Nancy Walser
2003 Candidate for Cambridge School Committee

Home address:
335 Huron Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

Contact information:
Tel: 617-868-1973
e-mail: nancy@nancywalser.org 
website: www.nancywalser.org 

Send contributions to:
The Committee to Elect Nancy Walser
335 Huron Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

Prior to my relatively new career in politics, I worked as a journalist for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Harvard Education Letter and many other publications.

I got involved in the Cambridge public schools in 1996 when my husband and I were trying to pick a kindergarten for our oldest child. My research turned into a book project -- "The Parents Guide to Cambridge Schools"-- which was published twice in book form and also on-line. (At www.nancywalser.org).

Before getting elected to the committee, I help found CUE (Cambridge United for Education), an citywide parent’s organization which focuses on the system as a whole, is committed to improving all our schools, and provides information to parents through forums and newsletters. I was (and am) a volunteer at my children’s school.

I come from a family of teachers: my father is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas, my mother is a former 2nd grade teacher and reading specialist, and my maternal grandmother taught in a one-room schoolhouse in the 1920s. I have been an ESL teacher in Tokyo, Japan.

I was raised in Austin, Texas and I consider Cambridge to be my adopted home -- the city that my husband and I chose to work and raise our children. On the school committee, I have been the co-chair of the budget subcommittee for two years in a row and have served three times on the teacher contract negotiations subcommittee.

Role of the School Committee:
There are three important tasks of the school committee under state law: hiring (and firing) the superintendent, reviewing and approving the school department budget, and setting policy.

In the last term we did all three: The School Committee accepted its responsibility to children and the taxpayers of Cambridge when faced the reality of eight years of declining enrollment and escalating budget shortfalls ($1.2 million in FY 01-02 ; $1.6 million in FY 02-03; and $3.8 million in FY 03-04). At the urging of all the elementary principals, five members (including myself) of the School Committee voted a plan to close two elementary schools and merge two others. Also, last term we hired an experienced superintendent, the most experienced in Cambridge in over 60 years. I am proud of my leadership role in these accomplishments.

In addition, School Committee members need to be advocates for public schools within their communities and at the state and federal level. They also need to work hard to communicate well with the superintendent, with each other, and with the public, especially about what is working well in the schools.

Elementary School Consolidation:
It took two years of debate and discussion to arrive at a solution to our enrollment and budget crisis. Closing schools was painful for the city. It's the hardest thing that any school board anywhere has to do. But I believe many students are already better for it, even if there are still a few kinks to be worked out.

I am the only school committee member whose children were directly affected: the school my children go to is now on the other end of the city from our home.

Here's what I see this fall as I tour schools: I see principals and teachers who are relieved to get a break from the annual cutting of their budget; who have more support services and better facilities than they ever had before and who don't have to worry about what might happen to their school for a third year in a row. Class sizes are at or near the recommended size. Principals and teachers are focusing on their students, curriculum and the new teacher-driven assessments to be implemented under the leadership of the new superintendent.

I see parents who have thrown themselves into building new communities and a School Committee that has spent its first three meetings of the year talking about important educational issues (i.e. MCAS and SAT test scores, goals for the superintendent and negotiating a new teacher's contract.) vs. turf issues (i.e. Whose school should close, and whose budget should be cut.)

Most importantly, I see hundreds of children who were not being served well before, now attending better schools.

Restructuring of the High School:
I was on the school committee when we voted unanimously (in 2000) to restructure the high school with a plan recommended by then-principal Paula Evans. Some parts of the plan have worked well. For example, the original plan called for the five Deans to run five separate small schools. After Evans rejected the idea of allowing students to choose from the different schools, the random school assignments were embraced and idea of autonomous schools was dropped.

I believe the most important reason to do the redesign was to improve teaching and learning and give all student more individualized attention, especially struggling students. My view is that more time has been spent debating structure and ideology at the high school than discussing how to improve teaching and curriculum. I believe the focus will change now under the leadership of the new superintendent. I support the superintendent's position that "dead-end" courses should be eliminated, that all students should be able to enter a college if they want to upon graduation and that more students --especially students of color--should be encouraged and supported to take honors and AP courses.

Academic Excellence and Goals for the Cambridge Public Schools:
Excellent teachers do all the things that are recommended for improving achievement and closing the achievement gap. They hold children to high standards, they follow best teaching practices, they communicate with families, they care about kids--and the kids know it and respond. In my experience, the first question a parent asks me about a school is, "which ones have the best teachers?"

The key to academic excellence for a school system is its people -- having well-trained, caring teachers, and administrators who will support them. This has been my top priority ever since 1999 when I first ran for school committee. Back then, the system had 11 goals. I lobbied hard for one goal: Excellent instruction in Every Classroom. The committee unanimously adopted this as the single goal for our system.

Through my work on the budget and on the teacher negotiations subcommittees, I have worked to increase professional development, increase accountability and reallocate millions out of central administration and into the classroom.

School Budget:
Although the School Committee made some progress in aligning the budget to the goal of excellent instruction, more needs to be done. Early on, as a member of the Cambridge United for Education, I helped do an analysis comparing our budget to that of Brookline, a slightly less diverse district, but with K-8 elementary schools like ours. It showed that Cambridge is top heavy, with many more administrators and support personnel. Consultants and others parents have done similar studies with the same finding.

What to do?

The city of Cambridge gives its schools enormous financial support, and it would be educationally irresponsible to just cut the budget for cutting's sake. At the end of October, the School Committee will vote on a list of four goals for the new superintendent to accomplish in one year as part of his contract and evaluation. Next spring, he will submit a budget recommendation in line with what he has promised to do. He may recommend eliminating or adding positions. The former is much harder than the latter. Am I willing to stand by the superintendent if he comes back with a recommendation to eliminate positions? I have and I will.

I would also add that because we consolidated elementary schools, it will be much easier to lobby the City Council and thus, the City Manager, for additional resources to upgrade school facilities (which need more work) and to cover loss of state and grant funding.

MCAS:
MCAS is mandated by the state and also by the federal government through the Leave No Child Behind Act. It is best used as a diagnostic tool to improve schools and curriculum. It's not useful as a way to sort students or deny them a high school diploma. That being said, the federal law will force school districts to pay more attention to the progress of all students, including poor, learning disabled, and bilingual students and children of color -- which is a good thing.

I'll go back to what I said above: the primary focus should be on hiring, developing and retaining well-trained teachers who can motivate children with interesting, rich curriculum that also teaches skills from the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks -- the English and Math being most important. If we succeed in doing this, and pay attention to the progress of all children in our classrooms, Cambridge will see its MCAS scores rise. In fact, we are seeing this now.

Civic participation:
It's necessary for Democracy and it’s good for our children (especially when it results in more parent participation in schools). During the many months we deliberated on how to close schools, I listened to hundreds of hours of public testimony. I also received and answered hundreds of phone calls and emails. Although some people may not agree with the final plan that was passed, it was better because of their participation.

I believe in civic participation, I believe in public schools. That is why my children attend Cambridge public schools. I believe we can have the best public schools in the country. I want to continue to serve on the School Committee to make that happen.