Tag: School choice

  • Bruce Hedison wants to be an advocate for teachers on the School Committee

    Bruce Hedison, who retired to Newton in 2024 after 33 years of teaching in Hudson, seeks to bring his decades of experience to the Ward 7 seat of the School Committee.

    “I just bring a different perspective to the table,” Hedison said. “I have 33 years of teaching under my belt in the same district.”

    Hedison, 59, who grew up in Chelmsford, is the fourth generation in his family to pursue a career in education. He earned a technology education degree at Fitchburg State University, got his first job in Hudson in 1990 as a drafting and architecture teacher, and developed Hudson High School’s first physics and robotics class with grants from the National Science Foundation.

    He is up against incumbent Alicia Piedalue for the Ward 7 seat. Before Piedalue ran for Ward 7, she served on the governing board for The Eliot Innovation School, a K-8 school that, because of school choice, has become disproportionately white. White students, who make up only 15 percent of the population in Boston public schools, account for 63 percent of Eliot’s enrollment.

    Hedison said Piedalue and several other Boston families tried to take over Charlestown High School in Boston to make it just as exclusionary. He compared the Eliot school to a charter school. He said that making Charlestown an innovation school would make it difficult for students in low-income areas to attend the school.

    “When [The Eliot] turned into this innovation charter school, which is still under Boston Public Schools, children in those schools had like a single percent of getting in versus living in the affluent areas of Boston,” Hedison said, “I just believe that public education is for all, no matter what.”

    Piedalue counters that criticism by pointing out that both Eliot and Charlestown are open-enrollment public schools. The Eliot School cannot choose its students based on exam scores or other metrics. Students attend Eliot through zoning and a lottery system, she said, and Charlestown High would be no different if it had earned innovation school status.

    “With respect to the Charlestown High innovation plan, it is accurate that there were a group of families who attempted to get Charlestown High ‘innovation school status.’ which is the status the Eliot school has,” Piedalue said. “They are still absolutely open-enrollment schools. You do not choose who goes there, and, in fact, Charlestown High draws from areas that have plenty of low-income students.”

    Over the course of his career, Hedison said he grew the school’s technology department and taught everything from computer design to photo editing.

    “It went from me at my school as the only technology teacher to currently now there’s seven,” Hedison said.

    Hedison, who does not have children, said he decided to run after hearing about the two-week teachers’ strike in 2024, in which the teachers demanded higher wages.

    “I always wondered why there weren’t many people on school committees with a background in education that had been in the trenches,” Hedison said.

    He said it is important to have a voice on the school board that can empathize with school employees and advocate for the teachers.

    “To hear about the disconnect between the teachers and the school committee and the city council and the mayor and the previous superintendent, it was really disheartening,” he said.

    Hedison experienced budget cuts as a teacher in Hudson and was moved around to various positions as a result. He later chaired a council that advises the government on Hudson’s insurance needs and became president of the Hudson Teachers Association.

    “We went into interest-based bargaining where everybody goes into the same room as equals,” he said, “and you have honest conversations and you are fully transparent with, you know, budgeting, what the needs are on both sides.”

    His experience has also helped shape his opinions on such topics as multi-level learning and school choice.

    Multi-level classrooms, which have been controversial in Newton, can be effective in some cases, he said, but the committee should prioritize teachers’ feedback before implementation. Multi-level learning involves placing students of different levels in the same classroom to learn a subject at different paces.

    “I believe that leveling should be happening at the high school level,” Hedison said. “Now, when we talk about humanities, that’s a whole different subject. We have to listen to the educators in the classroom, and they are saying that in math or science, it is needed.”

    Hedison witnessed the outcomes of school choice in his previous district and didn’t think the program was beneficial.

    “I don’t agree with school choice for Newton,” Hedison said. “The reason behind it is that we need to have our resources right now for our kids in Newton and to fund our schools and to take care of our own right now.”

    Discrimination and Islamophobia have been on the rise in Newton Schools amid the war in Gaza, and Hedison said there’s no room for that in the school system.

    “My feeling is that schools have to deal with any type of discrimination needs to be dealt with,” Hedison said. “And schools need to be a neutral zone when it comes to politics. You can have discussions, but it all has to be with a level of respect.”

  • Candidate Jenna Miara seeks to strengthen School Committee’s relationship with community

    Jenna Miara said she decided to run for the School Committee in reaction to the distrust between the school system and Newton community.

    “It became clear to me that we needed to change the way that we approached some of the challenges and the language that we use to describe what’s happening in the schools,” Miara said. “Based on my professional experiences and my personal perspectives, I think I bring a lot of really critical tools to help move those important changes forward.”

    Miara, 47, will face fellow Newton native Ben Schlesinger Nov. 4 in the race for the Ward 5 seat. Emily Prenner, the vice chair and current Ward 5 seat holder, is not seeking reelection.

    Miara grew up in Newton and attended Newton South High School until she was 16, then left when her parents accepted professorships at Columbia University in New York. She studied American History at Columbia for her undergraduate education before continuing to Stanford Law School.

    She and her husband returned to Newton in 2021 to be closer to their families and enrolled their two children in Angier Elementary and Brown Middle School, the schools she had attended as a child.

    “I noticed that both schools are much more inclusive of all kinds of different learning styles and of students with disabilities and other challenges,” Miara said. “I think that’s really great to see. I’ve been really happy with my kids’ experiences.”

    A big issue that drew Miara to run for school committee, she said, was the sense of distrust among community members after Mayor Ruthanne Fuller’s unsuccessful 2023 campaign to override Proposition 2½. The proposal would have added $9.2 million to the 2024 budget and increased the annual tax bill of a $2.1 million house – the median value in Newton – by $290. After the override failed, Newton was forced to make budget cuts. 

    “If we want to have the ability to come back to the voters and ask for an override to pay for things that the school district needs, we need to start working now to rebuild a sense of trust in partnership with the larger community,” Miara said, “to be clear communicators about what the schools need and what the financial realities of the city budget are.”

    As the executive director of the Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts Committee, a Massachusetts-based organization that funds legal aid programs, Miara said she has learned communications and social media strategies that she intends to implement as a committee member.

    “Something I’d like to do as a member of the school committee and maybe have the entire school committee as a group come up with more of a communications plan so that everyone in the city feels more informed,” Miara said.

    She also said she believes she can streamline communications with unionized workers at Newton’s schools, especially with her experience as a member of a legal service workers union.

    “I’ve been very involved in collective bargaining from both sides of the table,” Miara said. “I’ve worked in unionized environments, supervised unionized staff and implemented collective bargaining agreements for many years.”

    School choice, a program that enables schools to accept students from other districts, is a divisive topic among Newton parents. Superintendent Anna Nolin has supported school choice, but Miara and community members are skeptical of the program.

    “I would say I’m not convinced on that yet,” Miara said. “I’m open to hearing what she has to say. I want to see some more data from other districts about how the finances have worked out. I want to listen to all the stakeholders in Newton that would be impacted.”

    Amid the war between Israel and Palestine, antisemitism has become an issue in Newton schools. Miara said she has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination. 

    “It’s an incredibly important issue to me on a personal level,” Miara said. “I’m Jewish. I’m raising two Jewish children. The palpable rise in the number and intensity of antisemitic hate incidents in this country is deeply upsetting, and I think the schools have an important role to play in combating that.”

    Miara has spent a lot of her career fighting discrimination through litigation and policy as an attorney for firms in Los Angeles and Chicago. 

    “The schools need to be constantly thinking of proactive strategies and responsive strategies,” Miara said. She said she wants members of the School Committee to ask themselves, “What kinds of education and programming are we doing in the schools to counter bias and prejudice, and what kinds of policies do we have in place to deal with incidents when they do happen?”

    She said her years of serving the communities she has lived in have equipped her to handle Newton’s schools.

    “My entire career has been committed to public service as a legal aid lawyer and an anti-poverty advocate and now a nonprofit leader,” Miara said. “It’s core to my sensibilities that we work every day to ensure everybody has access to the support and the opportunities they need to succeed.”