School Committee Candidate Interviews
The Register Forum interviewed all twelve Cambridge School Committee candidates in November 7th’s election. These interviews were conducted in person between the candidates and six different Register Forum reporters, besides one interview conducted via phone call. Interviews have been edited for clarity and concision.
Manikka Bowman, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Manikka Bowman: What distinguishes me [is] I am a mother. I work full-time in addition to my service on the School Committee and I get things done. I get things done by leveraging the systems and the functions of the Committee to move very important work forward. RF: And when you say leveraging, what do you mean by...
Fran Cronin, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Fran Cronin: I think what distinguishes me is my experience as an educator—as an education advocate—having already served on the School Committee and also working in City Hall, so I have a lot breadth to my experience. … So just as a parent—and I’m also a single parent, I’m a widow, [I] raised my k...
Jake Crutchfield, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: Just to get started—very simple—why are you running for the School Committee? Jake Crutchfield: I’ve actually worked in the district for four years—in and around the district, I should say rather. That includes daycare assisting, and [for] the past few years, I've been at the Cambridgeport school. Throughout that time, I started getting civically engaged; I started going to ...
Emily Dexter, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Emily Dexter: I think there’s three things. I don’t know if they all distinguish me, but I think the combination might distinguish me. So first, I know the schools very well, K-12, because my daughters went through K-12—graduated from Rindge, went through King Open. Not only did they go through, but I we...
Fred Fantini, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Fred Fantini: Well, I’ve been on the Committee for 34 years … I went to the Cambridge Public Schools, I grew up in Cambridge, I’m a lifelong resident of Cambridge, I have a degree in accounting and finance from Bentley College ...I have a twin brother, two older brothers, and a sister—so the whole ...
Elechi Kadete, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the eleven other School Committee candidates? Elechi Kadete: Oh man, what distinguishes me is that... It used to be that I was the only person that graduated from Rindge, but that’s not—there are two other candidates that graduated from Rindge. What distinguishes me is, I’m proud to admit that in Cambridge we have a persistent achievement gap. I w...
Kathleen Kelly, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Kathleen Kelly: What distinguishes me is that I have a social work degree, and I’ve worked in social work, and I have an MBA, so I have a balance of both understanding what all families and students need in the system through the lens of social work—where you’re really looking at the child, student, ...
Laurance Kimbrough, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Laurence Kimbrough: So, I think the fact that I’m a Cambridge Public Schools graduate, a former Cambridge Public Schools employee, and a Cambridge Public Schools parent makes me very different than anyone else that is running. I did a little research and looked at the past 20 years, and, at least during th...
Will MacArthur, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Will MacArthur: So I see the committee as a body that sets a vision for the district, and I think that what distinguishes me is the experience that I had recently as a student in the district. I think that that’s the thing that is sometimes missing from the School Committee dialogue, and I think that’s somethi...
Piotr Mitros, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Piotr Mitros: I’ve spent the past half decade immersed in education research. In that context, I’ve interacted with substantially every education research community, from people doing very soft project-based learning to psychometrics to constructivist learning to how people work on educational policy, and...
Patty Nolan, School Committee Candidate
Register Forum: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? Patty Nolan: Well what distinguishes me from all of them, I believe, is that I have a deep experience with strategic thinking and financial planning that is part of the key role of the board which is what the School Committee is; it functions as a board of directors for the school district. I think the other...
David Weinstein, School Committee Candidate
RF: What distinguishes you from the other eleven School Committee candidates? David Weinstein: Well I think our values are all, I would say, pretty well-aligned. What I think distinguishes me ... is my experience in education. ... There’s a range of really valuable education experience represented by the other candidates. What I bring to it is the experience of five years as a full-time classroom...
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