The Sudbury School Committee removed a well-reviewed superintendent without a public vote. A member’s Open Meeting Law complaint asked how – and the committee’s response to that question, more than the removal itself, is what the record shows.

The removal, and the complaint

In the spring of 2025, the Sudbury School Committee gave Superintendent Brad Crozier a strong evaluation, concluding that his leadership “demonstrated a strong commitment to academic excellence, equity, and innovation.” His five-year contract ran through June 30, 2029.[1] A year later, the committee removed him – with no public vote and no stated reason.

The committee has never explained, in a public meeting, how that decision was made. One of its members asked, formally. On February 25, Nicole Burnard (the committee’s former chair, and its lone dissenter after the 2025 election produced a new majority under Chair Karyn Jones) filed an Open Meeting Law complaint with the town clerk, alleging that the superintendent’s removal had been set in motion without a vote of the committee.[2]

The records bear out the sequence. Legal invoices show the chair and Vice-Chair Jessica McCready conferring with the district’s lawyers in late November; on January 23, the chair convened a meeting with the superintendent and counsel (paid for by the district) at which, by Burnard’s account, a buyout of his contract was already under discussion.[3] No committee vote authorized any of it. Under the committee’s own governance policy, a decision to seek legal advice “on behalf of the school system will be made by the Committee,” and the chair may act only “at the direction of the Committee.”[4] When Burnard raised the issue in open session, at meetings on January 20 and 26, she was told she was “out of order,” and the meeting recessed.^[5] She filed her complaint afterward.

The town starts asking

She was not the only one asking. Through the late winter, residents used the committee’s public-comment period to press the same points. At the March 2 meeting, a resident told the committee she had reviewed the superintendent’s evaluations (a record of “proficient or exemplary” ratings) and warned that removing him without a documented basis risked “exposing the district to significant legal and financial liability.” Another speaker that night said the committee had shown “disrespect toward a fellow committee member for holding a differing opinion” and “a lack of respect for established law and process.”[6] The complaint’s allegations were being made from the floor, weeks before any public vote.

Managed, not answered

Each time the question surfaced, the response was directed at the people asking it rather than at the question.

The first of these came in the press. On March 6, the Sudbury Weekly published an article reporting that a school-committee member “may have leaked” the contents of executive sessions[7], turning the question of how the superintendent was removed into a question about how the complaint’s author had obtained her evidence. The emails that produced the article are now public, and they show how it was assembled.[8]

In the days before publication, the Weekly’s editor, Kevin LaHaise, approached the parties differently. To Burnard, he wrote to ask how she had come by her records; “Can you explain how you got copies of the emails between Chair Jones and the district’s legal counsel?”, and copied the district’s outside lawyer on the message. To Jones, in a warmer exchange, he offered that she “might have to be the spokesperson for the district,” signed off “Cheers,” and asked whether “the district [is] taking any action given that privileged materials were released.” He did not press the chair on the substance of the complaint, writing that he assumed she could not confirm the allegations. Jones supplied the framing the published article carried: that Burnard had filed “in her individual capacity, not as a member of the Sudbury School Committee.”[8]

LaHaise told each recipient he was copying counsel “for transparency” and did not want privileged material. The article that resulted examined the member who had brought the complaint and relayed the position of the officials she had complained about.

At its March 16 meeting (past 10 p.m., on an item added to the agenda two days earlier) the committee took up a finished draft of a public letter and moved it to a vote. Burnard objected that rushing a complete draft to a vote, with no prior deliberation, was itself an Open Meeting Law problem, and that the letter was “not fully honest” because it “does not outline the path the school committee took to get to executive session.” She voted no.[10]

Titled “Supporting Transparency,” the letter defends the removal on legal grounds: it cites the statute authorizing a superintendent’s removal, states that contract discussions for a nonunion employee “may legally occur in executive session,” and points to procurement law. The citations are almost certainly correct. The letter does not say what was decided, or by whom; its stated purpose was to “clarify… misinformation” in the community. It offered residents “listening sessions” rather than formal hearings; the committee later explained that it preferred them because a hearing would be “all public record,” while “the listening session allows it not to be.”[11] Residents who attended said as much. One told the board it had done “a lot of listening, but not really giving any answers,” and asked for “a question-and-answer session for the town.”[12]

The letter went out over the name “Sudbury School Committee,” above four members: Karyn Jones, Jessica McCready, Julie Durgin-Sicree, and Elizabeth Sues. The fifth member, Burnard, had also asked that her name be removed. A month later, announcing the interim superintendent, the committee issued a second letter under the same four names and the same defense: that the Open Meeting Law “allows these… discussions to take place in executive session.”[13] Burnard’s name was absent from both.

The committee maintained throughout that it acted in public. “All major decisions are discussed and voted on in public meetings,” it told a reporter in early March.[14]

By April the question had a crowd behind it. The committee scheduled a meeting for 8 a.m. on April 16 – the third that week – and announced that the superintendent was leaving. The public comment that followed ran long and pointed. The chair interrupted it to correct the speakers: “the superintendent resigned,” she said; he “submitted a resignation letter.” Residents rejected the characterization. “Brad’s resignation is of him being forced out,” one told the board. “Let’s be clear about that.” A former school-committee member said that for the chair to announce she would not respond and then respond – asserting a “fair and transparent” resignation “that we all know to not be true” – was “a slap in the face to Sudburyans.” Curtis Middle School’s principal of ten years said that when the superintendent called to tell him he was leaving, “none of this made any sense to me.” An educator said neighboring towns were watching: “I’m really ashamed and embarrassed to be a Sudbury resident right now.” Another resident said, “I never thought in a million years that I would have to babysit the school committee of Sudbury, Massachusetts.” Speaker after speaker asked for the same thing – answers – and several asked the members to resign.[12]

In the middle of it, the chair offered the committee’s defense: the chair “has no power outside of the committee… we make all decisions together.” The record from the same meeting cut against it. Pressed on how the interim superintendent had been chosen, McCready said that she and the chair had met privately with the candidate before the board acted. “Karyn and I did meet with Annette,” she said, “per attorney consultation.” When Burnard objected that this was the kind of unilateral action the committee had said did not happen, she was told she was “giving misinformation.” Asked to reconcile the contradiction, McCready said the committee “did exactly what counsel told us to do,” and that counsel had “highly coached us.”[12]

The town votes

By spring, Burnard’s was not the only complaint; the committee acknowledged that seven Open Meeting Law complaints had been filed against it.[15] Residents petitioned for a Special Town Meeting and placed two articles on the warrant: a vote of no confidence in the School Committee, and a measure to seek the authority to recall elected officials.[16]

The meeting was held on May 20. Burnard, by then off the board, addressed it as a private citizen: “How do you approve a separation agreement without ever discussing the justification?” and “Decisions belong to the school committee, not our lawyer.”[15] The town voted to petition the state legislature for recall authority, 473 to 394, and voted no confidence in the School Committee, 452 to 295. On the no-confidence article, the *yes* total held roughly steady while the *no* total fell by nearly a hundred from the recall vote: by the time it was called, near midnight, more than 160 residents had left the room.[17]

After the vote

None of it reversed what had been done. Crozier’s departure was structured as a resignation – there is a signed letter, effective June 30 – but the accompanying document is a “Separation Agreement and General Release,” labeled “Part One of Two.” In it, the district agreed to pay him $51,000, money he “would [otherwise] have no right” to, in exchange for a release of claims; the committee agreed to conduct “no further evaluation,” leaving the June 2025 review as his last; and both sides agreed to a jointly drafted public statement. Part Two, which would settle the remaining years of his contract, has not yet been executed or released.[18] The Attorney General has not ruled on the complaint.

The committee reorganized soon after. McCready became chair; Sues became vice-chair; Jones returned to member; and a newcomer took Burnard’s former seat. The committee’s first communication of the new year listed “improving public participation” among its accomplishments.[19] At its first regular meeting, on June 1, the new chair set out the committee’s norms for the year; one was that the names of members who disagree would not be removed from committee communications; a reversal of what the committee had done to Burnard, offered without reference to it. The longest discussion that night concerned “communication strategies”: a weekly graphic, a possible Facebook page, shorter clips of meetings. “I’m not really quite sure how more transparent you can be,” one member said. “You can watch everything.”[20] The seven complaints, the Attorney General’s review, and the separation were not mentioned.

The conditions that produced the complaint remain: the same core majority, and a chair-to-vice-chair line of succession within it. The recall measure the town approved is not yet in effect; it is a home-rule petition that requires action by the state legislature, which can take time. What the Special Town Meeting established was the vote itself: a documented, lopsided judgment of an elected committee by the residents who elected it. The same residents will choose that committee’s members at the next election.

Sources

1. Crozier employment agreement — Sudbury School Committee meeting packet, Dec. 11, 2023. PDF ↩
2. Nicole Burnard, Open Meeting Law complaint (filed Feb. 25, 2026) — complaint and counsel response, hosted by the Monitor (redacted). link ↩
3. Sudbury Public Schools legal invoices (late-November 2025; Jan. 23, 2026 entry), hosted by the Monitor (redacted). link ↩
4. Sudbury School Committee Policy BDG, as quoted in the complaint (see Source 2). ↩
5. School Committee meetings, Jan. 20 and Jan. 26, 2026 — SudburyTV video: Jan. 20 · Jan. 26 ↩
6. School Committee meeting, March 2, 2026 (public comment) — SudburyTV video ↩
7. Sudbury Weekly, “SPS Committee Member May Have Leaked Content Of Recent Executive Sessions,” March 6, 2026 (not linked). ↩
8. Emails between Kevin LaHaise / Sudbury Weekly and the School Committee and district counsel — public-records response, hosted by the Monitor (redacted). link ↩
9. Nicole Burnard’s account of the March 6 circulation of counsel’s response, as reflected in the email thread (see Source 8). ↩
10. School Committee meeting, March 16, 2026 — SudburyTV video ↩
11. “Supporting Transparency,” School Committee communication, March 19, 2026. link ↩
12. School Committee meeting, April 16, 2026 — SudburyTV video ↩
13. Interim-superintendent announcement, School Committee communication, April 16, 2026. link ↩
14. Patch (Sudbury), early March 2026. article ↩
15. Special Town Meeting, May 20, 2026 — SudburyTV video ↩
16. 2026 Special Town Meeting warrant, Articles 3 and 4. PDF ↩
17. Special Town Meeting vote results, Town of Sudbury (vote certificate in the June 2, 2026 Select Board packet). link ↩
18. Crozier Separation Agreement and General Release, Part One, hosted by the Monitor (redacted). link ↩
19. “Completes Goals” year-end communication, School Committee, May 2026. link ↩
20. School Committee meeting, June 1, 2026 — SudburyTV video ↩