The Boston Globe
MARBLEHEAD — When John Buckey arrived on this charming seaside city in the summertime of 2020, employed as superintendent of Marblehead Public Colleges, he greeted his new function with optimism, even because the pandemic raged round him.
Buckey, who had spent the earlier 15 years as a highschool principal, most just lately in Nantucket, was able to make a change. Marblehead had a status for biking by superintendents — with seven everlasting or interim leaders since 2005 — and Buckey thought he would possibly reverse the pattern and produce some much-needed stability to district management. He moved to a condominium within the historic Adams Home at Fort Sewall Seaside and have become a daily on the Driftwood diner. He might see himself retiring right here on the finish of an extended profession.
“Folks have been so heat and welcoming and sort,” Buckey advised an area realtor throughout a Zoom interview on the final day of his first month helming the district of roughly 2,600 college students. “Maybe, I’m a glass-half-full-type man, however perhaps it’s one of the best time to be a brand new superintendent.”
Buckey, 49, was out of a job somewhat greater than three years later, compelled on Aug. 2 to comply with resign, beneath a cloud of controversy that has outraged townspeople and shaken their religion within the native college system. The College Committee has supplied solely obscure clues as to why its members sought to oust him, prompting widespread hypothesis about their motives — and whether or not they have been personally or ideologically pushed.
Not even Buckey is aware of why he was pushed out of his practically $190,000 a 12 months job.
“I’ve by no means been given any rationalization, motive or motivation,” he mentioned in a written response to questions from the Globe. (Buckey is certain by a non-disparagement clause in his settlement settlement with the district; his solutions have been reviewed by his legal professional.)
Members of the College Committee, in the meantime, have declined to publicly remark.
The place many agree, nevertheless, is {that a} superintendent’s survival lately in a group akin to Marblehead hinges as a lot on the social and political milieu of the district he’s main as on his competence and management abilities. Simply as college boards have change into the middle of tradition wars throughout the nation, so too have superintendents, caught up in clashes on incendiary points akin to ebook bans, crucial race principle, and gender id.
Superintendents in a number of Massachusetts municipalities have, in current months, exited beneath equally strained circumstances. In Saugus, Erin McMahon, the primary girl to steer the district, has been compelled by the College Committee to stay on go away since January; the committee invoked solely obscure considerations about her conduct throughout a very acrimonious finances cycle. College Committee members in Everett voted this spring to not renew Priya Tahiliani’s superintendent contract following years of pressure between her and the mayor. This month, Michael Morris stepped down as superintendent of Amherst-Pelham Regional Public Colleges amid an outdoor investigation into the remedy of transgender college students at a center college.
“The query is, what’s driving these selections?” mentioned Vladimir Kogan, an Ohio State College professor who research college district politics. “To the extent that it’s actually grownup points that don’t have anything to do with pupil outcomes, that’s after we ought to begin to get involved as a result of finally it’s going to distract from what faculties do.”
Tom Scott, govt director of the Massachusetts Affiliation of College Superintendents, mentioned that “the job has change into far too political.” Prior to now, Scott mentioned, it wasn’t uncommon to see superintendents serving as many 20 years on the helm of a Massachusetts college district; at this time, the typical tenure of a superintendent within the state is 5 years.
Buckey was employed as superintendent of Marblehead Public Colleges in February 2020, considered one of two finalists for the job. College Committee members extolled Buckey as a transformational chief. He impressed the city in public boards together with his youth and charisma. He was additionally overtly homosexual and married and deliberate to plant roots within the city.
“It was similar to a breath of contemporary air,” mentioned Paul Baker, a Marblehead resident who attended the boards and later made an unsuccessful bid for College Committee. “Simply one thing a small city like Marblehead wants — a wake-up name, a little bit of variety.”
However fissures in Buckey’s help began forming virtually as quickly as he arrived to the district within the throes of the pandemic, tasked then with reopening faculties whereas navigating the murky terrain of masks mandates and hybrid studying. Public debate in Marblehead about COVID coverage gave option to consternation round variety and inclusion efforts, recalled Sarah Gold, a former Marblehead College Committee member who was committee chair when Buckey was appointed.
“I believe COVID is the direct line,” Gold mentioned of the highway to Buckey’s departure. “It began as wanting youngsters to get again to the classroom after which grew to become all about masks and you then had all the civil rights items inside it that then created divisions with Black Lives Matter.”
Within the 2021, controversy erupted over the show of a Black Lives Matter flag in the highschool cafeteria, which Buckey defended, citing his dedication to Marblehead “changing into an anti-racist college district.” (Marblehead, with a inhabitants of roughly 20,000 individuals, is 96 p.c white.) Final summer time, Buckey urged the city to cross a $3 million tax override for faculties that might have allowed the district, partly, to rent a brand new director of variety, fairness, and inclusion, galvanizing native critics. The override failed, however a vocal contingent of voters took to social media, accusing Buckey of making an attempt to “infiltrate” the faculties together with his liberal agenda.
“There may be positively a bunch of parents who have been anti-Buckey,” mentioned Leigh Blander, a reporter for the Marblehead Present, a web-based newspaper. “Buckey was very supportive of DEI…and, as a homosexual, married man, was very supportive of LGBTQ college students and points, and there positively was a way locally that not all people was snug with that.”
Till final month, Buckey had the help of the five-member College Committee. In July 2021, the College Committee voted 4 to 1 to increase his contract for one more two years. Solely Sarah Fox, the present chair, opposed the extension. In mid-June, the College Committee permitted a “proficient” efficiency analysis for Buckey.
However every week later, two new College Committee members have been elected — a earlier committee member, Jennifer Schaeffner, founding father of the native information web site Marblehead Beacon, and Brian Ota, a former principal of the district’s Glover Elementary College. (Gold misplaced her seat.) One other tax override was on the poll, however it, too, failed, leading to cuts to high school packages and personnel. After the election, the Present’s Blander broke the information that Ota had filed a grievance towards Buckey with the Massachusetts Fee Towards Discrimination when his contract as Glover’s principal was not renewed — a truth he didn’t disclose whereas campaigning.
By early July, and with two new members on the College Committee, it appeared an effort to take away Buckey was underway. On July 7, lower than three weeks after the election, Fox had “stopped speaking” with him, Buckey advised the Globe. To Buckey’s shock, he later discovered the College Committee deliberate to satisfy behind closed doorways in govt session on July 21 to debate the phrases of his contract, with Ota agreeing to recuse himself. The College Committee was set to vote on the early termination clause of his contract in a digital assembly on July 26 earlier than abruptly calling it off in beneath a minute with no rationalization. Per week later, Buckey agreed to resign.
Below the phrases of his settlement settlement, Buckey will probably be on paid go away till Dec. 31, at which level he’ll resign. He’ll obtain a lump sum fee of $94,350 on Jan. 2, 2024. The College Committee, within the meantime, has launched its seek for an interim superintendent and the city of Marblehead stays at midnight.
Just one College Committee member, Meagan Taylor, has sided publicly with Buckey. In a letter to the editor of the Present, Taylor chided her colleagues’ plans to take away Buckey from his place.
“The actions of this committee have affected employees morale, disrupted the soundness of our faculties, detracted from the optimistic work of the district, and can negatively impression our finances and talent to rent a successor superintendent,” she wrote. “Our group deserves higher than this.”
At an unusually vigorous College Committee assembly at the highschool library on Aug. 11, townspeople conjectured overtly about Buckey’s abrupt departure and voiced their frustration with their elected college leaders. One girl puzzled a few “hidden agenda.” One other accused the College Committee of turning the city right into a “laughing inventory.”
“I believe that members of our college board got here to this weird peremptory dismissal from completely different motivations,” Mimi Lemay, a Marblehead mother or father, advised the Globe.
Fox, the College Committee chair, has pointed solely to the July 21 minutes of the committee’s govt session by the use of indirect rationalization. The minutes point out a “current investigative report…on a grievance of bullying on an athletic crew along with different considerations introduced forth to the Committee on different issues in current weeks.”
The report referenced within the minutes refers to an outdoor investigation of unintentional “bullying” by former Marblehead Excessive women soccer coach John Dormer, obtained by the Present and revealed on July 26. In October, the report mentioned, the college district employed an unbiased investigator to look into an nameless grievance about Dormer by the household of a women soccer participant. The investigator decided the coach had inadvertently precipitated “emotional hurt” to non-varsity gamers who complained about their roles within the soccer program.
Buckey’s lawyer, Michael Lengthy, common counsel to the Massachusetts Affiliation of College Superintendents, mentioned Buckey was by no means contacted by the investigator or requested to be interviewed, and had solely change into conscious of the grievance in October.
Fox advised the Globe the minutes “are as they stand” and she or he couldn’t remark additional earlier than including that the College Committee had “heard from much more those who don’t really feel the identical means” as those that spoke out on the Aug. 11 assembly.
One these constituents is Megan Sweeney, founding father of the native activist group PowerUp. She mentioned she’s glad with the College Committee’s stage of transparency round Buckey’s elimination and that the allegations have been “worthy of unseating a superintendent.”
“I don’t know something extra vital than our youngsters,” she mentioned. “I really feel like as adults, we’ve an inherent accountability, ethical obligation, moral obligation to to ensure that they’re centered in our selections.”
It’s a proof not all appear prepared to purchase. Joe Selby, whose daughter was a participant on the ladies varsity soccer crew, suspects the investigation of Dormer was a “witch hunt” on behalf of oldsters who felt their youngsters didn’t get sufficient taking part in time, and a handy pretext for the College Committee to get a rid of Buckey.
“I believe the College Committee was determined to fireside this man,” he mentioned, “and I don’t know why.”
