School Committee spars on way to Muslim holiday, salary votes
School Committee members Patty Nolan and Marc McGovern disagreed Tuesday before voting together on inserting an Eid holiday in the Cambridge school calendar. (Photo: Marc Levy)
The School Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to include an Eid holiday for Muslim students in public schools. It would give students a day off to celebrate the holiday, as Christian or Jewish students get to observe their religious holidays and celebrations.
“Congratulations, Cambridge is in the 21st century,” said Ken Reeves, a city councillor and interim mayor and committee member, upon adoption. “Everybody made it.”
Adoption wasn’t without debate, but the conflict focused only on whether committee member Marc McGovern’s specific motion was necessary. He asked to split adoption of the holiday from a broader look at how the district decides which holidays to insert in the master calendar.
Member Patty Nolan questioned the need for McGovern’s change, saying that including a wider look at policy in the official motion would not affect students getting the next Eid holiday off.
“I think it would, it could hold it up,” McGovern said. “I fully agree we should look at the calendar, but I don’t feel we should do that on the backs of our Muslim students.”
After Nolan stressed “This was never about not supporting [the holiday]. I support it fully,” Alice Turkel — back on the committee after six years — agreed on the importance of creating an overarching policy. In her four terms, she had voted other holidays onto the school calendar and wished, in retrospect, a wider policy had been created.
Students were on hand to watch the vote. Among them was Humbi Song, a first-year student at Harvard who founded an initiative to recognize Eid before graduating from the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, the city’s public high school.
“It’s amazing for the School Committee to consider this,” Song said during public comment, especially “in a nation where bias against Muslims is so pervasive.”
Cambridge Human Rights chairwoman Marla Erlien thanked Superintendent Jeffrey Young for his interest in the matter and said inclusion such as approval of the holiday was “holding out a hand to families who have been alienated from schools.”
“I hope you’ll take it on as a broader project than just recognizing the holiday,” Erlien said.
The Eid vote followed formal acceptance of the district’s academic calendar and preceded another clash in which Nolan seemed misunderstood.
Raises for the committee’s executive secretary, Marilyn Y. Bradshaw, and confidential secretary, Patricia A. Berry, were brought forward for a vote by McGovern, and Nolan opposed the increases because “we are facing staggering budget deficits” and she considered the committee’s employees — as well as the committee members themselves — to already be “extremely well compensated, above the average.”
But she struggled to make it clear that the raises under discussion would be in addition to cost-of-living increases, and when the vote took place — 6-1, with only Nolan opposed — it was muddied by members’ distress that a personnel issue was being discussed publicly.
“I’m not sure this is all that appropriate,” Nancy Tauber said before apologizing to Bradshaw and Berry, who were present. Fred Fantini and Richard Harding agreed the discussion was “in poor taste.”
The raises had been debated in a closed-door session last year; McGovern said in bringing them up he intended a straight up-or-down vote, not more discussion.
Turkel noted three of the committee members were new and hadn’t been in the closed-door session — and echoed that late in the meeting when discussing approval of budget issues in which she hadn’t weighed in.
Harding took Turkel’s point a bit further, rejecting the notion new members of the committee would or should go along with decisions arrived at by previous committees. He also rejected the “unwritten rule” of limiting himself to two questions during presentations. “I’m going to ask questions appropriate to my constituents,” he said.
Just a few follow up points:
1. When the SC added a Christian and Jewish holiday to the school calendar they did so without a policy. Our Muslim population is significant and growing, that is why I felt it was important to treat them equally. Where Ms. Nolan and I disagreed is that she wanted to take the time to develop a policy addressing ALL of the holidays before adding the Muslim holiday. In the meantime, however, the school calendar would go forward with the other religions getting their holidays but the Muslims not.
2. I brought forward the motion to give a raise to the Executive Secretary because it was agreed upon in an executive session and as the Vice-Chair it fell to me to bring what was decided in that session to the floor. It should be pointed out that although we are in a challenging financial situation, our executive secretary has not had a raise in ten years. While teachers and others have raises built into their contract (step increases that are above and beyond cost of living) our secretary does not. Meaning, if she is ever to get a merit raise then it has to be done through a vote. While everyone else, including the SC, gets automatic raises, it seemed unfair that our executive secretary should go a decade without a raise. In terms of the budget, this raise, which will amount to a few thousand dollars, is not what is going to break us, and it is well deserved.
3. Anytime new members (whether they have served before or not) join the committee they are always a bit behind. We have all been there. We were all new once. Its difficult for new members, as it was for me, to say, “hey, I would have done it differently but I wasn’t there so I need to move on.” New members, particularly when they have served before and understand the issues, understandably want to jump in and have their say, but we cannot spend our time revisiting votes that have already been taken. The children of Cambridge need us to move forward, not debating issues from the past.
First off, thanks for covering the regular School Committee meetings. The “other” paper in town has ignored them for as long as I can remember.
Secondly, while it’s fine to have a Muslim holiday, did this take up the majority of the meeting??
There was an all too brief time in recent history when the School Committee was focused on a finite set of goals for improving achievement and set rules for meetings that allowed them (along with the superintendent) to do just that. Members had (mostly) a common agenda vs. just looking out for their constituents. Bottom line: A lot of progress was made.
It would be interesting to go back through the minutes and look at how much time has been spent in recent meetings actually discussing the academic goals and to track the amount of time spent going forward. Policies voted previously (including goals) are still SC policy no matter who is sitting in those seats.
It’s my sincere hope that this Committee will get a mayor who can run efficient, effective meetings where everyone follows the rules, respects staff and focuses on the goals of the district.
A few corrections:
First, I stated unequivocally that I supported adding the Muslim holidays immediately. No one suggested waiting on that decision. The idea of having a policy is simply good practice: at the same time we approve adding Muslim holidays, let’s make sure that we review how the calendar and holidays are decided. It is wrong to say that I or anyone else who wants a clear policy supported waiting. The opposite — I was very supportive of the students when this issue was first raised three years ago, before Marc McGovern returned to the committee. The former supt. chose not to move forward. Our current supt. brought forth a recommendation, after careful study. I applaud the students, and the Human Rights Commission for continuing to advocate for this move.
Secondly, voting on a raise after an election before a new committee taking office is wrong. In fact we received legal advice that voting a raise before the new term would have been illegal – voting to recommend a raise would have been legal, but not voting a raise — which is why I calendared the motion last December. Voting a raise with three new members who had no background in the matter was also problematic for me.
And, the record needs to be set straight: the “automatic raises” the school committee gets are also given to our staff, both the executive secretary and the confidential secretary. We all have regularly received the same salary increases. We did not get an additional raise, which in my view was correct – I also acknowledged that we are overpaid comparatively. The motion proposed a raise for two staff on top of the other “automatic raises” already received. I stand by my vote against the raises. In my view, the executive secretary salary of over $90,000 is extremely high compensation and should not have been raised.
Staff salaries, just as all public employees’ contracts, are public records. There was misinformation that we were discussing personnel issues — we were only discussing a raise, which by law must be voted upon in open session. Contract negotiations can be in executive session, and any personnel evaluation, but not a strict financial matter, which is what this motion was.
In regard to Nancy Walser’s comments:
I did not mean to give the impression the Eid discussion dominated the committee’s meeting. The largest portions were middle school improvements (which I did not write about) followed by a budget presentation (which I did write about in a separate post).
The Eid vote was a very human and immediate story and one that showed concrete change for a significant constituency in our schools. Middle school improvements are *huge* — but beyond the scope of what I could do immediately. I hope to return to the topic.
Marc Levy
Ms. Walser:
The Committee has been focused and has worked very hard on the issue of achievement. The discussion regarding the Muslim holiday did not take away from any other discussion. I disagree with your notion that looking out for constituents means you can’t also make progress. In this case, our Muslim students and staff deserved a few moments of our time to make this change. Achievement is impacted by many things and doing what we can to create a respectful and healthy environment for our students is one of those things.