All candidates running for contested seats in the upcoming election were invited to submit a post in support of their candidacy to Village14. This is Paul Kathy Shields’
Dear Village 14 Voters:
I’m asking for your vote to re-elect me to the School Committee for a third term. Unlike my opponent, I have children in the Newton Public Schools, where my three daughters are in elementary and middle schools. I care deeply about the success of our schools because they are the glue that holds our communities together.
Over my four years on the School Committee, I have been involved in all of the School Committee’s major responsibilities: collective bargaining, budgeting, policy writing, and communications. I have served on School Building Committees, on the Policy Working Group, as liaison to the Youth Commission and to Families Organizing for Racial Justice, on the City’s Financial Audit Advisory Committee and as the PTO Equity Committee representative. My experience will be critical on the next School Committee, where at least half of the members will be new.
I have built relationships with the administration and many of the parent and student groups who play key roles in NPS and city government. I know how to work with them to achieve our goals. And we do have important work to do. How NPS recovers from the pandemic and ensures our students have the support and resources to achieve – academically, socially and healthily – will shape our district’s success for years to come.
Please consider voting for me.
– Kathy Shields
Kathy – if there was one thing that you could change about how the pandemic has been handled in our schools, what would that be?
Kathy-
Many parents are very upset about Newton’s response to the pandemic, and see that other towns/cities figured out how to get their kids back more quickly.
Do you agree that Newton fared worse than other towns/cities during the pandemic? Is the School Committee at fault? What was your role and why should parents re-elect you?
Your background is great and needed. But it’s distressing to read your statement which does not even acknowledge the grave concerns of many parents in this system.
Will you please address these concerns on V14?
I rarely comment here, and most of you know that am term-limited off school committee come January 1. I speak from my perspective as an 8 year member of the committee, a person whose day job includes working with educational leaders in many places in Massachusetts and an active member of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.
If there is one lesson we have learned from the last 18+ months of dealing with COVID-19, it is that there are no right answers. As a member of the school committee, I will say we were all doing the best we knew how with imperfect information and an array of bad choices, and yet it was always too much and never enough. And we were not alone. Almost every school committee member I know from across the state will say the same. Did we make mistakes – absolutely. But I have learned that focusing on the “would of, could of, should of” is not productive. Instead we need to look to the work ahead.
What I do know is that the next few years are going to continue to be tough. The American Academy of Pediatrics has declared child mental health a national crisis. Children across Massachusetts and across the country are being adversely affected not only by the upheaval in our schools but also by the angry, fearful, grievance-driven society we live in.
I can unequivocally say that Kathy Shields has always and will always have the best interests of our children as her guiding principle. She is thoughtful, compassionate and considerate. She understands that on school committee we move forward through consensus not conflict; that we debate the issues and not each other; and our goal is to ensure that our schools are meeting the needs of all our kids. After four years of working with her, I know Kathy is the kind of school committee member our kids need.
@MargaretAlbright I agree the “would of, could of, should of” game is not productive. However, I have not heard from any of the incumbent candidates who are running again provide any introspection of what they felt they did right and what they would do differently. I understand that the Covid response is on-going and will be with us for some time. If I knew more about what they have learned as SC members and what their approach will be in the future, I might consider voting for an incumbent. I only hear crickets about what decisions they as incumbents thought, worked and what didn’t. This goes for unopposed incumbents as well.
Kathy Shields has demonstrated behavior that suggests that she learned from a mistake as related to the pandemic. She voted against an agreement she negotiated with the teachers union on reopening the schools after some angry parents pointed out a fatal flaw. I can’t vote for her. I can’t vote for a Trumper. I am going to write in somebody else.
Bruce C., what I have learned from COVID is that our public health system was and is overloaded and understaffed and school committees and superintendents were left to make public health decisions that we were neither equipped to make nor given guidance or support to make. All across the country school committees and school boards have been thrown into untenable situations and we have had to do the best we can – no one was coming to save us. And yes, sometimes we got it wrong – as did many other leaders in government.
The safety of our students and staff was and is the most important thing. That’s a pretty awesome responsibility during a worldwide pandemic.
Margaret, you are correct that you all were thrown in a very difficult situation, and were not equipped or trained on how to deal with it. We get it. However, this community is full of people who could, in fact, help. Physicians who were trying to help with safe reopening, parents connected to Broad trying to bring surveillance testing to schools to help them open earlier. These people, in fact, were very much qualified to help with the reopening. It was a all hands on deck situation, community was ready to help, and we still don’t know why it was decided that that extra help was not needed.
I would add that I agree with you that Kathy’s heart is in the right place, and she tries hard to do right by our kids. What parents are also looking for is not being afraid to use her SC seat to ask tough questions and hold the administration accountable.
Good luck, Kathy!
@ Margaret – I agree that we need to focus on the task ahead, but we also need accountability for what happened last year. I understand that the SC was operating in a stressful time, and decisions were difficult. But the fact is, Newton dragged its feet on school re-openings even when peer districts were offering far more in-person school, with no negative public health consequences. I’m not saying, “Newton didn’t follow the example of Denmark and re-open schools in May 2020.” I’m saying Newton didn’t follow the examples of Wellesley and Weston who both managed to offer far more in-person schooling for the youngest kids, as early as fall 2020! Needham opened its high school before ours did. And so on.
And again… it would perhaps be excusable if no one thought to mention this to the Newton SC. But scores of parents did, as did many doctors who live in Newton and are also NPS parents. I personally reached out to the SC numerous times, and was either ignored or received curt / condescending replies. A responsive SC would have taken this feedback into account and moved more decisively to re-open the schools.
So no, sorry – I simply cannot vote for anybody who was an incumbent on the SC. We need a fresh start.
@Tim –AGREED.
I spent many evenings between September and this past spring in regional meetings with other school leaders and with a number of health professionals. A number of our neighboring school districts had very active support and engagement from their board of health in their decision making. It was vital support because of the complexities of the ever changing landscape. We received help from our HHS department in January, 2021 when they hired as a consultant a retired Newton health commissioner with background in infectious disease.
Dear Ms. Albright.
I will never doubt the effort that you and other SC put in during this trying time. However, I just cannot accept that we did not have ID expertise. Dr. Rochelle Walensky (then head of MGH ID) had offered help to mayor Fuller on Jul 10, 2020 (https://bit.ly/3pR7bhL Page 9). We had access to world-renowned expertise in ID, who were also NPS parents.
Why did SC accept this help from these experts? Or maybe did mayor Fuller not inform her fellow SC of this offer?
Margaret wrote:
“A number of our neighboring school districts had very active support and engagement from their board of health in their decision making. It was vital support because of the complexities of the ever changing landscape. We received help from our HHS department in January, 2021 when they hired as a consultant a retired Newton health commissioner with background in infectious disease.”
I am going to take from this that unlike neighboring school districts, Newton did NOT have the active support and engagement of the Board of Health (including particularly Commissioner Deborah Youngblood) in their decision making. Furthermore, I’m also going to take from this that Margaret is telling us that it wasn’t until January of 2021 that HHS finally offered to help by hiring a retired Newton Health commissioner with a background in infectious disease as a way to offer help to the schools. This was a public health crisis not seen in a century. I can’t imagine a role better suited to HHS.
This to me sounds like a complete and abysmal failure of Commissioner Youngblood and HHS to step in and assist the School Department. I’m not suggesting this as an excuse. Rather, at a time of all hands on deck, sounds like some hands jumped ship. I would hope that the Mayor would consider a thorough review of HHS and their involvement and responsiveness in connection with the needs of the school department during this public health crisis.
Again – I’m not writing this to offer excuses for failings by the school committee and the administration. But from what Margaret has written here I think we need to be looking at a bigger picture.