Exit interviews: Laconia School District didn't ask employees why they left. So we did.

LACONIA — Seventeen members of the administrative team or district office in the Laconia School District have left since spring 2020. Of those departures, 13, including every principal and assistant principal, were in the last two school years. 

Weighing this turnover at a school board meeting this month, a majority of board members emphasized many of those leaving did so for promotions and that “there's a lot of reasons why people leave jobs.” 

In interviews with The Daily Sun, more than half a dozen departing or former employees rejected this characterization. 

“It's comical to me,” said one interviewee. “If they had a conversation with any of us, if they had a conversation with any of the 17 people, they would know none of us wanted to leave.”

All of those interviewed said Superintendent Steve Tucker either pushed them out, forced them into retirement or made them feel they had no choice but to seek other employment.

According to departing and former staff accounts, Tucker created a “dysfunctional” and “fearful” work environment, where anyone who questioned or “crossed” him was alienated and punished, and where loyalty trumped performance as the basis for employee value. Staff who raised questions about Tucker’s leadership or pushed back against directives they found unethical publicly fell out of his favor, these sources said, and were made examples.

Nine employees who had filed complaints about Tucker participated in a lawyer’s investigation under a promise of confidentiality. After a change in leadership on the school board at the end of 2021, those interviewed said it became apparent the superintendent, and everyone else on the administrative team, was aware of who had been involved. Tucker’s behavior toward them and the atmosphere in the district, they said, rapidly deteriorated. 

Those interviewed described him as “cruel,” “vindictive” and “vengeful” behind closed doors. They said they were regularly excluded from meetings that directly centered their work, verbally “dressed down” in front of coworkers, reprimanded regularly, met with increasing hostility when interacting with the superintendent and, eventually, either terminated, forced into retirement, boxed out of their posts or compelled to flee a toxic work environment. Nearly all investigation participants either left the district or will by the end of this contract year.

After initially agreeing to an interview, Tucker provided a letter in response to a list of written questions. He highlighted the accomplishments of current administrators, emphasized the volume of applicants eager to fill vacancies and praised the district’s “pockets of excellence.”

“Gross generalizations such as ‘retaliation’ and ‘hostile workplace’ are easy to say, but doing so anonymously is more likely to create problems,” Tucker wrote, adding that he was limited by personnel privacy rules.

“Yes, there have been administrators who have left the district. They have left for a variety of reasons. I wish those who have left the best of luck,” he continued. “We are moving forward and will not spend our time, energy, and resources rehashing the past.”

The turmoil and turnover has been costly. 

The number of tense goodbyes, according to public school board comments and interviewees, has left students and staff confused, downtrodden and grief-stricken. The district is still involved with at least one lawsuit related to this period. As of February — an up-to-date figure has not yet been provided — the district had spent $215,000 on legal fees since September 2021. 

The former or departing employees interviewed did so on the condition of anonymity, they said, because they now work in another district, because they feared a retaliatory attack on their reputations from Tucker, or both. They represent members of the administrative team as well as district and school staff. Two people agreed to be named in the story: former Grant Administrator and Office of Extended Learning Director Christine Gingerella, and Kierra Green, who led the Pleasant Street School Project Extra, a grant-funded after-school program, for three years.

‘His way or no way’ — employee complaints 

Tucker, a former Laconia teacher-turned-curriculum coordinator in Gilford, became superintendent in 2019. Interviewees said that while apprehensions about his inexperience were widespread — Tucker had never been a building principal — most were excited to work with him.

“He was positive, extremely articulate, very smart — no question about his intelligence,” Gingerella recalled. “We were genuinely excited.”

Over time, this honeymoon phase ended.

Tucker led with a “top-down, authoritarian approach,” a source said. The expertise of veteran administrators was steamrolled and decision-making consolidated. “He created a system where he had the final authority and say, and sometimes was the only eyes on anything.” 

“It's his way or no way,” another said. “Whether he's right or wrong doesn't really matter.”

Sources grew concerned that the superintendent took liberties with coronavirus quarantine rules and pressured staff to do the same, that he fostered a “good ol’ boys club” whose members received positions or raises in a circular and predetermined hiring network, that he tried to find “creative ways around spending grant money” and that he turned on employees who pushed back against directives they felt were questionable, illegal or unethical.

“If you don't follow his directive, without complete loyalty, blind loyalty,” Gingerella said, “He doesn't want you there. So he makes your life miserable.”

‘Simply accountability’ — an independent investigation

On these concerns and more personal ones — which those who spoke anonymously declined to share because it would reveal their identities — at least nine district employees filed complaints with human resources in fall 2021. Their complaints were passed on to then-Human Resources and Business Administrator Christine Blouin, who passed them on to Heather Lounsbury, then-chair of the school board.

Lounsbury interviewed as many as six employees before, sources said, the matter was passed on to an independent investigator.

Nine staff participated in that investigation, according to court documents in a wage claim brought by Blouin. These whistleblowers “complained that the superintendent had engaged in ‘intimidation, fear, microaggressions, retaliation, discrimination, harassment, false representation, favoritism, double standards, and intentional acts to push out staff, punish staff, and make their working environment uncomfortable to the point of being unbearable,’” the DOL’s ruling states, quoting a January 2022 letter sent to by one of the district’s attorneys to its auditor.

In its firing and appeal against Blouin, among the district’s grounds for terminating her contract was an accusation of an “attempt to use her position to encourage at least one district employee to work with her to have the superintendent discharged by the school board.” 

Each of those interviewed said this characterization was untrue. There was no coordinated vendetta: Blouin fielded their complaints as part of her human resources duties.

“None of us were coerced or recruited to be a part of anything,” one said. “The whole purpose of an investigation is simply accountability.”

“[Blouin] was forced into an unprecedented situation, where so many people complained she had to bring it to the board chair,” another said. “We were very worried about our staff, the future of the district and the taxpayers’ money.”

According to the letter to the auditor, “In November 2021, an independent investigator found that the superintendent did not engage in any type of discriminatory conduct under federal and state law, and there was no hostile environment based upon any protected class.”

 “The investigator did find,” the letter continues, “that the superintendent retaliated against two employees who participated in the investigation.”

None of the nine who participated in the investigation were permitted to review the findings and its details are unknown to them. The report was not submitted as evidence in Blouin’s DOL hearing. When Tucker was asked during the hearing about the findings of retaliation against two administrators, he responded, “I don’t know how anybody would know that.”

When pressed by the hearing officer to answer the question he said, “that’s a confidential matter.” When pressed again, Tucker said, “the investigator said that there was retaliation against Ms. Blouin…but the [school] board disagreed with that.”

According to court files, the investigative report led the school board to say a performance review Tucker gave Blouin could not be used against her and clearly directed he was not to retaliate against Blouin for participating in the investigation.

‘Quiet rage’ and retaliation

In November 2021, elections saw nearly half the school board newly seated. Lounsbury did not run for reelection and a new chair, Aaron Hayward, succeeded her.

Soon after this change, employees interviewed said, it became apparent that Tucker and the rest of the administrative team became aware of who participated in the investigation.

They accused Hayward of violating their confidentiality. 

“Steve and Aaron are very tight,” a source said. “So in a very short amount of time, Steve knows exactly who all of us are. Aaron not only made sure Steve knows who all of us are, he met with all of the other administrators who weren't a part of the investigation and made sure they knew who we were.”

“[Tucker] knew a lot of things he shouldn't have known,” another echoed, “and the only person that really knew those details would have been Aaron Hayward.” 

Reached by phone, Hayward said district personnel matters, as well as comment on them, was something that should be dealt with by the current board and chair.

When asked to address the claims made against him, Hayward responded, “They can make any accusations publicly,” and that “a he said-he said or he said-she said through the paper is completely inappropriate.”

After the alleged confidentiality breach, sources said working under the superintendent became “unbearable.” They could tell Tucker knew they had participated, each said, because his treatment of them took on severeness and intimidation.

“He had this quiet rage about him,” Gingerella said, “He would grit his teeth together when he looked at you. He would stare at you like you had no soul.”

Each described being regularly “iced out” or not included in meetings that directly affected their responsibilities and having their emails to Tucker ignored. “If we were invited to a meeting, we were dressed down … he said if we didn’t like it, we could leave — in a room full of people.”

One said he came into their office and asked “if I liked my job in Laconia” before demanding whether they supported him.

This toxic atmosphere, each interviewee recounted, took a toll. Several sought new or additional mental health care.

‘Or we’d be next’ — a stream of departures

After longtime Pleasant Street Principal David Levesque’s contract was not renewed in April 2022, the district was under a spotlight. Droves of students, staff, parents and taxpayers flocked to school board meetings demanding answers. A petition circulated for Tucker’s removal.

News of Levesque’s departure rocked the district, sources recounted, and the public attention it had drawn exacerbated tensions.

“The treatment of Dave Levesque was — I don’t even have words. I don't have words for what happened,” a former or departing employee said. “People were threatened to get on the leadership train and, you know, support Tucker and what he was doing to Dave Levesque — or we'd be next.”

Through an attorney, Levesque declined to provide comment for this story.

Several interviewees detailed how Tucker approached then-Elm Street Principal Tara Beauchemin and asked her to write a letter describing a disagreement she had with Levesque in 2018.

“People were in an uproar,” one said. “So he wanted her to write a letter that made Dave look really, really bad. And she refused to do it” because the disagreement never happened. 

This too prompted retaliatory treatment, according to their accounts — the superintendent “would come in her office and just go at her,” ​​they said, until Beauchemin “did not feel like she could be here anymore.”

By the end of the 2021-22 school year, a stream of administrators and employees were, by one means or another, moving on.

Gingerella identified herself to The Daily Sun as one of the nine whistleblowers. In the spring, the Office of Extended Learning was consolidating its director and assistant director positions. Gingerella said Tucker began telling her coworkers she would retire and, though she intended to do so six months later, she was forced out in June.

Gingerella and another member of her staff recounted how Assistant Director Beth Vachon was also boxed out of the district.

Green, as a representative for that department, was appointed to the hiring committee to fill Gingerella’s vacated role. Though Vachon was among the top picks of committee members for the position and “by far the most qualified” — she wrote the $4.25 million grant currently funding the office — her application did not advance to the round of interviews, Green said.

When Green asked why Vachon was not being considered, Tara Columb, president of the teacher’s association, made personal attacks against Vachon, according to Green. Columb told the hiring committee Vachon had joined eight others in an investigation of the superintendent and, therefore, she “did not know why we would even consider her as a candidate,” Green recalled.

Green, who resigned from the committee after that meeting, found Vachon’s exclusion both “unethical” and hypocritical.

“They preached that up there on the school board, that they could not violate confidentiality,” she said, yet Columb and the committee “broke Beth’s confidentiality over and over again.” 

Blouin, who had collected the complaints, was awarded both wages and damages in her DOL case against the district after it terminated her contract. Through an attorney, she declined to provide comment for this story. 

In its appeal, the district repositioned accusations about Blouin’s personal life, which had played a smaller role in DOL testimony and which Tucker testified to being unaware of until the hearing, as the backbone of its grounds to find her in breach. In his ruling, the hearing officer cited the independent investigation’s findings and wrote that “rather than claimant [Blouin] having an animus against him [Tucker], the opposite is found to be true.”

Levesque is now principal of Franklin High; Beauchemin accepted a position as principal of Gilford Middle School. Vachon now works in the private sector. Other departures last year include Woodland Heights Elementary Principal Dale Chenette, now a teacher in Northwood, and Grant Administrator McKenzie Harrington-Bacote, who now works in Rochester. This spring, middle school Principal Alison Bryant’s departure for another district was followed by that of Assistant Principal Chrigus Boezeman. High school Assistant Principal David Bartlett will be principal of Loudon Elementary next year and Special Education Administrator Lisa Holiday will join the Inter-Lakes team. Elementary academic coordinator Gail Bourn will retire, as the two academic coordinator positions are being consolidated into one district-wide post.

‘They did not ask me one question’ — the role of the school board

School boards are tasked with overseeing the work of the superintendent, who in turn runs the district. Those who spoke with The Daily Sun said, whether reaching out in public meetings or through private channels, the board appeared uninterested and unwilling to hold the superintendent accountable.

“The school board did not want to talk to us,” one former or departing administrator said. “They were convinced that Steve Tucker was correct and that we were the ones that had done things wrong.” 

According to emails reviewed by The Daily Sun and the accounts of interviewees, the nine whistleblowers were denied meetings with the school board about how they were exposed by Hayward and treated by Tucker.

In her exit interview — the only one conducted last year, Jennifer Anderson, current school board chair, confirmed — Gingerella described concerns for the “professionalism, ethics and fairness” of the district after she and Vachon, she said, had been forced out in retaliation.

During the interview, Gingerella said, “There was flat affect in their faces. They were stone cold — as I cried … They did not ask me one question.”

Though it still appears on the district website, the board rescinded its exit interview policy on June 21.

When asked to respond to the accounts of those interviewed for this story, Anderson responded, “I respect the administrators who left that you have spoken to, whoever they are. I respect their opportunity to be able to say how they feel. But I can't really speak to their experience with [Tucker].”

Her own experience with Tucker, she continued, is of “someone who has been striving for the success of our schools with strong people in leadership who feel supported, and looking for ways that he can support them.”

The board legally must evaluate the superintendent once per year. His contract now states that evaluation must happen by May 31, though Anderson noted this was an addition last year.

According to Anderson, Tucker’s last evaluation in August 2022 was the only one completed since she joined in November 2021, meaning that when the board re-upped the superintendent’s contract for another three years last June, a majority of those voting to renew Tucker had never evaluated him.

‘Those kids lost us’ — the price of turnover

Green and other sources in communication with current employees said the impact of turnover on staff and students has been palpable — and leaves its mark on the district long after successors have been hired.

When respected administrators leave unhappily, Green said, their teams are less inclined to stay. Green described turning down repeated requests to return as a full-time site coordinator this year. 

“When the people you're following under, leading you, when you see bad things happen to them, you follow suit,” Green said. “You follow good people.” 

The departure of principals in particular, interviewees said, has been “devastating.” 

“If you ask any teacher what their mental health is right now,” Aja Montague, a 13-year district employee who left last year, told the board at its meeting Tuesday, “it's horrible.”

“I don't know a lot of people who are happy there,” one source said. Another said they still get texts from former coworkers saying they are missed.

All of Pleasant Street, Green recalled, “was actually heartbroken” and “distraught” over Levesque’s departure. Her own distress about leaving the district, she said, was hard to contain.

“You try to put your best face on but, you know, the kids are smart, they pick up on things,” Green said. Such turmoil and turnover, she continued, left everyone grieving. 

“It affected everybody in the district — all the way from the administrators down to the kids.”

“Leaving this position was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do,” said a former administrator, through tears. “We loved our jobs, all of us did. And the worst part, for me, was having a look at all those faces, and the families that I'd worked with for years, and know they thought I was leaving because of a promotion.

“Those kids lost us.”