Stoneham Superintendent Responds To Turtleboy Blog By Suspending Teacher Who Lost License Due To Inappropriate Behavior Towards Student

 

Yesterday we published a story about a Stoneham Middle School teacher who fled Florida 30 years ago after his teaching license was suspended due to inappropriate sexual comments he repeatedly made towards a student. Richard Smyth has been teaching in Massachusetts since 1997, and in Stoneham since 2014. His history has been brought to the attention of Stoneham administrators numerous times and nothing was done about it. Then, within hours of our blog being published Superintendent David Ljungberg sent out an email alerting parents that Smyth is on paid leave pending an investigation.

So they were made aware of this in 2017, conducted an “investigation” and didn’t find out one of the first things that pops up for him on a search?

Are they incompetent, or just lying? Wait until they find out about Google in Stoneham. They will no longer have to rely on the Pony Express for information about people who want to work around children.

The superintendent mentions how they did a background check that included finger printing, and that nothing came up. Well, of course not. He wasn’t charged with a crime. But it’s not like they swept what he did under the rug. They thoroughly investigated him and took away his teaching license. He left his kids in Florida to start a new life, and could’ve pursued a variety of other occupations. But he wanted to remain around children.

The bigger issue here is that  parents have been alerting the district about this guy for years, and they were met with nothing but gaslighting from administrators.

It took being publicly shamed in a Turtleboy article for them to finally do the right thing, proving once again that public shaming works, and no media outlet fixes problems and uncovers poor behavior quite like Turtleboy.

P.S. Richard – you are a much bigger threat to children than climate change and Donald Trump.