Four staff members at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center were abruptly removed from their roles in what Roxbury Community College officials said was part of an organizational restructuring.

The four staff, all formerly part of the center’s top leadership team, were put on paid administrative leave June 11 ahead of officially being removed from their roles later this year.

“I was just very blindsided. I didn’t know how or why this decision was reached,” said Kamilah Rowe, the now-former assistant manager at the Reggie Lewis Center and one of the four staff.

Community leaders say the removal of the staff — who served as manager, assistant manager and daytime and evening fieldhouse supervisors — will be a blow to community activities at the Reggie Lewis Center.

“I’ve gotten swamped with calls from people asking me what’s going on and what are we going to do? The bottom line is that the community already knows what’s going on and they’re in an uproar,” said Sadiki Kambon, director of the Black Community Information Center and a longtime advocate around Roxbury Community College and its operations.

Rowe called herself and the other three removed staff the “four pillars” of the Reggie Lewis Center. In light of the action from the college, Kambon, in a letter sent to community members June 12, called them the “FIRESTORM 4.” They, together, had decades of experience at the athletic center.

Frank Jackson, who served as the evening fieldhouse supervisor, had worked there, in various capacities, since it opened its doors in 1995 and had been in his full-time role since 1999.

Sherman Hart, who was one of the staff removed, had been in his role as manager of the center for 11 years.

Though a recent employee, Rowe, too, had been a fixture at the Reggie Lewis for years — first as an athlete, since she was 12 years old, then as a coach and finally, since 2022, in her leadership role.

“To become the assistant manager just felt right,” she said. “It came full circle for me and was my way of giving back the community, to really make the Reggie Lewis Center a place that’s for the community and beyond.”

Hart said the action will impact the facility, which gets recognition across the country. When travelling, he has mentioned he works at the Reggie Lewis Center, which he said gets both recognition and appreciation from others in the field.

He said he’s had phone calls from other centers across the country looking for information about how the Reggie Lewis Center operates.

“We had a group of senior athletes go out to Chicago three months ago and they said, ‘Oh, I felt like I was just at Reggie Lewis,’” Hart said. “I said, ‘That’s because they sent a whole team to figure out what we’re doing.’”

Even in the short term, the departure of the four staff has impacted programming at the Reggie Lewis Center. Rowe said her removal cut short a series of classes for the center’s “Sensational Seniors,” a cardiovascular exercise program for older adults.

The staff members said they were given little notice of the action. An email notification, sent around 5 p.m. on June 10, instructing each to attend a meeting with the college’s human resources representatives the following day served as their only heads up.

At that meeting, they were told they were being put on paid leave, effective immediately.

Rowe, who took a sick day June 10 and 11, replied saying that she was going to be unavailable. The meeting was never rescheduled and she received all of the information through an email sent to her by the college’s human resources department and an official letter delivered to her.

“To just know that you’re at work one day and then you’re away from work and to then later get a notification that your position is being retrenched and to return all my company items — I just didn’t know what to do or think in that moment,” she said.

Jackson said he didn’t see the email and only found out when he was called into a room with the representatives as he was wrapping up a workout session at the Reggie Lewis Center.

He said that, following the meeting, he was escorted by security officers as he packed up his things and left the building. By the end of the afternoon, he said his code to get in no longer worked.

In a statement on behalf of Roxbury Community College, a representative called the move a “retrenchment,” part of an organizational restructuring to eliminate overlapping responsibilities and “ensure operational efficiency.” As part of that process, the college said it is in the midst of hiring a new director of operations for the Reggie Lewis Center.

The college said the shift stems from the Pathway Forward Report, released by the school in 2023 and outlining needs and plans for growth at the Reggie Lewis Center in light of longneeded repairs identified by facility assessments, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the facility shutter and then reopen as a vaccination site.

The Pathway Forward Report that was released online calls for the hiring of a facilities schedule, but makes no specific mention of redesigning the organizational structure or creating the new role.

Separately, it acknowledged that the center’s staff “contributed beyond expectations” over the years and kept the Reggie Lewis running throughout changes in leadership and insufficient funding and staffing.

According to a copy of an official letter communicating the retrenchment, obtained by the Banner, the four staff members were officially put on paid administrative leave June 11 pending the amount of time officially required by the state’s handbook for non-union community college staff before they can be fully removed from their positions. For staff like Jackson, who had been working in his role for more than 15 years, that means 120 days of paid leave; according to the handbook, it’s 90 days for employees like Rowe and Hart, whose times in their roles were shorter.

The college declined to comment on how the responsibilities of the four roles would be restructured into a director of operations position, or why the process seems to have happened so quickly.

Retrenchment of the staff also comes as the Reggie Lewis Center adjusts to a new executive director, Michael Turner, who was hired in September.

According to the Pathway Forward Report, the new executive director was intended to be a consensus builder with a focus on community engagement and the center’s budget.

The retrenched staff said that Turner’s stint, so far, in the role has failed to live up to those expectations.

Rowe said that Turner’s leadership has created an atmosphere of distrust at the Reggie Lewis that has divided staff. Both she and Jackson described a tendency toward micromanagement.

“Staff has really become divided since his arrival and that sense of community within the Reggie had been broken early after his arrival,” Rowe said. “I really can’t say much good that has come out of all this.”

One of Turner’s attempts to bolster the center’s budget was to install three golf simulators that both Jackson and Rowe said have seen little use.

Despite the official statement that the retrenchment is part of an organizational restructuring, Hart and Kambon both alleged that the move might have stemmed from disagreements between Turner and the leadership and an attempt from the latter to garner a stronger sense of control at the center.

During the hiring process, Kambon said he was consulted by RCC interim President Jackie Jenkins-Scott and spoke with Turner as a candidate for the executive director position. At the time, he advised that Turner wasn’t a good fit for the role.

The college declined to comment on the allegations against Turner’s leadership in his role as executive director.

Kambon said he intends to lead a community push to call on the college to remove Turner and rehire the four retrenched staff members.

For Kambon, the shake-up casts a shadow over improvements brought to the institution under Jenkins-Scott’s tenure. She is transitioning out of her interim role at the end of the month as incoming President Jonathan K. Jefferson prepares to step into the school’s top seat, starting July 1.

“It’s really unfortunate because of the fact that all the good that she’s been doing over there is now in the background, and this is out in the forefront,” Kambon said. “I’m sure that people are saying, ‘Well, it’s the same old RCC,’ and that’s really discouraging to me because after all these years, I’m saying to myself, ‘finally, it’s moving in the direction where there’s going to be a positive outlook.’”