Marblehead is used to superintendent turnover. This time seems different. Marblehead Weekly News reporter Ryan Vermette explores how we got here and what’s next.
The following is the first in a four part series chronicling the current state of the Marblehead School Committee and its public school system.
10 superintendents in 20 years. Why does this seem different?
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
The town’s school district isn’t exactly new to constant change at the superintendent position. Since 2005, Marblehead Public Schools has largely failed to retain a long-term superintendent, and has seen a total of nine permanent, acting, or interim superintendents: Ellen Minihan, Phil Devaux, G. Paul Dulac, Greg Maass, MaryAnn Perry, William McAlduff, John Buckey, Michelle Cresta, and Theresa McGuinness.
That number will rise to 10 come summer as McGuinness, the district’s interim superintendent, recently informed the School Committee that she will not be pursuing the permanent position, leaving district leadership in limbo yet again.
Despite the number of district leaders that Marblehead has gone through, nearly all left or were replaced due to specific reasons that were communicated to the public. For instance, even though Maass’ resignation came as a surprise during a School Committee meeting in 2013, he provided an explanation in a statement made during the meeting.
“I understood the work to be transformative and the methodology that the School Committee and I agreed upon to get the work accomplished would be collaborative,” Maass said at the meeting. “In other words, there would be a need for change and we would do the needed change in a team-based, mutual way. Recently, in my opinion, the culture within the majority of the School Committee has moved away from this methodology. In my opinion, it has turned into a transactional and somewhat fractured environment, one, quite frankly, I’m not compatible with.”
Even in 2019, it wasn’t questioned why Perry decided to retire as superintendent of schools, as it came during controversy after an audit revealed that school officials had illegally used fiscal year 2019 funds to pay for expenses in the previous year.
So, that brings us to Buckey’s resignation in August 2023.
The same situation has played out numerous times in the last two decades, but what makes this time different?
The answer is that there is no explanation.
To date, the public has not been given any answer on what caused or led to Buckey’s resignation, mainly due to the fact that he signed a nondisclosure agreement with the committee. That agreement was only signed after a surprise vote to terminate his contract without cause was called off minutes before it was scheduled to take place.
The committee’s refusal to give answers, even before the signing of the NDA, ignited feelings of outrage, discontent, and distrust for many in town. Nearly half a year later, a question still lingers.
Why would the committee refuse to provide clarity to the situation and force his resignation if it had originally planned to terminate his contract without cause?
During Buckey’s tenure in 2021, the town became polarized over a Black Lives Matter flag that was on display in the High School’s cafeteria. Buckey aimed to make Marblehead, which has a 97% white population, an anti-racist community. A petition was started to remove the flag, but Buckey refused to have it taken down.
That summer, the committee voted 4-1 to extend Buckey for two more years.
The only vote against his extension came from current School Committee Chair Sarah Fox, who, along with current Vice Chair Jenn Schaeffner, was on the superintendent screening committee when Buckey was hired.
In June 2023, committee members performed and shared their yearly evaluations of the superintendent, which resulted in three “proficient” and two “needs improvement” ratings.
Tom Mathers, Sarah Gold, and Meagan Taylor were the three who evaluated Buckey’s performance as “proficient.” All three are no longer on the committee after Taylor’s resignation in January.
Marking “needs improvement” were Fox and Alison Taylor. Each individual assessment was then compiled into one overall summative assessment, which resulted in Buckey receiving an overall evaluation of “proficient.”
On June 20, 2023, Brian Ota and Jenn Schaeffner were elected to the School Committee, replacing Gold, who was running for reelection, and Mathers, who declined to run.
Ota had served as assistant principal at Village School under McGuinness, and failed to disclose during his campaign that he had an open discriminatory complaint against Buckey and the district after his contract as Glover School principal was not renewed.
Roughly a month into the new members’ terms, a surprising School Committee agenda was posted for a July 26, Zoom-only meeting with an agenda item on exercising the termination clause in Buckey’s contract, which caught the attention of many in the community.
With hundreds watching online, Fox called off the vote less than a minute into the meeting due to the advice of counsel, as a deal had supposedly been proposed by Buckey’s attorney just hours before the meeting was scheduled.
One week later on Aug. 2, it was announced that Buckey had resigned and signed the nondisclosure agreement. Even before the agreement, the committee gave no indication as to why it had originally decided to vote on the early termination of his contract. At its first meeting after Buckey’s ousting, community members packed the High School’s library, demanding answers. Some, including Gold, called for each committee member to resign.
Assistant Superintendent Michelle Cresta was named acting superintendent the day after Buckey’s resignation, and served in the role until McGuinness was hired and began as interim superintendent in November.
Earlier this year, McGuinness announced to the committee that she would not be returning to pursue the permanent superintendent position despite expressing interest in it during her interview last year. Her announcement came after she had placed four educators on leave at Glover School after a student-restraint crisis, which resulted in the resignations of the director and associate director of student services after intense pressure from the Marblehead Education Association.
Rather than keeping Buckey’s contract, which would have run until 2025, the district will be looking for its third acting, interim, or permanent superintendent since his departure, which has already cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries, as well as expenses and resources related to the superintendent searches. Buckey’s settlement agreement alone has cost the district nearly $200,000.
With no permanent superintendent in sight, it’s likely that the path the current School Committee and district are on is not sustainable.