Wayland Superintendent of Schools Omar Easy Files Racial Discrimination Complaint with State Agency

Former 8-year Everett Public Schools administrator files with MCAD two days after being placed on leave by school board vote 

   Wayland Superintendent of Schools Omar Easy, a former Everett Public Schools administrator, has filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD), stating he has been the victim of racism and prejudice by members of the Wayland School Committee and Wayland Public Schools staff members.
The complaint was filed Feb. 10 against the Wayland School Committee, the Select Board, Wayland Public Schools and individually against School Committee members Chris Ryan and Ellen Grieco, two days after the School Committee voted to place Easy on administrative leave.
According to the complaint, Easy, in his second year as Wayland Superintendent, stated he was never given an explanation as to why he was placed on leave by the School Committee.
Easy is a former 8-year Everett Public Schools administrator who also formerly served as liaison between the city of Everett and the Everett Public Schools. Prior to working in the city of Everett, Easy was a former star football player at Everett High School and Penn State University before playing professionally for the Kansas City Chiefs in the National Football League (NFL), Everett’s only NFLer in the past 60-plus years.
Easy was hired in February 2021 and began serving on July 1, 2022. He was in his second year in that position when he was placed on administrative leave last week, on Feb. 8.

     According to the complaint, Easy stated, “As of the time I am filing this Charge of Discrimination, the School Committee has still failed to provide me any basis for its actions. “As a result of Respondents’ discriminatory, retaliatory and other unlawful actions, I have suffered, and continue to suffer, significant harm, including emotional distress.”
Further, as stated in the complaint, Easy stated Grieco and Ryan helped create “an unlawfully hostile work environment,” by undermining his authority and following a “racist trope that Black males are somehow suspicious and/or aggressive.”
Easy also stated in the complaint, after suggesting that cameras be placed in the middle school’s halls for security purposes after alleged racist graffiti was discovered there, “I was accused of ‘destroying Wayland’s culture’ and ‘bringing Everett culture to Wayland’ — a thinly veiled racist reference to my majority-minority hometown and prior employer.”