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When Sudbury’s Combined Facilities Director, Sandra Duran, completed a discussion with the Sudbury Select Board on Tuesday, September 25, she left the board with a simple message about the future of her department serving both the Town and Sudbury Public Schools:
“We definitely have opportunities for continuing in a shared services model that is good for the town fiscally, and provides the best delivery of services. And it is my honor and hope that I continue to do that for both entities.”
Duran spent the evening participating in both the Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) School Committee meeting and the Sudbury Select Board meeting. She joined the school committee meeting to present on the status of her work implementing the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) transition plan for SPS, as well as FY25 capital projects. Once she completed those presentations for SPS, she was a panelist for a conversation with the Select Board about the memorandum of agreement (MOA) that established her department in 2012. In a prior SPS meeting, the committee discussed the possibility of voting to terminate the agreement with the Town of Sudbury.
The crux of the MOA discussions in both meetings this week was to authorize the chairs of the SPS School Committee and the Select Board to join discussions with the SPS Superintendent and Sudbury Town Manager. Both bodies authorized their respective chairs to join those discussions, among other Town and school staff members.
Stymied?
While the upcoming discussions are expected to explore ways the MOA might be updated to resolve the concerns recently voiced by the SPS administration, the evening ended with more questions being raised about the SPS administration’s managerial choices with regard to the Combined Facilities Department.
During the Select Board meeting, member Lisa Kouchakdjian asked if Duran had submitted a department plan, as required by the terms of the MOA. Duran confirmed that she had submitted one to SPS leadership soon after joining the Town roughly two years ago, but had yet to receive a response from SPS. (2:38:00)
“That document I created when I first got here and shared with Brad Crozier, the superintendent, and Don Sawyer, the Business Manager. I didn’t ever receive any feedback on it. But it exists in draft form. I did create it. It was something that I created immediately because I found that the structure that I had inherited had some real obstacles to being able to fulfill the MOA as it was written. So yes, it does exist. But it is not in practice because it was never adopted. It didn’t get past the Superintendent so it was not brought to the Town Manager.”
Duran was asked if there was an organizational chart that clearly outlined who reports to her, and she explained that she had a very clear chain of command on the Town side, but no such organizational chart existed on the SPS side. Duran responded: “I’ve never been presented with one from SPS, but there’s one for the Town for sure.”
That led into a conversation about how Duran is not given any visibility into how SPS uses (or doesn’t use) the shared electrician. While she reports to the Superintendent, the SPS maintenance department reports to the SPS Business Manager according to Duran. When the SPS maintenance department has electrical needs, they don’t go through Duran to access the Town electrician or to outsource to third party service providers. She also said that neither the Town nor SPS consistently use the ticketing system her department has established.
Kouchakdjian asked more broadly about oversight of capital and maintenance, and access to major equipment, as outlined in the job description of the Combined Facilities Director. Duran was frank in her response:
“You know it’s kind of tough to share this in a public forum. But I would say that it’s been quite a challenge for me, because my job description is very clear that I’m responsible for maintenance as well as capital improvements, but I’ve been told specifically that I cannot have anything to do with maintenance.”
(2:44:48)
Duran went on to outline her perceived challenges:
“And so it fits kind of hand in glove with capital. So I’m kind of operating somewhat blindly, because I have no records. I have no access to funds. I have no access to records. I have no access to vendors. I have no access to the building management system.”
She concluded with a broad statement about the MOA:
“But again, it’s been a challenge with this particular structure. And I have recommended changes that have gone unheard and unimplemented.”
“I don’t know, Mary.”
Earlier in the evening, Duran was presenting on the ADA transition work completed in the schools. She emphasized that 173 out of 672 accessibility barriers had already been remedied by her department.
School Committee Vice Chair Meredith Gerson and member Mandy Sim asked if there was a plan/tracker for the ADA work at SPS, to which Duran said she had submitted one to SPS for this meeting. Superintendent Crozier noted that it was not put into the committee’s meeting packet. (1:46:00)
The omission appeared to be a simple oversight at first, but soon enough the committee learned that additional materials that Duran had submitted for the committee were not included in the packet.
SPS Superintendent Brad Crozier teed up the presentation on Fiscal Year 2025 capital projects, and proactively told the committee that Duran’s presentation was not included in the packet. He recommended holding off on a vote until the members received a copy and had a chance to review. Member Mary Stephens asked why it hadn’t been included and Superintendent Crozier offered a terse response:
“I don’t know, Mary.”
(2:01:00)
Over the course of the two meetings it began to seem as though the school committee was not receiving complete or at least consistent information about the activities and oversight of the Combined Facilities Department from the SPS administration. In the previous discussion about the MOA on September 9, members also voiced a desire to see much more data and information than was provided by the administration for them to make a decision as significant as terminating the MOA.
In addition to the information that came out during the discussion that was simultaneously happening in the Select Board meeting on Tuesday, the Select Board meeting packet included materials that raised questions about prior statements made by the SPS administration.
In the September 9 meeting of the school committee the SPS Director of Business and Finance, Don Sawyer, claimed SPS had no visibility into the salaries of the shared facilities department staff: “We estimate what the salary is going to be for the following year. Even now I don’t know what their salaries are this year.”
But a year earlier, he told the committee that the salaries and raises were on a knowable schedule and that he need only call over to the Town to find out:
“It’s contractual however they have it set up for how many years of service and such. And what their pay grades are and levels and how they attain those.”
(1:42:30)
At the time, Sawyer indicated that he had called over to the Town to get the updated salary data for the shared staff (1:43:00), but still claimed SPS otherwise had no visibility or input into the salaries. That led then-Chair Silvia Nerssessian to describe the situation as “out of control.” (1:46:10)
On Tuesday, it became clear that SPS had at least some visibility and input. On page 56 of the Select Board packet for Tuesday’s meeting, the fully-executed 2022 offer letter to the Combined Facilities Director was made available. The salary and second year raise were outlined in the offer letter, which was signed by SPS Superintendent Brad Crozier.
Touch and Go
Select Board Members Charlie Russo and Janie Dretler cautioned the board and Town staff to handle this situation delicately on Tuesday night. Russo emphasized:
“You know, we don’t want to be escalating things. Because I don’t think that’s the path to success. So I think that I fully support Jen’s proposal to coordinate with the school committee chair and the superintendent and the town manager.”
(2:46:15)
He suggested starting with areas of agreement, and then earnestly working towards improvements in areas where there are shared goals:
“And how do we just, I think as Janie said at the beginning of the meeting… How do we examine this, admit to some flaws, and then kind of fix them and move forward to be better. That’s kind of my hope.”
Dretler voiced support for honoring the original intent of the 2010 Town Meeting vote that created the combined facilities department, and highlighted some of the risks associated with the situation (2:31:36):
“I also just want to caution the board that there may be legal exposure that we’re unknowingly walking into. There need to be guardrails put in place. And I hope that that would be communicated to the full board. Because again, we we need to be very careful of how this is addressed, and my hope is that only the terms of the contract are discussed in any private meeting, because this would be a private meeting that the public would not have insight into, nor would the Board… the remaining four members of the board.”
While there was broad agreement on both the Select Board and School Committee to proceed with MOA discussions, that may be the last the public hears about the situation for some time. Those meetings will be private, and are not subject to the Open Meeting Law.
That may be less transparent to the public than the discussions that have recently occurred among the Select Board and SPS School Committee, but it would provide a greater amount of privacy for the shared staff in the Combined Facilities Department, and perhaps an opportunity to deescalate the situation.
The group will have their work cut out for them either way. Town Manager Sheehan noted that the ballpark impact of a vote by SPS to terminate the MOA would be around $143,000 shifting from SPS to the Town budget. The Town would either need to absorb that in the FY26 budget, or make cuts, adding another challenge to the numerous budget challenges the Town Manager has repeatedly highlighted since being hired. The FY26 budget building process will commence very soon for both SPS and the Town of Sudbury, and the MOA requires six months notice of termination prior to the end of a fiscal year, which is in the middle of 2025. They’re all on the clock in more ways than one; like it or not.