Results of the vote on School Committee raises
Note: This is adapted from my Reddit post about this issue. I spent a lot of time preparing the post and subsequently answering questions, and I figured it would make a good blog post. The post has been adapted primarily to include the final results of the regular council meeting in which we voted on the proposal.
On January 17th, the City Council held a Committee of the Whole meeting to discuss School Committee pay increases; on January 23rd, we voted, 5-2, to raise it from $12,000 to $22,105.60 (with more details on page 10). I already shared a few thoughts previously about this, and, just before the meeting, School Committee Vice Chair Jenny Graham sent out an email sharing her perspectives on it.
To summarize the issue: the City Council is currently paid $29,359.76 a year, while the School Committee is paid $12,000 a year. In December, outgoing Council President Nicole Morrell put forward a resolution (page 12) to increase School Committee Salaries by 145% to be equal to that of the City Council.
I'm going to lay out some purely technical details of what was discussed and what was proposed, and then I will offer my thoughts.
During the Committee of the Whole meeting, four motions were made:
Councilor Tseng brought up a motion to raise the School Committee's salaries to $22,105.60 by FY2025, instead of the full $29,359.76. This was voted out of committee, 6-1.
Councilor Collins motioned to both raise the salaries to $22,105.6 by FY2025 and provide for increases that would bring these to $29,359.76 by FY2027. This was voted out of committee, 6-1.
Councilor Collins motioned to pass the question of whether we can ensure raises in the Charter for the School Committee to the Governance Committee. This was voted out of committee, 6-1.
Councilor Scarpelli motioned to lower the City Council's pay and raise the School Committee's pay during the current term such that they would be equal while retaining the same sum amount. This was voted out of committee, 4-3.
In the three 6-1 votes, they were all Councilor Scarpelli against. The 4-3 vote was Councilors Bears, Callahan, Lazzaro, and Scarpelli in favor and Councilors Collins, Leming, and Tseng against.
In the regular City Council meeting on January 23rd, Councilor Collins withdrew her motion to raise it to $29,359 by 2027; Councilor Scarpelli’s motion was found to be invalid under Massachusetts General Law since council salaries cannot be altered in the given year they are voted on, so that motion was not voted on; and we ultimately voted on Councilor Tseng’s motion to raise School Committee’s salaries to $22,105.60 by 2025, 5-2, with Councilors Bears, Collins, Lazzaro, Leming, and Tseng in favor and Councilors Callahan and Scarpelli against. The third motion has yet to be discussed in the Governance Committee.
Where are these specific amounts coming from?
One public commenter at the Committee of the Whole meeting pointed out that the numbers being thrown around were very unclear. I fully agree. I will do my best to lay them out here, mainly by rephrasing the salary history research done by Councilor Tseng (Councilors were given a paper copy of that sheet before the meeting).
In the year 2000, regular members of the City Council made $13,785.71, while regular School Committee members made $12,000 (note: when I say "regular", I mean that positions like SC Chair and City Council President make slightly more). In 2023, City Council members made $29,359.76, while School Committee members made $12,000. The average annual increase for City Councilors since 2000 has been 3.38% — a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). If the School Committee had received this same annual increase since 2000, they would be making $25,556.68 in 2023.
Some justification behind each of the numbers considered:
| Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) | Who has already received this COLA? | What would SC's salary be if they had received this COLA since 2000? | If this were the new salary, how much more would it cost Medford in 2025? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | School Committee | $12,000.00 | $0.00 |
| 2% | Some non-union jobs, department heads | $19,687.27 | $53,810.89 |
| 2.48% | Medford Teacher's Association, other union positions | $22,105.60 | $70,739.20 |
| 3.38% | City Council | $25,556.68 | $94,896.76 |
There are a few factors to consider with each of these amounts:
This is essentially the only salary associated with MPS that the City Council gets to change, and this is because it is set specifically under Massachusetts General Law c. 71, s. 52. We received a notice prior to the meeting confirming this authority. Many teachers and paraprofessionals came to speak out against the raises and encouraged the City Council to raise their pay. The City Council has no authority to do so — School Committee pay is a unique issue that the City Council can change, but virtually everything else is under the authority of the School Committee.
We are, however, responsible for generating the revenue that can potentially be used for teacher pay. An SC increase, implemented over a two-year period, is in our current budget, because there are only seven SC members, and their salaries are part-time. In a $200m operating budget, it is small. There are 383 full-time teachers in the Medford Public School System, making an average of $88,179 a year (according to the linked source). I believe paraprofessionals make about $21K (I would have to go through the contracts to find the exact numbers — I have not looked through them myself personally, nor can I find a source for the exact number of paraprofessionals in MPS; Councilor Callahan noted that she would refuse to vote to raise SC salaries to be higher than that of paraprofessionals). A raise of, for example, $2,500 for teachers alone would amount to $1.15 million coming from the city. The most direct way to get that money is a Prop 2.5 Override. This is on the Council's proposed governing agenda. It is just a longer-term project.
The Mayor, as Chair of the School Committee under the Charter, receives both a School Committee Salary of $13,200 and the regular Mayor’s salary. This can potentially be changed at a later date, but that would require Charter Review. We are waiting on the results of the Charter Study Committee for their recommendations first. These are scheduled to come in September.
Among the questions to be voted on are:
By what amount should we raise School Committee pay? By nothing, by a rate equal to that of non-union personnel, by a rate equal to that of union personnel, by a rate equal to City Council's, or to City Council's directly?
If we choose to not raise School Committee pay to equal City Council's by 2025, will we do so at a later date? (Councilor Collins' second motion was to do so by 2027.)
Are we able to write a set and continuing COLA increase in the Charter?
Should the City Council decrease its own pay to pay for the increases?
My own thoughts
With the public backlash of the initial proposal, the choice for City Council soon boiled to whether the COLA ought to be 2% (i.e. non-union personnel) or 2.48% (same as MTA) — see the table above. With a 2.48% COLA, the Mayor, as SC Chair, and the rest of SC, would receive higher increases than department heads and some non-union personnel, which is a factor I was considering.
During the public comments period, we listened to teachers, paraprofessionals, union workers, and custodial staff. Virtually none of them were happy with the idea of School Committee raises. They discussed the poor condition of the schools; they noted how hard teachers and paraprofessionals fought to have their own salaries increased and said that School Committee members should come out and picket/negotiate themselves; they said that the City Council should be working on the business district of Medford instead; and teachers noted that most of them worked two jobs. The Medford Teachers Association came out very strong and represented themselves extremely well.
I will also say that the backlash to this was anticipated. It's a nasty subject. But the fact remains that the City Council has refused to raise the salaries of the School Committee for 23 years.
Two lines of thought were echoed by the public: the ideas of volunteerism and fiscal responsibility (again, I've tried to be open about my views). Volunteerism is an area where there are very fundamentally different ideas about compensation. People who are settled and well-off have the time and ability to volunteer for their community, and, as I noted during the meeting, people who choose to do so are the bedrock of this community. But, people who are working shifts in low-paying jobs do not. If we ask people to do a job that has the power and time commitment of the School Committee, we limit ourselves only to those members of our community who have the means to serve in that role. (MTA President Geehan noted during his public comment period that it was not low salaries, but rather the costs of running, that were the barrier to this — I think this is true to an extent, but social connections and the ability to raise money during an election can do a lot for someone who doesn't have the means to self-fund. It's a longer conversation.)
As for fiscal responsibility: the city has the money to pay for this particular line item, and as I said during the meeting, Medford has historically been penny smart and dollar stupid. I recently met with a city staff member who noted that the city used to sell off land to plug holes in the budget; this sort of short-term thinking got us into our current financial situation. The reason we cannot pay teachers much is not because of a $70,000 line item in the budget of just over $200,000,000; it's because our budget is just over $200,000,000 to begin with, and for a city of 62,000, that is very, very low. Our per capita operating budget is $3,152, which makes us 314th in the state (out of 351 total municipalities); Somerville's is $4,781, Cambridge's is $8,379, and Malden's is $3,313. The reason we're addressing School Committee pay now is because it's 23 years overdue, it can be addressed in the course of a few meetings, we want to get the nastiness over with quickly, and addressing the fundamental problems with Medford — which stem from our historical lack of investment in staff and resources, choosing instead short-term gains — will take a much longer period of time.
