The School Committee on Thursday night voted to reinstate school on Monday, Dec. 23 and cancel February vacation to make up days missed during last month’s teacher strike. The strike was 11 days long, but only 10 need to be made up because one was a professional development day.
Interim Superintendent John Robidoux planned to send a survey on Tuesday, Dec. 10 to ask parents and educators to choose one of two options to make up the remaining five days.
The two possibilities are:
- Canceling April vacation and adding one school day to the end of the year.
- Using the five snow days set aside at the end of the year. However, any declared snow day would then need to be made up during April break.
Robidoux explained that the state requires districts to complete 180 days, ending by June 30. The committee discussed Saturdays as an option, rather than cancelling vacations, but there were concerns for Jewish students who may observe the sabbath on Saturday. Saturday sporting events were also a concern.
“I know there are families and staff who have vacations already planned,” Robidoux said. “These are the consequences of the strike that we have to live with. There is no good path on this.”
Fox said there is a “full intent” to suspend attendance policies for students who are going on planned family trips. Teachers will make work available online, she said.
Robidoux sent out an email Dec. 6, saying, “… the School Committee will be discussing some adjustments to the student attendance policy during these unprecedented make-up days.”
Fox said she “strongly disagreed” with getting input from teachers on when the missed days should be made up, believing that only students and families should get to make that decision.
“The students didn’t get to vote to put themselves in this situation, and neither did their families,” she said.
The plan for making up the remaining five missed days will be announced at the School Committee’s Dec. 19 meeting.
Angry moments
The Dec. 5 meeting, the first since the teacher contract was settled last month, erupted several times with residents and teachers shouting. Chair Jenn Schaeffner had adjourned the meeting before reconvening it to let resident John DiPiano add a public comment via Zoom. DiPiano, an attorney, said he had pulled his child out of the schools because of the strike and blasted the teachers — naming the four educators whom the School Committee identified in a petition for a strike investigation with the Department of Labor Relations, which ultimately led a Superior Court judge to order them to go back to work. DiPiano demanded that those four educators apologize to the town.
Some teachers at the meeting became upset and started shouting.
“Unbelievable. Stand up for people once in your life, for the staff of Marblehead Public Schools, Jenn and Sarah,” Shevory said before walking out.
Letting go of Coffin
The School Committee’s facilities subcommittee made a recommended to hand the empty Coffin School back to the town. Members also discussed turning the vacant Eveleth School into a dedicated early education center.
Coffin is valued at $3.2 million, with $1.5 million of that coming from the land. The Eveleth was recently assessed at $2.65 million, with more than $2 million coming from the land value.
Initially, Fox wanted to hold on to the Coffin School in case the town sees population growth, especially if Marblehead ultimately votes to comply with the controversial MBTA multifamily zoning mandate.
“Coffin is deteriorating, and it needs to be dealt with,” she said Thursday.
Fox explained why she is proposing an early education center for Eveleth.
“We continually have waitlists to get into preschools,” she said. “It’s a revenue driver right now. We need to get really creative on how we’re going to fund things. Public schools shouldn’t be a revenue-generating business, but due to the state of our finances, here we find ourselves.”
Interim Superintendent John Robidoux supported the idea, mentioning that Marblehead already offers seven classrooms of integrated preschool.
“There are a lot of school districts who go into that model of having an early education center,” Robidoux said. “It’s the early formative years where we really need to focus on the resources and the learning.”
Updated roof project doubles in cost
The School Committee approved a $400,000 contract with an architect to design a new roof for Marblehead High School. Town Meeting in 2022 approved $5.3 million for the roof project.
At a School Committee facilities subcommittee meeting earlier that day, Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Administration Mike Pfifferling said updated estimates include new rooftop HVAC units, increasing the cost to about $11 million. Construction will not begin this summer, as hoped.
The MHS roof leaks in several spots. Last December, wet ceiling tiles fell and hit a student. Mold has also been addressed in the building.
Marblehead teacher Samantha Rosato, speaking at the School Committee meeting, addressed the roof.
“My kids go to school here,” she said. “The maintenance of our buildings is a major issue. I really hope the roof can be worked on. And there’s mold. It shouldn’t ever have been left for all these years.”
Parent Kate Thomson also spoke about the pace of the facilities subcommittee’s work. She asked why the subcommittee hadn’t met in more than a year and asked for Fox to step down.
Pfifferling went through a list of facilities projects, some completed, others not. At the Brown School, for example, the roof has leaked, windows have cracked (due to the building settling, Pfifferling believes), a wooden archway is buckling, and there have been issues with the main staircase.
“I’m not pleased with the speed of the response” from the building’s project manager, he said.
Pfifferling said he would work with town Finance Director Aleesha Benjamin on school capital requests to be made at Town Meeting.
**This story was updated on Dec. 20 to reflect that the School Committee’s subcommittee recommended turning the old Coffin School back to the town. A formal vote by the full School Committee is expected early in the new year.
