2019 School Committee Candidate Interviews

Register Forum: What would you say distinguishes you from the other ten candidates in the race? Elechi Kadete: In this race, I bring a unique skill set. I’m a current financial analyst for the Harvard Office of Technology Development. Before that, I was a grants administrator for WGBH. And this is important because one of the most critical duties of the School Committee is the budget, which is ...

Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the ten other School Committee candidates?  Manikka Bowman: One thing I pride myself on is being a balanced voice that gets things done. Since I’ve been on the School Committee, I’ve really been very intentional about leveraging the office of the committee to be able to bring people together, to have meaningful conversations that will … have a true...

Register Forum: Alright. So, what do you think distinguishes you from the other ten candidates? Christopher Lim: My engineering background, my focus on large systems, for both organizations and both in the public and private sectors, and I think it is a factor that I'm married to a teacher. Somebody who’s been teaching in public schools for over 20 years. RF: Great. How do you think the Sch...

Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the ten other School Committee candidates? Emily Dexter: That’s a hard question because I don't know all of them that well. I guess what I usually say is that… one thing I do is I do a lot of data analysis, and that sounds very unsexy, but actually it’s a great way, because I have a lot of training and data analysis and statistics and research; ...

RF: What are your schooling and public service backgrounds? BD: I’ve always been an advocate, from a young age.  Being in the METCOprogram (busing inner-city Boston kids to the suburbs to get a better education), I was always the only minority in my class. I was very much so into the books, and just from that young age, I had to advocate for myself and for what I needed to be the best version of...

RF: What distinguishes you from the other ten School Committee candidates? David Weinstein: I think we’re fortunate to have a really great pool of candidates, which includes a lot of varied experience including some people with experience in education. I have a career in education, in fact I'm the only candidate that has been a classroom teacher. I started my career with five years in the cla...

Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other ten School Committee candidates? Ruth Ryan Allen: There are 2 topics that are really important to me. Number one being special education, because I’ve been on the special ed parent advisory committee for 2 years, and have been active in the special ed PAC for a while, and I’m a parent and there are only a few of us that are parents. The se...

Register Forum: Ms. Wilson, would you like to tell us a little about yourself and your campaign? Ayesha Wilson: Yes, sure. So, I am a kid from Cambridge, I grew up in the Jefferson Park Housing development. My K-12 education has been here, to the Maynard school from kindergarten to third grade, the Kennedy School from fourth to eighth, and graduating from CRLS in 2000. I was a part of the Pilot S...

Register Forum: What would you say distinguishes yourself from the other people running? José Luis Rojas Villarreal: Well first, I’m the only English language learner- I learned English as a second language. I grew up in Mexico and came to America when I was 18, or so, so I got more of the immigrant experience. Other than that, I have been working for the past 20 years in community finance, and ...

Register Forum: What do you think distinguishes you from the other eleven candidates? Fred Fantini: I’m the School Committee person who likes to get things done, number one. And number two, I’m a full-time School Committee person, so I’ll give you an example, and it’s probably related to something. When I say I like to get things done, I think I’ve done a lot. And I don’t usually like ...

Register Forum: What do you think distinguishes you from the other ten School Committee candidates? Rachel Weinstein: So there are two main things that distinguish me, one is that I am the only candidate who is both a product of and a parent in the schools. So there are other candidates who either went through the schools themselves or now have kids in them and I’m both. So my level of connection an...