Superintendent of schools used to be a long-time gig in Brookline. Before 2015, only 13 people had held that job in 142 years, according to data from the district.
That’s no longer the case. In the past nine years, seven people have been superintendent on a permanent, acting, or interim basis.
So when it was time to look for a new leader again in 2021, a superintendent search committee prioritized stability, according to School Committee member Helen Charlupski. She and fellow members of the search committee saw a future with Linus Guillory, a former school principal and systemwide administrator whose resume includes a stint at NASA bringing astronauts together with students and teachers to study space.
Guillory made history as Brookline’s first Black superintendent — “a really proud day and a day that took way too long,” said Malcolm Cawthorne, a Brookline High School graduate who now directs the district’s METCO program, a regional school integration program that buses students of color from Boston to attend schools in suburbs like Brookline.
Guillory has been a polarizing figure at times, commended for increasing financial transparency and being present within the schools but criticized for budget cuts and communication blunders.
In its annual superintendent evaluation on Aug. 8, the School Committee rated Guillory’s overall performance “proficient,” noting he made “significant progress” toward his goals in professional practice, student learning and district wide improvement.
Looking ahead to the new school year, Guillory plans to focus on the overall student experience, raising the standard for student engagement and sustaining academic rigor in each school.
“In many communities, education is important, but it doesn’t always feel that way,” Guillory said. “In Brookline, the community takes its schools very seriously.”
Before Brookline
Guillory, 47, grew up in rural Texas and once planned to become a thoracic surgeon. He discovered his passion for teaching when he tutored undergraduate classmates in chemistry at Texas A&M University.
By the time he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology, he had chosen to pursue education rather than medicine and began his career as a middle school science teacher in Houston.
Three years later, Guillory joined NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he worked in the center’s Teaching From Space office and its Aerospace Education program.
“I drove a large van that had moon rocks and space suits and those types of things, and I drove around doing professional development for schools, science centers and museums and colleges,” Guillory said. He often sat in Mission Control, he said, as a liaison between astronauts in space and teachers in their classrooms.
After six years at NASA, Guillory took an assistant principal position at a middle school near Houston. When his wife, a professor of religion, took a job in upstate New York in 2012, he worked as a principal for schools in Ithaca and Rochester. He followed her again to Massachusetts in 2018 and served as the academic superintendent for Boston Public Schools and the chief school officer for Lowell Public Schools. Along the way he earned a master’s degree in education from Prairie View A&M and a PhD in environmental science from Oklahoma State University.
Progress with school finances, pushback amid budget cuts
In its annual evaluation of the superintendent last month, the School Committee praised Guillory’s implementation of “precision controls” and a strategic plan that outlines budget priorities and goals.
School Committee member Suzanne Federspiel called Guillory’s work on budget transparency “unsexy” but important.
“It’s not lights and sparkles, but it’s really important for how we view the budget, how the public can view the budget, and how central administration can work with the numbers,” she said. “That has been a huge improvement.”
Guillory’s work on the budget has not come without criticism, particularly in the most recent school year, when budget cuts resulted in employee layoffs and cuts to the world language program for kindergarten through fifth grade. While the cuts upset many parents, Guillory said they were a necessary part of a “sustainable funding formula.”
“That’s why we saw the very hard decisions to make some reductions in some areas, but looking forward, we want to add those back,” he said.
Justin Brown, president of the Brookline Educators Union, said he and Guillory “maintain an open channel of communication.”
“While we are often at odds about the issues facing educators, we both strive to maintain a relationship based on listening and dialogue so that we can move forward,” Brown wrote in a statement to Brookline.News.
Grappling with conflict
Following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Guillory sent a district-wide email that included resources such as a site called Decolonize Palestine and a report from Human Rights Watch detailing claims of persecution by the Israeli government. It sparked outrage within Brookline’s Jewish and Israeli communities, and some parents called for Guillory’s apology or resignation.
Town Meeting member Jonathan Klein was among the critics. He called the list of resources “extremely biased” and “completely inappropriate.”
Guillory apologized in a follow-up email and has since made an effort to learn from the past, he said. In mid-August, he visited an exhibit at Boston’s City Hall Plaza that simulated the experience of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.
“It’s a learning journey, and no one is ever going to come in with all knowledge and all information,” Guillory said. “Being committed to learning and engaging in the process, that’s what I’m here for. That’s what I’m modeling and demonstrating.”
Charlupski, who has served on the School Committee for more than 30 years, said superintendents are forced to navigate criticism — both expected and unexpected — many times every year, and last year was no exception.
“I think Dr. Guillory learned from that event and his response, and was able to regroup and put through something that really made sense,” Charlupski said.
While Guillory received heavy criticism on social media and in public comment sessions at School Committee meetings, some community members appreciated the lesson that transpired.
“I really want to use that as a moment of learning and give him tremendous credit,” Driscoll School parent Jonathan Golden said. “I know that he did listen and he understood, and very quickly wrote a follow-up communication.”
Policies and protocols
The situation sparked calls for preventative measures to mitigate alleged antisemitism and racial bullying in the district. A draft of a hate-speech policy began to stall after several meetings of the School Committee’s policy subcommittee and criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this summer.
Guillory said the district is developing a “protocol for incident reporting and investigation” that it plans to implement this school year. The protocol will streamline the process for information gathering when conflicts are reported, Guillory said.
“Everyone who lives in the community is entitled to go to school here, and we want to make sure that all of our schools are welcoming environments for everyone that walks through our doors,” he said.
Guillory’s experience attending a historically Black college — Prairie View A&M — has made him a more inclusive leader who recognizes that one size does not fit all, Cawthorne said.
“It creates a perspective where you don’t put kids in these silos,” said Cawthorne, who also served on the superintendent search committee.
Guillory’s fourth school year in Brookline
Moving forward, Guillory wants to universalize the time spent on academics across schools while ensuring that teachers and individual schools retain their autonomy, he said. He hopes to improve the overall student experience — time students spend in and outside of classrooms as members of the school community.
“When students are connected well with school, that means they show up, they engage, and they do well, and then that sets them on a stronger trajectory for what’s coming,” Guillory said.
Also coming this school year is an evaluation of a controversial pilot program to de-level ninth-grade English classes, which is part of a broader initiative to decrease tracking in an effort to increase equity at the high school.
While Cawthorne said he hopes Guillory will stay in his role, the constant turnover of superintendents in the past decade makes it difficult to be optimistic.
“I’m kind of afraid to hold my breath because of all that’s happened before him,” Cawthorne said.
Guillory, meanwhile, emphasized his role as a listener as well as a decision-maker.
“The vocal voices that you often hear will say one thing, but there are many quiet voices that say something. So it’s listening to all of that, and taking all of that to account,” he said.