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I worked with Karen T. McDermott at Scotch Plains Fanwood High School for many years and just want to give people a warning that this woman is extremely bad news. She is superficially charming. Of course, so is a used car salesman. She uses her charm and her fake smile to get her own way and to do whatever she wants, decency be hanged. She was in charge of the Guidance Department at the high school and would only hire women in the department. It was a policy, though an unofficial policy, of "no men allowed, " and it was Karen T. McDermott's policy. She was running the Guidance Department as if it was her own personal harem! There's something about her that you cannot put your finger on but it's unsettling and it's very much there. She was in trouble several times over the years and always talked her way out of it. Once she told me she just "sat there and smiled" at her detractors until they thought she was a sweetheart, well, some sweetheart her kind makes! She's also overly impressed with herself. More so than she has any right to be, the rest of us were laughing all over the faculty dining room about her most of the time. She comes from the slums but speaks in a fake Bryn Mawr accent. When confronted with anything untoward that she's doing she can get very far out of control, and quickly too. I saw it once. It's like Dr. Jekyll and Ms. McDermott. If she tries to seek employment at a new school or a new company people need to know that she is a lawsuit that is waiting to happen. Do not hire.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
This woman was a RACIST! She fixed a school tryout against Blacks. One of the ways she got away with it was by sweet-talkin her way in to the good graces of the family that ran the town newspaper whose name was Monihan. Fat McDermott didn't see my daughter nearby one day when she was asking one of the Monihan boys how she was being written up in that week's paper about the way she fixed the cheerleading tryouts. But my girl heard her! The whole thing was awful, the school board should of gotten rid of this loser but they didn't. About a year later after she talked her way out of the charges the Monihans put her on front page of the town paper again this time after she visited Soviet Russia to study their education practice. The Monihans were still in her thrall and making her look like she was some bastion of decency rather than a racist, then she became one of the guidance counselors! I heard she retired to the Deep South, ha ha, that's where she belongs, they can have her, but our kids in Scotch Plains and Fanwood deserved SO MUCH BETTER than to be expose to HER in the first place!
Miss McDermott from SPFHS, what a blast from the past this is! I was a student. She was always known as biased when she was a teacher, yes. Played favorites. Always thought something weird was under the surface with her. Rumor had it she went out drinking with certain kids. Ever see the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie where the teacher has her own group of favorite kids and she's detrimental to them? Reminded me of Miss McD.
Good to see this is finally getting out!