The Sutton Files: Public Records, Receipts, and all That Good Stuff (AKA: Mega Update, Part One).
The Sutton Files: Public Records, Receipts, and all That Good Stuff (AKA: Mega Update, Part One).
We spill the tea for the good people of Sutton. Because getting woke ideology (and drag queens) out of your school is a massive deal.
It was the skirt ruffle heard round the world.
Back in the spring we told you about how a drag queen named Diva D ended up dancing on a table in the Sutton High School Library Media Center. The dance happened during an intro-to-drag-and-pride seminar for public school students, part of Sutton’s Connections Conference, or “ConCon.” The bizarrely outrageous photos of a grown man doing his best Mean Girls impression went viral, the world took notice, and Sutton parents demanded answers. As the saying goes, chaos ensued.
(Don’t know what we’re talking about? Well, have we got a story for you. Click below to read our previous posts exposing the truth behind this viral story.)
Now a new school year has started, and even though the folks responsible for this debacle might prefer that we give ol’ ruffle-bottom’s table dance a one-way trip down the memory hole, we just can’t do that. We’ve been tracking this story for months, and the good people of Sutton have a right to know what we have learned so they can correct this wreck and ensure their district only makes the paper in the 2024-2025 school year for good reasons. Plus, everyone in MA needs to know what happened in Sutton so they can avoid having the same nonsense take over their schools (and if it tries, so they will know what to do).
If you live in Sutton, you probably already know that big things have been happening in your town ever since drag-queen-gate exploded. But for those of you whose zip code isn’t 01590, here are the highlights that bring us to where we are today.
On Monday April 22nd (which also happened to be the day we published our second article exposing the history of ConCon), Sutton School Committee members Paul Brennan and Nathan Jerome hosted a Q&A forum where Sutton residents could ask questions about ConCon. During this forum Brennan stated that the drag performance, as he understood it, was appropriate for school.
By Tuesday the 23rd, the word was spreading in local Facebook groups that Superintendent Roberts-Morandi, who had supported and defended ConCon, had taken a conveniently timed FMLA leave. By Thursday evening of that same week an interim had been appointed to fill her place.
While this was going on, Sutton was also preparing for an upcoming school committee election to be held on May 28th. Brennan, the 20+ year incumbent who had expressed his approval of Diva D’s performance, was up for reelection. Animated by frustration with ConCon and Brennan’s drag-affirming comments, concerned parents demanded change on the school committee. As they began looking for other options, multiple write-in candidates entered the race.
But before the election could happen, there would be another school committee meeting. This meeting, scheduled for May 6th, drew attention from outside activist groups like MassEquality, who used their statewide platform to put out the call for pro-drag supporters to attend.
May 6th came, and so did the flag-waving activists (Diva D was there too, though not in drag). But technical difficulties also came, and while a long line of concerned Sutton parents and ConCon supporters snaked down the sidewalk waiting to get in, the news broke that the meeting would be postponed. The new meeting date would now be May 9th at the Sutton MS/HS auditorium.
Groups like MassEquality spread the word of the postponement, but so did we. We shared it on Facebook, Instagram, and even the Howie Carr Show! And when the 9th rolled around, the crowd was even larger.
Suttoners came out in droves that night to speak their minds about ConCon. Principal McCarthy, the administrator responsible for the fiasco, gave a presentation that started with quasi-apologies but ended up making his case for the conference (along with excuses and straw man arguments, like the one below).
McCarthy’s presentation was followed by 2 hours of public comment (the majority of which was opposed to ConCon). You can check the whole 4-hour meeting here or catch a few highlights of the public comment below. These clips are well worth your time, and we encourage you to watch them if you haven’t already.
Coleen Motyl-Szary, the World Language chair, GSA advisor, and Connections advisor who worked most closely with McCarthy on planning the conference, also spoke. During her comments she mentioned that “countless kids have come out to (her)” during her 17 years of teaching in Sutton, and that she plans to continue to teach there until she retires. Motyl-Szary gave no inkling of remorse for the drag performance and displayed no desire to empathize with the concerns of the parents who oppose the drag queen’s presence at ConCon. You can listen to her comments in their entirety here.
After the public comments and a brief recess, the committee hosted a Q&A session with McCarthy where he answered questions that had been raised during public comment. During this session McCarthy revealed that the internet filters normally in place during a regular school day had been turned off during ConCon, and the school committee confirmed that no CORI check had been done on the drag performer prior to him interacting with minor students. Parents who had come to the meeting hoping to be reassured that those in charge made their kids safety a priority left emptyhanded.
Toward the end of the meeting, school committee member Bruce Edwards motioned that the school committee direct the business office conduct an internal independent financial audit of any expenses and revenues connected to the 2024 ConCon. The school committee, having heard many questions from the community about the financial impact of ConCon, voted unanimously to move forward with the audit. (More about this later.) The school committee members made closing statements (including Paul Brennan, who spoke at length in favor of ConCon, DEI, and the drag performance). The meeting ended on a respectful note, well after 11pm.
Following the meeting there was a lull in ConCon-related activity as the district’s focus returned to finishing out the school year. But that doesn’t mean all was quiet in Sutton.
On May 28th, a history-making election was held that spoke volumes about the direction that Suttoners wanted for their schools. In a massive upset, veteran incumbent Brennan was voted off resoundingly. His seat was won by write-in candidate Jill Kozaczka, a political newcomer who had expressed concern with the direction of the schools and supported academic excellence and a collaborative spirit between schools and families. Kozaczka had only been in the race for about a month but received the highest number of votes. The community had spoken.
Brennan was out, and Kozaczka was in. But that wasn’t the only change coming to Sutton.
On June 26th the School Committee met and discussed a separation agreement with Superintendent Roberts-Morandi. By July 12th, Roberts-Morandi had officially resigned.
(For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 2 ConCon defenders out in Sutton.)
On July 26th, Interim Superintendent Caitlin Paget released a letter notifying the community that Sutton High School would not host the 2025 Connections Conference. If the event was to be held, it would have to be held elsewhere.
(Score another one for common sense! At least, it’s a step in the right direction.)
And on August 1st, the committee voted to retain Paget as the Interim Superintendent for the duration of the 2024-2025 school year, a move that ensures stability for the district in the immediate future.
Sutton was poised to move forward on a new school year with fewer distractions, but they were still awaiting the results of the ConCon financial audit.
While all of this was going on, we were working too.
Back from the very first minute that we found out about a drag queen dancing on a table surrounded by school children, we started our quest for answers. Suttoners needed to know the truth about what had unfolded in their community. We worked with the staff attorney from Massachusetts Family Institute to submit two public records requests, one in early April and one in May. But while we waited for the records, we did lots of digging on our own. It’s this digging that we used to write our first two articles (and it’s a good thing we did that, because our initial public records request was met with significant stonewalling, and our second one was delayed due to the changes in leadership and staff summer vacations). It was several months, not weeks, before we received (most of) the information we asked for. There was quite a bit of back and forth, and we were forced to appeal to the state for some of it. But now we have new info, and we want to share with you what we learned. Because the people of Sutton deserve to know the truth, and those outside Sutton can take heed of the lessons learned. These are presented in no particular order.
We asked for a copy of the permission slip needed to attend ConCon. There was none.
We requested “A copy of the permission form required to attend the event:”
The SPS responded that the district had no records responsive to that request.
In other words, there was no permission form needed to attend - a fact that seems to conflict with Principal McCarthy’s statements elsewhere. How could McCarthy possibly know that the minor attendees at ConCon had their parents’ blessing to be there without written permission? The answer is, he didn’t. His presentation at the May 9th meeting sheds light on this seeming contradiction. Rather than making sure parents wanted their kids to attend ConCon, he was relying on “passive consent.” Relying on “passive consent” feels a lot more like “asking for forgiveness rather than permission,” which is not a posture taken by someone who respects the rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their own children. He said he plans to change this in the future, but we think that’s too little, too late.
We asked for proof that ConCon presenters has been subject to CORI and SORI checks. There was none.
We requested “All records verifying CORI and SORI reports were properly obtained by all adults participating in the Connections Conference.”
The SPS replied there were no records responsive to that request.
The wording on the response was a bit obtuse, but since we asked for proof of the checks and not the checks themselves, the records would have been returned to us if they existed. The fact that these checks were not done wasn’t news to us by the time we received this response, but it’s worth reiterating because nothing is more important than student safety. Given the fact that McCarthy allowed a sexual performer and other unvetted adults to interact freely with students without being CORI’d, and doing so was not a direct violation of current SPS policy, we think SPS policy needs to change.
We asked for a list of the schools that attended ConCon. We received it… eventually.
We requested “A list of all schools that participated in the Connections Conference (or documents including the names of these schools, if a list does not exist).
The district responded but refused to provide this list for what we believed were legally dubious reasons. We filed an appeal, and the state forced them to release it (months later).
You can download the list of schools below.
This list is important because many, many parents wanted to know if their school had participated, but the list of attendees was a closely guarded secret. Mom and dad, if you see your child’s district on this list, now’s the time to make sure your superintendent knows that if the conference is held again, you will be a vocal opponent of your district participating (and why).
We wanted to know which staff was responsible for Connections and ConCon. We received that eventually, too.
We requested: “Records showing the staff advisors for the Connections Club.”
The district tried to hold that back for bogus reasons, too, but we persevered and secured it on appeal as well (again, months later).
You can see the list here:
This list is important because we know there are SPS staff who are NOT in support of Connections and ConCon, but speaking out against it would put them at odds with their administration. We also heard that some staff had felt obligated to attend ConCon, which was held on a professional development (PD) day, and were concerned that their attendance would be construed as support for what went on there. For those staff, this list comes to the rescue, providing a clearer look at which district staff are “all in” on ConCon. We don’t know if everyone on this list knew about the drag queen before that day, but we do know that if a teacher signs up to be an advisor for a woke club that hosts a conference that pushes progressive ideology, it’s a safe bet that they are on board with that ideology too. To be clear, we absolutely do not recommend targeting these teachers in any way (or anyone referenced in this post, for that matter). But we do recommend that if you live in Sutton and your child has a class with one of them, you keep a close eye on what is taught. If your child is silenced or disciplined for expressing a view that does not align with a teacher’s woke ideology, contact Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center.
We wanted to know how much the district was paying Connections advisors. We received that info (sorta).
We requested: “A list of stipend/honorarium positions available for Connections advisors, including the amount of each stipend/honorarium, paid by the Sutton Public Schools (regardless of revenue source).”
We were informed (eventually) that Connections advisors are paid a “Level A Club” stipend per the teacher’s contract.
The Level A stipend is $1,200 a year. It is not clear how many Connections advisors receive that stipend. If they all do, the general budget cost last year alone would have been almost $10,000.00.
We also noticed that club advisors are eligible for an hourly rate when their functions are conducted beyond the school day. Were the Connections advisors ever paid an additional hourly fee? What is the actual budgetary impact of the Connections advisors? That’s something the school committee should look into, if they haven’t already. (Also, FWIW, the school committee should note that clubs and their level must be approved annually. If Connections was not approved for the next budget cycle, or if it was approved at a lower level, that could go a long way toward helping the district refocus its resources and priorities.)
We heard district administrators say that ConCon had been “optional” for teachers to attend, yet some teachers felt obligated to be there. Why the discrepancy? We found out.
We requested: “All records sent from district administration (or designee) to district staff concerning the professional development day held on March 15th;”
And eventually we received them.
There were three emails, and you can read them below.
The first email, sent by McCarthy on October 31, 2023, mentions three possible PD options for HS and MS staff on the March: Connections Conference, Mental Health First Aid, and one yet to be determined.
The second email, sent by McCarthy just one week later, mentions only two PD options and states that if the teachers don’t sign up for one of them by the end of the following day, he will assign them to one. The third option has now been removed and there are only two: Connections Conference, and Mental Health and First Aid (which requires multiple hours of pre-work and can only take a limited number of people).
The third email doesn’t tell us anything new about the PD day, but it does provide an interesting look into some of the other resources McCarthy shares with his staff.
Based on these emails, it seems attending the ConCon was “optional,” but there was really only one other “option,” and the other option required 2 hours of pre-work and was only open to a limited number of staff. And, if a teacher accidentally missed the RSVP date (4 months in advance of the PD itself), McCarthy may have assigned them to ConCon. It’s easy to see why some staff felt helping at ConCon wasn’t truly “optional” after all.
We asked for budgetary information so we could follow the money. We got it… eventually.
We requested: “All budgetary information related to the Connections Conference, including but not limited to: invoices received and/or paid and revenue (including donations and sponsorships) received in connection with the Connections Conference.”
We received responsive items, in a heavily redacted format. The district tried to justify blocking out relevant portions of public information for the same legally dubious reasons they tried on some of the other items. We filed an appeal, and the state agreed that the district must release these records with minimal redactions.
You can download the budgetary information we received about ConCon below.
Now, there is a lot that can be said about what was revealed in the ConCon financial documents. It clears up one important point of confusion with certainty - Diva D was NOT paid for his appearance at the conference. None of the ConCon workshop leaders were paid. However, the keynote speakers (YA author Cynthia Leitich Smith and transgender activist Kai Shappley) were paid - over $8,000 total. That is quite a hefty tab, even when the money doesn’t come directly out of the general budget. Going through the documents, we couldn’t help but notice just how many times the names of Motyl-Szary and McCarthy appear (with all of this ConCon activity, it’s a wonder they manage to get anything else done!). We also noticed that the New England Association of Schools (aka NEASC), the powerful and very well-funded “nonprofit” responsible for accrediting public schools in New England, donated $6,000, making them the primary ConCon sponsor. We also asked, “what’s missing?” What about the expenses required to run ConCon that don’t appear in these pages, like building utilities and staff time?
(As it turns out, we weren’t the only ones who were wondering what was missing. The Sutton Public Schools business manager also made note of these “indirect costs” in his audit. More about that later.)
We wanted to know how much staff time was used to plan the conference. We found out, nobody knew.
We asked for: “All existing records that demonstrate the amount of staff time used to organize, coordinate, or facilitate the Connections Conference.”
The answer was, “no district records are responsive to Item No. 3 of your Request.”
Did the district make any attempt to figure out how much time was being spent on ConCon prior to our records request? It seems the answer is no. Staff time is paid for with tax dollars, so if ConCon-related work is going on during the school day and it exceeds the amount of time allocated for the club advisor positions, the public has a right to know. Also, for every paid hour spent on ConCon prep by district staff, that’s an hour they aren’t spending on another area of education. What is the “opportunity cost” of Connections? What is the district NOT doing because it spends so much time on the Connections program and ConCon? During his May 9th presentation to the school committee, McCarthy said that students have to apply to be part of Connections, and that attending ConCon is optional. One of his defenses for the program and conference is, essentially, that it does not serve the whole student body. So how much time is being spent on this one niche interest, powered forward by the principal and one department chair, that does not benefit so many of the students? What are the rest of the students of Sutton unwillingly sacrificing on the altar of ConCon? We can’t answer that question, but it’s something folks in Sutton should look into.
We wanted to learn more about the drag performance - who knew about it, when did they know, and what? We received a trove of information (eventually).
We requested: “All records containing the phrase “drag queen,” “Diva D,” “Pride Worcester,” or “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen.”
It took a while, and we were willing to pay the (small) good faith estimate provided by the district. Several months later we received back what amounted to 400+ pages of documents, mostly emails, responsive to the request.
The bulk of that information will be the subject of our next post. But for now, here’s one email exchange we think Suttoners should know about.
The first email is signed by McCarthy and Motyl-Szary (writing from a “Sutton Connections Team” email address) to conference presenters (in this case, specifically to the drag queen, Diva D). This email was sent on February 12th.
On March 2nd, Diva D responds (and adds McCarthy’s email address… we’re not sure why). He is inquiring about the quality of the sound system in the library, because he “was hoping to start the workshop with a performance to get the group excited.”
On March 4th, McCarthy forwards Diva D’s email to Motyl-Szary.
And then later on the 4th, McCarthy responds to Diva D:
Based on these emails it appears both McCarthy and Motyl-Szary knew that the drag queen was not only coming to talk about drag, he was planning to give an actual performance. And neither of them pushed back on this. No questions were asked. No limits placed. No mentions of the importance of dressing modestly, or trying to find out what type of song he was going to perform, etc. Nothing. In our view, this is grossly negligent.
During his May 9th presentation before the school committee, McCarthy said (in reference to the drag performance) that “I… want to apologize for the workshop in question, not that I think that Worcester Pride did anything wrong, I think the people at Worcester Pride do amazing work supporting our LGBTQ youth in our community… three minutes of that presentation went a little bit too far and to paint an entire conference, an entire group, entire community because three minutes went a little bit beyond what we expected and what we hoped for, I think does a disservice to all the work that they do… so while yeah I wish the drag queen didn't get on the table and yeah I wish she didn't sing the song from Mean Girls I don't think the response from - the hate, the death threats, the bomb threats - evens out, and so I just want to put it in perspective… so… I wish that we had done things a little bit differently… I do want to apologize for that portion of the workshop because I do know that's what got people upset…”
McCarthy apologized, but not for having a drag queen perform for minors. He only apologized for the parts of the performance that “went a little bit beyond what we expected.” What did he and Motyl-Szary expect, exactly? There is no record of him communicating anything at all to Diva D about what type of performance is acceptable. What were his expectations based on? Naïveté? Willful ignorance? Was he so blinded by his rainbow-colored glasses that he couldn’t see the very obvious issues that allowing a drag performance could present? He allowed an adult sexual performer the opportunity to perform for kids with no apparent parameters. On top of that, he witnessed the performance himself (see the photo at the top of this post) and continues to say that Pride Worcester didn’t do “anything wrong.” He did not apologize for any of it until “people” got “upset.”
We will talk more about the other documents related to the drag queen in our next post. But before we wrap this one up, let’s touch on the audit ordered by the school committee at the end of the May 9th meeting.
On September 16th, the Sutton School Committee reconvened and the results of the ConCon audit was on the agenda. You can watch the audit presented here, starting at 1:16:35:
The audit documents can be found on the district website here (items #19-#26).
You can also download the whole audit below.
We won’t get into the whole audit in this post, but for now, there are two things we want to point out that tie back to some of our earlier questions.
First, remember how we had asked “what’s missing?” from the budget info we received? The Business Manager looked at some of the Indirect Costs, and here’s what he found.
He determined that ConCon and its various activities, including pre and post-conference ‘support,’ cost 200-300 hours of administrative time. On top of that, district email accounts contained +4,600 emails from/to 216 staff members that touched on ConCon, Connections or the drag queen. The amount of staff time spent on those emails is “unquantifiable.” While he doesn’t provide a breakdown of these numbers (for instance, how many hours were spent preparing for the conference vs how many were spent on damage control afterward), this is an astonishing amount of time. He estimates that the indirect costs are in the thousands.
Another section of the audit we found interesting had nothing to do with the money spent. It had to do with a powerful outside influence impacting Sutton, and what that could mean for students across New England, if Suttoners don’t act to stop it.
In file #23, which focuses on the cost of the lunches provided at ConCon, we found the following email from former Superintendent Roberts-Morandi to Julianna Valcour, DESE’s School Nutrition Programs Coordinator.
In this email, Roberts-Morandi says: “As I had explained on the phone, we are being asked to model (the Connections Conference) for other states so that NEASC can get a program going in every state in New England.”
Now, the goal of this email was to convince the state to pay for these student meals which would otherwise have been non-reimbursible under the National School Lunch Program. In pursuit of that goal, it would have behooved Roberts-Morandi to paint ConCon as something that an esteemed higher power is calling Sutton to do, rather than a pet project on steroids started by lower-level district administrators prior to her tenure in Sutton, for which she became an enthusiastic cheerleader when she was hired in 2022. But what is the truth exactly? What is the role of NEASC in this conference?
We did a deep dive into the history of ConCon back in April, and based on publicly available information at the time, there was no sign of NEASC being involved in the start of the conference. Quite the opposite actually, as McCarthy publicly took credit for starting ConCon, along with Motyl-Szary. But in the years following, McCarthy spoke at NEASC’s annual conference multiple times (although it appears his speaker bio, which you can see below has now been scrubbed from their website), and NEASC became a primary ConCon sponsor. Was NEASC pulling other strings as well?
This question is important because NEASC is very woke, and very rich, and has a lot of influence with public schools (yet only has a one-star rating on Charity Navigator, a very bad look for a nonprofit with so much power). Has NEASC been pushing ConCon forward, propping it up with large donations and stroking the egos of its organizers with speaking engagements, to further its own progressive agenda? In his presentation on May 9th, McCarthy mentioned that NEASC is their “main financial supporter” and that it “thinks so highly of our conference and the work we do in this area that they are trying to replicate it in CT.” This mirrors what Roberts-Morandi mentioned in her email about the lunches - that NEASC is hoping to use ConCon as a model to implement elsewhere.
Now, maybe the expanding influence of NEASC and its desire to replicate ConCon to multiple states didn’t happen in a covert manner. It’s possible that at some point over the last several years, the school committee was made aware of this (or some portion of it). It’s possible that a previous superintendent was on board with this amount of district time, energy and resources going to bolster an event that would primarily benefit students from outside Sutton, pushed by an outside organization with a bad financial record and questionable ideology. We don’t know the whole history in this area, and we aren’t arguing that NEASC attained its place of impact with ConCon through dishonest means. But we do know that in public education, administrators and school committee members come and go, and sometimes bad ideas remain. It’s easy for district leadership to simply keep doing what it’s always done (especially when “what it’s always done” is the baby of motivated staff members or is lauded by the press) rather than step back and analyze whether or not what they are doing is still what’s best for the students and community.
The conflagration over the 2024 ConCon provides district leadership in Sutton a unique opportunity to tap the brakes and ask hard questions. We think they should start with, “At what point did hosting ConCon stop (supposedly) being about what’s best for Sutton students, and start being about what’s best for NEASC?”
We have more to share in our next post (don’t forget to subscribe, if you haven’t already!). But until then, we will be keeping our eyes on Sutton. It is clearer than ever that what happens in this small town has the potential to impact schools (and students) all across New England. Does the community of Sutton want to be known as the launching point for a woke conference that brought leftist ideology and drag queens to kids in other states? Or will they put a stop to it once and for all?
Time will tell.
The Sutton School Committee has a meeting tonight, and “Connections Conference (NEASC)” is on the agenda. We don’t know what this means, but we do know that if you live in Sutton, tonight at 6:00 is your next best chance to make public comment. We encourage you to make your voices heard.
Update: At the 10/7 meeting referenced above, Interim Superintendent Paget announced that the ConCon is being taken over by NEASC and will no longer be a project of Sutton Public Schools. We are looking into the impacts of this decision and will discuss it more in our next post. But for now, you can watch the relevant part of the meeting below.
Note: the truth is important to us, and we take great pains to present facts accurately. If you are from Sutton and you believe we have reported something factually incorrect in our ConCon coverage, please email us at massinformedparents@gmail.com with concrete evidence of your claim. We will review the information you provide and will update this article if necessary.
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