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The administrator who has run Marblehead Public Schools’ budget through an override, a contract settlement and a wholesale software conversion is leaving in November. On Sept. 3 the School Committee decided that the person who takes the money over is someone who has spent the past two years sitting next to him.
The committee voted 4-0 to appoint Kristen Morello, the district’s assistant business manager, as director of finance, pending successful contract negotiations. No salary, contract term or start date was disclosed at the meeting, and no effective date was set.
Morello will assume the financial half of the portfolio now held by Michael Pfifferling, assistant superintendent for finance and operations, whose departure is expected in November. She will not inherit the rest of it.
Chair Kate Schmeckpeper explained the mechanics before the discussion began: the director of finance is appointed by the School Committee on the recommendation of the superintendent. Superintendent John Robidoux ran the hiring process, including interviews, and brought forward a single candidate. The committee’s job was not to interview her but to vote.
A familiar hand
Robidoux told the committee that a vacancy is a chance to look again at how a position is built, and that Pfifferling’s November departure was the moment to split finance off on its own.
His case for Morello was built almost entirely on work already done inside the district. She has served as assistant business manager for two years, working directly alongside Pfifferling. Robidoux credited her with leading the rollout of the Munis financial software across district operations, managing state and federal grants and their reporting deadlines, learning the payroll system alongside the payroll coordinator so the district has two people who understand it, and tightening the administration of user fees — checking whether families were being charged the right amounts and whether the money was landing in the right accounts.
“Without Kristen’s perseverance and persistence, we wouldn’t be operating close to where we need to be at this point,” Robidoux said of the Munis work.
He also cited her role in the financial side of negotiations with the Marblehead Education Association and in managing financial operations connected to the town’s Proposition 2½ override, and her Massachusetts Certified Public Purchasing Official designation, which she pursued on her own initiative. Robidoux, who holds the same certification, said it takes months of coursework and testing, and that having a second certified official on staff matters when the district hires a facilities director. Her technical work across the district’s financial systems, he said, has been “indispensable” — his assessment, offered to a committee that did not interview her.
Committee member Henry Gwazda said it was fantastic that the district was elevating someone who had already worked inside its systems. Another member, who said she had managed software implementations herself, said having someone who helped run the Munis conversion “makes the transition obviously much easier.”
The clearest signal that this is not a straight replacement came from Robidoux himself. The director of finance job, he said, is “vastly different” from an assistant superintendent’s role combining finance and operations. Morello will concentrate on the budget and the financial systems that feed it.
The buildings side goes elsewhere. The district is still hiring a facilities director — a first search failed and a second is underway, with candidates now being screened — and Robidoux said that person will report directly to him rather than through the finance office. He acknowledged the obvious question about how many direct reports a superintendent can absorb, and said the arrangement would still function as a team.
The books she inherits
Earlier in the same meeting, Pfifferling gave the committee a picture of what Morello is walking into.
The schools are on track to return roughly $800,000 to the town from fiscal 2026, he said, though the figure remains subject to the town’s closeout. In June he had projected about $200,000. He attributed most of the roughly $600,000 gap to the way the new software handles salary encumbrances: when employees left, their salaries stayed encumbered rather than clearing. The rest came from purchase orders open in June that were closed without the money being spent.
Robidoux was quick to frame the number. Against a district budget of about $47 million, he said, $800,000 is a thin margin. Pfifferling put it at 1.6% of the budget.
The tight spending was deliberate. The district did not know until the June 9 override vote what resources it would have for fiscal 2027, Pfifferling said, and restricted spending in case the town needed the money back on short notice. The fiscal 2027 budget eliminated 22 positions. Salaries are projected at about 71.5% of that budget, down from closer to 80% in past years; Pfifferling did not give a fiscal 2027 dollar total at the meeting, so that share cannot be translated into a salary figure.
Morello’s fingerprints are already on the near-term work. Pfifferling said she did most of last year’s end-of-year report to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and will do the vast majority of this year’s, due Sept. 30. On the payroll conversion that puts checks in employees’ hands next week, he praised the “checking, double checking, triple checking” the office had put in.
What comes next
Robidoux said filling a senior school-finance position is among the hardest tasks a superintendent faces, and that having Morello ready to step in spared the district that search.
The immediate work is procedural and then practical. Once a contract is settled, Robidoux said, his first task will be to sit down with Morello and Pfifferling to map out the weeks remaining before Pfifferling leaves and decide what to prioritize. Pfifferling has offered to remain available as a resource after he goes.
The other half of the reorganization is still open. Until a facilities director is hired, the operational responsibilities Pfifferling has carried alongside the budget have no permanent home.
