Marblehead School Committee Looks To Reshape Budget Discussions

MARBLEHEAD, MA — A longer school day, increased pay for bus drivers, tutors and food service workers, special education changes and new textbooks and curriculum were among the priorities that residents voiced to the Marblehead School Committee during a virtual forum to kick off next year's budget process on Thursday night.

The forum — which drew an online attendance in excess of 80 — was designed to bring the community into the discussions on what needs to be priorities for district spending after a proposed $3 million permanent tax override was overwhelmingly defeated in a townwide vote in June after sailing through the annual town meeting.

"Our hope is that we get ourselves to a point where it is more just maintenance and it's not just these moments of crisis," School Committee Chair Sarah Fox said. "But we are not there yet. We really need to have bigger investments to get ourselves to par, if you will, so it's just more maintenance.

"We've run so lean for so many years that we find ourselves in this position."

Fox said that, while in the past Superintendent John Buckey would develop a budget request after meeting first with school and department heads and then bring it to the School Committee before it was finalized and brought to the Finance Committee and the public, this year the hope was having the public involved at early stages would create a better understanding of needs and goodwill toward increased funding.

That includes the staff pay increases — including some positions that were revealed to be receiving pay that is currently below minimum wage through past contracts — that was a popular request during the forum.

"Our teachers, our staff, is the best asset we have for our students," Fox said. "All these surveys we've done, all this feedback, all we continually hear is, quite frankly, what a godsend our staff is — all of our educators — they just are," Fox said. "We want to pay them. We want to do this.

"We need the funding to do it. That's why we're here. That's why we're listening to you. We value what you have to say just as much as we value our teachers."

The budget process kicks off as the School Committee remains down one member after the resignation of Emily Barron late last month. The School Committee was deadlocked on a way forward on Barron's vacancy — either to proceed with four members until the end of the term or to choose a fifth member who would serve out Barron's term until the annual town election in the spring.

Fox said that a recent precedent indicated that the School Committee could leave the position unfilled for the remaining months before the election, however, she updated the Committee at the outset of the forum that the Marblehead Select Board may feel otherwise and wanted to include a discussion of the vacancy at its next meeting.

Fox told Committee members and those attending the forum that she intended to work with the Select Board to make sure the School Committee had a voice in any discussion on its makeup through the next town election.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)