Schools

School Turnover: Leaders Address Richards' Departure, MHS Future, Retention

In the wake of Melrose High School Principal Dan Richards' unexpected departure and four elementary principals leaving Melrose, city and school leaders addressed questions about the future of Melrose High School, retaining principals and teacher pay.

Shock. Disappointment. Betrayal.

Those were some of the emotions Mayor Rob Dolan expressed on Monday regarding the unexpected departure of Principal Dan Richards, .

Personal emotions aside, though, Dolan remained steadfast his confidence about the future of Melrose High School and Melrose Public Schools as a whole, which also faces the departure of four elementary principals, with three new principals now hired.

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"Any emotions I feel … it’s over after today," he said. "The people of Melrose should understand totally today that we thank Mr. Richards for his service, but we are moving on, and moving on to a better place."

Dolan, incoming Superintendent Cyndy Taymore and retiring Superintendent Joe Casey spoke with reporters at a press conference on Monday, after the, about Richards' departure, the future of Melrose High School and to address questions raised in the wake of five out of seven school principals all leaving the district this year.

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Unexpected Exit

Dolan has repeatedly stated in recent months that his first priority for his current four-year term is the improvement of Melrose High School. On Monday, while first adding the caveat that he has no qualification for and does not "nor would I want to" involve himself in the day-to-day operations of MHS, Dolan said his responsibility with regard to the high school is the areas he can control: capital improvements, technology and giving the school administrators the tools needed for a 21st century learning environment.

In recent years, the city has installed SMART Boards in all high school classrooms, repaired the roof, addressed air quality, security and the open space issue, Dolan said. That all led up to, after a "very tough process," Dolan said, the hiring of soon-to-be former principal Richards.

"I am shocked by this. I never saw this coming and I’m usually pretty good at seeing things happening," he said. "I am profoundly disappointed. And I have to use the word betrayed. I think I speak for a number of people that there is a real, human, deep sense of betrayal. Not only our shared goals that I’ve worked incredibly hard on with Joe Casey, with the department heads and with Dan Richards, but also a sense of betrayal of the students, many of whom were sold something by Principal Richards when he came in and believed in it and chose Melrose High School. To the parents who have options."

Richards could not be reached for comment before this article's publication. Messages were left for him by Melrose Patch on his voice mail at MHS this week and last week.

Richard had a three-year contract according to Casey, which Taymore said is a typical length for a school administrator contract. Included in the contract was a stipulation to provide 90 days notice if leaving, which Casey said is being waived.

"We feel at this point and time we need to move forward, so we are releasing him," he said. Richards' official last day is June 30.

School and city officials were apparently all caught off guard by the . When asked if anyone received notice, Casey said that "everybody got it about the same time" before Dolan jumped in saying, "Nobody got any notice."

Dolan said that he met with Richards on Thursday, June 7 to discuss plans for the new science labs and two days later boarded a plane for Florida for vacation with his family.

"I got an email, I got about seven texts on Monday coming out of Magic Kingdom and that's how I found out," he said, adding, "To learn about it on Monday in Florida from the Belmont Patch is not how business should be conducted."

Taymore, while saying that Richards "did some good beginning work," pointed to Richards years in Belmont before coming to Melrose as perhaps the deciding factor in his decision.

"I really think the competition was Belmont. He came from Belmont," she said. "Probably nobody anticipated that the current principal of Belmont High would become the superintendent in Hamilton-Wenham. That happened very fast and very late." Belmont High School Principal Michael Harvey was .

"I do not know whether anybody reached out to Mr. Richards and said 'Do you want to come back,' or whether he applied on his own," Taymore continued. "It’s irrelevant at this point."

Future of Melrose High School

Putting aside his initial emotional reaction, Dolan said in his decade as mayor, "this isn’t even in the top 20 of challenges that this community has faced." He cited shuttering schools and fire stations, laying off 20 percent of staff, and overrides and debt exclusions that "divided this community."

Looking to the future of Melrose High School, Dolan cited the new MHS science labs that will be built, language labs, technology center and almost $6 million in renovations planned for the building. In terms of staff, he said—while crediting Richards in this area—the school will hire "excellent teachers and holding them accountable."

With regard to Melrose High School teachers who are also leaving this summer, Dolan said, "A lot of those people were not renewed by Dan Richards, which I say good for him. Because he made a tough decision."

Dolan said that teachers who don't meet "the standards of our community" will not return, while the district will support teachers who need assistance in certain areas and recognize superlative educators.

"We are going to rebuild Melrose High School with a new principal and a new team and I’m totally confident in that," he said. "Whatever human emotions I feel and the public feels at this time—because I've gotten a lot of calls from people who feel that sense of betrayal—it’s over after today. I feel very confident ... that the new superintendent has an immediate plan to fill this vacuum, that we’re ready to get to work."

Casey spoke to the importance of the city as a whole supporting education, and said that while Taymore is coming in to lead the district, the success of a school and a whole district relies on more than any single individual.

"The vision is here, the vision is being acted on and that’s the future," he said. "Because we can see that clearly. Ms. Taymore is going to take us forward to the next steps and it's going to be great. But a school is not one person."

Still, Melrose High School needs a principal.

To that end, Taymore said that she and Casey met with Richards on Monday morning to map out what he accomplished in his one year at the helm and what's left unfinished.

The plan now is to have Marianne Farrell, Melrose High School assistant principal, serve as the acting principal over the summer until an interim principal is found and hired for the coming school year, giving Melrose time to find a permanent replacement for Richards.

"Searching for a high school principal is a huge undertaking and should be done thoughtfully, over time," Taymore said. "You cannot put up a posting and hire someone in the next month."

To find a long-term principal, Taymore said she's proposing to conduct a survey of Melrose High School staff and the community as a whole to see what they would want in a new principal; in the fall, hold focus groups to have small group conversation and feedback; and use the survey results and group feedback to re-write the high school principal's job description, with the tentative goal to post that position by Dec. 1 and hopefully, tentatively, hire a new Melrose High School principal by March 1.

How Do You Keep Principals?

Of course, Richards isn't the only Melrose principal to leave this year, stoking comments from the public expressing concern and wondering if there's a larger picture being missed.

On the one hand, the individual reasons each principal appears to have for leaving seem clear: Winthrop School Principal and Hoover School Principal are both moving closer to home for family reasons.

Roosevelt School Principal earned a promotion to a central office position and Horace Mann Principal expressed a desire to focus on younger grade levels in areas where he has a strong background. And Richards, as alluded to by Taymore, is returning to the school where he built strong ties before coming to Melrose.

On the other hand, five out of seven school principals all leaving after the same school year begs the question: What's happening here? Does an underlying reason exist? Is there a commonality shared amongst the five principals that explains their simultaneous departures?

Some commenters on the as a possible impetus for the district's turnover.

Melrose Patch previously reported that , based on the most recent numbers from the state based on the 2009-2010 school year. In the 2008-2009 school year, Melrose had the had the lowest average teacher salary in the region.

As salary pertains to Richards, Dolan shot down speculation that Richards' salary played a role in his leaving Melrose.

"We made Dan Richards the highest paid administrator in the history of the Melrose Public Schools," he said. "We spent the last month creating a that would’ve put not only him, but any administrator on pace to be paid as much or more than any area administrator. Any. ... I'm more than fairly confident that if you extrapolate out five years in that grid system he'd be making more in the city of Melrose than he'd be making in Belmont."

That new grid system, still being adapted to Melrose Public Schools, is based on the city's own salary administration plan. As , the plan would define a series of salary levels or "steps" for principals and non-union administrators, who would each be assigned a salary level upon their hire and move on to the next step only after an annual performance review by the superintendent.

Historically Lower Pay; Officials Say Addressed By New Grid System

Dolan acknowledged that Melrose has traditionally paid its employees, school and otherwise, less than surrounding communities, citing former superintendents and former high school principal Dan Burke as paid less than their contemporaries, and in 2006, after the departure of city assessor Ken Beardsley, Melrose posting a job for city assessor that paid $25,000 less than Wakefield or Stoneham. He also pointed to his own salary, , which went before the aldermen last year under a .

"It really affected us on the city side, in that we couldn’t get people to apply for jobs," he said. "We had to create a salary administration plan that put people on a track. Designed very similar—in fact, not very similar, but the same—as the union track."

On the educational side, Dolan said that based on his conversations with other mayors, he argued there is a shortage of quality principals and central office administrators that causes a spike in salaries from communities trying to address their own vacancies.

He also said with the Baby Boomer generation now retiring from the public sector in the range of 60 years old and collecting their pension, combined with younger principals and school administrators becoming more common, that has added to that competitive market.

There's increased turnover in the market as well. According to a report from The Center for Public Education, the average length of a principal’s tenure is three to four years for the average school, and other media outlets have reported that the average Massachusetts  school superintendent's tenure is four years.

That's where the  comes in, Dolan, Casey and Taymore said. The superintendent would slot principals and administrators into a salary step upon their hire, based on their qualifications and their role.

"Everybody else, administrative contracts are negotiated every three years ... whether you get a raise or not in between is up to the superintendent to go back to the School Committee and ask for money," Taymore said. "We’ve taken that outside of the School Committee to some degree. We have said this is a matrix and the superintendent can advance you on that matrix if you meet certain goals."

Dolan said the accountability factor is the key to the grid system, with principals and administrators not receiving their salary step increase automatically, as with collectively bargained teachers' contracts, but only after review by the superintendent. At the same time, he said, it lays out a salary plan that principals and administrators can count on, as long as they perform.

"On top of that, if the superintendent wants to add, she can add a 1 percent COLA (cost of living adjustment) on top of that to further reward that person," Dolan said. "So we’ve taken the politics out of hiring principals and put it in the hands of the most qualified person in the room to do so. We've set them on a path so principals aren’t used as political pawns in other negotiations for police, fire, teachers, any place else, and she has the ability to hire the best people. That fundamentally changes the way Melrose has done business for the better."

What About Teacher Salaries?

There's still the matter of teacher pay. Dolan acknowleged the average Melrose teacher salary is lower in Melrose than most surrounding communities, but argued that the city is moving in the right direction, saying that the average teacher salary increase this year is between 5 and 7 percent.

He also argued that as a total package, Melrose pays among the highest percentage (87 percent) of premium contributions for health insurance and guarantees retiree health benefits at 85 percent, with most cities paying 50 percent.

"I would argue that although we’re among the lowest, we’re making a heck of a good run at trying to be better," Dolan said.

Also, with a limited commercial tax base and little appetite for overrides, Dolan said Melrose has to have a balanced budget each year, meaning additions within Melrose Public Schools means doing with less somewhere else. In comparison, he mentioned the challenges faced in other communities, such as a to avoid cuts; ; and cuts recently made in

"We are on the right track financially to be sustainable," he argued. "The key word is a 'sustainable' community, as it pertains to pension, wages and health insurance."

So assuming money isn't everything: how do you get principals to stay? How do you get teachers to stay?

"You get them to stay because they love their work and love where we're taking it," Taymore said. "They want to be part of that change, they want to believe that they can make a difference ... So I think people who are excited about creating a competitive, rigorous school system will want to work with us."

Dolan pointed to the , who have tenures of a decade or more in previous districts, as examples of the educators the city is targeting.

"We want people to commit to this community," he said. "It’s a great city, it’s a great place to work, we are stable economically, we haven’t had a layoff in the last five years in the worst economy. We are basically investing in capital and tools for educators unlike any other city in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. That's going to happen and that's going to continue to happen."


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