Massachusetts schools superintendent candidate who lost offer over ‘ladies’ email files suit

The superintendent candidate who lost his offer after he used the word “ladies” in an email is suing five school committee members in a small western Massachusetts city, arguing he was “maliciously defamed.”

Vito Perrone, who saw his contract to lead Easthampton public schools rescinded in early 2023, has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Springfield seeking at least $300,000 in damages, accusing the School Committee of “unconstitutional and illegal conduct.”

Perrone, now leading the Hampshire Regional School District, is suing Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, former School Committee Chairwoman Cynthia Kwiecinski and three other school committee members.

Kwiecinski, in particular, led the effort to rescind Perrone’s contract after the candidate, then-interim superintendent of West Springfield Public Schools, addressed her and her executive assistant as “ladies” in an email.

Perrone sent the email on March 29, 2023, making three requests relative to compensation, annual vacation days and sick days to his tentative three-year contract which would have paid him $151,000 annually, according to the suit.

“Ladies, Good evening! I perused the [employment] contract and have three requests,” Perrone wrote at the start of the email.

Kwiencinski did not welcome the use of the word “ladies.” Rather, she called it an “unprofessional microaggression,” the suit states.

The School Committee met in executive session the next day and “rescinded” Perrone’s contract allegedly before informing him of their reasons behind the move. Perrone is also accusing the committee of failing to provide him with a “pre-termination hearing.”

In the suit filed Tuesday, Perrone’s attorney Raymond Dinsmore outlines how terminating an employment contract without prior notice for the reasons for doing so and without holding a pre-termination hearing “violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

During the executive session, Megan Harvey, who remains on the committee, stated, “We cannot give an oppressor [Plaintiff] any opportunity to explain away the oppression,” according to the suit.

Once the committee let him into the meeting after its 5-1-1 vote to rescind the offer, Perrone “apologized three times for any inadvertent offense he had caused.” He “explained that it was not his intention to be unprofessional and that he was unaware that the word ‘Ladies’ was an insult and/or a microaggression.”

In a letter sent to Perrone a day after the executive session, Kwiecinski highlighted how the committee and candidate “were not able to reach a mutually agreeable contract.” She did not cite the “use of the term ‘Ladies,’” according to the suit.

A week later, Kwiecinski broke her silence publicly in an interview with the Daily Hampshire Gazette about how she felt insulted for being called a lady, a familiarity that he had not earned.”

“While I speak informally most of the time, if I am addressing a public official — especially in written communication, and even more so if engaged in salary negotiations — I would always use formal titles,” Kwiecinski wrote in an email to the Gazette.

“The salutation ‘Ladies’ raised concerns among most that the candidate might make administrators and teachers feel uncomfortable if used in the future instead of calling them by their names or titles.”

Two members of the School Committee at the time resigned in the fallout of the controversy which also included a failed last-ditch effort to get the school board to re-enter contract negotiations with Perrone, the top pick for superintendent.

“Individual Defendants publicly portrayed Plaintiff as an oppressor who is an insensitive, unprofessional, dismissive, insulting, and sexist person, and who also fails to grasp rapidly advancing social conversations,” the suit states.

The controversy has caused Perrone to suffer “lost wages, lost employment benefits, lost retirement benefits, loss of future employment opportunities, emotional distress, personal humiliation, damage to his personal and professional reputation, and incurred attorneys’ fees and litigation costs,” his attorney wrote in the suit.