Weeks away from graduation, senior class president Estelle Chmura worried she was about to get in trouble. A classmate had just informed her that their new principal, Charles Langille, had handed him the master keys to every classroom in Kearsarge Regional High School.
Late that Sunday night in May 2022, Chmura watched as fellow students ran rampant throughout the building, stacking desks on top of each other, erecting pyramids of chairs, and interlacing green streamers everywhere. The night had been billed as an attempt to establish a new senior year tradition at Kearsarge, but it was getting out of hand.
Concerned that the repercussions of any damage could fall on her, Chmura sought out Langille.
Her principal reassured her not to worry. Any issues are “on me,” she recalled him saying.
Hours later, teachers returned from the weekend to find some of their classrooms in disarray. Messages adorned whiteboards and personal items sat concealed in wrapping paper on their desks. Students gained access to the guidance counselors’ office, which contained confidential information, and a science classroom that held chemicals prepared for an upcoming lab, according to five former employees.
Though the prank ultimately proved relatively harmless, it left many teachers shaken. They worried about all that could have gone wrong and considered the episode a major breakdown in security, not an exercise in building school spirit.
When students told their teachers that Langille himself had provided them access to their rooms, some grew upset at what they perceived as a significant lapse in judgment. Their anger only grew when Langille failed to take responsibility, as he had done with Chmura, and instead deflected blame, according to three former teachers who either talked to him or attended a faculty meeting shortly afterward.
The incident, some now-former employees said, marked a turning point in the faculty and staff’s relationship with their new leader.
“That immediately set the tone of distrust that he would prioritize trying to basically be friends with students over having a trusting relationship with his faculty, and it was deeply concerning,” former science teacher Lindsay Herlihy said.
Since the start of 2023, at least 40 employees have left the high school, according to meeting minutes, interviews, and other records, a staggering rate of turnover for a school that currently employs 87 people, according to its staff directory. (Three of the employees who left the high school currently work at other schools in the district.)
Some who have left blame Langille directly for the mass exodus. Ten former employees who spanned a range of positions and tenures at the school said in interviews or in public that Langille failed to act in a trustworthy manner, exhibited a practice of favoritism and retribution, and struggled with communication.
“Over the course of my time there with Charles, it became less and less of the school that I had given my career to and the entire culture and climate was definitely the worst that it had been in my entire tenure,” longtime English teacher Kevin Lee said.
He retired last year at the age of 57 after 30 years at the school.
“I would have probably stayed until I was 60 if I felt that I could in good conscience stay working with Charles,” Lee said.
Langille declined a request for an interview for this story. He wrote in a statement that he could not respond to “individual allegations due to legal and privacy constraints.”
“I want to emphasize that I take any feedback about myself and our school climate seriously,” he wrote. “I care deeply about the people I work with — past and present — and I reflect regularly on how I can improve as both a person and as a leader.”
Negative sentiment about Langille’s leadership wasn’t universal among former employees. Two who agreed to interviews expressed either neutral or positive feelings about him.
“I found Charles to be very fair. I found him to be a very kind person,” Michael McCosker, the former associate director of student support services, said. “Being it was my first role as an administrator, he was, I thought, very gracious — offered me all of the help that he could to help me grow in that position.”
Support from superintendent
Superintendent John Fortney wrote in a statement that district-level administrators “fully support” the high school’s leadership team. Fortney, who became superintendent last year, described the high school as being in a phase of transition and improvement.
“During this period of change, there is always room for disagreement and civil discussions about leadership and the direction of the high school,” he wrote. “While the majority of staff approach this change with a growth mindset, a few have struggled to adapt to doing things differently, and a few personal concerns are being misconstrued as school-wide issues.”
Fortney also cited the state and country’s “anti-public-school rhetoric” as a factor driving poor retention in recent years.
Always a difficult job, the political climate and staff shortages – along with new and sometimes ambiguous requirements facing public schools – have only made serving as a principal more challenging in recent years, according to Bridey Bellemare, the executive director of the New Hampshire Association of School Principals, an organization that represents principals’ professional needs and concerns.
Principals must answer not only to their faculty and staff, but also to their superintendent, school board, students and parents, said Bellemare, who spoke generally about the role rather than about the leadership concerns raised in Kearsarge.
“They are warriors for every stakeholder,” said Bellemare. “… All of these pressures – principals must navigate them while still striving for a balanced educational approach.”
Some former employees who raised concerns about Langille stressed that they believed he wanted to succeed as a leader but didn’t possess the tools or support to do so.
“I don’t think that Charles has nefarious intent regarding his decision-making, his leadership style, or his conduct with either students or staff,” Herlihy said. “I do think that he lacks courage to both make decisions, stick by them, and receive and act upon feedback that he receives.”
Some faulted the leadership of the school administrative unit — and particularly former Superintendent Winfried Feneberg — for failing to give Langille appropriate direction or step in as complaints against him mounted in exit interviews and in multiple staff climate surveys conducted in recent years.
Feneberg, who retired in 2024 and hired and supervised Langille during his first four years in the job, did not respond to a request for comment. Members of Kearsarge’s school board also did not respond to requests for comment.
The concerns about Langille come on the heels of issues with another principal in the district. In August, Kelly Collins, the principal of Kearsarge Regional Elementary School at New London, resigned after an investigation found she had asked school staff to do her laundry and clean her home, at times during school hours.
Scope of turnover
The Concord Monitor attempted to contact all 40 of the employees identified as having left over the past three years, though contact information could not be found for some of them.
Twelve of them agreed to interviews or have otherwise spoken publicly about Langille’s leadership. Six of the 12 spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared professional or personal repercussions from speaking publicly about a former supervisor.
Of the 10 former employees who expressed concerns about Langille’s leadership, five of them said those concerns either directly caused or contributed to their decision to leave. Some of them also identified other former employees who they believed had left due to issues with Langille, though the reasons for those departures could not be independently verified.
Other employees interviewed – including those who criticized Langille’s leadership – said they left for a range of separate reasons, including retirement, promotion to positions as administrators, and health concerns.
The employees who have departed include at least 12 people who had worked at least 10 years at the school. The departees include nearly 20 teachers, multiple guidance counselors, three members of the nursing staff, and a variety of employees who worked as paraprofessionals, administrative assistants, and in other roles.
At least six former employees currently work at other public schools in the state.
“I’m not going to send my students to a poisoned well and tell them to drink, and right now Kearsarge is a poisoned well.”
The impact of the turnover on students is difficult to quantify. Since 2023, the high school has lost more than one-third of its teachers, which has led to gaps in expertise and experience in certain subjects. For instance, it no longer has a teacher who possesses a state-level endorsement in physics education, according to a state database. Several employees in the guidance, social work and special education roles, who tend to have relationships with vulnerable students that extend multiple years, have also left.
Test scores are a difficult barometer of student performance during Langille’s tenure because it coincided with the pandemic, which universally torpedoed achievement.
Former employees emphasized that though more than three dozen people have left the high school in the past three years, many great faculty and staff members remain, including those who have had long careers there.
Arriving at Kearsarge
Langille’s tenure as principal began in July 2020, during the most difficult period for education in modern American history. A former school counselor, he had previously spent his career in southern New Hampshire, rising to serve as an assistant principal at Mascenic Regional High School.
He was one of three finalists interviewed by a team that included teachers, students, parents, a school board representative and school administrators, according to an announcement about his hiring.
“Charles has demonstrated that he is a remarkable administrator, a proficient leader, and an educator with an eye toward which initiatives will best support students and their academic journeys,” Feneberg said when Langille’s selection was announced.
Langille replaced Robert Bennett, a longtime presence at Kearsarge with a mixed reputation as a principal among those interviewed. He departed in 2020 to serve as principal of Laconia High School and died in 2021 from cancer.
Former employees said their initial impression of Langille was positive. During his first months, he reached out to the entire staff and invited them to participate in one-on-one conversations, one former employee said. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, former employees said they found him personable in those early in-person interactions, and for many that impression persisted.
But within a year, some said they began to distrust him.
One Friday in October 2021, Lee, the veteran English teacher, said he was called into a meeting with Langille, who asked him if he would be willing to fill in for a teacher on maternity leave at the middle school. Twenty-seven years into his tenure at the high school, Lee felt taken aback by the request and unequipped to teach a grade level in which he had no experience. He said no.
The next Monday, Lee ran into a colleague. The middle school staff, the colleague relayed, had just been told Lee would be stepping in for the teacher on maternity leave.
Shocked, Lee confronted Langille in the hallway. At a meeting with Langille and Feneberg later, the former superintendent admitted the decision to transfer Lee had already been made when Langille broached the topic, according to Lee.
“So, when Charles asked me the question, it was not a question,” Lee said. “He didn’t actually say what had already been decided, and that was troubling.”
Several former teachers recounted similar experiences in which Langille would tell them something that they later found to be misrepresented or untrue.
One former teacher said that while she didn’t personally have negative experiences with Langille, she went out of her way “to avoid situations where I needed to trust what he said.” Two other former employees described how he would take what they both characterized as a “divide and conquer” approach, pitting staff against each other.
McCosker, the only former employee who defended Langille, said he never questioned Langille’s honesty.
“I feel that Charles always talked straight and plain with me,” he said. “Let’s just call it what it is — I don’t think he’s ever lied to me.”
Allegations of retribution and communication issues
Former employees said that Langille failed to lead in an even-handed manner, rewarding employees he favored and penalizing those who crossed him. Early in his tenure, he assumed control of the faculty course scheduling system from the guidance office, wielding it as a carrot and a stick, they said.
Sometimes, particularly when teachers pushed back against him in public settings, he removed them from teaching courses that they had developed or taught for a long time, three former teachers said.
Former employees said he also penalized them or their colleagues in other ways.
Last spring, an employee informed the human resources department that she and other employees were so overworked they didn’t have time to take lunch breaks, according to a colleague who documented the fallout from the interaction in her resignation letter, which was shared with the Concord Monitor. Shortly after, in a meeting with the employee and two others, including the author of the resignation letter, Langille assigned the trio lunch duty, according to the letter.
“That’s what happens when you go to HR,” Langille told them, according to the letter, which was written earlier this year. (The individual who made the report to HR, who has also since left, declined through a separate former employee to comment.)
At a school board meeting in September, science teacher Cody Anderson announced he was resigning because Langille had refused to grant him or his wife – also a high school teacher – a preparatory period during the first block of the day so that they could drop off their child at daycare. He said the accommodation was previously afforded to them.
“(Langille’s) leadership at KRHS has directly led to high levels of faculty and staff turnover in recent years,” Anderson said at the meeting. (In a departure from standard practice for the school board, minutes from the meeting omitted a description of Anderson’s comments and those of others who spoke that day.)
Anderson declined a request for an interview.
Jacqui Nelson, a Newbury resident and friend of Anderson and his wife, said the scheduling change “appeared to me to be kind of retribution towards the Andersons, because they don’t have a positive relationship with Charles.”
“It seems to be this continuous battle for him of doing what is right or being right,” said Nelson, who knows several employees who have quit in recent years. “It essentially seems like he lays these directives out at his staff, and if you don’t comply and you don’t go for it, he just guns for you from that point forward.”
“I can’t think of a more unhealthy environment for the staff of Kearsarge, and if the environment’s unhealthy for the staff, it means it’s going to be unhealthy for the students,” she added.
Some former employees said Langille was at times known to draw out or threaten investigations against staff who were perceived to be disobedient.
Last fall, assistant media specialist Belle Harvey said she met with Langille and then-assistant principal Laura Newman after she told them she wouldn’t be available at her official start time to supervise a student on in-school suspension. Issues with the district’s buses, she told them, required her to transport her own child to school, delaying her by about 15 minutes.
After she explained the nature of the delay, Harvey said Langille pulled out a prepared printout of her timesheets for lunch breaks, which showed she was taking a few minutes less than allotted on some days. Harvey perceived the documents as evidence he was building a case against her.
“I think he was arming himself with the lunch (records) that made it look like I was not a dutiful employee,” said Harvey, who resigned the next day.
McCosker, who wasn’t aware of the specifics of certain issues, said that in general, he believed that Langille may have been attempting to correct a culture that had grown too lax.
“When I was at Kearsarge, people would roll in a little later; they’d leave a little earlier,” he said. “There are things in the world of education – collective bargaining agreements and things like that – that very clearly define the work time and a school principal has to answer to a superintendent and the SAU staff. When some of these things begin to be challenged, teachers don’t like it when you’re being held accountable to a standard.”
Former employees also took issue with Langille’s communication — or lack thereof. They faulted him for failing to regularly visit teachers’ classrooms, infrequently leading faculty meetings and sometimes failing to attend them at all, refusing to meet about pressing issues, and conspicuously ignoring certain employees he didn’t like in hallways and at meetings.
In October 2023, for instance, a teacher reached out to Langille and others to express concerns about students dealing and using drugs and to request an urgent meeting, according to an email thread shared with the Concord Monitor by a third party.
More than 24 hours passed before Langille responded, declining to meet. “I am booked with the music department right after school and then it will be prep for tonight,” he wrote.
‘Great school’ or ‘poisoned well’
Residents of the seven towns at the base of the Upper Valley that make up the Kearsarge Regional School District have long taken pride in their high school. Some teachers, such as Cody Anderson, went through the school district as students before returning to work in it. Others sought out a job there due to its positive reputation in New Hampshire’s education circles.
Some say Langille’s leadership has now sullied that reputation. Nelson, the friend of the Andersons and other former employees, serves as a teaching lecturer at Plymouth State University. Previously, she would encourage her students to consider working at Kearsarge. She doesn’t do that anymore.
“I’m not going to send my students to a poisoned well and tell them to drink,” she said, “and right now Kearsarge is a poisoned well.”
Many former employees interviewed said they felt the school had lost its sense of direction.
“There’s a sense of fear, but more so a lack of clarity and consistency,” Lee said. “You never knew what was going to be the next thing that was going to be changed. There was a lack of vision.”
Last year, Fortney replaced Feneberg as superintendent, moving from Missouri to take the role. Those interviewed expressed unanimous support for Fortney and optimism that he could get the high school on track. Though Fortney declined to address the complaints specifically, he said he was committed to the high school’s success.
“No school is perfect and there is always room for improvement in every school,” Fortney wrote in a lengthy statement. “Kearsarge Regional High School is a good school, but the Administration is committed to making it a great school.”
Former employees were divided on whether they believed Langille could lead Kearsarge in that direction if given more substantive support.
“I do think he wants to do well,” one former teacher said. “He’s generally a positive person and what I saw is a person eventually not operating in their happy place. Sometimes people want to do well but they get pushed into a corner and they end up the opposite. I think he wants to do well, but he needs more guidance and he needs to listen to it too.”