On June 20, 2023, Jenn Schaeffner and Brian Ota were elected to the School Committee, replacing incumbent members Sarah Gold and Tom Mathers, who had been temporarily filling the vacancy left by former member, Emily Barron.
In less than a year since their terms began, former superintendent John Buckey was forced to resign by the committee, five resignations occurred in the district in a two-week span, and the committee is on the verge of adopting a flag and banner policy that many believe could have a negative impact on students’ right to expression and free speech.
And now, the already fragile layer of trust between community members and the committee has been shattered, partly due to broken promises and secrets kept under wraps during Schaeffner and Ota’s campaigns.
Before the election in 2023, The Weekly News interviewed Schaeffner and Ota, who had promised transparency, team-building, and more open lines of communication with the community.
Schaeffner said that one of her goals, if elected, was to rebuild trust with the community.
“To me, the most important thing, which I believe I did when I served earlier and have a lot more ideas about coming into the role this year, is about transparency and honesty,” Schaeffner told The Weekly News.
Schaeffner previously served on the School Committee from 2016 to 2020. In 2019, controversy surrounded the district after an audit revealed that school officials illegally used funds from the fiscal year 2019 budget to bills from the prior fiscal year related to out-of-district special-education tuition, amounting to nearly $600,000. The audit stated that the officials broke the state finance law.
At the time, Schaeffner was a member of the School Committee, and a representative on its Budget Subcommittee.
She also told The Weekly News that transparency, to her, meant that “if somebody asks me a question, I’m going to answer it. The parents and community members who have questions or concerns deserve to be heard, deserve to have an answer, and deserve to have it in real time.”
Less than two months into her term in 2023, the School Committee had abruptly planned to vote to terminate Superintendent John Buckey’s contract before calling off the vote minutes before it was scheduled. Instead, the committee forced Buckey into resigning and signing a nondisclosure agreement.
To date, despite repeated outcry and demands for answers by community members at several School Committee meetings, no answers, reasons, or indications have been publicly given to the community on why the committee initially decided to terminate Buckey’s contract.
In his separation agreement, Buckey remained on paid administrative leave until Dec. 31, 2023, and was paid his normal salary through that date, which amounted to roughly $80,500. According to the agreement, he was also paid a lump sum of $94,350 on Jan. 2 for the last year of his contract, bringing the total cost of his resignation to around $175,000.
In addition to paying out the remainder of Buckey’s contract, the committee then had to pay salaries to acting Superintendent Michelle Cresta and interim Superintendent Theresa McGuinness.
With McGuinness not pursuing the permanent role, the committee will now have to hire another superintendent under yet another new contract.
Late last year in December, Committee Chair Sarah Fox announced that the committee’s law firm, Stoneman, Chandler & Miller, had dropped it as a client.
It is unclear exactly why the firm dropped the committee, however the announcement came after recent controversies involving the committee’s drafted flag policy and the placing of four Marblehead educators on paid administrative leave amidst a student-restraint crisis.
The committee then decided to hire Elizabeth B. Valerio, who had worked for the committee more than a decade ago. The change in attorneys will cost nearly $25 more per hour.
When Ota was interviewed by The Weekly News ahead of the election, he noted that one goal of his, if elected, would be to create a less contentious atmosphere within the School Committee.
“People have literally been going after each other in public, that has got to stop,” Ota said. “When I was a principal, I always worked on team-building.”
On Nov. 30, 2023, the committee held a workshop that focused on communication improvement between members, which led to a highly contentious atmosphere and multiple accusations between members. Less than two months later, Meagan Taylor resigned from the committee. Taylor had been consistently in the minority on a number of votes since the June 2023 election and was the only member to support Buckey during the controversy that ultimately ended with his resignation.
She expressed her frustrations with the way the situation was handled at the committee’s first public meeting after his resignation.
“I’m just so profoundly disappointed that this is where we’re at,” Taylor said. “I think as a committee, we did not effectively manage the superintendent. I think if there were concerns about his performance or his actions, as a committee, we should have raised those and discussed them as a committee and come up with action plans on how to address them.”
Ota also failed to disclose an ongoing discriminatory complaint that he had filed against Buckey and the district while running for School Committee. The complaint stemmed from Ota’s contract as principal of Glover School not being renewed by Buckey.
The complaint was not revealed until after Ota had won a seat on the committee. In order to avoid a conflict of interest, Ota recused himself from votes pertaining to Buckey’s contract.