Middle School Nurse Claims Transfer to the High School is Retributive
The new rainbow crosswalk at Amherst Regional Middle School. Photo: Art Keene
Amherst Regional Middle School nurse Celia Maysles has been transferred to Amherst Regional High School, according to a report in MassLive on March 13. Maysles is reported to have said she believes the transfer is a retributive response to sexual harassment complaints filed by students in a school club for which she had been the advisor. Maysles resigned as advisor to the club on February 5 and was transferred to the High School on February 12. She has filed a grievance against the district protesting the transfer. The MassLive report is based on public records requests by reporter Juliet Shulman-Hall. Both Maysles and the Amherst Regional School District declined to comment on the report.
According to a previous MassLive report, Maysles resigned her position as advisor to the social justice oriented student group POSH (People Opposed to Sexual Harassment) on February 5, following a complaint against her filed by other staff at ARMS, claiming that students were “bullying” staff by making “false allegations” against those staff.
Maysles’ grievance reads: “Moving Nurse Celia not only sends a terrible message to the children — if you report something inappropriate, your safe person will get punished and vanish from the building — it is also harmful to the students that she supports on a daily basis,” “Having substitute nurses at ARMS instead of the building nurse that the students know and trust while ARHS [Amherst Regional High School] is already fully staffed is a great disservice to the ARMS students, especially the students with health-related disabilities who require consistent care.”
Amherst Pelham Education Association President Alex Lopez said of the grievance, “I can’t speak for Celia [Maysles’] experience in the same way that I can’t speak for any of the other 599 members but what I can say is that across those 600 members and the conversations that we are having, there are commonalities of the fact that issues of race, of sexual harassment, continue to go unsupported by an administration, that we continue — when asking for help or healing — to be met with investigations instead.”
In addition to the grievance citing the student group, another complaint was filed against Maysles stating she had used her power as the student advisor to “commit racist and sexist attacks,” according to Maysles’ email.
Maysles said she was cleared of the allegations made against her on February. 9, according to her February 28 grievance.
During the crisis involving the harassment of trans students at ARMS last year, Maysles had been identified as an adult who provided support and refuge for LGBTQIA+ students and who had been critical of the administration’s handling of student and parent complaints about discrimination.
The report in Mass Live can be found here.
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