LYNNFIELD — During public comment, the Lynnfield School Committee was again met by multiple people, including father Carl Allien, who were frustrated with the lack of response regarding racial incidents in the schools.

Phil McQueen, a former School Committee member and a teacher at Lynn Classical High School, was the first to address the Committee about racism and how it’s been a recurring problem.

“Our School Committee’s response has fallen short. Yes, officials have acknowledged incidents. Yes, policies are being reviewed. But acknowledgment is not leadership, and process is not progress,” McQueen said.

He said there has been no clear public commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“Instead, the response has centered on discipline and procedural adjustments while avoiding the deeper question: ‘What kind of district do we want to be?’” he said.

He highlighted the lack of inclusion of community feedback in decisions about policy changes and the fact that public comment has been pushed to the end of meetings and limited.

McQueen also mentioned that the Select Board has unanimously formed an anti-hate task force, in contrast to the Committee’s response.

“At this time, Lynnfield needs leadership, and not just responses to racism. Our students deserve better, or families deserve better, and so does the community as a whole,” he said.

He suggested that in the recently discussed policies, the Committee make a full commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity within the policy, “not just inclusivity.”

Wendy Dixon, who is serving on the anti-hate task force, asked the Committee how they decided whom to appoint to the task force and what the Committee’s goal is for its participation.

“As chair, I asked if we could appoint a member to the task force,” Kristen Elworthy said. “Right now, there’s some level of logistics to our decision-making.”

She said that at the moment, much of the Committee is working on subcommittees that have a lot of work through the end of the year, and that since Brian Lambert is new to the Committee, he is available.

“In terms of the goal, if we’re talking about something as a town, I understand that the schools are going to be part of that discussion. I believe (Assistant Superintendent) Adam (Federico) is also on as an advisor. And so we just wanted to have a presence there,” Elworthy said.

Dixon then asked that Committee member Kim Baker Donahue be appointed to the task force, as Donahue has publicly committed to DEI.

Former Committee member Jamie Hayman, who served for 12 years, brought up that a year ago, Allien had asked the Committee for help.

“Here we are, another year later, and in my opinion, we have not done better. In fact, in several important ways, I believe we have gotten worse,” he said.

Hayman brought up multiple incidents, including town employees being caught on tape making racist comments, and Allien having to speak at multiple meetings due to persistent racist incidents toward his son.

“Two weeks ago, Mr. Allien revealed he was told it would cost $13,000 to receive information related to his child and bullying situation. Rather than trying to offer to fix this situation, Mr. Geary’s response was to blame the parent for having too broad a request, and cited over 8,000 pages of documents,” Hayman said.

Nearing the end of his term, Hayman had requested from Geary data on the number of Title VI, Title IX, and MLG Chapter 71, Section 370 reports submitted in the past 18 months.

“All of these laws have mandatory requirements about written reporting findings to complainants and require supportive measures to be taken. This data was never provided by Mr. Geary, and based on the fact that this keeps happening, I suspect the number of those reports do not match the number of incidents,” he said.

Allien then came to the microphone, stating that his son had once again been called a “slave” or that another student had used the term slavery. He filed a complaint, and in the past two months, this is the fourth incident involving his son.

“I cannot help but believe that if this administration had acted with any sense of urgency, my son would not have been subjected to this latest torment,” Allien said.

He continued that the pushing back of any policy changes or discussion showed a lack of urgency and the failure to put student safety first.

Allien then stated he had received an email from Federico, whom he thanked for his honesty, admitting that no formal investigations were ever conducted and that there was a need to improve practices and systems for documenting student conduct issues.

“At the last School Committee meeting, Superintendent Tom, you went on record and stated you did not have the reports on you. Tom, the truth is that you did not have them on you because they did not exist,” he said.

Elworthy apologized that Allien’s son had once again been targeted and said she hopes the follow-up response to the incident has been different.

Allien commented that he had met with the new civil rights coordinator and that there was a clear disconnect, as this was the first time he had met with one despite the incidents in 2025.

“I don’t know how you can sit there and be blinded by this. It’s not fair because if it was your child… I know your children. My children play with your children. You would feel the same way that I feel right now,” he said.

Others spoke, including Edelyne Beauvais-Thomas, who stated she had received multiple messages from people saying they had never been charged for public records requests.

Geary said the request sought about 15 staff names and 10 search terms, which is why so many pages came up, and that some of those pages included confidential information that would need to be redacted.

“We, as a municipality, any municipality, are required to provide two hours of free labor in this type of situation or any type of situation. The vast majority of requests that we receive can be handled within those two hours, so there would be no charge,” he said.