About Paul Levy
Ineffective member
Since Jan 2023, Paul Levy has been absent from school committee meetings 13% of the time. He participated remotely 43% of the time. This means, he attends in person less than half of all meetings.
Noticeably, Levy was not in Newton during the entire time leading and during the strike.
Levy's attempt to replace the Chair of the School Committee was a failure. His freshman hubris was soundly rejected by his peers.
Levy's touted expertise in complex and difficult negotiations resulted in no positive contributions to his assigned subcommittee, which failed to reach a collective bargaining agreement with NTA.
For someone who campaigned to rush returning to in-person learning and put teachers in their place, it's ironic he doesn't even show up. And when he does, he's ineffective.
Lapses in judgement or entitlement?
His ego has been his downfall.
Levy admitted on May 5, 2010, to poor judgement in his role as CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, because he had hired and promoted a young female employee with whom he had an allegedly inappropriate relationship. He was fined $50,000 and after trying to stay in place, resigned in shame.
Farzana Mohamed had been hired by Levy as his direct report in 2002 when he was the CEO of BIDMC. Mohamed and Levy had known each other since she was an undergrad and he was her academic adviser. Levy ended his 38-year marriage and wed Mohamed in 2012.
The day he walked out, employees of BIDMC loudly cheered his departure. Attorney General Coakley’s report criticized the Beth Israel board’s failure to provide “diligent and independent management oversight” of Levy.
"The particulars of Levy’s extracurricular activities are of even less interest to most of us than his musings on youth soccer" writes Eileen McNamara in Boston Magazine focusing rather on how "larger-than-life figures who go astray in Boston (even those more slick than charismatic)" and what the Paul Levy saga says about the city’s most powerful institutions, accountability, and us.
Well connected troll
Levy's blog became his soap box to pontificate and rally against unions during his time as Beth Israel's CEO. He then self-published books on "leadership". How a Blog Held Off the Most Powerful Union in America (2013) has been the subject of academic research focused on the perils of social media in negotiation.
His benefits extend to even having his "connections" appoint his wife to the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2022.