In Mass. the person who submits the claim to MCAD does not have to submit proof that they have been discriminated. They need only claim that they were discriminated against. It then becomes the burden, including substantial legal costs, of the person or company that has been accused of discrimination to prove that they did not discriminate. Essentially the question is asked by MACD to the person or company being accused "are you now or have you ever been a discriminator".

When an accuser lies (perjury) on their claim to MCAD and the claim is dismissed there are no consequences whatsoever to the person that filed the complaint. In essence if you are accused of discrimination in Massachusetts and a member of an unprotected class you are held to letter of the law but if you are a member of a protected class and make a complaint and intentionally lie you get a free pass.

MCAD has become a piggy bank for street smart people and attorneys. And guess who funds MCAD. You and me.

I assume this is not in reference to the multiple Federal Civil rights investigations going on in Melrose. OCR's standards are very high and they will not take on an investigation unless they already have the "smoking gun" as in the Melrose cases.

"The Village Voice" person must be from the Mayor's Village Voice group (city hall or school committee group) trying to do the "bait and switch" to somehow convince us that the OCR investigations are meaningless and don't mean anything.

Nice try but we are all just too smart for you not to see your real purpose!

"Village Voice"--FYI: MCAD is a state process/office. The Federal Office of Civil Rights has nothing to do with MCAD. It is a completely different office with a totally separate set of processes, and it cannot be bought by local politicians. The school officials can't get Kathy to fix the deal by getting her bud Martha to intervene.

Sure it will be costly that there are several OCR cases now, and it's an unprecedented disgrace that this has happened to Melrose. But it's the Melrose community that has allowed these heinous politicians and administrations to be in charge, and now it will be the community that will have to rid itself of the cancer it has allowed to metastasize.

The Village Voice? More like the Village People.

Actually, "Village Voice" is a cranky old far, far right-winger, someone who occasionally writes good things, but lots of the time is way out in crazyland with a mindset that is actually quite frightening, despite the interesting pieces now and again.

I am well aware that it was a Federal complaint but that doesn't mean it could not be also filed later with the MCAD, Hopefully not.

Better crazy right winger, than awful left winger.

Crazy right wingers get away with saying all sorts of stupid stuff all the time because liberals are too polite. Well, you crazy right wingers are out of touch. Liberals should be proud. Right wingers think and care only about themselves.

A conserative says: "If it hasn't happened to me, I dont care." A liberal says: "This shouldn't happen to anyone, that's why I care."

That's why all the liberals in Melrose are working so hard to fix a school system that intimidates the most vulnerable students-those with special needs and those in the racial minority. Yeah, right. Those liberals are really showing our METCO kids, "That shouldn't happen to anyone, that's why I care." That's why they let a racist teacher retire with a full pension. You really are in la-la land. Political parties do not care about people. People care about people. And, if you ever cared to get outside of your "liberal" bubble, you would know that there are people who identify in a variety of ways, politically, who do great things, and those who do lousy things. Political parties care about power, and nothing else. Being liberal doesn't mean you care. Grow up.

Yes, those conservatives like Trump and the rest of the people on stage at the debate have shown how much they care about the less fortunate and the other 98%. Every party has immoral people but at least for democrats it's not part of their party platform. It wasn't part of the democrat ideology to do what has happened with Melrose racists. But if you think that conservatives try to legislate with compassion, you are out of touch. And you are touchy.

If we ever split this country by ideology, you'd see how quickly the left side would sink. We'll take the oil, the military, the jobs, the decent people of this country, the hard workers with no excuses.

You on the other hand can take all the criminals, the taxes, the debt, the unions, the tree hugging american haters, political correctness, and we'll see who ends up on top, shall we??

You liberal clowns would be begging to get into conservative town when you finally got fed up with the INSANE taxes, the ABSURD crime rate, and ohhhh thats right since you don't like Police, don't worry as I mentioned above we took them away from you, you're all set on your own.

You really do need to grow up. How can you say that immorality is not part of the party platform when the woman who is the national face of your party is one of the most immoral peaople on the planet. She may becaome our next president, but she has repeatedly shown herself to be a lying, immoral democrat. It absolutely is part of the democrat platform to lie and cheat their way into power. If you think the republicans cornered the market on that one, you are delusional. Then again, you must be delusional if you think you are the party of compassion.

This has nothing to do with what party someone is in. The superintendent and her cabal simply thought that by intimidating and retaliating against students and parents who lodge complaints about educator and administrator misconduct (bullying/harassing students and parents, committing civil rights violations, using public resources such as MPD and city solicitor's office to intimidate complainants, etc.) that parents would get frightened off, would go away and they wouldn't have to do the hard work of addressing the problem. But the much more serious problem they created is that this behavior, by being tolerated and possibly even encouraged by the administration, has become routine at the superintendent's office, middle school, high school, Horace Mann and possibly other district schools, although time and the OCR investigations at these locations will tell.