D’Ambrosio Donates School Committee Salary Back to City

Anthony D’Ambrosio is earning plaudits from colleagues in city government for his decision to not accept his salary for being a member of the Revere School Committee.

D’Ambrosio, who is in his first term as a member of the Committee after topping the ticket in the 2019 election, has not accepted his approximately $6,000 annual salary and benefits for the past two years.

“It was a decision that I immediately made after getting elected, especially because I came in wanting to fund certain mental health initiatives and equity initiatives, knowing that education is a chronically underfunded field,” said D’Ambrosio.

Ward 4 Councillor Patrick Keefe praised D’Ambrosio for not accepting a salary.

“I think it’s an admirable feat,” said Keefe. “I don’t think many people are aware of it. It’s a very generous thing for Anthony to do. Hopefully, the funds were used toward something good.”

D’Ambrosio said he does not get to choose the area in the school budget where the funds from his salary will go. “Anything helps in preserving the overall, larger budget of the school district,” said D’Ambrosio. “For me, School Committee was very much a public service action. It was a public service for me. It was a public service for my community. And I didn’t feel comfortable accepting any compensation when that compensation could have gone to educating children or providing the services that we needed.”

 D’Ambrosio’s decision was especially impactful because of COVID-19’s financial impact on the school budget. “Coming into COVID-19, we had to make some serious budget adjustments,” he said. “There were shortfalls everywhere, and we didn’t end up getting the Student Opportunity Act funding that we needed as quickly as we thought we were. It was important to me to donate my salary during a time when the resources were lacking in the district.”

D’Ambrosio was not a candidate for re-election to the School Committee in the Nov. 2 election. A graduate of Yale University, D’Ambrosio is running for the State Senate seat in the First Suffolk and Middlesex District that encompasses Revere, Winthrop, and parts of Boston and Cambridge. The Special Election is Dec. 14.

“Serving on the School Committee has been the honor of a lifetime,” said D’Ambrosio. “It’s been a tremendous opportunity to enact change on the mental health front, on the equity front, on the curriculum front. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Obviously, COVID-19 presented huge challenges to all of us and the district as a whole. But I was very lucky to be surrounded by a group of students, a group of teachers, staff, and administrators, and fellow members of the School Committee that rallied around that hardship and did something quite extraordinary that not a lot of other cities in the state did, and still put together a good product for our school system.”

D’Ambrosio said he will miss serving with his colleagues, “especially Carol Tye, who has been a mentor and an absolute titan of everything good and just in the City of Revere over the direction of her career.”