Somerville Election Profile: Sarah Phillips For School Committee

SOMERVILLE, MA — Somerville's preliminary election Tuesday will thin the field of mayoral and Ward 3 School Committee candidates to two apiece. Sarah Phillips, 43, is one of three candidates for Ward 3 School Committee vying to move on to the general election in November.

Phillips has been an educational researcher for six-and-a-half years. She lives in Somerville with her husband, Joshua, and two children.

Phillips has a Ph.D. from the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis University.

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The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Meeting the needs of all our kids. I want our district to foster excellence and equity. I think we need to do a better job meeting every student where they're at academically, and I want to us to hire more push-in teachers for our classrooms. I also want us to do a better job meeting the social, emotional, and physical needs of every family. We know kids can't learn when they're hungry, when they're afraid of being evicted or deported. I want Somerville's social service agencies to work together efficiently to address these issues for every family that needs them.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

As a former teacher, current education researcher, social worker, and parent, I think I have a uniquely holistic understanding of the strengths and challenges we face in our schools. If I were elected, I would be the only social worker on our school committee, and I believe I am the only candidate in the race with any policy experience-- a key function of the job. I have also worked with schools and districts around the country on many of the issues we're grappling with here in Somerville. For example, I created a school climate survey that the Hawaii Public Schools recently used as part of its state education plan to monitor students' relationships and sense of safety at school.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform:

In addition to putting more teachers in our classrooms and wrapping social services around every family in need, my goals as Ward 3's School Committee Representative would be to: 1) Improve community and family engagement, especially the extent to which our district seeks and considers community input, 2) Pass the proposed equity policy so that every student gets what they need to thrive, 3) Increase access to high-quality, affordable after school and summer programming, and 4) Foster inclusive school climates so everyone feels truly welcome in our schools.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I am an activist and have made concrete change in Somerville and other communities where I've lived.. While living in Chicago, I was part of a grassroots coalition of community organizations that won weekend subway service through three low-income communities of color. Here in Somerville, I was a leader in Progress Together for Somerville Schools-- the group that helped stopped a charter school in 2012. I sat the city’s Child and Youth Study team. I currently sit on Argenziano's School Improvement Council. And, most recently, I led a campaign to get my son’s daycare reopened when the state unfairly shut it down. To me, serving on the school committee is a way to keep working with others in my community to make our schools the best they can be.

While getting my PhD, I won a fellowship from Harvard to work in state government at the Executive Office of Education. I was fortunate to get to work on the legislation that would have authorized Powderhouse Studios, which gave me the opportunity to learn how policy is made. Around the same time, I did some policy analysis for Somerville's school committee that helped build district support for establishing pre-school classrooms in several of our elementary schools. As the school committee considers ways to more equitably assign students to schools and the district's next steps with Powderhouse Studios, I think these experiences will be very useful.

Finally, I've been working to improve public education for over twenty years. Like the majority of our current school committee, I started my career as a teacher; I taught English as a Second Language in the Oakland, CA Public Schools. After leaving the classroom, I helped start a multi-service center at the school where I had a been a teacher. More recently, I brought tutoring, mentoring, and after school programs to hundreds of students in the Providence Public Schools as the Service Director at City Year Rhode Island. After receiving my PhD, I spent six years helping schools and districts better understand the teaching and learning environments in their schools as the Vice President of Research at Tripod Education Partners, a spinoff of Harvard's Achievement Gap Initiative. Recently, I started a new job as the Director of Research and Impact at Mass Insight, an organization working to close racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in Massachusetts and across the country. I believe these professional experiences have given me the skills, knowledge, and perspective necessary to help take our schools to the next level.

I hope to earn your support September 10th!

The best advice ever shared with me was ...

Be present