BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION JULY 18-20, 2025) — As we all know, largely because of digging by private citizens and THE PLANET, there have been changes in the Bitchfield school department (PPS) after the scandals at Pittsfield High School erupted and were whitewashed. Of course, Bitchfield being run by out-of-touch officials, don’t expect changes for the better.

The fallout caused an exodus of teachers and staff, the change in superintendents, and a new PHS principal. Out finally, Jumpin’ Joe Curtis, “to spend more time with his family,” and PHS principal Maggie Harrington-Esko-Hyphenate, who got kicked upstairs for a no-show position at Mercer, with a raise no less.

The scrheoxozl committee, led by Smile You’re On Candid Cameron and Sara “Miss Jane” Shoegum, hired Latifah Phillips as interim super. She was previously “assistant principal of equity” for the Lowell public schools, which tells you all you need to know. Status Quo, bro!

New school spot. Latifah Phillips

To replace Hypenate at PHS, they recycled Lynn Taylor, principal of Allendale School.

THE PLANET knows nothing of Taylor, but her  appointment alarmed several teachers and staff that had previously worked with and for her. These credible sources, one of whom is known to us personally, conveyed their concerns to THE PLANET.  Prior to the publication of this column, Days before, we contacted Taylor, inviting her comments. She did not reply. We shall be more than glad to post any reactions from her if we receive them retroactively.

Here is the information we received:

As principal of Allendale School, Lynn Taylor created a toxic and abusive environment for all who walked in the doors of that building. The amount of stress, physical sickness from the stress and pure misery that that woman was allowed to create and perpetuate was inhumane. People say that the teachers and staff at PHS will never put up with her, that she won’t get away with it there, but I have seen many strong educators fall victim, and lose confidence and cower.

After all of the grievances that were filed, after the mass exodus of educators from Allendale and the monitoring by the union, nothing was ever done. She has now been given yet another position—principal of scandal-plagued Pittsfield High School—because, ”no one applied for the job.” I would like to know the truth on that. I don’t believe that no one applied for that job. 

PHS needs to heal, they need a firm principal, but one with compassion. Lynn is not that, she is the opposite of that. She is punitive, manipulative, passive aggressive and lacks compassion. My prediction is that the staff will either eat her alive, or she will completely break that building’s spirit and bring nothing but organized chaos and toxicity. 

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Lynn Taylor, new PHS principal, studies the current situation at the school (Photo from Lynn Taylor’s Facebook page)

Typically in PPS when an educator has a problem in a school building, if they are friends with the right people, they are moved to an administrator position out of the school building, where they may stay for a bit of time as a curriculum coach, or data specialist, until they are given a principal position in one of the buildings or they retire and are brought back as a private contractor to “write grants” or act as a “consultant,”  for the PPS. This describes the career ladder of Lynn Taylor, who is now principal at a dysfunctional PHS. 

PPS is notorious for promoting bad teachers to administrator positions or data coordinators. This has happened more times than I can count and never ends well. It’s all in who you know and who you are friends with. 

From what I understand at Allendale, Lynn was tasked with getting teachers to step in line, raise scores, benchmark scores as well as MCAS scores, and her plan was to “micromanage” every minute of every day for teachers and staff. She removed science and social studies from the daily curriculum. When teachers asked why, her answer to this was that many of the  “leveled readers”  in the packaged reading program are science- and social-studies-based and that they follow the state standards for these subjects for each grade level. 

 SCIENCE IS IMPORTANT, as is social studies, but at Allendale, Lynn was allowed to chop these two subjects from the instructional day. As a result, Lynn was adamant about removing social studies and science materials from classrooms, and she MONITORED this heavily to make sure teachers were not “sneaking it in.” This is a fact, as outlandish as this sounds. 

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After the 2022-2023 school year, there was a mass exodus of teachers and staff from Allendale Elementary School. Some14 teachers left Allendale due to Lynn’s micromanaging and toxic, abusive bullying toward them. At this point, the union stepped in because many grievances were filed, and Lynn was being “monitored” supposedly by Joe Curtis and the Union. (Clearly, nothing came of that, as she is now the principal of PHS). 

As I understand it, Teachers at Allendale were expected to be robots, reading and testing every single day with no hands-on activities at all. Under Taylor, either teachers fell in line or there was hell to pay.

It seems the only thing her model did was create angry kids. Kids were frustrated, felt trapped and unhappy a lot of the time. Teachers jerked when keys jiggled in a door or heard footsteps in the hall outside their classroom door.

As it was told to me, Lynn had a podium on wheels, I can’t make this up. She custom fitted wheels and a microphone on the podium so she could be louder in the cafeteria and in certain areas of the school where the kids were not following the rules. She would stand behind the podium, roll herself around the halls and choose a teacher to target for the week, and on her “downtime,” she’d park her podium outside the classroom so that she could hear what was going on or monitor the kids coming out of that room to use the bathroom. INSANE!! She was the QUEEN, and she used her podium as her helm. 

[THE PLANET‘s NOTE: In 2023, Lynn Taylor earned $106,820, an increase of 7.9% ($7,823) from 2022. Her salary then was 127% higher than average City of Pittsfield salary and 123% higher than median City of Pittsfield salary in 2023. That number will likely increase in her new gig at PHS. Again, we invite her comments.]

Have a great weekend, everybody!

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“The ‘Three Rs’ in Bitchfield public schools: Wrongdoing, Rip-Off, and Red Herring“–Sir Donald Turpentine, Knight of the Bath.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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