Cambridge students shouldn’t simply learn to read and do math at grade level. They should learn to apply their reading and math skills to critical thinking, research and problem-solving, asking and answering questions that interest them, and identifying reliable information rather than being vulnerable to rampant online misinformation. And they should benefit from immersive and culturally responsive teaching that goes beyond offering diverse texts for them to consume passively.
Classrooms should be fully staffed to best support students, including with two adults in every early grade classroom. All schools should have full special educator staffing and certified librarians, social workers, nurses.
Cambridge should hire highly qualified educators and support them with professional development and robust evaluation and feedback – and respect their expertise, giving them autonomy in the classroom and input into policy decisions. Additionally, we should leverage our educators’ expertise by encouraging peer-to-peer observation, support and collaboration. Teachers often learn the most from other teachers.
Hungry, tired, stressed kids struggle to learn, so wraparound services should be used to lower barriers to student success, combating the effects of poverty, housing and food insecurity, inadequate medical care, and other stressors. We cannot close the achievement gap without addressing the root causes of that gap: systemic racism, inequality, and poverty.
Students should emerge from the Cambridge schools not just ready to hold a job but to pursue their dreams and be fully engaged in our society and our democracy.
Cambridge students – particularly students in underserved communities – deserve better than to have their success summed up by their scores on one high-stakes standardized test. Standardized tests can be an important measure of learning, but their results too closely reflect parental education and income for Cambridge to rely on them to the exclusion of other measures. We need to develop better, more culturally responsive methods of assessment to supplement the MCAS and provide the context we’ve too often failed even to look for.
It’s never too early for students to wrestle with complex texts and to become active participants in our democracy.
Assessment should not be a once-a-year special occasion. It should happen regularly, embedded in the learning process so that educators can adjust to students’ needs.
Cambridge should work with the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment to implement high-quality, rigorous assessments giving students the chance to show what they’ve learned in multiple, culturally responsive ways. They should emerge with the kind of experience that will equip them for the futures they want — whether that is college, vocational training, apprenticeship, or work.
We also cannot discuss student success without discussing the achievement gap — observed differences in academic performance between groups of students corresponding to socioeconomic status and to race and ethnicity. Research has shown for decades that the achievement gap is both pervasive and linked to income inequality and systemic racism.
Instead, if we want to close the achievement gap we need to address the root causes. And although we cannot unilaterally end poverty or systemic racism, we can provide wraparound supports, a culturally responsive and sensitive curriculum and education, and free quality early education and child care. If the achievement gap is large even when children enter public school, we should double down on investing in early education to close the gap. We should put multiple adults in early-grade classrooms so that we can identify students who need additional supports as early as possible and provide them with the interventions and coaching they need to catch up by third/fourth grade.
The School Committee and district leadership have recognized community engagement as an area for clear improvement, including in the previous Superintendent’s evaluations.
Current District leadership has taken steps to improve. The School Committee itself needs to do the same.
We need School Committee members with open minds and open doors. Cambridge’s elected and professional leadership has repeatedly shut the community out of decision-making and refused requests for public engagement.
The most obvious example is the current Superintendent search. The School Committee voted to end the contract of former Superintendent Victoria Greer in May of 2024. It took the School Committee one full yearto begin community engagement regarding the qualities sought in a new Superintendent.
That community engagement consists of a handful of mostly in-person “forums,” announced with almost no notice, compressed in a three-week period right at the end of the school year.
This is unacceptable. The choice of a Superintendent is the most important decision this School Committee will make. Community engagement and open discussion should have been a priority — not an afterthought.
Caregivers and educators – those closest to our students – will always have my ear and my voice.
If elected, I will commit to responding to all constituent emails within 5 business days.
I will commit to visiting every Cambridge public school, and sitting in on classes at each level of school — elementary, upper, and high — within each two-year term.
I will hold “office hours” which will be publicly posted, so that any Cantabrigian can speak with me one-on-one or in a group about any issues on their mind, large or small.
I will fight to ensure that the CEA leadership – who speak on behalf of over a thousand educators across the district – will always have sufficient time at every School Committee meeting to present on behalf of their members. In fact, I see no reason that Cambridge educators should not have non-voting membership on the School Committee, as students do.
Cambridge Public Schools have a history of launching ambitious new policies, and then not following up to see whether those policies are working. Instead, they move on to the next big new vision. For instance, the 2011 Innovation Agenda reshaped the experience of kids in sixth through eighth grades and cost the district hundreds of millions of dollars in new school construction – but the district has never assessed its impact. If elected to the School Committee, I will press to evaluate the impact of the Innovation Agenda and other existing policies.
The School Committee should set new policies knowing that their success will be evaluated rigorously on a set schedule, and that Committee members will be accountable for their votes. They should be prepared to fully explain the basis for the policies they impose on students and educators. If elected, I will always share my decision-making in a format that doesn’t require sitting through a multi-hour School Committee meeting.
Our city’s greatest strength – and the Commonwealth’s, and America’s – is its diversity. That strength exists against the backdrop of hundreds of years of systemic racism and socioeconomic inequality, and the effects of those are still acute and cannot be overcome overnight or with a single-pronged approach.
Laura, me, and friends at our first march for marriage equality in 2009.
These are challenging times for our country and both our communities and our values are under attack. We must protect the rights of all of our kids to feel safe, welcomed, and valued at school and in the community – including those from immigrant families and those who are transgender or gender nonconforming.
In the current political environment, immigrant communities should receive additional supports, which may take various forms:
A rapid response plan for potential ICE raids, under which staff at every level, including bus drivers, are trained on how to respond.
Advocating with the city council for policies that will protect our immigrant neighbors (particularly with respect to the police department).
Learning from cities like Los Angeles, which has implemented safe zones around schools, rerouted buses to pick kids up closer to home, and dispatched district staff to watch for ICE and communicate with local police if they are present.
Being open to remote learning options for kids who do not feel safe coming to school.
And we need to reinforce and protect the right of all students to be their authentic selves — and to participate in all activities, including sports, on an equal footing with their peers.
Disparities in Discipline
Over the past decade-plus, we have seen startling disparities across the district with respect to student discipline. DESE data shows that Black and Hispanic/Latino students and students with special needs have consistently been disciplined at rates two to nine times higher than white students.
Such frequent disciplines can severely harm kids and can perpetuate the same systemic racism and bias that causes these disparities. We cannot allow this to continue — and the answer is not simply disciplining more white students. Instead, I will push for an investigation of disciplining practices at all Cambridge schools, and to radically rethink our approach to crisis incidents, disciplines, and suspensions. We should be finding ways to keep Black and brown kids and students with special needs in class – not the other way around.
