allow for school employees to request specific schools for their children.
“If there is space … they would be allowed to have their children go to something other than the school that they're assigned to. They would be responsible for transporting them however, in that case,” Collins said.
As for Warwick’s comments about priority treatment, Hurst said the conversation is nuanced and she cannot speak to the specific claims, but stressed that there is a difference between priority and advocacy.
“We get requests as School Committee members all the time, even when they're not about our children. We need to be really mindful that there is a level of advocacy that takes place to help families navigate a system that they are not accustomed to encountering. It's not prioritization but assistance so that they [students] have full access to what they are entitled to,” she said.
