It’s Friday morning, Nov. 15, and the streets of Marblehead on my early morning walk are eerily quiet for a weekday. Feels just like yesterday, Wednesday, Tuesday, the Veterans Day holiday and the weekend days before it. Why? Marblehead Education Association members walked out. The schools are closed.
Interim Superintendent John Robidoux, with vocal support from School Committee members Sarah Fox and Jenn Schaeffner, canceled all extracurricular activities until the strike ends. Under pressure from parents, Robidoux reversed his decision. Cancellation of the Marblehead High School state playoff football game with Grafton would have been grounds for the first tar and feathering since Skipper Benjamin Ireson in 1808 — and earned him the shortest superintendent tenure since John Buckey. He would have gone down in MHS infamy and spawned a new synonym for the word “cancel.” Just like Google is a synonym for “search.”
Example: “He ‘Robidouxed’ the high school football game.” Note, you didn’t hear Fox and Schaeffner support his reversal.
It’s egregious that after 21 negotiation sessions over eight months since March 14, 2024, the alleged leaders of our town could not agree on a competitive compensation and benefits package for educators in our schools. Even during September there was no sense of urgency. There were weeks that went by without negotiation. It shouldn’t be this difficult. Yet the blame game has begun.
The mandate for competitive educator compensation and benefits
Competitive compensation and benefits in the next contract is critical. If the Marblehead School District doesn’t have competitive wages and benefits, teacher turnover will continue. No competent teacher would ever join the educator team to replace them. Resolving this issue quickly also gets the teachers back into the classroom ASAP.
In fiscal year 2023, according to Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education records, the MSD had 2,790 students. Twenty-eight Massachusetts school districts have student populations around Marblehead’s 2,790, plus or minus 250 students. The average teacher salary in this group was $91,977 compared to MSD’s $83,338 — 9.4 percent lower.
Since we are competitive with Swampscott in everything, the easiest solution would be to match the terms in the recent Swampscott contract and be done with it. But no. They probably didn’t even think of that. And if they did, the Marblehead School Committee would be arguing MSD should be $1 less and the MEA, $1 more than Swampscott.
Both sides, the MEA and School Committee, have done a horrible job of defining what is a competitive level.
You will be hard-pressed to find the wage offers from both sides. It’s buried in the MEA website but they are expressed in terms of COLA adjustment percentages. These mean nothing. What would be meaningful is a competitive comparison with other towns of proposed wages in dollars for entry level, mid-level and senior-level teachers. And provide the same views for paraprofessionals, tutors and custodians. And extend the comparisons to include benefits like leave policies, lunch and recess, school safety etc.
The negotiating behavior of the School Committee and Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer is appalling. They are spending precious School Committee budget money in hiring a PR firm for $9,500 to explain that they are simply not negotiating further. They have hired a lawyer to be their spokesperson in the negotiations at $265 per hour with a current running tab of over $20,000. They refuse to negotiate and claim the MEA proposal is unaffordable. An override will never pass because the town never supports overrides. If it didn’t pass there would be catastrophic layoffs.
The School Committee’s Fox and Schaeffner are merely pawns in the bargaining sessions. Using an analogy from the Wizard of Oz, the “man behind the curtain” is the Select Board trying to scare the wits out of the little Dorothy, the MEA. And Kezer who works for the Select Board is Professor Marvel. Good idea for a political cartoon?
The negotiation posture of the MEA is not completely altruistic and realistic. They aspire to be the top paying school district in year four of their proposed contract relative to 14 North Shore districts. Relative to other benefits, their comparisons are to the “public sector.” Their comparisons should be other school districts. Their “man behind the curtain” is the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
How much of an override will be needed?
Both sides now recognize that there will be a need for an override. But the question to be answered is how much? There are four other factors, not just educator compensation and benefits, that impact this:
- Educator staffing levels and other school costs are too high
In FY22, according to the latest available Massachusetts DESE records, the average cost per student in those 28 Massachusetts school districts was $19,332. Marblehead’s cost was $21,119, $1,786 or 9.2 percent more. Since the MSD cost per teacher is 9 percent less than average it implies that overall MSD staffing levels and/or administration and non-teacher compensation are too high. Unfortunately, DESE doesn’t track these items. But they need to be understood. If Marblehead lowered its cost-per-student funding to the average, the town would save nearly $5 million.
- School budget allocation from taxes and other revenues
Who says the split is correct? This needs investigation across comparable towns and benchmark studies of other town departments — police, fire, DPW, etc. See my column “Is Marblehead Right-sized?”
- FY24 budget performance
Who knows if we generated a profit in FY24 and some of the budget surplus, aka “free cash,” used to reduce the magnitude of the override at least in FY25. The town is a business and it’s appalling there are no financial statements available for public consumption after four-and-a-half months since the close of FY24 on June 30. I bet the Select Board and Kezer know and they don’t want to tell anyone especially the MEA during the negotiations.
- Sale of Coffin and Eveleth schools and ongoing available property taxes
The School Committee needs to relinquish these schools and allow the town to sell them for zoning-compliant development. The money for their sale and ongoing property taxes would help mitigate the magnitude of the override required.
While we always want to better than Swampscott, let’s just match Swampscott in terms of educator compensation and benefits and be done with it. Get the students back in school. Stop wasting valuable money for useless PR firms and lawyers. Stop wasting the valuable time of town employees and committee members. Stop incurring MEA fines. Work very hard to understand whether Marblehead is right-sized. Assess how much of an override is required. And finally, let the voters decide.
James (Seamus) Hourihan was born in Marblehead and is a MHS graduate. For 35 years, he worked in finance, marketing and executive management roles at high-tech companies. He has lived here full-time since 2009 and is a member of the town’s Charter Committee.
