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.