Instructional books and School Committee salaries
Happy New Year to everyone! The most productive political activity I finished over the holiday was reading through a short book called Now What? A Practical Guide for Newly Elected Officials, which covers the nitty gritties of working as a local politician. It's the first text I've read where the author talks about this role as a job that needs to be done, outside all the chatter that tends to happen during campaigns. The most memorable and humbling advice the book gave was in Chapter 5, entitled "To get things done, control your ego," which contained my favorite line of the book, on page 41: "You were elected because someone had to be". (The author encourages candidates, as a social experiment, to ask ten people at a street corner who their elected officials are, betting that nobody would recognize them — I have no doubt the prediction would come to pass if I tried it.) Among the more practical advice of the book is the idea that elected officials need to actively learn, listen to others, and never think of themselves as indispensable.
Besides my reading, two interesting events have happened since the election. One was the recount. That happened, it was pretty open-and-shut, and the results came out the same as they'd been before, albeit with slightly altered numbers, reflecting several provisional ballots that were not counted. The election department will likely need funding and more staffing to ensure that things run more smoothly in future elections. And I have nothing but gratitude for everyone who volunteered their time to observe the recount.
The other interesting event, which presents a future issue that may be of some consequence, is the proposal by the City Council to raise the School Committee's salaries. This could be one of the first things that I vote on, so I'll list my initial thoughts on it here.
To summarize: City Council proposed to raise the School Committee members' salaries by about 145%, from around $12,000 to $29,000, equal to City Council's. This proposal was one of the few things Medford City Council has done that made any form of local news. Naturally, people generally don't like the idea of politicians giving other politicians a 145% raise at a time when teachers and paraprofessionals are underpaid. I've heard School Committee members come out against it, and I've heard others speak in favor of it.
In parsing internet comments (which I usually follow closely, even if I don't always reply), I've read thoughts in the community about what the School Committee role should be. The role should be a volunteer role, with members serving in that role purely out of the joy of public service and the stipend only offsetting operating costs. City Council should be paid more because they have more areas of responsibility than the School Committee and thus should take on a higher salary. The role should only be a few hours per week. That seems to be the platonic ideal of a part-time elected position.
The issue I take with this line of thought is that, if one wants the school system to both function and improve, the School Committee role becomes something else. School Committee members, just like City Councilors, can choose to put in two hours a week or 20 hours a week (really, without charter review, there's not much we can do during a term if an elected official decides to put in zero hours). But a member who puts in 20 hours is more likely to do good for the school system across the board. School Committee members are responsible for hiring and evaluating the superintendent and negotiating contracts with different groups of employees — this takes time, and, ideally, an elected official sees this as a part-time job. Internally, one of the biggest challenges that Medford has been facing over the past few years is the professionalization of its operations — essentially transitioning from a big town government to a small city — and the School Committee has been neck-deep in this process with the school system. While the City Council has influence over more areas of municipal government, the School Committee is more deeply involved in running the school system than the City Council is in any one of its areas of responsibility.
That book I read lists instances of municipal corruption in which officials were paid ridiculously high salaries (go through the Wikipedia page for the City of Bell scandal, or read about how the city manager of Vernon, CA, with a population of 112, received a pension of over half a million a year). Outsized executive compensation is an issue. But I don't think that's what's going on here. Severely underpaying roles that influence policy is just as bad because it means that only the wealthy can afford to serve. $12,000 a year, when a successful campaign can require $5,000 in personal funds, and when a School Committee member needs to put in many hours per week to improve the system, is not sufficient compensation; $29,000 offers some justification for the time committed, and it would do something to attract candidates who would otherwise need to put in more shifts at work to make ends meet. This is a reality because we just elected someone to School Committee who was doing shift work for much of the campaign. Furthermore, in the early 2000s, City Council's salary was $16K while the School Committee's still was $12K — so while City Council spent its time over the past 20 years steadily raising its own salary, because they had the power to, they left School Committee without a raise.
But — none of this gets around one simple fact: it's terrible optics to raise a politician's salary by 145%, especially to teachers and paraprofessionals who don't get paid enough. And these teachers and paraprofessionals don't want a lesson on budgets, incentives, and balance in executive compensation. During the recount, I listened for 40 minutes to a retiree who discussed her very low salary when she worked as a paraprofessional at Medford High (the salaries have since been raised, though they're still far from livable). Raising it gradually, or by a lesser amount, would certainly help with the optics. But I'm also weighing that against conversations with School Committee members who made this work a significant part of their lives and have been frustrated for years with the compensation gap.
As usual, I love to hear any thoughts folks have on this, and I look forward to the discussion after the inauguration on January 7th.
