School Committee: July 8, 2021

Transcript captured from YouTube auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

1:36 okay i see that we have all committee members present and we are live on youtube as well as being recorded for mhtv and i will call this order at 601 pm first up is public comment if everyone who wants to make public comment could please use the raise their hand function

1:59 so that i know who wants to speak um and when i call on you please state your name and address for the record meredith tedford hey y’all hey y’all um meredith tedford 40 locust street um first of all i can appreciate that probably me speaking is the last thing that some of you may want to hear because i know when i was in the position of chairing meetings and former school committee members would step up to speak it was always kind of a challenge because obviously new year new situation and i i really do appreciate that um that every year and every new sort of committee iteration brings its own challenges and um and i

2:45 appreciate this so i i thank you in advance for hearing me out um i was i you know continue to pay attention just personally because i care about the the committee in the town and i care about our students and staff and faculty um and i i just felt really compelled to to comment on um the contract that’s being voted on tonight which i saw posted thank you for posting that um there’s two two things that i would like to bring up the first is personal a little bit and the second is really professional and business related from a personal perspective um i just remember sort of going through contract negotiations with our prior superintendent and

3:32 i really um based on that knowledge and that information and um the input that we got from legal counsel and masc it’s virtually unheard of to kind of give a five-year contract to a new superintendent so i i really encourage you to kind of think about think about that um i think it’s even more unheard of after a year where we don’t really have data about performance in relation to a normal functioning school year and and that’s no slate on dr bucky it’s really there’s just there’s not data and a five-year contract at this point gives absolutely no leverage to the district in terms of future and budgeting um and whatnot so i think that that’s something that really needs to be kind of vetted with the community

4:19 i also think that you know there’s some real challenges um related to you know again sort of personal relationships and conflict of interest law and um the law is really written broadly to cover sort of even the appearance of impropriety and because it’s so unusual to to offer a five-year contract after a year and there’s already been apologies made for sort of you know overstepping personal bounds with the superintendent i think the committee really needs to justify um that that this decision you know not based on your personal relationship but based on student achievement which is really what the obligation of the committee is all about is being able to justify superintendent’s performance based on

5:05 super based on student achievement so i really hope that you can kind of answer in your discussion today how dr bucky’s performance in relation to that student achievement with only one year in the district in a very unusual year justifies that kind of contract renewal um and how does that five five years now benefit the district moving forward and then you know the other piece of this in terms of the personal relationship is something i also would like committee members to con consider in the six years that i spent on that board i never once met with the superintendent outside of woodrow road not once we never had a cup of coffee we never went to lunch we never went to dinner together nothing all of our

5:51 and i that was intentional and it was because we were very conscientious of having a professional relationship and not a personal relationship and i think all of you or many of you that i worked with were even critical of that and the amount of time that i did spend at woodrow road so i just want you to think about that also in relation to um you know being able to to separate and really um make the community feel comfortable with the fact that a personal relationship isn’t impacting a professional one thanks thank you meredith um catherine martin you’re next 29 west shore drive and actually

6:37 meredith summed everything up really nicely that i had to say uh a couple additions i’m kind of i guess tired also of feeling like the lack of transparency having this meeting with such

6:56 a july week clock instead of the typical seven o’clock time um and then everything she said we’re coming off of an atypical year with our superintendent and we the data to be able to oh you know what look like in the future and it may be great and this isn’t good or bad it’s about being financial stewards of the 42 you oversee right now just seems fiscally irresponsible um and i couldn’t agree more with the conflict of interest and some of the the friendships that we have all been

7:42 witnessing all around town and it’s just not appropriate i work in the municipal sector and i don’t have any private with any of my clients because it’s inappropriate and we’re seeing this over and over again with this committee and now we’re seeing a five-year deal you know we’re talking about us here in a district that struggles to keep the lights on so i think you really all need to to look hard at this and really think is this appropriate is this the right time are we being stewards of this budget of um of the school district thank you thank you katie dan elbert you’re up next

8:29 uh uh hi sarah hi uh committee thank you for letting me uh talk to you about this issue as i see it i am i’m here to urge you to vote no on any sort of contract extension uh tonight i make this plea for a few reasons first of all the methodology is for evaluation is not sufficient for making this kind of decision uh a superintendent who earns himself a grade of proficient uh from the school committee does not warrant special treatment let’s say that for somebody that scores excellent and as you note in your first sentence

9:15 of commentary this superintendent has spent the past year in quote uncharted territory and i want to quickly kind of unpack uh if i could each of those and let me make clear that i am pleading with you urging you not to take this vote independent of my own uh views of dr bucky mr bakke uh and the school committee i think uh everybody on the school committee has heard from me plenty when i’m happy and when i’m not but that’s not why i’m speaking you today so let me speak about the um methodology so i’ve read the underlying law the deci guidance and then you’ve used the deci uh evaluation summative evaluation form this was posted and i’m

10:00 only going on what i’ve been able to see posted as an end of cycle summit of evaluation it lists and i i don’t know if this is a typo or what but it was june 3rd to june uh 2021 to june 1st 2021 i’m not sure how long this cycle is i don’t know if he negotiated coming in a particular cycles uh uh cadence uh or what but if this is a one-year evaluation i’m not i i would understand if you need at least a two year uh cycle uh secondly speaking about um kind of who marblehead deserves as a superintendent as you noted in the evaluation um

10:46 his scores are and i should say the scores for this superintendent for a superintendent uh were um uh making progress towards goals uh not uh met goals and also um proficient so what i want as a parent what i think marblehead is able to get because of the kind of community uh we have is a superintendent who scores excellent okay um you know it’s sort of like okay we gave the guy a b um that’s fine but what why would you then give uh somebody with a c or a b special treatment of an extended contract and i want to quickly say i call this special treatment because i’ve

11:31 been through several superintendents and i’ve never seen this before um last one uncharted territory so you refer to uncharted territory and i know others have made this uh same content a comment you you might think that or the the logic might be okay so he’s done great with this incredibly difficult problem therefore when the problem’s much smaller and normal uh obviously he’d do even better i think the opposite is true and i think it’s true for two reasons one is uh the ability operator of crisis is not the same as the ability to operate in a sort of a normal section more importantly though this school committee has held any

12:17 school committee in this past year uh but this school committee has had to deal with uncharted territory which means your ability our ability to assess a superintendent or anybody on any kind of normal uh scale uh uh is is kind of blown okay um so again it’s it’s not true that if you do a great job in an extraordinary year you’ll do an even better job in an ordinary year but more importantly we as a community and i think you as a school committee have also been through an extraordinary year and you’re making uh decisions uh based on that so i appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk uh today i appreciate you taking

13:03 feedback from everybody i appreciate everything the school committee has done um and when i haven’t i’d let you know um but i really do urge you to vote no on any sort of contract extension certainly tonight thank you thank you dan uh kim day you’re next

13:29 hi there kim day 18 liberty road um i want to thank all of you for posting the information in the materials packet prior to the meeting so that the public had the opportunity to review it and to weigh in this evening in public comment or in their emails to you i know i sent an email that i’ve heard from a few of you that you’ve seen and thank you for your response i guess i i might i don’t want to repeat too much of what the others have said but i i tend to agree and listen dr bucky this has nothing to do with me saying that i object to your um experiencing like you what you have done for the district over this past year and it was an incredibly challenging year honestly i think that you’re off to a great start in this district um and i

14:14 have a feeling that there are people that are listening that may be afraid to make public comment because you are listening so this this is not personal about you i just want to make sure that that’s clear i think that i struggle with the idea of extending the contract by an additional two years at this point is because as others have said and i said in my email we haven’t seen um dr bucky his performance in a typical school year and so i guess i’m just really encouraging the committee to consider revisiting this at the end of next year um after we have a typical school year under our belt and in additionally since i’ve been involved in the district for a while and paying attention and an involved parent i still have the history and the memory of what happened with the last superintendent

15:00 and when we had an extended contract that we had a difficult time getting out of um i’m not to say that that will be necessarily the experience with dr bucky and i certainly hope that he is here for several years and he continues to grow in the in the role and um be successful here but we don’t have a crystal ball right and so why lock marblehead into a contract um that we don’t have to right now so um that’s it i’ll keep it short and thank you for taking public comment i appreciate that

15:35 thank you kim scott solberg you’re up next thank you scott solberg one ramsey road um so a couple of issues i i actually wrote this out before so i know i’m going to be hitting on some of the comments we’ve had but actually it’s not in it in direct response um ben as some of you know i’m in the education profession so i do a lot around leadership working with assists with superintendents and state leaders the number one issue that’s been going on in meetings we’ve been having in marblehead whether it’s the plan for success or other areas the biggest issue that keeps coming up is we do we have not had stability in leadership it’s the number one issue we need to be able to count on our leadership our teachers need to count on

16:20 if we’re putting in new programs in place these programs are going to continue and it’s not going to be bringing a new leader to set up new programs they need that and they’re asking for that and it really begins with us as a community we have to be focused not so much on saying are we do a good job what’s not going on which dollars in the budget aren’t working how can we as a community support our superintendent we can offer constructive ideas to improve the schools but how can we work as a community to help support the superintendent just as the school committee’s role is to support the superintendent um but here’s some here’s some things i i disagree with the idea that we just simply need to get a new superintendent if this one doesn’t work out our national reputation i’ve heard from more than one superintendent at meetings i’ve been to they know all about marblehead when i

17:07 bring up my mom from marblehead they go oh my gosh absolutely because the bruce the bruce moss debacle we’ve had the issue recently that we have a reputation of basically doing this of doing exactly this not good enough never good enough uh we really want to see more and it ends up turning over our leadership and we’re not able to get that piece as far as the actual data that’s going on here one of the data pieces i have three or four one of them is transparency and collaboration for the first time we have even despite kobit we have budget information we are getting it regularly it’s transparent we’re getting weekly updates on what what the district is doing to manage

17:52 through covid the issues coming up how we’re managing through we had weekly reopening committee meetings that included parents parents voices were right there to express the concerns that we all had and were pushing to get the reopening and our superintendent moved to reopen the schools before the state and the cdc was willing to do so because he looked at data and said we’re not going to listen anymore let’s start moving now you can’t take a whole district and simply snap your fingers in school’s reopening they put together a whole program to get the it was huge the amount of effort that went into getting this done so i hear what you’re saying that maybe under crisis things can rise to it but what about during the early but i just want to say this was a major effort in courage to make to do what was right with the parent impact at the very end of the year we had a parent survey well

18:39 that came because a parent was on one of those committees making the case and would not let it go thankfully until everyone said you’re right we need to get more voice and more ideas of what’s going on responsive transparent collaborative leadership means enabling this district and our school leaders to lead so nan gave a report recently about something that has not happened in the 10 years i’ve been here an actual horizontal as well as vertical alignment of our curriculum during kobe you want to have better student outcomes it starts with curriculum redesign and it happened during the covid crisis that’s amazing honestly that is huge it’s something we’ve been asking for our previous superintendent was originally hired by bruce moss to do

19:25 that alignment that never happened we’ve been wanting it for years it’s finally happening very exciting eric oxford redesigned our student services to establish not only more inclusive services and support but this innovation is going to bring national attention to our district we’ve already had conversations with one of the national leaders in disability who’s saying oh my god you need to get some people from around the state who are doing national research on the topic to come into marblehead to watch what you’re doing because this is the model that everyone’s going to want to be replicating this happened during covet this is going to improve the outcomes for our students with disabilities again amazing the plan for success efforts is going to help our committee our whole community rally around the budget increase that we want but it’s going to be tied to clear objectives and

20:10 a strategy that’s going to improve the schools again during the context of covid these are the things that are being put in place so from my experience given all this that’s going on it’s been an unprecedented amount of positive work i do not recall seeing superintendent new contracts based on student outcomes and i have been if you’ve been watching for a long time bringing out our post-secondary completion rates and showing you how our kids with students with disabilities have not been moving through our district but that was never brought up as an issue in relation to student contract or to the superintendent contract so i don’t know that that’s the primary i think this process that’s going in is not only a positive trajectory but it’s something that we’ve got to invest in and we’ve gotta but we basically need to tell our teachers as well as our leadership that we want a

20:58 stable structure and it starts by hiring our superintendent and keeping our superintendent here one last thing i apologize if i’m over time so i’m not even keeping track i apologize for that we just lost 70 superintendents in new hampshire there are plenty of job openings for a superintendent and if you think we’re going to be getting just a better one given our reputation i think what we need to do is invest in the great change that’s happened the great opportunities are going on and and just keep moving forward so i think that’s that’s the plan i hope you do give the five-year extension thank you thank you scott uh rhea stalberg

21:35 hi uh good evening i’m bree stahlberg and i live on field brook road and um i just want to echo everything that scott solberg said and um commend you for extending dr bucky’s contract for two years if that’s how you so vote i really wanted to speak to my role as on the planning for success initiative um we were asked as a parent representative we were asked to go on to the community to speak to as many people as possible for um to gauge what people’s feelings were with the district going forward and um looking backwards and one of the major issues that came up for almost every single person i talked to whether it was a parent a community member or staff member was

22:21 the dire need for stable leadership and i really want to say that i feel that extending dr bucky’s contract for two years longer um is a major step in the right direction based on what the community feedback i received was looking for uh from the school department and that the plan taking shape from marblehead public schools and the work that’s being done and planning for success is something that i think marblehead is going to be very proud of and i have full confidence in doctor’s ability dr bucky’s ability to lead the district on this forward path so thank you thank you reese melissa kaplawicz hi good evening everyone melissa gapley which camille terrace i also wrote out a statement and

23:07 it is no surprise that scott silberg and i are in the same field and did the exact same work so i’m going to sort of um not repeat what he has said but before i start i do would like to say that um i really do appreciate the voice of the speakers who um spoke early on i think it’s really important to have different perspectives in this community and to be respectful of all perspectives and um i don’t want to undermine any of the voices that that came before me because i think that they’re they’re valid and important points um i’ve been a parent and a volunteer in this district since 2005. it’s been a long time over that time of experience for evolving door of superintendents and building administrators i’ve seen the direct effects of ineffective leadership

23:54 on my children on district leaders teachers in this community um and frankly i have just about given up on our efforts as a district to move towards academic excellence bill mccaldock restored my faith and when he was in district um i like many of the people on this meeting took great interest in the superintendent search process and who our new superintendent would be just over a year ago dr bucky began his tenure as a superintendent in our community after an in-depth and rigorous process historically a newly hired superintendent starts the preparation for this position by creating an entry plan meeting with stakeholders examining

24:39 schedules looking at staffing looking at budgets looking at existing policy um and above all perhaps does a tremendous amount of listening that’s what we would expect um in a regular year when this community hired dr bucky five months prior to the start of um his contract nobody could have imagined that um the series of scenarios that took place um would be before us none of us could have planned for it um this past year has brought a series of scenario scenarios that not even the most seasoned superintendent could have had a plan before hidden in their back pocket almost daily every administrator across this country faced a series of

25:25 unfamiliar territory with the landscape that changed again and again and again the usual entry plan that this community may have expected um which would have included reasonably set goals and the typical to-do list went out the door and was replaced with um a series of safety initiatives a series of academic standards under a series of changing strategies daily and welcoming and reassuring our students and our teachers and our families that our students would be okay um given all of the unknowns the job of a district superintendent is challenging on the best day under the most ideal circumstances all

26:11 superintendents are called upon to manage daunting challenges in marblehead even without a pandemic this continues to be more challenging compared to other districts as scott mentioned as many of you know maybe you won’t say it we have a reputation of being a difficult district with difficult parents underpaid teachers stagnation and the ability inability to get to the next level of excellence when dr bucky began his tenure here our district had faced great turmoil which left scores of unhappy parents unhappy staff scared children in a sour taste of discontent and distrust amongst many of us we have just started to rebuild

26:56 this year superintendents across the country not just in our little microcosm of marblehead have had to react to rapid ever-evolving uncertain changes almost daily and make decisions about matters that not only would occur in the first year of a new job but with regard to curveballs that kept coming and coming and coming throughout the year members of this community were scared they were angry they were disappointed and yet at the same time there were members of this community who were happy and grateful for all of the work and planning that went into creating the best possible environment under the worst possible set of circumstances not all of us have to agree all the time how can we we are all unique and all of our children are unique learners not

27:42 everyone will be happy myself included and when i’m not people hear it however most people recognize that this past year was an operation unlike any other time in recent history and most people are positive about the future direction of our district despite all we’ve faced this past year just a few weeks ago at a school committee meeting i watched the presentations given by nan murphy and dr oxford where they updated the community on what they have done and all that they’ve accomplished despite the challenges of the pandemic i was in awe i actually thought it was the best school committee i’ve ever attended the changes in our curriculum staffing approaches to teaching and inclusion demonstrated excellence that i have not seen in this district since i began in 2005.

28:28 all that was done under the pandemic under the tenure of a brand new superintendent in his first year in our district and his first year as a superintendent dr bucky you have faced more than your share of challenges this year through it all you have answered your critics perhaps not always with the answers that pleased all but with the willingness to listen be responsive be open be proactive in understanding how you can improve not just the district but how you can improve as a superintendent through all of the challenges this year you’ve shown to be a strong communicator you planned you planned again and you planned with a b c and d so that we could be ready with each set of ever evolving changes that were directed by jesse you presented a calm encouraging manner you work with stakeholders across

29:15 the community you mentioned damages that were years in the making and hard to fix you acknowledged that there were bumps along the way and you have been self-reflective in what you might do differently and perhaps more most impressively you continue to produce impactful and much needed change including academic cultural and social betterment for our children amazingly you are not hindered by the challenges of the pandemic or the critics that or your critics you continue to make paradigm shifts introduce positive change across the district and find new ways to measure and advance district goals you have empowered administrative teams to be leaders within their own buildings delegating responsibilities that should have been held by our building principles yet haven’t been for years by calling upon their strengths as

30:02 you rebuild the foundation of this district throughout this year i had many worries but i never worried about a contract renewal i worried that you would leave us and i shared this worry with you on many occasions i’ve been an educator for 29 years i’ve worked closely with district superintendents in this state and retired superintendents who now work with the national superintendents association i know all too well about the super superintendent shortage nationwide i don’t just read the globe i interact with superintendents across the country who are just simply opting out we are seeing instability in districts across the state and across the united states of america for that matter the success of this district and our ability to move forward

30:48 um depends on creating a plan for success and a portrait of a graduate and it’s dependent upon having a leader that will see it through with a clear consistent vision we need to be productive we need to push forward we need to acknowledge the process that the progress that has made over this year and we need to acknowledge the job that our leadership team has done

31:11 over this year if people on this call have not watched the presentation by nan murphy and eric oxford i really recommend watching watching it see what was actually been done i would like this committee to remember that there are many people who recognize the work that has been done this past year under the most horrific of circumstances i want to say thank you to dr bucky and his entire team not only what for what you’ve been accomplished but what you’ve endured criticism comes with this job there’s nothing to be learned from listening there’s something to be learned from hearing and there’s something to be learned for making corresponding changes tonight i’d like you and this school committee to know that there is extreme gratitude for what has been done to the members of the school committee the mere fact that dr bucky has chosen to commit

31:58 to this district is a testament to his dedication to our community and our return to maintaining a stable well-led district with equality leadership who seeks academic and academic excellence for all learners during a climate when superintendents are opting to leave their districts before their contracts are up we need to understand that the demonstrated commitment dr bucky has made in moving this district forward is something that we’ve lacked for years that progress is not getting lost in the majority of this community it is up to the members of this school district to move this community forward the recent election has shown you what the voters in this town are expecting in the planning success success meetings that i’ve been part of

32:44 in the school advisory committee meetings i’ve been part of i repeatedly hear parents addressing the need for stable leadership we need to move forward we need to allow the superintendent that we hired last year to continue doing the job that we expected thank you thanks melissa thanks melissa if everyone could try to keep their uh their comments around three minutes that would be wonderful next up is paul’s iphone

33:21 thank you sarah paul baker 79 overlook um i don’t really how i follow melissa um congratulations i just dropped the mic moment um from my point of view and for what it’s worth there just seems to appear to be a number of residents in in the school district as hell ben on undermining the present school committee and the superintendent it appears that some individuals are almost acting as a vichy school school committee members are poking and prompting from behind the curtains to stir unrest disquiet and generally undermine the work of our school district to what end i just don’t know what is to be gained by all this negativity revenge retribution who knows do any of or do any or all of these individuals really want dr bucky to resign and not stay with us do they really want the entire entire school

34:07 committee to resign after all the flag that you have all endured over the last year i wouldn’t blame any one of you if you did let’s remember only one resident stepped forward to challenge megan taylor in june elections and that person was unsuccessful period she lost there were no hidden agendas no nefarious unscrupulous backroom deals instead they were just residents willing to stand out in the rain hold signs knock on doors and encourage others to do their civic duty and vote and yes i can’t vote i’m not a citizen but i’m a resident and i’m able to to um have an opinion on what goes on in this school that affects my children and i will continue to do that next june residents will have the opportunity to step up and challenge should they wish to run for re-election david harris and or sarah fox for the

34:54 next 11 months our town has the five elected schools committee members sat before us the five that we elected hopefully we’ll also have dr for four more years we as residents of this town can choose to work with him or against him i say that after all of the ridiculous accusations outlandish conspiracy theories and general hogwash that’s been directed at his administration we’re just darn lucky that he wants to stay here at all for one year let alone four to reiterate i wouldn’t blame him one little bit if he chose not to stay let’s be perfectly honest with ourselves if dr bucky has driven out of our school district by this continuous tsunami of negativity the superintendency of our town will be viewed as a poison chalice not this wonderful holy grail that some mistakenly seem to think it is

35:40 as scott and melissa and reece have already stated our record re superintendents is not particularly stellar in fact it’s bloody appalling quite frankly our school district cannot afford to lose dr bucky if we were to lose him who the heck do all of these naysayers think we could attract by a negative little bubble of a peninsula stop kidding yourselves wake up we’re marblehead and look at us people talk about us and it’s not positive this is our lot get on board support the folks that were elected the superintendent they hired and the administration and teachers work with him not for him with him and then take a pause this is the funny part if you want to laugh ask yourself what will bing crosby do your bloody work accentuate the positive and eliminate all of this toxic negativity

36:26 that’s what he’d do dr bucky thank you and thank you to your team and thank you for sticking with us thank you paul john d piano

36:45 oops sorry about that uh i was fumbling with my um my mute button hi john dupiano sixth triangle road um i wasn’t sure i was gonna comment but i was listening to the comments that were being made and i just decided that i would i’ll try to keep my comments brief um i don’t i don’t subscribe to the view that marvel heads a poison chalice i i don’t subscribe to the view that people here have an ulterior motive to undermine the school

37:19 i don’t think people have to be opposite or at home in in terms of addressing different points of view and that’s a larger conversation that maybe extends beyond this meeting um i also don’t subscribe to the view that uh parents in this in this town

37:45 who are engaged and to be difficult um i also don’t subscribe to the view that it’s a school committee’s exclusive job to support the superintendent the school committee is not elected by the superintendent the school committee members are elected by the membership of this town you have a dual jew a job you have the answer to both your constituents who are the people who put you in those positions and to do the best you can with the administration that administration needs to be able to support and communicate with the parents in a way that prior superintendents have not been able to do that may or may not be a direct consequence of who the school’s committees have placed in the superintendent’s role in the past and so i don’t believe

38:30 for a minute that extending a contract which is not the usual and customary practice to five years is going to address the concerns that people have said that they’re going to address it needs to be a change in terms of maybe the communication between the committee and the and the town and the superintendent and the people in town the better communications and more uh the more cooperative communication perhaps not indicating that because someone has a contrary view that mobile head has a reputation of of being difficult and and is going to be a poison chalice that’s hyperbolic in charge language it’s not helpful and i mean that with all due respect in addition to that um as an attorney

39:17 and as a father of a child in the school in this school community i am concerned that the school as ms tedford indicated when she spoke earlier is giving up its leverage with respect to um getting the best and the brightest superintendents by squelching competition for the position by placing themselves uh in a position where they’ve now extended the contract beyond a warranted period of time you also strap any future school committee members who may replace the city school committee members uh if they are not voted in with that contract you’ve made that decision for future school committees that’s not that’s not appropriate i also want to say that that while while this existing superintendent may

40:03 have been determined to be proficient during a pandemic that we don’t have the data points of this superintendent running the school district in an in-person format which is the usual customary format in which he will be participating so i may understand some of the support for dr bucky in extending the contract for five years if we were already at the end of his three-year term i don’t understand it at the end of his one-year term and so i urge the members of this committee to take these comments any comments that you’ve heard not because that anyone’s trying to undermine anyone not because anyone has a personal vendetta or an agenda with respect to dr bucky but because of the fact that a future school committee should not be saddled with a five-year contract which is not the usual customary manner of doing business it shouldn’t and and we should not be

40:50 strapped and and lose leverage in terms of being able to have competition for this job in the future regardless of whether or whether or not the motivations for doing that are well placed it’s not a good idea thank you for the opportunity to comment

41:15 hi it’s actually mary mcariston i’m not going to spend 15 minutes uh speaking about how i believe we should uh vote for five years we need stability yes we are a laughingstock i grew up in lynn and people tell me all the time you know you’re over there you know you’re not any better than any of the other surrounding towns and i think dr bucky is bringing stability and as a parent this isn’t my first time i have ages from 8 to so i’m going through it all over again and i feel confident that we should keep him for five years because i think he works very hard and he wants to invest in this town so

42:01 so so i agree with reese and scott and melissa i think as a parent i would want the full five years so i know that we’re going to have somebody there for us and working hard he’s young he’s not going to retire anytime soon and i think we should keep them here in town and try to turn our views views that other towns surrounding towns have on us to be something more positive thank you mary cindy tower lowen hi hi

42:47 cindy tower lowing 12 trinity road um i will make this brief

42:54 when i saw the chatter on facebook today um it was like oh here we go again and many people know how i feel regarding the school committee and dr bucky as well but many people don’t know what i feel about the facebook and the chatter and um you know looking at it it’s like okay so what am i going to do with this and i will tell you that my initial reaction in terms of the contract piece um just personally was okay we did this with mary and perry why are we doing this now and then when i’m thinking about it and

43:41 i started reaching out in terms of how i do my homework i have to say that um you know john bucky is not mary ann perry and thank the lord for that and yet we are still in this mistrust vicious cycle because of what that administration did with our school system and um and so yeah there is fear about okay is this going to get us in the same place that we were um with that administration and when we wanted to not have that person there anymore what happened

44:27 the school committee had an executive meeting and honestly it had to be you know three to two or 41 or whatever in terms of how that all came down okay and i wasn’t in that meeting and i’m not privy to that but that is the fear of where we are and yet i am reminded time and time again that john bucky is not who we had and what i’ve seen him do in the last year under covid under being a freshman superintendent under all kinds of things including marblehead and including the mess that was created by the

45:15 former school committee members as well as the administration okay i think john has done very very well now is he perfect now is anybody perfect no we all know that and so in terms of what i would i agree to an extension given the circumstances as what we’re looking at and the fact that this man is invested and he’s already proven himself maybe he hasn’t proven himself in the ways that some people have i would say yes okay um and i would like to think that the school committee once again as i said in the last at the last meeting will come together that does not mean you guys have to agree but

46:00 you know what the chatter on the facebook and all that other crap that happens and yes it includes one of the school committee members currently who is on there and then says oh everybody you can call me and whatever else well you know what to be honest i think we all know we can call anybody on the school committee we don’t need to see that on the facebook and that just brings more stuff that comes out and then people are divisive and everything else and oh what are they doing now oh back door this back door that you know what i’m really tired of it and i really do wish that you guys would just come together and step up and work together instead of working the

46:46 way that it has been in this last year and i hope that john bucky stays here and wants to stay here because damn it all as paul said i wouldn’t be surprised if he walked out why would anybody want to be here are we so great everybody thinks we’re so great here think again okay and i will share one thing the church that i was a member of and have been we had a reputation too and that reputation was we would um chew out our ministers and spit them out and you know what we paid dearly for that okay and so don’t think it can’t happen here with superintendents because it certainly can and so i commend john for being here i commend the work that the school

47:33 committee and i trust in um having elected you guys in terms of where you go with this and just be well and stay safe thank you cindy and our final public comment will be from kazzy kindle hello um thank you for hearing me tonight so i’ve listened to all of the comments tonight and what i’m hearing is two sides of the same fear there seems to be one side that is afraid that if we extend a contract for an additional two years we might lock ourselves into an unfavorable position there’s another side of the fear that

48:20 says if we don’t do that we might lose our superintendent both of these as i say are based in fear but the reality is that we have a contract with an additional sorry but this already has another two years on it to run so what i would suggest is waiting one more year doctor bucky is not go i hope he doesn’t leave mid-contract but by waiting one more year and as others have said evaluating and seeing what this looks

49:06 like in hopefully a typical year we would have a better sense of what could happen and i just think that the people who are afraid that this would make us unstable i think again that’s based in fear i’m not afraid of waiting one more year to make this decision and i don’t think the school community should be afraid of that either thank you

49:38 thank you kazzy um i chris and pratt you can speak um but i will probably wrap us up after that um i feel a little bit like gary’s speech right now i think we’ve heard a lot and um and that we’re sort of hearing people say things um over and over at this point so i appreciate all the public comment um and kristin pratt go ahead yeah no i’m gonna be short i agree with kazzy honestly i started getting questions about this a couple of days ago from people and i felt i felt confused because i didn’t feel prepared to even give an opinion um i was surprised it wasn’t mentioned by the school committee in an earlier meeting it feels like a very big decision and it feels like this is something that is quite maybe emotional and fear-based and i don’t even really have a strong opinion about should we or shouldn’t we

50:27 my question is why now like and and why are we like from a in my professional experience it would be very unorthodox to do something like this at this stage of the contract if we weren’t really concerned that there was a huge risk that we were trying to mitigate so i guess i’m asking like is there a risk that we don’t know about could you explain it do we think john bucky is going to leave i mean i surely hope dr rocky doesn’t leave during his contract um it just seems it seems a little bit rushed and it seems a little bit emotionally driven driven and um i guess just like with my business head on i just it feels a little bit imprudent and i’m trying to understand what’s going on that’s prompting us to kind of rush this right now um and i i hadn’t thought about it but when when john d piano commented i think his comment

51:13 i don’t carry weight with me maybe that’s why the cycles are typically three years but you know that i would i would ask the school committee you know take it seriously that you’re now making a decision for school committees that have been not only yet but i didn’t see anything in the document when i read it that helped protect us in terms of him staying longer it’s it’s yeah that’s i don’t know i was really confused when i read the documents because i was trying to understand what are we trying to achieve why now and it felt like something was missing in that so maybe hopefully we’ll get some clarity in your comments thank you kristen right that will move us on to our next agenda item which is first the director of finance contract

52:01 everyone had this contract in their dropbox it was out for the community to see as well so i will ask for a motion that the school committee appoint michelle crusta as assistant superintendent for finance and operations and approved the contract for such appointments all right uh does anybody have anything they would like to comment on sarah fox um first there’s a couple things in there i think we just need to amend um under the the um holidays we didn’t have in there

52:48 juneteenth which is now obviously both uh state and federal holiday so we should add that to any contracts obviously that that are are made up moving forward um and just add that that piece in there i think it’s just a a small piece and i actually would motion to amend this to a three-year contract um typically three years is the term that we see um and when we see a one-year contract it’s my understanding it’s typically for an interim position um and which this wasn’t titled so i i would i would motion to change this to a three-year contract to be in line with what is customary

53:33 so i’ll speak to that um i am amenable to that motion assuming we can make it uh without having to go back into executive session i had a lengthy conversation with legal john foskett yesterday regarding whether or not it should be a one year versus a three year he did not have any significant concerns either way in the end because we did not talk about it as a three-year in in the um executive session we decided to leave it as a one year um over concern that a three-year would would cut would raise concerns over the executive session peace and negotiations um so what he told me was that if we leave it as a one year the only thing that’s going to go on because it is a contract that is

54:18 worked out between john and the finance director the superintendent and the finance director and then it’s just a simple school committee approval on it um that they could do that and then come back to us you know at some point later this year with an additional with the additional or a new three-year contract

54:36 okay do we have so is anybody prepared to second my motion or not so the motion on the floor is to accept the contract as presented yes i am ended the motion to um make it a three-year contract which reflects the typical time spans so i didn’t know if there was a second on that amendment yeah if i’m hearing correctly though sarah you said we have to go back into executive session to confirm that right

55:28 not necessarily john was unsure and we felt as though because we had not done it in executive session that we were going to default to not putting it as a three year in can over concern that we would have to table it tonight and go back into executive session so you know and um dr bucky i know you were part of that conversation for a time um

56:00 i actually had that conversation with michelle cresta about the one or the three-year contract and because john was indicating that it had not been discussed in executive session she was not concerned about the duration of the contract um my understanding is that we don’t even have to do negotiations in executive session it’s an option but we can always if both parties are amicable do it in a published session there’s never anything keeping us from that unless one party chooses so if um no one objects then we can move forward with the amended motion if it’s seconded so sarah has made it a motion to amend to the to make it a three-year contract instead of a one did anybody want to second that a second

56:47 okay so emily ii let me just write

57:05 okay so sarah uh correct me if i’m wrong we need to vote the amendment first yes amendments are always voted prior okay and if um you only vote the main motion if the amendment fails

57:24 so you vote the amendment first okay and if it passes then that’s the end of it if it fails then you vote the original motion only upon failure of the amended motion does that make sense yes so i have a motion to appoint michelle cresta as assistant superintendent for finance and operations and approve the contract for such appointment making it a three-year contract and giving her juneteenth off as it pertains to federal law and giving her june teeth off is it weird to do this without even talking to michelle john has talked with her and she’s fine with this she is and this was the contract approved by legal so but for the three year i guess is my

58:09 point you’ve talked to her about the three years okay okay does anybody else have anything that they want to add i’ll just add that this is a huge step for the district and um a really positive move in my opinion yeah if michelle’s willing to stick with us for three years let’s take it she’s amazing

58:38 right i’d also like to um recognize michelle as as well i mean michelle was the first hire bill mccaldiff um brought michelle on board and um sarah and i were fortunate enough to be the subcommittee involved in that search and um you know we always knew michelle had some additional uh skill sets in her back pocket and we were hoping that we’d be able to take advantage of those uh michelle so you know we’re glad to be um adding some of those duties um into your position and um you know making those making those changes tonight i think it goes without saying you know a lot of people don’t even know that michelle filled in for the town when there was some gaps with uh in between allison nieto leaving

59:24 and uh really helped out jason in the throes of uh you know pandemic and and budget planning so there was a you know relying on her experience there as a as a town finance um professional as well in past years so we really appreciate all the work that was done there and also if we you know we know the foundation of the budget was something that we’ve been working on for two years and the ease with which we were able to well i know it wasn’t easy michelle but i should say the um documents that you presented the clarity um the continuity of how we were able to follow along with um throughout our budget meetings with uh that megan and i were involved in and many others participated in

1:00:10 provided a lot of clarity and understanding and you know we all received some really good news you also managed close to two million dollars of coved funds that you know all kinds of different areas the district needed funding uh different resources figuring out what funds could be used you know for the different types of resources that we acquired during the pandemic whether it was laptops for teachers or cleaning supplies or the outdoor tents another unprecedented area of finance that you know normally wouldn’t wouldn’t be kept over here but you you really did a great job with that um additionally another job that most finance directors don’t have is uh you know a

1:00:57 new school project there aren’t too many of them going on in the state of massachusetts i think there’s only about 64 active projects and you’ve just done an outstanding job processing the invoices on a monthly basis uh with left field and dan mcsweeney and making sure that our vendors are getting paid timely making sure that marblehead’s getting reimbursed from the msba on a timely basis so thank you very much for that and i’m glad to have you on board for another three years and uh have you stepping up so thank you very much michelle thanks david emily did you want to say something or are you all set all right uh

1:01:43 uh uh so we’ve got a motion and it is seconded so i will call for a roll call vote sarah gold yes uh david harris yes emily baron yes megan taylor yes and sarah fox yes all right so that motion passes five to zero in addition to that motion can i please get a motion that the school committee designate the chair to execute this on behalf of execute on its behalf the contract for the assistant superintendent of finance and operations

1:02:27 all right uh sarah gold yes uh david harris yes emily baron yes megan taylor yes and sarah fox yes okay that passes five to zero all right that takes us on to the superintendent contracts i’m just going to meet david um can i please get a motion that the school committee enter into an amended employment agreement with dr john bucky a superintendent extending the term of employment to and including june 30th 2025 and granting a two percent cola increase in annual salary for the 2021 2022 school year

1:03:15 so moved so moved megan moved

1:03:21 second david second all right does anybody have any comments on that david

1:03:30 thank you and i would like to also um thank the many people that came tonight to have their comments here uh heard pardon me and as well as the emails um i haven’t had a chance to read everybody’s email some of them uh came in late today but i’ll be sure to catch up on those so thank you there for everybody’s input in may of this year dr bucky and the school committee began the process of completing the highly prescriptive end-of-year evaluation as required by the massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education but in reality his evaluation started in the fall of 2019 when a superintendent screening committee of 13 people was created this committee included town citizens parents teachers

1:04:16 parents teachers parents teachers administrative staff our town administrator the chair of our board of selectmen and school committee members jen schaffner and sarah foxx over the next several weeks the committee worked to review 20 applicants conducted 10 interviews and in the end recommended two finalists for consideration in january each finalist visited the district with a comprehensive itinerary ended up meeting and greeting with the community and finally a public interview with the school committee we also solicited feedback and received over 100 written feedback forms additionally the school committee received numerous emails from citizens and staff offering their thoughts on each candidate and each school committee member conducted reference checks on the process

1:05:02 process process our successful candidate profile recommended that preference be given to an educational leader who demonstrates a significant depth of skill and knowledge in two key areas collaborative inclusive leadership and strategic systemic leadership one candidate clearly stood out in that process from screening interviews to feedback and reference checks by presenting excellent communication skills examples of building positive and effective leadership with community members teachers and students and clearly understands and expects multiple viewpoints and perspectives dr bucky was the unanimous choice of the school committee

1:05:48 he exhibited a good understanding of the complex interaction of the multiple facets of the district and understands most importantly as a superintendent he will be accountable and responsible for ensuring that all are well managed dr bucky offered clear concise responses to each question we asked and backed up his statements with examples of experience he clearly indicated a sincere interest in developing relationships with school staff students and community members the statements i made nearly 15 months ago at a public meeting to hire our next leader still hold true tonight and as i said dr bucky is not only

1:06:34 passionate about education he’s an experienced creative problem solver and has a and the leader that this district needs to move us forward and complement our solid staff of educators and administrators i feel that dr bucky is the leader we’re looking for and i have full confidence in his ability to lead the district as one feedback form stated and i quote john is fresh full of energy poised confident completely comfortable with public speaking and has a great sense of humor in short he has charisma it is without hesitation that i recommend to this committee we move him

1:07:20 forward as the next superintendent of marblehead schools so now we fast forward to tonight i’d like to read a few of my comments from my summative evaluation of his first year year of performance that is public record but i’m not too sure too many people have had a chance to read them the global pandemic of covet 19 has had a significant impact on the entire nation and education was not spared in 2020 and 2021 every aspect of dr bucky’s first year summative report speaks to the challenges we faced as a district and the leadership role he played in student learning management and operations family and community engagement and the commitment to a high standard

1:08:07 within the professional culture dr bucky started his transition by working closely with superintendent bill mccaldiff to understand some of the short-term and long-term needs of our district he also embraced the project the progress made by bill and the new director of finance michelle cresta on our budget shortcomings from prior years as well as the move to a more stable environment in fy21 next he hired assistant superintendent dan murphy followed by the recommendation of eric oxford as permanent director of student services dr bucky has also been actively engaged in the massachusetts association of school committee’s new superintendent’s induction program say that fast five times

1:08:54 where he worked with his coach retired superintendent chris mcgrath on all aspects of his position including the daily challenges of covert planning and pivoting another key aspect this year was this detailed entry plan that focused on listening and learning being reflective about history culture needs and concerns of the marblehead community at a presentation in late april to the committee it was clear that despite the ongoing challenges presented by kovid dr bucky had made significant progress in moving his plan forward and the district forward he has also recently rolled out the planning for success initiative as the next step to move our district forward

1:09:41 throughout the year dr bucky’s leadership has been focused on the safety and security of our students and staff while sometimes unpopular and challenging for students and families and staff the day-to-day pivoting that was brought on by kovid was always based on and i quote developing and executing plans procedures routines operational systems to address the full range of safety health and the emotional and social needs the reopening plan and collaborative work with the reopening committee and nine subcommittees was thoughtful and purposeful and ultimately led us to a full reopening of our school safely dr bucky has also taken an active role in the construction of the new lucretia

1:10:26 and joseph brown school which is also a unique aspect of his first year he’s been fully engaged with the team visiting the site on a regular basis and helping to ensure that the educational design is being implemented sean satterfield was confirmed as principal as the project nears completion dr bucky is overseeing the internal logistics along with his team that will allow for a successful transition to this new school in the fall in summary dr bucky’s overall performance this year has been proficient if not exemplary in many areas and highlighted by many exemplary achievements excuse me in his in his self-assessment he identified his

1:11:12 strengths and weaknesses provided a thoughtful photo retrospective and offers the foundation for leading the district out of the pandemic and back to building quote a culture of high standards i’m confident he’ll continue to be communicative and open in his work with the school committee and be highly highly visible and accessible to staff parents and the community additionally throughout this challenging year dr bucky has maintained a sense of humor been active in the community remained open honest and transparent in communications and built relationships that have created trust in his leadership i look forward to working with you dr bucky

1:11:58 his leadership team and the staff in the coming year to support the educational needs of our students in closing as i said once before it is without hesitation that i recommend that this committee vote yes this time to approve the contract as presented tonight with an extension through 2025 and a two percent raise for this fiscal year i believe that an additional two years to dr dr bucky’s contract will allow this district to move forward with confidence consistency and stability and it will demonstrate to dr bucky how we truly value him as the leader of our schools thank you thanks david thanks david

1:12:44 does anybody else have anything they would like to say

1:12:51 fairfax hi so i just want to start off by being really clear because i’m i’m not sure by some of the comments if the public understands this or if even our full board understands this this is not a review of dr bucky we did our review of dr bucky um we closed that out with a vote um this is not for this is not a re a performance review in any way shape or form of dr bucky and i think it’s unfair um to con complete the two um so we’re in the business of um educating students essentially you know it’s not we’re not a business but that’s that’s what we do and we should be evaluating the success of our leadership

1:13:37 based on student achievement this past year has shown our students have deep emotional needs and learning gaps and that is in no way shape or form something dr bucky created i am not saying it is i am saying it exists better or worse it exists because we were in a pandemic um and so i think for me someone who is extremely data driven it’s very hard to say we don’t have data points that in a way it’s unfair to dr bucky because we don’t have those data points he wasn’t given an opportunity um no one in in the country in the world was given that opportunity because of the circumstances of the pandemic um and this by is by no means his fault however

1:14:23 i i do think that typically a decision of this would like this would be based on increasing student achievement um in fulfillment of our duties as good stewards um in our elected roles i would suggest that we want to give a full year in a quote-unquote typical normal setting of in-person school full-time um to allow dr bucky to really show us you know what he can do in that normal setting and i and i’m again i am not saying i i think he’s not going to show us great things i’m saying we need the data points and i think that at the end of next year he’ll have been able to give

1:15:10 us that those data points will be able to approach this from a business mindset versus a social emotional one um and we then can make that decision so going with the data points i you know while trying to kind of make wrap my head around this decision i reached out we have several organizations that we pay dues to our members of we have masc we have nasdaq um dr bucky has m-a-s-s um and i thought these are the professionals this is what they do they they have their pulse on what’s going on in districts across the state and across new england um i don’t i don’t know what’s going on in every district i don’t have time to look into that

1:15:55 i try to keep up with what’s going on in area districts so i use the resources available and i reached out to two of those organizations and um the consultants just to see you know what is happening out there and you know there is known to these consultants one other um first year superintendent where they extended the contract to the superintendent by a year i believe she basically saying like we’re evaluating you in a three year term we it’s hard because you didn’t get to be evaluated in this first year um so we want to give you a full three years of scope which as as i noted with michelle’s contract three years is the typical scope um when the other organization said

1:16:43 a five-year contract for a new superintendent is completely unprecedented in the first year um and the reason they gave me which was really interesting was that it is tying the fee of future school committees that your your town’s ability to decide where that what direction they want to go as we all know is through a vote and if all of our 10 years is three years you know doing anything that kind of carries us more than three years out is saying that if that we we are making decisions for future school committees future voters so i would i’m personally uncomfortable making any decision that carries beyond

1:17:30 our tenure um you know megan was just reelected she’s got the longest tenure she is three years um then there’s two of us that have two years and then two of us that are up next year um but my point is i i went to the consultants that do this professionally day in and day out and this was the feedback i received from them um so i you know like everybody else i i heard the public comment i’ve read the emails um i’m not going to respond to public comment because it’s inappropriate but contrary to what was stated i didn’t i didn’t wait in the way it was presented i will be following up with that um but you know i i went to our our paid

1:18:16 consultants we paid memberships to these places and this is kind of what was given to me so what i would suggest is that at this point i am making a motion to amend the current motion that we revisit this at the end of this year when dr bucky has had a chance in a non-coveted crisis year to flourish and shine and give us those data points of of increases in a student achievement so then we we have fact based and not social emotional based reasons for moving moving forward in

1:19:01 this um so my motion is to table this right now and revisit this mo this vote at the end of the school year

1:19:22 okay that motion does not have a second um sarah are you done um giving your comments

1:19:30 at this time i have just asked one clarifying question so which could you just clarify which consultants for the record you spoke with sarah since you’re voting for the agencies that we are members of and those were

1:19:51 um well we’re members of nasdaq masc and i believe we’re also a member of mass and which one of them used this term unprecedented

1:20:09 um i got information about the one superintendent who was a new superintendent being extended by one of them and i got information about um how a five-year superintendency to a first-year superintendent is unprecedented from the other and that that was nasdaq that told you that um david i think it’s inappropriate for me to state to put any one of our consultants on the um line we all have to work together sorry i have a little little person involving here okay it’s fun you know what i mean like people have to work together moving forward i don’t want this i i don’t want this to become a personal um

1:20:55 um um i’m assuming that no one’s i was just wondering please as well i mean did your homework so has done that you know so okay took a new superintendent who had a three-year contract and at the end of their second year offered the five-year extension but it was at the end of their second year um and then there was one more that extended um the three-year contract by a year i believe this year okay thanks okay does anybody else have any comments emily um um i know boston extended their contract also um

1:21:41 but that’s not what i just add to the whatever okay so we all know that this past year was not a great year but i think we all know that dr bucky and his team and um we were able to do and i know everyone has said this i’m just going to say some of this stuff again i’m sorry to repeat but um we did get a lot of great work done um there was the curriculum work our technology improvements the special education work all the dei work we’ve done the planning for success and getting our kids back into the buildings before the end um before you know the state said and

1:22:26 and and it’s just this work would not have been done um or would not have been as successful without dr bucky’s support and i think we have to think about that um something that just recently happened and i’ll just give you this as something that for me really shows how important it is for him to be here is that um in our equity network we just did a pd with a renowned um inclusion educator and she was so impressed that dr bucky went to this to our town’s juneteenth celebration and spoke and she said how lucky we are um to have a superintendent who is so committed to doing this work in our district and what his vision for

1:23:13 inclusion is for our district and to me that was such a great thing to hear from someone who is almost like has been doing this work for years and has written books and she’s like at the top of her um game and for her to tell us how lucky it is that we get to have this um that really meant a lot and um we also i know a lot of people have said this but we need the consistency we need stability for our students our teachers and our admin and i personally i am doing this for them to be successful to have that and i’m going to quote um what scott uh solberg said i thought this was amazing we need to invest in the great change that is

1:23:59 happening in our district and i’ll leave it at that thanks emily uh megan and then i’ll talk okay thanks so um again thanks to everyone who’s weighed in on this and taken the time to review the documents to email us call us and to speak at public comment because i think the community input is invaluable to this process um you know when i looked at this the question that i asked in consideration was what is in the best interest of our students and our staff and i know it’s been said already but it

1:24:45 really is stability and consistency in leadership and being part of the planning for success process has really highlighted the impact that that inconsistency has had on our district so all the great things that we want to do the curriculum the technology the budgeting we cannot move forward on that without consistent and stable leadership here so um you know for me that’s really where we’re at we’re just kicking off our planning for success we’re setting up what we need to do over the next five years to get to where we want this district to be dr bucky is spearheading that initiative we need to give him

1:25:32 the opportunity to see that through these are not changes that happen in one year some of them might not happen in three years you know these are long-term initiatives that we want to accomplish and that’s what we’re setting ourselves up for by having ourselves in a position where we’ve got stable and consistent leadership so you know i know the question was asked what does this bring to the town that’s what this brings to the town getting us the ability to reach the goals that we are setting for ourselves right now secondly just to hit on the you know what has this been an appropriate year to actually make this decision and yes this year has been challenging for everybody personally professionally and

1:26:17 in our schools we’re you know it’s like that across the board everywhere but dr bucky has not only shepherded us through that and got us to a point where our kids are back in school full-time and learning in their classroom with their teachers we didn’t take any steps back we took he did methodical thoughtful planning and preparation to get us through this year and not only that we have moved the dial forward on some of the things that we’ve been wanting to for so long like i mentioned curriculum technology special education as a member of the cpac board for a number of years what eric presented in june were the things that i personally worked so hard to get this district to

1:27:03 take on board and he’s doing it he’s making it happen and that wouldn’t have happened without dr bucky empowering the leadership team to do the work that is necessary to move us forward so again for me it’s about what is in the best interest of our students and our staff and that is stable consistent leadership to get us to achieve the goals that we want to achieve for this district thanks megan thanks megan um so i’ve i’ve obviously thought about this quite a bit as well um and my thoughts are not dissimilar to many of the thoughts that have been expressed this evening um i’m although i always run anxious so there’s always that vein within me but i’m not fearful of the things that we’ve discussed

1:27:50 discussed discussed i i’m excited that we’re here discussing the extension of the superintendent’s contract our community has indicated the desire to have a school committee who is focused on calm and thoughtful leadership we’ve worked hard to get to this place and the people we have put into administrative positions have worked even harder and this is an amazing team in this district and that’s something to celebrate uh i’ve been on this committee since the chaos came to a head a few years ago and i’ve been solely committed to moving this district forward in a steady way for me um an extension of the superintendent superintendent’s contract is a stabilizing choice um you know i am absolutely of the mind that we cannot run another superintendent out of this

1:28:35 town um we we you know as hard as it may be to here we do have a reputation um with good pieces of our reputation but we do have a reputation for treating our superintendents poorly and that’s really not a legacy to be proud of and it certainly isn’t one that i want to be attached to um we need to move away from the traumas of the past and trust our administrators again and marblehead really needs stability and consistency um i too reached out to some of the resources um to talk about this contract and um you know we aren’t the only ones as has mentioned that is adopting or us opting to extend a new superintendent’s contract and dr bucky will not be the only superintendent in massachusetts with a contract longer than three years um i actually disagree that this is tying the

1:29:22 fee to future committees i get where that thought comes from and i can certainly understand it and and ponder it i i but i i just think i every year in technically we have a new committee and so if we think about that then we shouldn’t be making any any decisions past that that have any more ramification than one year and you know we made a decision to hire dr bucky that maybe a different committee would have gone a different way um but but we hired him and he’s with us today and and you know when we’re talking about what a fabulous job he’s done so um i think we’re always making decisions that impact future committees um particularly when there’s turnover in a committee so you know i just i push back a little bit on that um there’s also ample reporting out there

1:30:08 that superintendents have been leaving their careers at alarming rates um and so by agreeing to this contract in my mind dr bucky is making a commitment to marblehead and as much as we’re making a commitment to dr bucky um this contract doesn’t have any different provisions um that favor dr bucky any more than the current one does and i actually one of the people i reached out to today was um bill mccaldiff and he talked with me about that particular clause that i think some people have been very concerned about um about us being able to give dr bucky the 100 days and then there’s a fee that we would pay him for for leaving without cause and that he looks at that as a as actually a protection to the to marblehead and to the school district um which i found fascinating because i had always thought

1:30:54 of it the other way as well and he said no you know i see that as preferring to as deferring to marblehead because otherwise you have to show cause and it is incredibly difficult to show cause and so you are sort of with a superintendent for the duration of their term whatever that contract one two three four five six years is um so i thought that was really worth noting um from from bill um and the contract is pretty standard in all of these ways um and it is directly from our lawyers um so i think you know we have a superintendent sitting before us and he’s looking to buy a home in marblehead because he’s so committed to success here um and yes this past year has been hopefully the most difficult year that any of us will ever experience but i’ve seen dr bucky lead with a

1:31:41 steady hand um and i’m excited for the work that he started and supported with the administrators and staff throughout the district and i really want to support him in that work and see it come to fruition so that that’s kind of where my head is at at this point um sarah i also just want to clarify we keep hearing people concerned about stability and that this contract offers stability um as you noted there is the clause about it’s 180 days actually about 180 days notice and then p a half year salary um if we were to separatize so it’s about a year commitment um but what it but this doesn’t offer stability in that there’s dr bucky can still leave at any time and

1:32:27 i i don’t think he’s i mean we’re all i think we’re we’re making the community very nervous that dr bucky’s on our interviews you know wherever and and moving that’s not my understanding um but i just want to be clear that this there’s no provision from a contract lost standpoint in this contract that um offers more stability from from any from the superintendent choosing to leave of his own free will there’s there’s no provision that he would pay a penalty or there’s no provision that that offers the stability so if we want to offer a five-year contract then that’s will the committee and we do

1:33:13 it but i just want to make a clarification that there is absolutely no legal standing in this contract that offers quote unquote the stability everyone is seeking of i mean we can’t force dr bucky to stay here for five years with this contract the way it reads he can leave just as easily as he could leave in a three-year contract um and i don’t think he’s going to i’m not i’m not saying that and i want to keep saying this is not a review this is we are talking about a contract a business decision this is not a review of um of you know we had our review that was a few weeks ago this is not the review but this also does not offer any further stability

1:34:00 there are no additional provisions that prevent dr buckbee from leaving prior to five years if all of this comes to fruition and marblehead really is um the rough place to work that we’re hearing in this meeting it is i’ll just clarify one thing quickly um in 12.2 it is 100 days and the half year salary that for him to leave us it’s 180.

1:34:33 all right um so we do have a motion and everyone has had their chance to speak to it uh so i will call for a roll call vote uh sarah gold yes david harris yes sarah fox no no emily baron yes megan taylor yes all right that motion passes four to one um can i get an additional motion that the school committee designate the chair to execute the amended employment agreement on its behalf so moves david moved second

1:35:14 uh roll call vote sarah gold yes david harris yes sarah fox yes emily baron yes and megan taylor yes all right that passes five to zero um i forgot to ask michelle after we voted um but dr bucky um i’ll ask you right now do you have any thoughts that you wanted to share with us this evening sure uh thank you sarah um while this might be puzzling to some i really do love my job as superintendent of marvel head public schools which i hope has been evident in my work this year the fact that i live here and continue to look for a permanent home here should underscore my commitment to this community therefore it is deeply gratifying to

1:35:59 have the committee publicly support stability in the value in our continued collaboration in moving the district forward over the past year our entire school district and the broader community accomplished a great deal under the most challenging set of circumstances of a global pandemic we persevered thanks to the incredible dedication and hard work of every student parent teacher administrator school committee member and countless other employees in the schools in our central office i see tonight’s vote as a mandate for me and my leadership team to go further and deeper into the vision goals budget development and planning

1:36:46 for success work we collaborated on and around it supports our collective work to continue moving mps forward in a positive direction i do think there were exemplary things accomplished this year as a result of our ability to work together to collaborate and to communicate frequently openly honestly and transparently i am genuinely grateful for your support i’m encouraged about the future of the marblehead public schools our team is very strong thank you thanks john thanks john sarah can we just in his contract make sure we add the juneteenth as well absolutely thanks sarah

1:37:33 um michelle i know i i did not ask you but i will go back to you i don’t want to put you on the spot i apologize um so but if you wanted to say anything um feel free thanks don’t know how i’m going to follow up john but um no i just wanted to say thank you very much and you know the contract extension did not mean too much to me because we’d be just negotiating the contract in another six months or so um but i do appreciate it because i i hope to stick around a very long time and um as john said this is not an easy or i don’t know if he said that be paraphrased it’s not an easy job but i truly do love my job and i love the team i work with and um just looking to make a difference in marblehead because it’s a great place to be so thank you thanks michelle thanks michelle

1:38:18 we’re happy to have you all right so our final agenda item this evening is the fy 22 user fees um you guys had a memo in the dropbox regarding a 2.5 increase um i guess i will kick it off and then john i’ll let you weigh in um a couple years ago as we were working with things we sort of made a semi commitment uh to not allowing our user fees to fall too far behind as i think they had before um david you may have been on the committee when they had that big jump um but i think um that was pre um negative myself though um but so that we kind of kept up with these things so this 2.5 um i think is reflective of of other

1:39:04 year with the other years with the rate increases and john i’ll turn it over to you at this point um to fill in any of those other details

1:39:13 great i worked with uh greg ciglarsky and michelle to look clearly this year we did not do an increase in our user fees because we weren’t sure what sports and activities would be able to run so we looked at a two and a half percent increase from uh the rates as they were established in 2019 2020 i do think there is value in reviewing the structure we use for user fees so i have asked greg to look at that this year as maybe one of his goals so that when we look to user fees moving forward and perhaps there’s even a part of the conversation as do we need to have user fees because those were implemented many years ago in many districts and

1:39:59 fees for using the bus and taking classes and so marblehead is not unique in the fact that we have a user fee structure but are we in line with the north shore uh schools and so i’ve asked greg uh to take a look at that and see if we’re going to restructure some of the possibilities that we could bring to the school committee for that and i asked greg to be here tonight if people had specific questions but i do think it’s a fairly straightforward proposal for the increase for next year great thanks dr bucky um i will before we get into any discussion i will ask for a motion to approve a rate increase of 2.5 percent for the 2021-2022 school year user fees

1:40:45 user fees user fees so moved megan moved second emily second all right does anybody have any comments on that david so um thanks for this information and i um just a couple of um issues related to the fees in general michelle since last year was sort of you know you were working through it and we didn’t have as many programs going is the responsibility for collecting the fees falls with the individual programs right but who is who ultimately is checking the box to make sure the fees have been collected that is also the um individual programs right now but that that’s something that i do want to work with the programs and

1:41:31 set up a better system so we are making sure that those boxes are checked so that will be part of our review of the programs and the fees absolutely it’s going to be a collective effort and um as you have realigned the budget the a lot of these user fees ultimately are supporting as an example for athletics they might support referees and officials right and busing for some of the other clubs and and programs right i mean we’re trying to stare steer clear of paying salaries with with user fees or do some some salaries yeah most of the user fees currently are paying for a portion of the athletic coaching salaries um there is a very

1:42:17 small piece that is um used by the other groups but primarily it is coaching salaries um just in terms of the coaching programs and obviously the coaching salaries would not be there if the programs were not running so it’s a direct correlation it’s not operating budget yep and i would just i remember the day back we were at the village school and we voted to restructure these fees which i you know it hadn’t been done in a long time and and i’m i was not in favor of the fees i will vote in favor of them this evening because ultimately you know it’s built into the structure and financial um basis of our budget but i would certainly encourage if we do take the opportunity to benchmark against other districts and um you know as we as we move forward

1:43:03 because you know for me i think about it you know if someone’s in the performing arts isn’t that really just part of part of overall being in school and you know we’re asking it’s another it’s a sort of tax or you know being on being on the swim team or the tennis team or you know whatever athletic teams we have and all of the all the the lessons that are learned by participating in in those programs and just looking on down you know through the through the list of programs that we have i just hope maybe there’s a way that we could ultimately find um the opportunity to fund these in the coming year if we are going to be looking at other um funding needs for the district i think this is one where

1:43:49 we should be blind when it comes to um you know who’s playing what when and where and just welcome everybody so but that’s all i am on it thanks david sarah you’ve got your hand up so like our kindergarten tuition or preschool tuition moving forward this is something i would like covered in an operating budget um i think you know for a big part of a public education is being an active participant in a lot of these programs and although i know we have um we have programs that help compensate for families that raise their hand and say you know i need some help and qualify it’s very hard to do that as a family especially specifically in the town of

1:44:35 marblehead and i think that you know if we truly want to be inclusive getting rid of these fees is is really an important step um you know i know we have to pay our coaches stipends out of this but i’d like to see things like that come into an operating budget instead so just moving forward i wanted to put that on the record and then i have a couple clarifying questions um where it says first of all senior girls only played football is that just for the powder puff yes so i i always thought that was just you know a rite of kind of like a senior celebration i really take it back that we’re actually charging them to do that but um where it says family maximum is that only at the high school level or is your family maximum throughout the different grade levels

1:45:22 grade levels grade levels [Music] that is for any extracurricular activity which includes athletics it would not be inclusive of kindergarten or um preschool fees but outside of those two groups that would be too good to be true in this house no i meant like for instance if you have someone at village and someone at vets and someone at the high school do does all of that work into that maximum family or is it a maximum family per school yes no it should be one per family across all schools the wolverines are getting their money for um so yeah that was that was my other question and then if we where we have interscholastic sports versus intramural sports so if a

1:46:08 child does one intramural in the fall and one interscholastic in the winter they wind up paying both those fees at the middle school level i will defer to greg on that if he happens to know the answer to that yeah they would hi everybody they would just pay the balance of whatever’s left over

1:46:31 so if you put oh it’s not to exceed 214 it wouldn’t be a combination of the two correct so if you just do it you do an intramural sport in the fall you do it from your old ultimate frisbee and then you play uh just classic basketball you just pay the difference from between the intramural feed to the edge classic okay so the max out of pocket at the middle school per student is 214. it would be the same thing if you did i’ll use frisbee again if you were a ultimate frisbee intramural then you play you having our daughter who plays high school sports as well again you just pay that balance of whatever that fee is to get to the sixth if we’re 611 or 6002 or whatever that price is going to be that we’re gonna vote on tonight okay thank you for that clarification no problem megan so um

1:47:17 i always thought the structure was very confusing and overly complicated so i’m glad to hear you’re going to review it i think that’s great and if we can get to the point where we don’t have this fee i would absolutely support you know the work to get to that point um that said for the vote tonight when we or when i came on board you know three years ago i think you had just kind of gotten over the hump of a big a big increase in the whole point was to not put families in that situation again where there’d be a big increase and just do kind of the you know small incremental per year so i think for this year that makes sense thanks thanks i mean i agree with everything that’s been said i just seconded it all yeah i’m the same

1:48:03 i think we should get rid of them if we can um because everyone like david said just should be able to do everything as part of their education package so um so i think as we move forward and kind of sooner hopefully rather than later start to have some conversation if it’s about what our budget priorities are i think we just heard unanimously that one should be getting rid of these user fees getting rid of all these parent taxes and in making it more i’m inclusive yes yes all right um i will call for a vote sarah gold yes sarah fox yes

1:48:51 emily barron yes david harris yes all right that passes five to zero thank you michelle and greg as well as john okay so that is the end of our agenda this evening so i will adjourn us at 7 49. if i if i can real quick sarah can we make a concerted effort during public comment to leave the obscenities out moving forward i heard four tonight and i think that um we all could do better than that it was it was not by the committee it was during public comment but i would just appeal to the community to try to leave the obscenities out of public health absolutely all right we are adjourned at 7 49. thank you everyone thank you