Contested School Committee races: in Ward 1, Bridget Ray-Canada beat Kathleen Marchi (7,478-6,677); in Ward 2, Margaret Albright crushed Cyrus Vaghar (12,041-2,341); in Ward 3 Anping Shen handily beat Eileen Sandberg (8,132-6,833); and in Ward 8, Matthew Miller knocked off once and future V14 blogger Gail Spector (8,821-7,082). Believe that Matthew will be the first openly gay elected official in Newton.
School Committee — Ray-Canada, Albright, Shen, Miller
by Sean Roche | Nov 7, 2017 | Newton | 8 comments
Very excited about Miller, Shen, and Ray-Canada. We need their energy!!!
Now…let’s move that high school start time and keep our custodians!
Congratulations to the SC winners.
Newton owes Cyrus Vagher a huge “Thank you.” Cyrus, more than any other candidate made high school start times one of his top issues. He had the Herculean challenge of running against an incumbent in an at-large elected race. He ran a sparse campaign without inside endorsements. His message is not lost. Thanks Cyrus!
Thanks Mr. Pontiff, the loss was expected, although our final percentage was way off, but due to the mayoral year and turnout (plus a lot of other factors we are still researching), it makes sense.
Very big respect to the new members, incumbents and Ms. Albright for their respective victories and campaigns.
The School Committee has a bunch of promising new members & seasoned incumbents, and they definitely can solve many of the problems impacting our students. I will be following closely and perhaps could be swayed to return (maybe in 4 years when the seat opens up), but I hope they can get the ball rolling so I do not have to!
Please don’t go anywhere, Cyrus!
Extremely proud to have worked for Cyrus’ campaign this year. We knocked on thousands of doors and made our message heard. I am excited that my other 3 choices for SC — Ray-Canada, Shen, and Miller — were successful. Looking forward to a productive 2 years.
Cyrus also uniquely had the Commonwealth Dual Enrollment Partnership on his platform, although it didn’t get much play in the races and I wonder why not. Rather, I wonder why none of the other candidates made this an issue too. I hope they will follow his lead. Not all newton students come from wealthy families that can afford high college tuitions. Cyrus uniquely made a case for these students and for giving them a leg up to help them make college an affordable goal. Given all the attention paid to affordable housing, I think the same needs to be paid to affordable opportunity of higher education. Thanks, Cyrus, for calling attention to this.
This is a great group – congratulations to all for excellent campaigns.
I am tickled that Mary Mary Quite Contrary and I totally agree about Bridget Ray-Canada, Anping Shen and Matt Miller.
I got to watch the election results tonight from a front row seat behind the desk with Jenn Adams at Newton News on NewTV, and could barely contain my excitement when all three of these terrific, first time School Committee candidates won. I am really looking forward to where they will take the Newton Public Schools.