This is a guest column from the candidate. All candidates are welcome to submit a single guest column between now and Aug 1
From Newtonville to Lower Falls, this campaign cycle has truly started off with a bang as I personally have knocked on over 1,000 doors across the Garden City. Residents have been more than happy to talk, including the Houghteling family (pictured), the son being a former teacher and the mother being a longtime Newton resident, who invited me into their home. Below are a few of the prominent themes that emerged when I have knocked on residents’ doors:
- “Why you? Why now?” Almost everybody on the campaign trail wants to know why I am running for office, for it is intriguing that a 20 year old would run for a citywide office that is generally dominated by those a few decades my senior. Like I told Marcia Cooper, President of Green Newton, just the other day: I graduated from Newton North two years ago, and I know there is a great need for next generation leadership to help solve many of the most pressing issues. College has kept me local and I would regret it if I did not offer to give back.
- “Will later start times happen?” Those with students in the schools are usually the most vocal on this issue. I tell all residents that back in 2015 I personally proposed, “flipping the start times (having elementary schools start first, high schools start later) (go to 16:30 to see me discuss it)”. As a former student, it seemed like the obvious and much needed change. As noted by leading doctors, starting school later specifically for high school students leads to, “better grades, higher standardized test scores and an overall better quality of life.” Flipping the start times is an urgent policy for implementation. Our students in their formative teenage years deserve this policy change.
However, I am also honest with any resident who brings up this issue. The current School Committee has delayed any change for a minimum of two years, and I do not see any reason that the new School Committee would change this issue without an enormous showing of support from parents and students alike (hint, hint). We can lead on this together.
- “If elected, what would your number one goal on the School Committee be?” Mandatory basic financial literacy classes for all students. Period. When a student graduates from high school, while they must have learned about the Siege of Detroit (1812), they do not have to know what a credit card is or how to balance a checkbook. As I was discussing with Boston College Finance Professor, Newton resident and campaign supporter Jeffrey Pontiff recently, the finance departments at both high schools are world class, but unless a student voluntarily signs up for their classes, they can graduate high school missing this essential content. In the 21st century, learning about different types of student loans and planning for financial stability should be required knowledge, not an elective.
Please feel free to visit my website and check out what I believe are pressing issues in the school system. As always, I encourage you to give me a call at (617)-823-2556 if you have any questions, comments or ideas, or send me an email at ([email protected]). I hope to meet all of you whether it is on the trail, at the Cabot Fair, or at Newton Highlands Village Day. I also keep a Facebook page and an email list up-to-date. One final note: If you support my campaign and would like a campaign T-shirt, I am happy to send you one (while supplies last!).
Thank you to Mr. Reibman & the V14 bloggers for curating this forum and welcoming my post. And fear not, I will be writing more posts over at NewtonForum and may even return with a campaign video! For now, I am off to Waban, Nonantum, and all the villages of Newton in the weeks ahead to talk with more voters!
United We Stand,
Cyrus Vaghar
School Committee Candidate, Ward 2
I’m incredibly proud to come from a community that produces young people like Cyrus Vaghar. This young man is more on the ball than every one of those pathetic losers on the School Committee put together. His opponent, Margaret Albright, has been flapping her gums for years about later high school start times, but has accomplished absolutely nothing to fulfill that campaign promise she made. I’m sick of elected officials like Albright lying to me about their commitment to later start times. Margaret Albright deserves to lose, and Cyrus Vaghar deserves a chance. I support Cyrus, I endorse Cyrus, and I urge people to cast their vote for this young man who is wise beyond his years.
Good Luck Cyrus! Looks like you are working hard to achieve your goal. Newton needs some new blood and new ideas.
I guess you decided not to take the advice about “giving back”, that was presented to us during the “new candidates forum” at L.O.W.V.eh?
You have my vote, young man!
@Mr. Saunders, good memory about the LWVN event. On this one, I guess I feel this other way. After all, I did offer to give any candidate in Newton who attended the event a list of voters who voted between 2009 and 2016 in at least 2 elections. Public information, but hard to find.
@Mr. Striar, Thank you for the endorsement, send me an email at [email protected]. Every School Committee member is a knowledgeable individual who has served a long time, but I think it is time to pass the baton onto the next generation of leaders, and in my case, a former student.
The financial literacy requirement is something I’ve thought about over the years. I won’t tell you how old I was when I understood interest!
Cyrus, I commend you for jumping into politics. It’s not an easy thing to do.
That said, if your priorities are in the school system, why run for mayor? Why not run for school committee where you’d be more directly involved in these issues?
Previous posts in this blog indicated that he is running for school committee. I haven’t read anything about Cyrus running for mayor.
Good luck, Cyrus! I think it would be helpful for the school committee to have some new blood and I am particularly interested in hearing from a recent grad of NPS.
Sorry, my mistake. My mind was elsewhere. I apologize.
I am excited that Cyrus is running. We need young blood. During the high school start time discussions, the high school students who participate on the school committee contributed insight beyond everyone else.
I neither object nor support Cyrus’ financial literacy requirement. I plan on voting for Cyrus because he knows how important it is to move to a late high school start time. Also, my understanding is that he supports full day kindergarten. On these two very important issues, he will be more effective than his opponent. I am voting for someone who can get the job done. I regret not voting for him last election.
Cyrus,
First, let me thank you for your interest in public service and your dedication to run for school committee.
After reading some of your past comments on Village 14, I took some time to look at your campaign website. You address important issues for Newton’s schools, students, and families. However, you seem to suggest that simple solutions exist, only they just haven’t been tried. It is my experience that when a longstanding problem seems simple to solve, there are usually important bedeviling details just below the surface.
Let me provide some examples. Let’s start with a big one: high school start times. It’s an important problem to solve. In 2015, and I believe on your web site up until recently, you said: “we can change that immediately, we can flip elementary school and high school start times because elementary school students usually aren’t up at midnight”. As a parent of two elementary school students, I am very happy the school committee didn’t “immediately” embrace this “obvious” solution. Turns out about 75% of elementary school parents said that a 60 minute earlier start time would have a negative effect on their families. And the health effects of earlier start times for elementary school kids are poorly understood, so your solution risked unintended consequences.
The solution to high school start times may have taken longer than everyone wanted, but the proposed solution actually deals with the details that the issue demanded.
Next example: school food. Your web site talks about Sodexo (“a company known for supplying prison food”), how the Sodexo contract is “nickel-and-dime”ing school meals, and that “any open-bid contract should include specific healthy options for all students”. I am very interested in school food in Newton. But I’ve talked to Sodexo’s Newton representative, and helped bring her to our elementary school for a parent discussion. And I’ve learned that Sodexo aggressively follows nutrition guidelines for school lunches, and that they are pretty pro-active in trying to address issues that come up. They meet the standards that their predecessors did not. They are actively trying to locally source food. Some of the complaints about school food actually seem to be arising in part because Sodexo is more strict about following nutrition guidelines than Whitsons (no more Papa Gino’s pizza on Fridays). They do what they are required to do.
Perfect? No. Prison food? Hardly. Once again, it’s easy to demonize. It’s harder to deal with subtleties.
Let me choose one other example: school budget. Your website states: “Spending on schools has gone up on exorbitant rates because the School Committee negotiates in a position of weakness and complacency when dealing with smaller unions and contracts. For example, when a custodian makes over $125,000 a year, change in needed.” Sure, school budgets are big and we can all disagree on priorities and identify things we don’t like. But to imply that the problem is just that the current school committee and staff are pushovers (presumably in contrast to yourself) is simplistic without offering a real solution.
And those $125K custodians? Look closely at the salary sheet you link to on your site. Most of those experienced custodians are pulling in tens of thousands of extra dollars because they have to work overtime, I would presume in part because of staff cuts and increased requirements over the years.
Ironically, one solution to that particular budget issue (and one opposed by many Newton residents) is to outsource custodian jobs. Is outsourcing custodial jobs OK, but outsourcing food services not OK? Details matter when hard choices have to be made.
Each election cycle, we hear promises of simple, “obvious” solutions just waiting for the right person to bring them forward. I think Newton families are better served by more nuanced, thoughtful leadership than that.
Best of luck to you in your race.
@Jeffrey Pontiff: Margaret Albright has been a tireless supporter of Full Day Kindergarten since about the time that Cyrus himself was in kindergarten. She ran on this as a key issue and voiced support for it from at least the time that my 20 year old son was in K 15 years ago. So I don’t understand that you should give your support to Vaghar based on this vs. overall performance and proven competence.
@ Cyrus: There is ample opportunity for student representation in the current system.
Given this, I’m wondering why you were not a student representative on the School Committee while you were at NNHS. Did you not run? Or did you run and not get elected by your student peers? Either way, I have been tuning in to SC meetings for fifteen years and don’t remember seeing you.
@KarenN– I’m curious… Is your expectation of elected officials that they be a “tireless supporter” of change, or do you hope they will actually accomplish the policy objectives they state as a candidate?
Your comment appears to commend Margaret Albright’s 15 years of support for full day kindergarten. Albright has been on the SC for nearly a decade. When are you hoping she’s going to accomplish her work toward FDK? How about her campaign commitment to changing high school start times? I supported Albright’s campaign to join the SC. After she was elected, it didn’t take me long to figure out she was a big talker with little ability to produce change.
@Mike, I was elected to the school committee in November, 2013 and began my first term on January 1, 2014.
Thank you Karen. Mike, you are partially right. I have been an advocate of FDK for more than a decade, far before I was elected to the school committee – when my own 19-year-old was a kindergartner. Planning for FDK was part of the budget guidelines for FY 18 and will be part of district planning going forward. To learn more about my other priorities visit http://www.margaretalbright.org
I am somewhat surprised and disappointed that Cyrus hasn’t (yet?) responded to the later comments in this discussion.
Village 14 is a unique forum to discuss important issues in Newton. I have seen many politicians engage in lively and/or informative dialog about sometimes difficult issues here. And this “guest column” format could be great way for candidates to communicate with voters.
But that communication takes commitment, just like holding an elected office takes commitment.