Candidates for the Cambridge School Committee met for a forum on Sunday afternoon, hosted by the Cambridge Progressive Electoral Collaboration. By Joey Huang
The Cambridge Progressive Electoral Collaboration pushed School Committee candidates to commit to increasing teacher involvement in district leadership decisions during its Sunday afternoon forum.
The CPEC is a collective of progressive organizations in Cambridge founded earlier this year. The Cambridge Education Association is an “ally organization” of the CPEC — meaning that the union helps to promote forums and distribute questionnaire responses, but is not responsible for creating the questionnaire or forums.
Twelve candidates — three incumbents and nine challengers — attended the forum after filling out the CPEC’s questionnaire. Incumbents Richard Harding Jr. and Elizabeth C.P. Hudson and challengers Alborz Bejnood, Melanie Gause, Jane S. Hirschi, and Eugenia B. Schraa Huh ’04 were missing.
The candidates were united in advocating for increased teacher involvement in district decision-making during the upcoming term. Seven candidates suggested adding a non-voting seat on the School Committee for the CEA to increase their role in decision making.
“Like so many people here have said, I wholeheartedly support CEA representation at the School Committee table,” challenger Jessica D. Goetz said.
“We absolutely need to have educators at the table when we’re making policy decisions,” Caitlin E. Dube ’05 said. “They’re the ones with the on-the-ground data that can tell us what we actually need to be doing in real time with our kids.”
But challenger Alexandra Bowers expressed uncertainty about adding a non-voting seat for the CEA.
“I don’t know how many more entities you need to invite to make it fair,” she said.
Candidates specified that teachers should be more involved in creating unique environments at each school — a possible solution to equalizing student enrollment distribution throughout the district’s schools. Candidates claimed that schools with distinct teaching styles instead of standardized curriculum are more popular among parents.
Under the current controlled choice system — created to increase school diversity — parents can rank school options for their students before entering a lottery system. Many parents blamed this system for the closure of the Kennedy-Longfellow Elementary School last year.
“We need to enable teacher autonomy, and we need to return to developing individualized school identities,” Arjun K. Jaikumar said.
The push for increasing teacher input comes as the CEA called for a restart to the superintendent search in August. The union accused the School Committee of not including educator or caregiver voice in decision making.
Candidates criticized the search, but disagreed over whether it should be restarted.
Public interviews with the superintendent finalists will be held this Tuesday, and the School Committee will vote on the superintendent on Oct. 6.
“I feel a little angry trying to talk about it, and I support the CEA’s call to halt this search and start over,” challenger Lilly Havstad said.
But challenger Anne M. Coburn disagreed with Havstad, aligning herself with incumbent José Luis Rojas Villarreal.
“I also think that we should not restart the superintendent search,” Coburn said. “We have had so much leadership churn over the past five years that teacher burnout is real.”
The CPEC will host a forum for City Council candidates this Tuesday.
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