Newburyport Needs Reform, Not an Override

Before a standing-room only audience Superintendent of Schools Dr. Marc Kerble thundered "To keep cutting just takes away from who we are in Newburyport. If we want to be great, we have to fund our school system." Is he right? Must we submit to a higher tax burden or see our schools fall to wreck and ruin? As a community, we must provide a proper education for the 18% of households that have children in our schools, but we must also be mindful that a property tax increase will present a crippling burden to the 5.9%(US Census) of our neighbors who live below the Federal poverty level.

Any attempt to determine if Dr. Kerble's $900 thousand override is warranted should begin with our school system's greatest expense: payroll and benefits. But it's impossible to view the current teachers’ contract. It's not posted online and neither the clerk's nor the mayor's office has a copy and shockingly the superintendent's office doesn't either. Apparently the contract isn't final yet. We know from this paper that teachers received a 3% raise and retained guaranteed yearly step increases, but without the contract we can't know the new pay scale. In the 05-08 contract, a first year teacher would start at $35,694 and after four years of guaranteed step increases their pay was $45,124. Without the contract it's impossible to verify if teachers still receive 15 paid sick days for a work year of 184 days or if some can still bank up to 165 days and cash out at 50% of their final years pay-rate upon retirement. We can infer from this statement by Mayor Holaday when the city council voted department heads a 2% raise a year after awarding them a sixth week of vacation that they are "..it's easier to absorb a small increase as opposed to keep giving these extravagant benefits that are really hard to take back once you give them.." The mayor also called for teachers to pay higher deductibles for their healthcare, implying that they have a cadillac plan. I believe with fair changes, focused on reform to the not yet final contract it's possible to avoid some if not all of Dr. Kerble's projected cuts without raising taxes.

To the larger question: Does more money equal better schools? The Massachusetts Teachers Association certainly believes so, which is why they spent millions in dues money fighting the income tax rollback and only endorse politicians who agree to raise it back to 5.95%. But, the data tells a very different story. The Digest of Education Statistics found that America spent $55 thousand in 1970 on a K-12 education and $150 thousand in 2010, with negligible results to our academic standing. In math for example, America places 35th behind the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. Money can't buy love and it doesn’t buy great schools. Reforming our education system, not simply throwing more money at it is the wiser course, beginning with saying no to an override.