Former director of Boston's English learners program sues district, claiming retaliation

A former Boston Public Schools administrator is suing the district, alleging she was pushed out of her role after voicing concerns about the transfer of hundreds of English learners out of specialized programs.

Aketa Narang Kapur, the former assistant superintendent overseeing the district’s Office of English Learners, alleges retaliation and discrimination in a complaint filed Friday in Suffolk Superior Court.

Kapur had served 15 years in Boston Public Schools as an educator and coach focused on English learners before being named assistant superintendent for English learners in November 2021. She lasted just weeks in the role before being placed on administrative leave.

She claims the retaliatory action began after she alerted her supervisors that over 200 intermediate English language learners had been transferred to general education classrooms before achieving the level of fluency recommended under state guidance.

Kapur, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that after reporting those concerns, she experienced public ridicule and bullying over her "manner of speech" by Drew Echelson, the district’s chief of schools and accountability, who was a supervisor at the time.

Sophia Hall, deputy litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights, is one of the attorneys representing Kapur in the case.

Hall said that alongside personal remedies — like reinstatement and money damages — Kapur hopes her suit will spark structural change for the district’s English learners and on behalf of administrators of color.

“Real scrutiny should be applied to the type of employer that BPS is,” Hall said.

In 2022, a number of former school and district leaders alleged in a letter to then-incoming superintendent Mary Skipper that they had been disproportionately targeted for discipline. They claimed that practice communicated “a message of fear and intimidation … that you will be discredited and destroyed if you speak out.”

Through a spokesperson, the district declined to comment on any of Kapur’s allegations.

Kapur’s suit is just the latest sign of trouble within the office overseeing the roughly 15,000 English learners in BPS classrooms.

With Boston’s overall handling of English learners still under both state and federal scrutiny, Kapur's brief tenure was part of a whirlwind of turnover atop that office: The Boston Globe reported that, including Kapur, a total of six directors led the unit in less than three years.

And just last fall, eight members of a district task force on English learners resigned in protest over district plans to move away from “language-specific” programs for its multilingual learners in the next few years.

John Mudd, one of the task force members who resigned, said Kapur’s claims are validating — and tragic.

“What’s dismaying is that it takes court cases and resignations for BPS to recognize that its strategies are failing, and it needs to learn to adopt different approaches,” he said in an interview Monday.

Kapur’s complaint alleges that the trouble started before she even entered the assistant superintendent role. It claims she had learned that the district had transferred over 200 English learners classed as “Level 3,” or intermediate, to general education classrooms — without informing their parents.

State guidance suggests that students in that category should be offered at least 45 minutes of direct instruction each day in English as a second language.

Both moves, the complaint argues, violated the district’s longstanding agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to “ensure that English Language Learner (ELL) students in Boston receive the services and supports they need” — and to which they are entitled under federal law.

Instead of acting on her concerns, Kapur alleges that district officials retaliated against her. She claims Echelson belittled her in large meetings and that she was placed on paid administrative leave in December 2022, just weeks after she had started in her role.

At the time, district officials claimed that Kapur’s suspension — and her eventual resignation the following April — stemmed from her failing to make proper disclosures over laptop donations she secured from a company she had founded.

But in the complaint, Kapur outlines several instances in which she had disclosed her ownership of the firm in question to the district.

“The allegations against Kapur regarding her attempt to obtain donated laptops for BPS staff were a pretext to retaliate against her for objecting to and reporting activities which she knew or had a reasonable belief were violations of law,” the complaint concludes.

Hall, the attorney, said she hopes a judge will view the district's claims as a case in which “employers scurry to create valid reasons for demoting, firing or penalizing employees of color.” Hall noted that Kapur received no financial reward for the firm's eventual donation of two laptops.

Many of the resigning members of the district’s English Learners task force had a high opinion of Kapur, said Mudd, a longtime education advocate in the city.

“My sense is that she shared our belief in the profound importance of building on the foundation of native language — valuing it, not only in itself, but as the best way for students to learn academic English,” he said. “But she was bucking up against a system that was, for inexplicable reasons, determined to follow a failed strategy.”

In public presentations in recent months, district officials have said they hope to include multilingual learners more fully in their schools in order to prevent feelings of isolation — and to adhere to state and federal regulations.

But Mudd and others believe that BPS should instead recruit more multilingual teachers to its schools and conduct substantial instruction in those students' native languages.

Such a campaign of recruitment would be difficult, Mudd acknowledged, but research suggests it may be the most effective way to help English learners improve their academic outcomes in Boston.