Misdirected Melrose: Letter

The following was submitted by Melrose resident Gerry Mroz:

Mark Feldman demonstrates more capacity to engage in some of the deeper issues than have many other override proponents. Arnie Cave, the person he targets, however, is not the villain in this play. In fact, Mr. Cave and Mr. Feldman are both victims of an auspicious attempt by the School Committee and Mayor to present a woefully incomplete picture of the entirety of the Melrose Schools’ policies, practices and resource use. Not only did proponents begin with a one-sided premise, through every one of the Mayor’s ‘articles’ and ‘information sessions,’ they dug in deeper and deeper as the months dragged on. They’ve been relatively successful at controlling and conveying their message.

Override proponents know that most people are trusting and won’t look beyond the district’s money claims. Cynically, the proponents trade on the goodwill of many wealthy and otherwise- privileged people who think, “I want to contribute…Money can’t hurt…I can afford it…Even if there’s some waste, more money can only help.” Proponents know that many good, civic- minded, well-intentioned people will vote for the override, trusting their most-adamant claims that money is the only problem, and solution.

No one can fault Mr. Cave for identifying the faulty logic and math on the surface of the proponents’ claims. He’s a CPA and saw clearly that the numbers didn’t add up. In response to the Supt.’s/Mayor’s/SC’s narrative, he presented simple numbers which exposed some of their blatant misrepresentations. Their attempted money grab was extreme and he successfully provided a simple context to demonstrate so. In that context, he had no obligation to present any balanced, middle position, as Mr. Feldman criticizes. The voters should thank Mr. Cave for his civic-minded engagement.

Mr. Cave is a modern hero for calling out some of the misrepresentations of the proponents. Although he didn’t need to look very far to prove the district wrong, others simply accepted blindly, overlooked, or couldn’t identify the same inconsistencies. Mr. Cave presents evidence and logic which counters some of the proponents’ unstated false premises, misleading information, false dichotomies, and every scare tactic “OneMelrose” could muster.

In response to the district’s unproven and false assertion that teachers are leaving in record numbers, for example, Mr. Cave points to the accurate statistic that retention is above the state average. Even Mr. Feldman’s own analysis doesn’t prove some grand exodus of teachers. His doesn’t prove why any educators actually left Melrose. It certainly doesn’t demonstrate that any teachers who left for more money wouldn’t have left for the same reason after another $5 Million gets applied toward school spending from an override.

Mr. Cave responded to other quantitative defects obvious in the proponents’ arguments. As competent as he is, however, he’s also a victim in this play because they got him to argue only about dollars, about which voters are easily confounded and misled. The proponents’ strategy and antics with the numbers successfully deflected his attention away from focusing on what’s done, or not done, to educate our children well.

Even as Mr. Feldman lashes out at Mr. Cave for not presenting every piece of data available, or presenting a more ‘balanced’ viewpoint, he is also a victim. Mr. Feldman explores numbers near the surface, instead of what’s beneath them educationally. One could argue that, despite his attack on Cave, Feldman is actually more of a victim, because he’s been successfully manipulated by the politicians’ false narrative to defend something, on their behalf, of which he apparently doesn’t fully understand. He is a sacrificial pawn in the “OneMelrose” override strategy.

Mr. Feldman appears to have fallen for the district’s primary override strategy of manipulating the narrative. He clearly supports this new override, as he did the one in 2015, but doesn’t appear to understand how well the schools’ application of $50,000,000 benefits our children (or not), let alone how another 10% will help them. He likely is unaware that there are different educational models which would be more effective, more efficient, more future-focused, and would result in far more opportunity and equity for students in the Melrose Schools.

Through the proponents’ tactics, even sophisticated people such as Cave and Feldman are cleverly manipulated to fixate on the numbers instead of the significant structural problems hiding beneath them. Neither is trying to figure out why our schools are doubling down their bets on an anachronistic education model instead of figuring out how our Melrose Schools can become relevant for our children’s needs, today, as they enter an unprecedentedly different and competitive global economy.

Feldman likely doesn’t recognize that deficient schools reinforce and bolster the power of the privileged class. It’s understandable. Like many of us products of privilege, he’s someone who may not recognize the implicit benefits he’s received from that privilege. He’s apparently happy to invest more in the schools which obtain results which likely benefited him well and will continue to for people like him.

Have Melrose administrators proven that the current system is designed and working for the benefit of students? No.

Have they, or the Mayor, proved that more money will fix the problems? No.

Has anyone proven that hiring more teachers or paying them more money will provide our children what they really need? No.

The thorny issues of the schools’ failures are qualitative in nature far more than quantitative.

Yet the proponents, throughout their whole effort, have refused to engage in any of them. Their lack of engagement is nothing new. For years, this district hasn’t questioned the anachronistic premises and practices upon which they operate. Policymakers refuse to critically evaluate a theory of action designed for the societal needs and demographics of the mid-19th Century, instead of what’s necessary and appropriate for the mid-21st Century. They don’t recognize that the sophistication with which Horace Mann adapted a Prussian model of education (appropriate for pre-industrial Massachusetts in the 1840s) would lead him, if he were here today, to frame a different system appropriate for the current century’s challenges.

Present classroom- and resource-assignment constructs, which attempt to teach the same grade-level curriculum to five or more different grade-levels of student achievement and readiness levels in a typical age-based classroom in 2019, deny relevant and appropriate opportunities to students of every demographic to develop and grow within their zones of proximal development. Consequently, their classroom experiences aren’t relevant or meaningful. They are forced to endure inappropriate environments, 180 days a year, every year, for thirteen years. It’s no wonder Melrose children are becoming increasingly anxious and stressed.

When schools are defective, it’s the children of privilege for whom parents are best positioned to mitigate the harms. Equity goals for society are cast aside, as the most disadvantaged populations, with limited supports external to the schools, are simply left to fail. Any simplistic assumption that paying more money (to even more teachers!) will correct the harm caused by that fundamental failure of management is without foundation.

Students of policy theory will understand that embedding more resources to reinforce the failing status quo will serve only to further displace, constrain, and delay any future improvements to the system. Not only won’t the needed restructuring occur tomorrow, it will be prevented from beginning for another five or ten years hence. Unfortunately, the ‘alternative facts’ presented by proponents of the override may will cause significant alternative costs suffered by actual human children in Melrose.

In an effort focused only on money, the politicians used the most cynical route that they could to exploit the voters’ goodwill. If they get the money, their job will be easier because they can alleviate some symptoms of a disease, the cause of which they refuse to treat. It’s certainly more work for them to structure schools differently than simply spending more of the taxpayers’ money in more of the same ways. The former takes persistent diligence and vigilance. The latter rests on the status quo. They know that this override will allow administrators to coast downhill the rest of the way toward their well-paid retirement, without concern to look back at what they didn’t do to maximize benefit for the children.

The egregious actors in this override are on the side of the proponents. They went greedily after a $5 Million override, using false premises, misleading, one-sided information, and every scare tactic they could muster. For this override attempt, the City listed four separate buckets for funding. Their strategy was designed to convince voters on any one of the four, such as increased enrollment, to snag them to vote for all the others as a windfall gain. As a matter of strategy, they didn’t provide voters a chance to fund some, but not others. They wanted to create the doomsday scenario they now use to guilt voters into giving them everything they want. They had plenty of time in the fall to deliberate carefully on the override ballot questions.

It was a calculated, and greedy gamble on their part not to put each bucket on the ballot, separately, for voters to prioritize.

How does this override provide more for students than teachers? Melrose pays teachers an average of more than five times the state-mandated minimum wage but only makes them teach students for the exact and bare minimum hours mandated by state law (a few years ago, Melrose students didn’t receive that much respect). The Melrose contract only requires teachers to contribute a maximum three days each year (if that) to improve their craft. Mystic Valley has their teachers do so for thirteen days a year. Mystic Valley teachers work a six-week longer work year than Melrose teachers do, teaching students for four additional weeks. Those Mystic Valley teachers likely get paid less, but their contract requires they work 49 percent more time than the contract does for Melrose elementary teachers. It’s no wonder so many parents want to send their children to Mystic Valley, which receives equivalent resources per-pupil to educate them.

Why do civic-minded, well-intentioned people like Mr. Feldman defend more money for highly compensated teachers and administrators? Does he even know the value of the combined base pay, minimal hours, additional contract pay, health insurance contributions and retirement of Melrose educators? Does he know that some of their pensions are equivalent to well more than
$2 Million in his 401K at retirement? Does he understand that when money goes into a collective bargaining agreement, it never comes out?

Has Mr. Feldman ever stopped to consider why he’s rallying for more money for already-highly- paid adults but apparently completely unaware of the plight of the children in our schools for whom more money applied in the same manner will cause further harm? Does he stop to consider that dysfunctional schools cause disproportionate harm to the most disadvantaged? Does he recognize that he’s rallying behind another structural white privilege, certainly as generationally debilitating as better-understood discriminatory actions that are centered around financial or property concerns?

Mr. Feldman has fallen into their trap and has become one of the override proponents’ process victims, but the absolute victims of this override attempt are the most disadvantaged children of Melrose. Why are the override arguments framed in terms of what teachers and administrators get paid instead of what our children receive, in return, from them and the system? Is the Melrose teachers’ union more sympathetic a player than the very children for whom we’re supposedly framing our schools? I hope Mr. Feldman will begin to engage in some of those questions.

Melrose children need more engaged people like Mr. Feldman and Mr. Cave to do so. My hope is that no matter how this override turns out that all the people who vote for or against the override will come together to work on the real issues to benefit this and future generations of Melrose schools. In the end it’s not about money – it’s about the system we create for our children.