Platform & Solutions
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🏫 Fully Funded Schools: Services Our Students Deserve
Every child in Cambridge deserves schools that meet their needs. I’ll fight to guarantee:
• Differentiated instruction that challenges and engages every student’s learning at every level.
• Living wages for education support professionals and real PD with meaningful options (not just checkbox trainings).
• Health insurance that staff can afford.
• Safe, healthy buildings—no more mold, broken HVAC, or rodent infestations. Accountability for all liability and neglect.
• 1:1 paras, trauma counseling, and ELL services for high-needs students.
• Community schools with wraparound supports (meals, clinics, adult ed).
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💰 Tax Justice: How We Pay For It
Cambridge has the money, but it could be better used for the public good. The revenue plan I’ll advocate for:
• Review the budget, particularly all for-profit curricular and consulting contracts—closely examining their outcomes in order to redirect funds to student-facing individualized support systems.
• Partner with City Councillors to file home-rule petitions to generate commercial taxes that match Boston’s rate ($25.27 vs. our $11.52), raising $137M+/year.
• Bring charter school funds ($18M/year) back to CPS classrooms.
• Residential property tax reform coupled with rent control to protect renters (66% of Cambridge residents) from displacement.
• PILOT agreements with MIT, Harvard, and other tax-dodging institutions.
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✊ Collaboration for People-Powered Change: How We Win
Real solutions require dismantling Cambridge’s insider politics that favors the wealthy.
My approach:• Grassroots pressure: Mobilize caregivers, educators, and students to testify, rally, and hold veto-proof majorities.
• Design and fund participatory processes through which education policy decisions are made with meaningful community input.
• Participatory school budgeting: Let families directly allocate 10% of CPS funds.
• City Council partnerships: Draft joint bills to tie school funding to tax reforms.
• Sunlight as strategy: Publish “Accountability Audit” exposing hidden reserves and proposing equitable fund allocation across schools.
• Administrator evaluations with educator and caregiver input.
A Crisis of Leadership
The ongoing Cambridge Superintendent search has been a masterclass in how not to run a public process. Conducting a bizarre and opaque hiring process with an inexperienced firm, the current School Committee has failed in its most important duty: to hire a visionary leader for our schools.
The process has been marked by:
A Lack of Transparency: Critical decisions have been made behind closed doors, with committee members themselves stonewalled and kept in the dark.
Astonishing Incompetence: The rejection of qualified firms for vague reasons, followed by a no-bid contract to an unqualified vendor, wasted precious time and resources.
Blatant Conflicts of Interest: Allowing the Interim Superintendent’s direct report to oversee the search for his permanent job is an unforgivable ethical failure. Not only did the hired firm choose finalists who all lack permanent superintendent experience, but they also may have personal relationships with some of the finalists.
A Disrespect for Community Trust: Using non-disclosure agreements to silence community panelists and refusing to answer basic questions shows a contempt for the public’s right to know.
This cannot stand. While the current School Committee may force through a permanent superintendent based on a failed process and before a new board is seated, the fight for accountability is just beginning. Our students, educators, and families deserve a leader who is held to the highest standard. As your School Committee member, I will relentlessly hold the new superintendent accountable to our community's values and will reform the process to ensure this failure is never repeated.
Racial and ableist disparities in discipline across Cambridge Public Schools
The Cambridge Public Schools have been suspending students of color and students with disabilities at a rate that is 2-9x (with that range reflecting the data across the years) that of white, neurotypical children. This practice is academically and developmentally harmful to children.
The School Committee has the power to order proper investigations of institutional racism in the Cambridge Public Schools. My approach to address this issue will go further beyond reports and into action. I will pursue the following concrete steps:
I will demand an independent, public audit of CPS disciplinary practices, putting out a bid for experienced firms, with full participation from community stakeholders such as the Cambridge Families of Color Coalition. This audit will go beyond the numbers to examine the why: the specific behaviors leading to suspension, the administrators issuing them, and the school environments fostering them.
I will advocate for a district-wide policy that eliminates out-of-school suspensions for non-violent, disruptive behavior. We will replace it with restorative justice circles, mediation, and in-school wraparound supports.
Tie Administrator Accountability to Equity Metrics: I will push for principal and administrator evaluations and contracts to be partially based on their success in eliminating racial and disability-based disciplinary disparities in their schools. We must incentivize the creation of supportive environments, not punitive ones.
Fund the Solutions, Not the Punishment: I will fight to reallocate funds from security and policing budgets towards hiring more counselors, social workers, and values-aligned board-certified behavior analysts—especially those who reflect the racial and linguistic diversity of our student body—and providing more robust professional development on restorative justice practices to all educators and educator support professionals. We need to address the root causes of behavior, not just punish the symptoms.
Use the Full Power of the School Committee: According to MGL Ch 71 Sec 37, the School Committee has the power to investigate matters related to the management of the public schools, and I will not shy away from it. Transparency and accountability are key values of my campaign for School Committee. I will call for public hearings where students and families most impacted by these policies can testify directly to the committee, creating an undeniable public record that forces action.