Tag: teacher

  • 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.”

  • School Committee candidate and educator Mali Brodt hopes to help reshape NPS

    Mali Brodt moved to Newton for the school system. Now she wants to reform it.

    A mother of three and a longtime educator, Brodt, 46, says her run for the Ward 6 seat on the Newton School Committee is deeply personal.

    She and her husband moved to Newton 10 years ago, when their twins, Manon and Persephone, were in preschool and she was pregnant with their youngest daughter, Reyna.

    “We moved here for the schools, like many people do,” Brodt said. “They’re now in seventh and third grade, so it’s been a full decade.”

    Brodt will face Jonathan Greene, a Newton parent and finance executive, in the race for the Ward 6 seat, which is now held by Paul F. Levy, a businessman, author and professor who is not seeking reelection.

    A native of Brookline, Brodt has worked in education for nearly 20 years, first as a middle school teacher in Boston Public Schools and later as a school adjustment counselor in private schools. She currently works in Westwood but said her experience across different school systems gives her a valuable lens on the challenges educators face. 

    “I think becoming a mother changed everything,” Brodt said. “It changed my perspective as a teacher. It made me much more empathetic to parents and families. Before you have kids, it’s easy to think, ‘My kid would never do that.’ But parenting is complicated.” 

    Brodt’s passion for equity emerged early. Her mother worked in public health and was active in the American Civil Rights Movement. Her father, who grew up under apartheid in South Africa, was involved in the anti-apartheid movement.

    “I was brought up in a way that if you can see that you can help in some way, you should,” Brodt said.

    Though Brodt has spent years observing Newton’s schools as a parent and educator, it was the 2024 teacher strike that pushed her to run. 

    In January 2024, Newton educators launched an 11-day strike, the longest in Massachusetts in over two decades. Teachers demanded better pay, improved student mental health support and limitations on the number of students one staff member can be responsible for. Organized by the Newton Teachers Association, the strike drew attention to issues in the classroom and tension between teachers and city officials. 

    “When you move to a place with strong schools, I think there’s a strong assumption that things work well and everybody’s on the same page. The strike really showed us that it isn’t true,” Brodt said. “It was shocking to me to see the antagonism and rhetoric around it, and that’s what pushed me to pay more attention to the politics.” 

    She criticized the situation for characterizing teachers as the problem, worsening the relationship among teachers, parents and the city council. 

    “I mean, being a teacher, knowing teachers and respecting teachers—teachers don’t want to strike, they want to teach,” Brodt said. “It must have come to a point where something was truly off.” 

    During the strike, Brodt said, the messages coming from the school committee and the teachers did not align. She condemned the current school committee for its lack of transparency and cohesiveness when informing parents and community members about the strike. 

    If elected, Brodt said, she would prioritize rebuilding trust among the school committee, teachers and the public. “The school committee and the teachers’ union are on the same side,” Brodt said. “We all want what is best for our schools.”  

    Brodt is also critical of how Newton funds its schools. “We have been chronically underfunding our schools for years,” Brodt said. “You can’t just keep throwing one-time funds at the budget every year and expect it to be fixed—we need to actually fix the problem.” 

    She brought up the example of curriculum development, an ongoing need that’s often treated as a one-off line item. Every year, Newton does curriculum reviews, buys new curricula and does professional development to prepare teachers for new material. However, the budget does not account for these costs on an annual basis. 

    Brodt is candid about the mental health crisis in schools today, especially after COVID-19. “Ever since I started teaching, I’ve seen a steady increase in social-emotional deficits and mental health needs,” Brodt said. “But COVID accelerated everything.” 

    Students, she said, are dealing with more anxiety and attention challenges than ever before. “Teachers don’t necessarily have all the tools that they need to help support the kids in front of them,” Brodt said. “The world is different now.” She described how social media and the pandemic have had a direct impact on children’s ability to learn and behave.

    Brodt said she believes that if the world is changing, so should the curriculum. “We need to have schools meet the needs of kids today, and not just be nostalgic for the way things used to be.” 

    Despite her criticism, Brodt is quick to clarify that she is not running out of personal disappointment.

    “My kids have had a tremendous experience. We’ve loved their teachers, we’ve loved their school,” Brodt said. “It’s not that I’ve been disappointed in Newton schools. I’m frustrated that a city with the resources is not treating schools with the respect and importance they deserve.”