Anne MacMillan alleges that Kingsley terminated her employment after she reported sustained bullying and mistreatment of a vulnerable student to the school's Human Resources representative on October 31, 2022. Section 37O of Massachusetts General Laws chapter 71 requires school staff to make that report. According to her complaint, she then faced escalating scrutiny, an unscheduled 8-day classroom observation, and pressure to "align" with the administration, before the school rescinded her appointment for the following school year and terminated her employment on April 7, 2023. The termination letter, delivered by courier to her home that evening, stated that the school was ending her at-will employment because she had not agreed to "move on gracefully."

According to the complaint, MacMillan's promotion to Lead Co-Teacher for the 2022–2023 school year, recommended unanimously by Kingsley's hiring team, took effect just weeks before she made her report. The complaint further alleges that she began the school year in good standing, with no disciplinary history and no performance concerns raised, and that she received positive feedback following an external Montessori observation on October 17, 2022, two weeks before her October 31 report.

The case turns on a legal standard unique to the early stages of litigation. Under Massachusetts civil procedure, a motion to dismiss requires courts to accept a plaintiff's factual allegations as true and to draw every reasonable inference in the plaintiff's favor. The Superior Court did so. It dismissed all five counts of MacMillan's complaint anyway, ruling that her report concerned only an "internal matter" at the school and that a provision of the anti-bullying statute barring private lawsuits under the statute itself also barred her separate common-law claim.

"The court accepted every fact I alleged as true, and still ruled it was lawful to fire me for reporting bullying," said MacMillan. "If that decision stands, no teacher, aide, or staff member at a private school in Massachusetts can safely comply with the state's own anti-bullying law without risking their job."

MacMillan's opening brief, filed with the Appeals Court (No. 2026-P-0938), argues that while Massachusetts courts have held that section 37O does not itself create a private right of action, no court has decided whether that limitation also extinguishes the state's long-standing common-law protection for at-will employees discharged for "doing what the law requires." Section 37O separately and expressly prohibits retaliation against school staff who report bullying. The brief contends that treating the statute's bar on private enforcement as also barring an independent wrongful-termination claim would leave mandatory reporters with no remedy if a school fires them for complying with the very law that requires them to report.

The complaint places the case within what it describes as a structural gap in Massachusetts law. Independent school teachers are commonly employed under annual "letters of appointment," an at-will arrangement that carries none of the protections public school teachers receive. Because independent schools depend on tuition, the complaint alleges, administrators face financial pressure to accommodate influential families rather than act on staff concerns. MacMillan alleges that colleagues warned her, before she reported, that speaking up would cost her appointment for the following year, and that teachers who raised similar concerns had previously been pushed out quietly. Her original complaint asked the court to require Kingsley to give its faculty written employment contracts.

The complaint also alleges that Kingsley defamed MacMillan in an April 13, 2023 email sent to parents in her former classroom, which the appeal argues falsely implied that undisclosed misconduct, rather than her reporting, justified her removal.

MacMillan has litigated the case without a lawyer. Claims like hers are hard to bring at all: the damages available to a single teacher rarely justify the cost of a contingency-fee case against an institution with counsel, which is part of why the practice she describes has drawn little scrutiny.

MacMillan says the issues raised in her case extend beyond her own experience. She is the founder of Bullying Accountability, a public-interest project that publishes court records and analysis to help students, parents, and educators understand how school accountability systems work, and how they can fail.

"At heart, I am an educator," MacMillan said. "I built the Bullying Accountability website because I believe that clear, freely available information helps communities become safer, more transparent, and more just."

MacMillan is asking the Appeals Court to reverse the dismissal of her wrongful-termination and defamation claims and to remand the case for further proceedings, or, in the alternative, to allow her to amend her complaint. Briefing in the appeal is ongoing.

About

Anne MacMillan is a former Lead Co-Teacher at Kingsley Montessori School in Boston and the founder of Bullying Accountability. She is self-represented in Anne MacMillan v. Kingsley Montessori School, et al., Massachusetts Appeals Court No. 2026-P-0938, on appeal from the Suffolk Superior Court.

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