We obtained the following information from Newburyport, after learning that former Harmony Grove principal, was on a short list for a principal job with them. What really was a shocker to us was that it was announced that she was on a short list for this new role mere months after suddenly leaving Framingham and taking a job in Tewksbury. Skip down to learn how we got here.
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We have been tracking Demorais since she left Framingham. Was it good that she left… per many of her former Harmony Grove staff, a resounding yes. So why are we following her – we have been asked by local employees to ensure that she doesn’t continue her purported practices of favoritism and deceit, at the expense of the children who are there to learn.
On November 1, Demorais started her new job in Tewksbury, and multiple local news sources took the time to interview her. One interview caught our eye, in a Tewksbury Carnation interview by Julie Naughton on November 16, 2021. One question we flagged as outright lie.
In the time that she spent in Tewksbury, we have watched her home in Milford remain off the market, even in a time when home sales are very active and the prices they are fetching very high. In her application to Newburyport, she lists her home address as in Milford.
The town of Milford agrees, in the year 2022, she owns a house in Milford. Her house has not been listed for sale, and the last sale on record was to Demorais and her husband.
So instead of being honest and truthful, and state to the press that she was possibly feeling pressured to leave her job in Framingham due to a purported HR investigation, she said she was moving to the area – which we now know did not happen.
In our quest for information, as we tracked Demorais, we filed a FOIA request with Tewksbury. They were a tough nut to crack as initially they denied all requested documents under personnel exemptions, and we appealed that, then they sent us documents redacted for content, and dates. We appealed that, and finally got almost what we wanted – enough to let Tewksbury off the hook.
Here is the application info, the cover letter, and everything we obtained from Tewksbury.
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We were unhappy that the town of Tewksbury absolutely refused to provide the letter of recommendation provided by Framingham, so we filed a request with the FPS to obtain that document. Our initial response was a denial on the grounds that the content is confidential and that a document of just a couple pages would require so much time to redact.
We appealed this denial and won…
After being ordered to turn over the requested document on February 14th and given another 10 days to obtain redact any protected info…. they turned over the requested document, with no redactions at all… on the 10th day. So much for Framingham making up a bullshit claim that public records are in fact not public. On February 28th, we received this letter of recommendation. The letter glowed.
We doubt that the writing here of Amy Bright, Demoaris’s supervisor is an honest representation of Demorais’s true performance. When Demorais was working as principal of Harmony Grove Elementary here in Framingham, we believe that she was under investigation by Human Relations between Spring 2021 and the time of her departure in the Autumn.
Based on the information above, we know that Demorais applied to the position in Tewksbury September 13, 2021, immediately after the school year started in Framingham. Bu the end of September, Demorais has been offered the job and she had accepted it. Her new role would be the interim Principal of a elementary school in Tewksbury.
Mid-October, the Source reported that Demorais was leaving, and FU started receiving anonymous tips on what went wrong at Harmony Grove. THOSE TIPS CAN BE READ BY CLICKING HERE. We reported those tips, publicly.
A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE TIPS RECIEVED…
THIS INFO IN THIS BOX SHOULD BE CONSIDEREED NON-FACTUAL AND AS ONLY THE OPINIONS OF THE SOURCES WHO CONTRIBUTED THEIR THOUGHTS.
A source suggested to us that DeMorais leaving was not a personal choice, that she had been under investigation by Human Resources for over 6 months, and was facing termination, had she not left on her own.
We were told that she hired her own son-in-law as an interventionist during COVID remote learning, and he never really showed up. He didn’t go to scheduled meetings or classes, and if he did, his video and microphone would be off and he would not respond. He did not support the Harmony Grove students as an interventionist should have, and she would not terminate or replace him. Staff eventually figured out the family connection. In DeMorais’s first year, she hired her own daughter, who only showed up to work a few times, but remained paid by the school district for many months, on “medical leave”.
Inappropriate hiring didn’t end with her family. She hired a yoga instructor friend to lead voluntary meetings and other after school sessions, that nobody really attended, but she kept hiring him in that role.
There were also poor hires. She hired a ESL coach with only a K-2 teaching license and no ESL certification. The other ESL coach was ineffective in that role, and was purportedly a close friend of DeMorais. She hired a literacy coach who publicly admitted a month into the job that she hadn’t looked at the curriculum.
A source wrote, “The previous ESL coach remained in the role without actually going in classrooms for his three years and never having a single coaching cycle with any teachers. Maybe we’re fortunate for that, because he became physically aggressive with those that disagreed with him, yet he stayed on the job.”
The Dual Language program is supposed to be comprised of 1/3 native English speakers, 1/3 bilingual students and 1/3 Portuguese speakers. But at Harmony Grove it is 90% comprised of native Portuguese speakers and the program is completely failing.
Teachers told us that often times, they were retaliated against by DeMorais for merely doing their jobs, including advocating for their students. We were told that she fired lots of good employees, and if she couldn’t fire them she would move them around trying to get them to quit. Within employee groups, Demorais would put elements of her inner circle to sit in and act as moles.
There were lies. There were suggestions that the school’s CVR data over the last few years was fake. She packed focus groups at the last state visit with teachers without professional status who were afraid to speak up.
Her first day in her new role was to be November 1, 2021 and our publishing of anonymous tips took place between October 15th and October 17th. On Tuesday October 19th, Demorais wrote a final letter to her staff, savagely attacking those who had the guts to be a whistleblower. This email was written in a manner which sought to hide it from the public record. She shared it as a Google document, and after sending, once her message was seen by her staff, she deleted the document. It took us several tries to obtain this letter. Read the letter of a tyrant leader, voluntarily leaving after being under HR investigation for months, to those who finally spoke up as whistleblowers.
Some of these ‘toxic individuals’ tell us that with the new interim principal Juliana Kessler Marco, it is night and day. They are thankful that a real leader is at the helm and that they can do their jobs without fear of retaliation. In the end it was apparent that the true toxins were really Demorais and her friends.
