Outgoing Newton School Committee member Geoff Espstein wrote something on a blog thread about this year’s only contested School Committee contest that I’ve never thought about before…
If Margaret Albright were to win the vote on November 5th, she would be the first School Committee member from the Horace Mann community since 1973.
With 15 elementary schools and 8 SC members, the average coverage is about 50% for each elementary school. Horace Mann has been out in the cold for a very, very long time in terms of SC representation.
On the other hand, if Andrea Steenstrup were to win, Cabot would have two sitting SC members with children at Cabot: Andrea and Angela Pitter.
Does Epstein have a valid point? I must say in all my years voting and thinking about candidates for School Committee, I’ve never once based my vote, support or opposition on which SC member comes from a specific elementary school.
In fact, while I can name all eight of our current SC members, I only know where one SC member sent their kids and that’s only because I know that member’s kids. (OK, thanks to Geoff I now know about Angela Pitter’s children too.)
It seems to me that if these are city-wide seats, we’d expect our SC members to advocate for all our schools. Am I just being naive? Does this matter to you? Should it?
I think economic diversity matters and which elementary school the candidates are from is a loose reflection of that. For example, Ward 6 (my ward) often has contested races. It is also a highly educated and affluent ward. The more $s and education a citizen has, the greater the likelihood of them voting.
Personally, I think economic diversity in our government is as important as any other type of diversity. If you live among wealthy, well-educated people, it is difficult not to see the world through their lens.
I normally don’t agree with Geoff Epstein, but he made a good point about how Horace Mann has been out in the cold for a very, very long time in terms of SC representation.
I think Horace Mann being out in the cold for a very long time in terms of SC representation has resulted in that school’s saga with the water faucets.
http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/newton/2009/05/21/new-newton-north/#axzz2gTkDARbS
It shouldn’t matter but it does.
For Example it was the SC members on the North Side that advocated for the Day Renovation. Had they not been so persistent we would not have this renovation and we would not have any place for the additional 200 students that are now at Day.
The Water Faucet issue is another one that I have heard about for years at HM.
But I think that the most important thing are the issues that the candidates feel are important – Margaret Albright is advocating for Full Day Kindergarten, Removal of Fees, STEM, Facilities. I cant seem to figure out what Andrea Steenstrup stands for even looking at her website – it does say she is concerned about finances but how does she stand on Fees?? She was Pro the Override does that mean she wants more fees for clubs and afterschool programs? And if the override passed why were the fees not reduced? Does she realize that many NNHS clubs did not continue last year as teachers did not feel that fees should be charged? And don’t we have an Asst Superintendent of Finance that is involved in preparing the budget?
My son will never go to another afterschool club after we were charged $60.00 last year for him to play Flag Football with his friends. So if the fees were removed as Margaret is advocating for – then maybe he will go to another afterschool activity or try a club.
Margaret has my vote as I believe she has the background and experience to make these changes ( FDK and Fees ) that are so important for the Children in the Newton Public Schools.
We’re building a new Angier School and yet there are no Angier parents on the School Committee.
Greg, Angier had Susie Heyman from 1993 to 2001 and 2003 to 2009.
Also, Zervas is going to be having major work done on it and it had Susan Rosenbaum from 2009 to 2011 and Steve Siegel since 2011.
If someone from Angier was running for School Committee, that would be a good campaign point!
Susie Heyman was on the SC for 8 years and represented Angier.
Greg,
I think that there is a broader point to be made: most of the schools that receive Title I funding in Newton are clustered fairly close together and north of the pike. I can’t put my finger on the data from 2013/14 but for 2012-13, Newton was identified as having 4.77% of school children living in poverty for purposes of Title I funding. The Newton schools selected to receive Title I aid based upon the percentage of children receiving free and reduced lunch in Newton were in rank order: Lincoln-Eliot, Horace-Mann, Williams and Franklin. Bigelow also received Title I funding based upon an NCLB waiver. So, while one would reasonably expect that all school committee members will be accountable for the needs of all of Newton’s school children, Newton is not homogenous and individual school committee members have an opportunity to reflect the values and concerns that are unique to their neighborhoods.
@Lisap: In my mind that speaks more to the quality of the individual, not where someone’s kid went to school.
@Colleen: But the decision to rebuild Angier wasn’t made during the Heyman era.
@Lucia: Can you elaborate? It seems Angier is getting the attention it needs, without a direct SC “representative”
This is not to comment on the concept of the thread, but the MSBA determines which building projects it funds based on its facilities assessment. Angier and Cabot placed in the bottom 2% of elementary facilities in the state so they qualified for state funding.
The days when a city could choose which school it would rebuild or have a comprehensive renovation are over unless it plans to pay 100% of the cost.
A note on fees: several fees were reduced or eliminated for this school year – the high school activity fee was eliminated completely, several music-related fees were reduced, and the family super-cap was reduced from $1,800 to $1,200.
Greg – I think it is human nature to care more about something the closer you are to it. Thus a shooting or murder in Newton would be big news, but shootings over the border in Boston or in Newark NJ – do you ever here them discussed locally?
In an ideal world, distance and personal contact wouldn’t matter, we’d all care equally about everyone. But, in our imperfect world I think the closer one is to parents with low-income children in Newton schools, the better they understand their concerns.
Basically, the concept of METCO on a smaller scale. METCO benefits NPS by increasing our students interactions with students from different backgrounds. Similarly I think having a diverse School Committee membership benefits NPS. Margaret differs from her opponent and other members, in residence, Title 1 school experience, and working knowledge of the educational world (important with new programs like RETELL and Common Core being instituted by the State in Newton).
I don’t think elementary school affiliation matters. Dori Zaleznik certainly understood Countryside when she was on the School Committee but I don’t remember the school benefitting from that. (In fact, the Countryside community has been waiting for renovations since my senior in college was in second grade.) And I believe it was a Title I school for at least a couple of those years. She was careful not to show favoritism.
That said, if I were an elementary school parent, unless I had a reason not to, I’d probably vote for the candidate from my kids’ school.
What is truly sad is that Zaleznik was the SC chair and the fact that she let the overcrowding go on for all these many years at Countryside and did not work out a solution for that community. I am glad that Kusiak and Yeo worked on Day’s expansion if not we would have 200 extra children in the building this year and not enough space.
You might call it favoritism – I call it doing the job they were elected to do – which is support the needs of the children in the NPS. And you would expect that the SC member from your ward would support the needs and advocate for that ward.
It’s favoritism if SC members work to the benefit of the elementary school that their children attend (or attended) when other schools should take priority. I don’t know of an instance where it has happened, but it’s why I don’t think SC members are elected to represent elementary school constituencies, they’re elected to represent the entire city.
Favoritism is, of course, wrong. But I would expect a School Committee member to understand the situation at the schools they’ve been at better than others and to use that knowledge to benefit city-wide SC decisions on things like capital planning and academic support.
Basically, I’d hope they’d be like Aldermen who work city-wide, while having a closer relationship and understanding of the people and issues of their own ward.
I think my point was that over time one would expect that every elementary school would have an SC member actually have there children go through.
I know that I had a very good idea of what made Underwood tick and that not only ran to the facility but to the number of students, the quality of the principal and the staff, what the school excelled at (small group instruction) and the general atmosphere.
It was very helpful to have had 6 years of close observation of Underwood and to have developed a strong connection to the Underwood community. It means that I added that to the pool of experience on the SC. We try to treat all schools in an even handed manner but real knowledge of a given school is very helpful.
It certainly does not help that no SC member has had any clue what it is like to go through Horace Mann for 40 years, as compared to Cabot which has been very well traveled by SC members and now could have 2 sitting SC members with real experience of it.
One of the things which is not well known is that Horace Mann is one of our leading edge elementary schools as far as using data to improve instruction. Way back Joe Russo and his teachers were taking apart MCAS results to see what areas they were not teaching well. Greg Hurray kept that going and the current principal and staff have continued to push Horace mann student performance up.
If an SC member had been in that environment, with their kids benefiting from that local innovation, maybe we would have gone more quickly to using data to improve instruction across the other elementary schools.
Each school is different and it serves us well to have close knowledge of each different learning environment fed into the SC.
Most schools are covered, but some are really left out of the real parent experience picture and the SC decision making process is the poorer for it.
That is not optimal.
It is a factor for me. Not a giant one. But nonetheless a factor.
We have a chance to fix this by electing Margaret Albright. Or we could go the other way and then come 2021 Horace Mann will have been left out in the cold for half a century.
Some streets in Ward 3 are in the Horace Mann district. Norah Wylie, a former active Horace Mann parent and PTO President, served on the School Committee in 1998 and 1999.
Here are the electoral records obtained from David Olson:
Ward 2 School Committee
Election Year Candidates Address
1971 Eleanor Rosenbaum 15 Bemis Street
1973 Eleanor Rosenbaum 15 Bemis Street
1975 Edward Prince 60 Harvard Street
1977 Katherine Jones 1087 Commonwealth Ave
1979 Katherine Jones 1087 Commonwealth Ave
1981 Katherine Jones 1087 Commonwealth Ave
1983 Katherine Jones 1087 Commonwealth Ave
1985 Jennifer Huntington 20 Berkshire Road
1987 Jennifer Huntington 20 Berkshire Road
1989 Jennifer Huntington 20 Berkshire Road
1991 Dorothea Engler* 64 Prospect Ave
1993 Dorothea Engler* 64 Prospect Ave
1995 Susan Albright 1075 Commonwealth Ave
1997 Susan Albright 1075 Commonwealth Ave
1999 Susan Albright 1075 Commonwealth Ave
2001 Susan Albright 1075 Commonwealth Ave
2003 Reenie Murphy 53 Trowbridge Avenue
2005 Reenie Murphy 53 Trowbridge Avenue
2007 Reenie Murphy 53 Trowbridge Avenue
2009 Reenie Murphy 53 Trowbridge Avenue
2011 Jonathan Yeo 275 Lowell Ave
No Ward 2 school committee member has come from the Horace Mann school district since 1973. 40 years.
Conceding that a Ward 3 SC member from Horace Mann served for 2 years out of 40, still means that Horace Mann has been vastly under represented on the SC in the 4 decade period.
Fair enough Susie, I stand corrected, but the major point remains. For 38 of the last 40 years Horace Mann has had no SC rep who has any experience of what the school is like.
One further question would be good to answer and maybe Susie can do that.
How many times in the last 40 years has any elementary school had double coverage on the SC, i.e. two sitting members whose kids were in the same school at the same time.
I did not research that, but I’d assume that it is extremely rare!
A prominent Newton observer of local politics just noted to me that Cabot not only has the prospect of 2 sitting SC members drawn from its parent ranks, the Mayor is also a Cabot parent.
So Cabot has the prospect of triple elected official coverage!
I’d encourage Cabot parents to vote for Margaret Albright just to sent some electoral coverage over to the much neglected Horace Mann! The population pressure on Horace Mann is huge and there is no end in sight. There is facilities action at Cabot, Angier and Zervas, but none on the north side where we need some relief!
Geoff, many Horace Mann parents or parents of alumni, like myself, live in Ward 3. Norah Wylie was a School Committee member a number of years ago and I believe her kids went to Horace Mann.
Ted,
Susie made that point above.
Geoff: Great minds think alike.
I always like to be in the company of great minds.
In truth anyway, Susie was the most congenial of all of the SC members I served with.
Very persistent too!
Thanks Ted and Geoff!