Why I'm Running for the Board of Education

I’m running for school board because this is the place my family calls home. These are the towns that are nurturing and shaping my children. These are the schools that are teaching them. And it is of paramount importance to me that they grow up to be thoughtful, generous, contributing members of our society, that they become good Americans.

And I believe that’s important not just for my children, but for all the children in these marvelous, complicated, singular towns, all the children who call this place home.

I have to admit that we moved here because we fell in love with a house. It was not until after we had been here several years, and after the first of our four children was born, that we began to realize what a special place we had found: two actual towns, with people as diverse and distinct as the architecture.

Of course, like every place worth living, the very qualities that make these towns admirable and interesting are also those that make them challenging. I love that we are a mixture of races, creeds and classes, and that the community is stronger, and the discourse more interesting, because of it; and yet the struggle to create a public school system that meets the needs of this varied lot has been at the heart of every educational debate for as long as I can remember.

Five years ago, not long after he had arrived, Superintendent Osborne gave a speech that framed the debate perfectly. I remember friends talking about it days later. What the superintendent articulated that night, and what got the towns buzzing, was the notion that not only were excellence and equity compatible, they were intimately entwined. Excellence without equity is not excellence, it is privilege, he said; equity without excellence is not equity, it is tokenism.

He pledged that night that he would raise the educational level for all children in this district, no matter what side of town they came from, that he would meet them where they were and bring them on; and I believed what he said; more importantly, I believed he believed what he said.

And then he set to work, hiring good, education-minded principals when he got the chance or needed to; instituting a full-day kindergarten program that got kids ready for first grade without forgetting they were 5 years old; replacing a loosely-structured, uneven language arts curriculum at the elementary schools with a clearly-defined one that gives parents and teachers a way to understand where their kids are and where they need to go.

There also has been a great deal accomplished at the middle schools, the schools always described to me as the weak links in the system. I have two children at SOMS; and they have been  happy there; for those of us who remember junior high as a terrible time, their happiness and easy self-esteem are themselves great accomplishments. But we also have found many dedicated, innovative,  teachers, who have inspired and motivated them.

I believe the school board was right to vote to get rid of levels for most at the middle school, a statement not only about equity, but about expectation and community. Together with the institution of the IB program and the rolling out of common standards that will bump up the quality and difficulty of books taught, I believe we’re on the way toward that much vaunted melding of excellence and equity. Obviously, there’s  more work to be done. We need more and better science and social studies curriculums at the elementary and middle school level. We need to ensure that our special needs children, who as a group do remarkably well in elementary school, continue to succeed as they enter secondary school. We need to hire great teachers, and find better ways to spread the methods of the outstanding teachers we already have.   

But despite the challenges, there is not a doubt in my mind that our schools will be better tomorrow than they are today; and that our children, all of our children, will be better students and citizens because of it.

I want to do my part, as a member of this great place, to help us get there.