I am announcing today that I am running for one of the two at large seats on the Worcester School Committee in November of 2023.

Three years ago, when I ran to get back on the Committee, I said that we deserve better.
I have fought hard for that these past three years.

We now–finally–have an administration and a Committee that also believes we deserve better.
We are working to acknowledge and fix what is broken while building on what we do well.
I want to continue to bring my experience, energy, and ability to that work.

I am announcing this now for three reasons:
1. With the changes coming in this election, I think I owe it to you all to be clear about my intentions. And I am asking for your support for one of those two at large seats now.
2. Bluntly–I don’t usually ask for donations in a non-election year. The donation period for 2022 closes on December 31, though, and this year, I am asking you to donate now, as well as next year. You can do that hear on the website.
3. I want to make the offer now that I have made every year since I first joined the Committee: if you are considering running this year, perhaps for one of those new district seats, and you want to talk about what it means to serve on the Committee, get in touch. The coffee’s on me.

Thank you for your support of me.
Let’s continue to build the district we deserve.

Thank you not only for re-electing me to the Worcester School Committee, but for putting together a committee that is looking forward and looking out for students and their families.
And I’m really looking forward to this city council, as well.

THANK YOU!

When I announced that I was running for another term on the Worcester School Committee in spring of 2019, I said it was because “we deserve better.”

I said that Worcester students and families deserve better, and that the City deserves better.

I didn’t anticipate being on the Worcester School Committee when the Student Opportunity Act was–finally!–being implemented.

And none of us, of course, anticipated the pandemic.

There are ways in which we have made the system a bit better: ensured that families have had opportunities to be heard, that students’ voices made it on the agenda, that the work that goes on in classrooms every day is supported by the work that goes on in governance.

In other ways, there is still much more to do.

Central to that in the coming term, of course, is selecting a new superintendent of the Worcester Public Schools. While the School Committee sets the direction of the district, it is the day to day work that implements that vision.

Or that doesn’t.

Given both the complexities of our district and the influx of funding from the federal and state governments, we must have governance that thinks systemically and leads strategically. We cannot piecemeal district improvement and direction.

We must have a school system that looks to the future of the city, considering the actual students in our seats now–a majority of whom speak languages other than English at home and a majority of whom are poor–in how we move.

And we still deserve an administration that is accountable to all of us for what is working and what is not.

We all deserve a just, equitable school district for all who learn and all who work there.

And we have work to do on that.

And that is why I am running for re-election to the Worcester School Committee.