School Committee
School Committee: July 8, 2020
The Marblehead School Committee held its regularly scheduled meeting on July 8th, marking the first appearance of new Superintendent Dr. John Bucky. Bucky praised the outgoing interim superintendent Phil McCaldiff and the administrative team, then outlined the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's three reopening scenarios: full in-person, full remote, or hybrid. He also shared results of a parent survey on spring remote learning, noting that 88% of respondents had an adult working remotely at home and that families broadly felt remote learning expectations were unclear.
Superintendent outlines three fall reopening scenarios as state guidance still pending
Bucky said the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education cautioned districts against finalizing reopening plans before mid-July guidance is released.
Superintendent Bucky described the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s three fall reopening scenarios: full in-person, full remote, and hybrid. He noted that the commissioner advised districts not to publish plans prematurely because conditions were changing rapidly and more prescriptive guidance was expected in mid-July.
Bucky said the hybrid model — involving rotating cohorts on alternating schedules — was the most complex and generated the most anxiety among educators and families. He added that the department was exploring options to provide districts with more structured remote learning support, with an expectation that remote learning in any future scenario would be standards-based and not pass-fail.
He then summarized results of a parent survey on spring remote learning:
| Data Point | Finding |
|---|---|
| Responses per grade level | Over 100 for most grades; pre-K and K were exceptions |
| Highest-response grade | 4th grade (159 responses) |
| Adults also working remotely at home | 88% of respondents |
| Adequate access to learning materials | 86% of respondents |
| Students spending 2 hrs/day on remote learning | 36% |
| Students spending 3+ hrs/day | 29% |
Bucky noted families widely felt remote learning expectations were unclear and unmanageable, and said those concerns would inform future planning. He emphasized the survey was not scientific and the district would not commission a formal scientific survey.
Dr. John Bucky (Superintendent)
Also on the agenda
New Superintendent Dr. John Bucky introduces himself to the School Committee
Bucky praised outgoing interim superintendent Phil McCaldiff and lauded the administrative team during his first five days on the job.
Dr. John Bucky addressed the School Committee for the first time as superintendent, describing his first five days as encouraging. He credited outgoing interim superintendent Phil McCaldiff with laying a strong foundation and praised assistant superintendent Nan Murphy along with other administrators and building principals. Bucky introduced his guiding philosophy of “PPI” — Presume Positive Intentions — and said his only mandate was to build trust and capacity in the district.
Dr. John Bucky (Superintendent) · John Caswell (MHTV host) · James Maroney (MHTV reporter)
Tonight's record
10 min full transcript ▾
AI-generated · may contain errors · verify with the source video
Transcript machine-generated with Whisper speech recognition (the source video has no caption track). No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.
0:05 Hello, welcome to my MHTV’s Headliner. I’m John Caswell. The Marblehead School Committee held their regularly scheduled meeting on July 8th, and it was the first meeting attended by new superintendent Dr. John Bucky. MHTV’s James Maroney was there and put together these highlights. First, let me begin by saying how honored I am and excited to be here as the superintendent of schools in Marblehead. If the first five days are any harbinger of things to come, let me say with all humility, we have both chosen wisely. I would be remiss not to acknowledge Phil McCaldiff and the work in his leadership over the last year in the district. He has laid a wonderful foundation for me as the incoming superintendent of schools. He has been invaluable during the transition. He cares deeply about Marblehead and the work he did here proves that. Even more, he has made himself available to me through text and emails and calls, and each time he assures me that it is no bother and invites me to continue reaching out to him, which I will take him up on regularly. So I thought I’d be remiss not to acknowledge Phil. The administrative team is strong. Nan Murphy, our assistant superintendent, has already been a wonderful resource to me, serving as a great thought partner and a critical friend as we both navigate learning the district.
1:39 Lisa, our executive assistant, has been a wealth of knowledge for our numerous questions. Eric Oxford, Michelle Cresta, Emily Dean have all been super knowledgeable, inspirational, and thoughtful. Kathleen has been such a resource on technology. I had a chance to meet with the building principals yesterday who have also been just as wonderful. I shared a little vision and philosophy that I termed PPI. I know in our term of time of COVID, we’re all familiar with PPE, personal protective equipment, but the PPI for me is to presume positive intentions. I am here with no mandate other than to build trust and capacity in the district and our schools. Again, I think these initial days confirm that the community is rightfully excited. For the future of our schools and our school districts, I believe our brightest days are ahead of us. Tomorrow will be just two weeks since the department provided schools initial guidance for reopening. I was on a call with the commissioner the next day on the 26th, where the question was asked of him. If we have our reopening scenarios ready to go, can we produce those and get moving?
3:12 And I thought his response was very telling because he said, while I want to commend your industriousness and appreciate the work that you have put in, I would caution you not to do so because conditions are changing so rapidly and the department is going to be much more prescriptive in our phased guidance and the secondary phase of guidance from the department is not coming out until mid-July. And I think it’s important to note that because some districts have gone ahead and produced wonderful documents that they are now in the process of walking back or rethinking or retooling as information changes and the conditions on the ground shift. The department is asking us to consider three different scenarios. A in-person return to brick and mortar schools, a full remote learning return to school, or a hybrid model. And I can share without question the hybrid model makes everyone the most nervous. People can wrap their head around 100% remote learning or 100% in-person, but if you’re saying you’re going to have cohorts of students that might be remote learning one week, an in-person another week, or a red day
4:49 and a black day, or one week on, one week off, that’s complicated. One thing that is providing me solace right now, and I’m not allowed to talk about it, and so I will, is the department is going to be much more involved in a remote learning support. They are talking now about several options that districts can join in terms of remote learning that I think will take away from what I saw as the liability in remote learning in that we took people that were brick and mortar teachers who knew how to give instruction in face-to-face time and develop curriculum and ask them to do that all in a different platform. Remote learning is not new, but asking people who have never done it and don’t know how to do it to do it full-time was what was new. And so I think if the department can be involved more proactively and giving districts guidance or options for that remote learning piece, they will be able to support what they are telling us will be an expectation that remote learning needs to be much more robust. It will not be a pass-fail
6:24 remote learning. It will be a standards-based remote learning with the option probably of traditional grading and earning of credit. We had over 100 responses from each grade level pre-K and K were the only exceptions. And for me that makes probably good sense that pre-K and K would not have had over 100 parents responding to a survey. Just as in terms of a data point, fourth grade was the winningness grade in terms of feedback with 159 responses, followed closely by the 10th grade at 157 and the 8th grade at 155. 88% of the respondents said that there was an adult also working remotely from home. And I think that’s very telling about the district that 88% of families had a family member that was doing remote work working remotely from home. 86% indicated that they felt they had adequate access to learning materials, books, art supplies, and that’s one of those things that can become urban legend for lack of a better word that there were too many people that didn’t have the supplies and materials that they needed.
7:54 Most families said 36% said students spent two hours a day in remote learning, 29% said that students spent more than three hours a day. I think that was one of the learning curves for everyone in remote learning is that people thought that you would just transfer what happened in a six day, six hour face-to-face school day and transition it to a screen. And really the prevailing professional development and best practice guidance is that everything is about 50%. And so if we have a third, roughly a third of our families saying that students were spending three hours a day, that’s a learning curve for us for remote learning, for making improvements for the future. It was very clear that people did not feel that remote learning expectations were clear and manageable. And so if we do go back to remote learning, we want to take back feedback into account that we have to be much more explicit and clear in the expectations, keeping an eye to what is manageable for our families to do. We are not going to make any policy decisions based on this survey. It is not a scientific survey. I don’t think it is in our
9:29 best interest to ask over a thousand families or a thousand respondents to redo the survey. I don’t think it is a good use of budget of the school district’s resources to develop a scientific survey because I think this produced the information that we need for planning purposes.