Ayesha Wilson

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 School, so it was the last year of having the houses, and the houses were really a combination of culture within the school. I would say that it had this social justice kind of space, and it really put an emphasis on racial policies and social justice. It really created a community around activists, and many of the folks who graduated from the Pilot School are maybe in education … The Pilot School really is my foundation. When I did graduate from Rindge, given that I’m a kid from a single-parent household in public housing, my mom wasn’t able to afford for me to go to school. So, I worked in our city, I did the Mayor’s Program, worked in many of our Youth Centers, and then I was encouraged to go back to school – that was about seven years later. And at that time, being more of an adult, living on my own, I went to a two-year school, got my Associate’s, and then transferred into Wheelock, getting my B.S.W. and M.S.W. there. Then, I came back to the city and currently, work with the Workforce program here at the high school. Being at the high school, seeing firsthand how our young people are transitioning into our school and transition out, I really grew some concerns. Concerns around what we can do, how we can really prepare our kids for their next steps in entering adulthood, and it seems that Cambridge schools are doing a really good job at that, and in which areas do we really need to improve on. That, really, is what led me to run for the School Committee, because I really believe my voice through my experiences as a kid in this community, my K-12 being here, my professional experiences working in our schools and working with our kids … That there is just so much more we can be doing to make sure all of our kids are successful. 

RF: I actually read a little about your idea for a program, but could you give us some more details about what exactly you plan to do? Like different professional developments, or maybe group settings?

AW: Absolutely! Well, I think that it’s important – like, our teachers come with some high level of expertise, right? Doing this work, they know what they need to push themselves, to have more autonomy in our classrooms. They really feel like they’re empowered to be fantastic educators, but be consistent and continue to grow in that area. So, I really want to put forth opportunities, there’s a lot that we can do around social-emotional learning, a lot we can do around cultural competency skills, but I really want to push it back onto the teachers to say “What is it that you need?” in order to be successful, “Where are you strong?”, and “Where do you need to grow?” We need to figure out how we can really cultivate appropriate professional developments that are going to make and allow our teachers to have more buy-in. So, if teachers are going to PD, and they feel that it really doesn’t meet their needs, they’re not going to feel like they got anything out of it, and really feel like it’s a waste of their time. We really need to make sure we’re valuing our educators’ time, and saying “Let’s give you what you want.” I think that’s going to have to happen across all levels, so elementary, middle, and high school; but, even across curriculum-based things too. It can be some universal language we’re focusing on, but also as a whole, how are we going to make sure there is intentionality for leveling our students up, making sure that our teachers are well-prepared with that and support as well. 

RF: Next question, how do you think the School Committee can be more effective?

AW: Absolutely, my platform is around “Together, we are better,” and I say that as together on all levels. So, together [with] students, together [with] the families, teachers, community-based partners like myself, just being invested in our young people. We all need to come together and be a part of these upcoming meetings that the School Committee is about, which helps to influence what the agendas are. If we have those different voices, it really helps focus on which initiative we want to take, where it’s being driven from. It’s just better to have all those voices be part of the table. And that, for me, is what’s going to help cultivate what the School Committee looks like, and feeling that the School Committee is actually an inclusive body and not just the body of individuals which is making decisions and running with it. But, as actually being a collective body of folks who are actually helping to push initiatives forward.

RF: How are you planning to close the achievement gap? Not just by increasing diversity, but really, what you think best would help [close] that gap?

AW: So, we have a huge problem here. Our test scores are really showing that there is a lot of challenges with our young people, specifically African American kids and their test scores, kids of color, of all levels. There’s a lot that we need to be doing. Ultimately, we need to have more hearts or hands in the classroom, bringing in more certified teachers. We need to bring in more reading intervention specialists and math intervention specialists. We need to promote universal Pre-K, and allowing for our kids, who are three and four years old, to actually have free junior kindergarten education—free public education. Of course, there would be a huge cost to this. So, let me put it into perspective, and then I’ll dive into the specifics. The shortened version is that if we’re able to get our young people in at three and four years old, specifically low-income families and families of color, they’ll be able to put their kids in preschool and not have to worry about paying for it. When you think about our more privileged families, white families, two-parent households —they have more opportunities and resources to actually put their kids in schools. Those kids are already reading by the time they’re in kindergarten, whereas more kids of color, African American kids for the most part, may not have that same privilege, resources, or the same opportunity. By allowing there to be this clean slate of like “No, all four-year-olds can come in, and get this education.” We’ll be cultivating a better learning environment, building on social skills, and so many other things. So, when these kids do hit kindergarten, they are at higher reading levels, they are advanced in terms of the skill sets they need. That way, when we’re looking at third grade MCAS scores, we’re not looking at this huge division in black vs. white. The problem with this is that when we think of our low-income families, they are not able to afford it, period. Then, these kids aren’t able to go to school until they’re five or six years old.

RF: How do you plan to budget? I know you said that you are planning this for the 2022-2023 school year, so do you have an idea of how you want to go forward with this?

AW: Well, when we think about universal Pre-K, because of the state mandate, our elementary schools are not required to educate a student until they are five years old. This is going to take a collaborative approach, and we need to get support from the city. We need to get the funding and resources from our city manager, from our city council, to really provide more resources for that. We could work with our community-based partners, there’s a lot of Headstart preschool programs, a lot of Montessori schools, new Rock N’ Roll daycares. We could provide more voucher programs for our families to take advantage of, that’s where we can be very conscious of the resources. It doesn’t just have to come from the School Committee budget to make that happen, and it needs to be reflective of the city. One thing, in terms of how the city even needs to move on that, is their bigtime, million-dollar developers are coming into our city and wanting to build need to put more money into early education for all our kids. That needs to be critical, and that’s something that’s going on at the Courthouse project —

RF: The Sullivan Courthouse?

AW: Yes, so there’s going to be an early intervention center, or early childhood center, as a part of that project, which is important. We need to do that more; as a developer wants to build, these need to be our demands. It needs to be kind of like “You want to come, you want something from us, we need something for you.” That’s how we’re going to nurture these relationships, but it needs to be more so at the city’s level, but the School Committee does have a voice in being able to push on these needs for resources. However, we do need other people to back us up, because it’s not just the School Committee that controls it. 

RF: What do you see as a strength of Cambridge Public Schools that the committee could emphasize? Also, what do you see as a weakness in CPS that the committee could fix?

AW: I would say that first, our strength is that we do have a lot of resources and access to opportunities for our kids. There are many advantages: free breakfast for all, free bus passes for kids who are in need of those, the Backpack Program. There are a lot of great opportunities we have, like these amazing bilingual programs that we offer in our city to students. We have these great, new, innovative spaces that are being built. We have million-dollar schools that are being built – and it’s great! You feel beautiful; I feel like a scholar walking into these brand new buildings. You don’t want to feel like you’re going into a rundown place because you’re only going to feel rundown. So, if you’re going into these beautiful, bright, and colorful places – you’re going to feel beautiful, bright, and colorful. Well, at least that’s the intent. With that being said, we also have great educators, a wealth of resources, and we’re between two Ivy League schools. Our city, as a whole, is rich with a lot of assets. The challenge is that we don’t allocate them the right way. We don’t push out enough intention, or how we do things. I think our city does a great job of coming up with ideas – we do that very well. However, it’s the follow-through or the playout of those ideas where we get hung up. I really feel that – again, going back to intentionality – what is our mission? What are our goals and our objective? What do we hope to get out of cultivating this new initiative? Basically, what is our intent here? And, if that intent goes back to meeting our needs, then let’s push it so that we have a step-by-step plan on how we’re going to actually enforce it. Again, I think that we need to go back to those areas, and always check for what balances are in play. There’s something specific I wanted to talk about: the Leveling Up program. That was a fantastic idea, we have to think about how we can even the playing field, especially for all of our kids coming in as ninth graders. Like “Hey, you’re coming in as a ninth-grader in an honors class, that’s wonderful!” The follow-through, the movement of it, has been challenging. It’s been hard on our teachers, it’s been challenging for our students, right? When we think about the goal there, it was to think about equity, and bringing everyone onto the same level. The impact now, though, is that we have teachers who are doing a lot more work, and those spaces in terms of tracking are going to be heterogeneous classes. You have the kids who are overachievers: the ones who hit it, who got it. You have the ones who struggle, and the ones who are just coasting by in the middle. How are they balancing out their lessons to make sure all the kids have it, are understanding it? As for the students who require more assistance – how are we going to bring those resources to them? It was a fresh idea and initiative, there has just been a lot of challenges that I think are important. Some people say that we should take a step back and think about it, maybe others say that we’re doing a great job, we should keep going. There just isn’t going to be 100% of people saying the same thing. We need to just make sure that in middle school levels – how are we going to make sure our kids are prepared? Possessing that growth mindset and self-confidence is like saying “I’m going into honors, this feels great!” That is better than saying “Oh my God, it’s honors, I can’t do this work,” and just freaking out. They might feel ill-prepared or not ready for that level, so those students go into that situation with a negative mindset. We need to bring on the growth mindset, and really make sure our kids have that can-do attitude. If you look right behind you, I have this poster of the growth mindset.

RF: On your website, I found information about this idea called the Restorative Justice practice as an approach to disciplinary action. Would you like to talk a bit more about that?

AW: Yes, so it’s a native practice that helps in thinking about how we build on the community when we’re trying to address the behavior. As we reflect on how people, specifically communities of color, have been harmed over generations and centuries, we need to think about Restorative Justice. This practice looks at the young person, the perpetrator, and have them understand how they harmed their community. They’ll have a sense of not liking the fact that they hurt their community – at least, that’s what we hope. We want them to think “My peers told me I hurt them in a certain way, I need to now change my ways in order to not hurt them again.” So, it usually has to do with circling: you sit in a circle, and each person in that community has the chance to talk about how they were harmed, or the harm of even a friend being harmed. That could be from your simplest situations to more intense situations. If we’re talking about a classroom setting, and a kid just gets upset at a teacher, maybe they didn’t grasp a concept that was being discussed, and they slam the door and ran out of the room. They might come back in ten minutes because they needed a break, and the teacher says that now they’re going to circle up. They have a conversation about that interaction and how it affected our community. Through that practice, you’re able to hear from your peers that they get that you needed space, and that’s fine. But, could there have been a better way for you to go about that versus making it so that they’re also affected by that situation? There’s also Chandra Banks, a wonderful educator here, she has the peer mediation program. She’s also a well-informed Restorative Justice practitioner, so we can use her skills and build on what that could look like. Not only at the high school level, but also doing some work at the middle school level. I think that Cambridge Street Upper School has been our first upper school to implement peer mediators who were certified over the summer. So, I want to also be used in our elementary schools, and think about how we can build a culture about community. We need to build a culture of “When you are harmed, I’m harmed,” and what that will actually look like in time. It takes a community to uplift everybody, and it’s not one person fending for themselves and dealing with high levels of stress because they’re the only ones causing the harm. This practice may actually cause someone to learn that this young person may actually need a bit of time away from the classroom, or maybe they actually have to give back to the community, which might be community service. That might mean they team up with our custodians and clean up our spaces in our school – something like that. Again, Restorative Justice is a native practice, and it really helps communities in addressing those who are harmed and the person who did the harm. It also gives the person a chance to reflect and take accountability, and ultimately, giving back to the community.