Fred Fantini
Register Forum (RF): What distinguishes you from the other eight candidates?
Fred Fantini (FF): I am the longest-serving member in the city of Cambridge School Committee history, having served for 38 years and 19 terms. Experience is really one of the things that distinguish me from everyone else. I am always working hard to get new constituents. This year in the midst of this pandemic because of my experience I was assigned by the vice-chair to take on the most difficult subcommittees… On the negotiation front in order for us to open up schools, I had to renegotiate four memorandums of understanding with the teachers union to make it possible for reopening. I was really one of the only members who had experience as being a union member and also being on the management side with the school committee.
The other one is I am a single guy. I’ve never had children in school so I was able to service all schools equally and I think that was an advantage for me. [Due to] my background in finance, I [also] led… some financial leadership in the earlier days to keep the financial systems going forward.
I like to get things done. I was the founder of the media arts center. That was my creation… I was the founder of the city scholarship program that had issues well over three million dollars worth of scholarships to CRLS graduates. Probably over 500 students have received those scholarships. I went to Bentley college and my family has created a Bentley college scholarship fund that we’ve had for 25 years and that gives scholarships to CRLS graduates.
RF: How could the school committee be more effective?
FF: One of the most important things is that you work with and through the superintendent in achieving goals. When you have a superintendent that sets a strategic plan, that sets data goals, and that sets strategic goals, that helps keep the school committee focused and heading in the right direction.
Especially in this environment, it is important that school committee members work together. We have to be effective—there is too much at stake for grandstanding … As a senior member of the school committee, I model best practices, best behaviors, [and] hard work. As the dean, the most experienced member, I have to set an example so others can follow. That’s going to be my role if I am elected for the next two years.
RF: How do you aim to close the achievement gap?
FF: Right now we have a six-hour school day which is the shortest of all other school districts in Massachusetts. You have to remember that children spend 30% of their waking hours going to school so that leaves 70% of the time when they are doing something else. We have yet to design a strong early childhood program in Cambridge where kids come to our school kindergarten-ready.
The department of education, through the strategic plan I mentioned, considers us to be making substantial progress. That’s not satisfactory to me until we get kids reading at the third-grade reading level. That’s really a key indicator of how successful kids will be in high school and in college. So we have got a lot of work to do in that area.
In the last three years, we have brought on over 100 new positions in the Cambridge Public Schools like social workers, instructional coaches, instructional literary coaches, instructional math coaches. So part of me is hoping that the influx of those people, that we haven’t yet seen the benefits of that influx of employees.
We are now going to be having individual success plans for every student. Every student is going to have their own plan, we’re going to monitor progress on a regular basis, and we are going to provide the remediation that is needed by doing. We have developed assessment systems, that don’t take a lot of time, but you get the results quickly on literacy, on math, and on reading.
One of the things we really have to improve upon is our data systems. We aren’t capturing important data. For example, we have got to capture much more significant data on things like how well is Breakthrough doing in our schools for our kids. We have to do that with the Cambridge Housing Program Partnership, we have to do that with our Avid program. So we are going to start making our data systems more coordinated to see what programs are really working and if they’re not, what else we need to do.
What we need to do is find more effective ways… [to implement] high-quality school vacations to make sure students are caught up … I think that we need to have flexible scheduling with teachers so that kids who really need support can go to school longer during the day when we really focus on their needs and provide the remediations to do that. It’s not just the school system’s issue. This is an issue with the collaboration with the city side, the city office programs like the mayor’s program, children counsel, family counsel. We need serious coordination.
RF: What do you see as CPSD’s greatest strengths and weaknesses?
FF: We have tremendous resources in our system financially. We have three immersion programs. We have the lowest student-to-adult ratio in most systems. We have a strong staff with most people credentialed. We have a strong visual performing arts program. We have 36 varsity sports. We have numerous clubs. We have internships. We have senior projects. We have opportunities for kids to go to Harvard extension school.
One of the things that has been bothering me recently is that we have twelve vocational education programs. Vocational education needs to have… a big role in Cambridge. There are actually 47 vocational programs that kids can take. We don’t have electrical, plumbing, advanced manufacturing, and welding. These are all highly sought out careers that are making tons and tons of money. We need to provide that balance for kids to go to[:] the academic side and the vocational side. And the achievement gap is something that we really need to resolve.
[What] I need to do is engage with students. I need to hear from students a little bit more about what you guys really feel are the needs. I need some help from students. I want to talk to students about how you can help.
RF: As the three-year District Plan is coming to an end this year, what will be an important focus for the new plan?
FF: Much of the older plan will be part of it because a lot of it we haven’t achieved 100% success at. What the superintendent has engaged in her entry plan … is to engage in focus groups.. The superintendent… is probably going to create a student cabinet, which students will be a part of at a very high-level position… I’m sure vocational education will be a part of it and I’m sure early college is going to be a part of it.
The other thing that I also did and hope will be a part of it is a pathway. I worked with Lesley University as well to create a pathway so our paraprofessionals—a diverse group of paraprofessionals—who have their bachelor’s degrees [are being provided] with a master’s degree for free. Cambridge Public Schools are paying for that. I created that program. That diverse group will be a pipeline to further diversify our workforce. The reports I have been receiving are wonderful so it is something I look forward to continuing… We are going to provide opportunities like that that are going to create more diversity in our school system. It’s going to be part of a recruitment program so we are recruiting a lot of people who will see the benefits of coming to Cambridge and hopefully that will lead to increasing our diversity.
RF: How will you increase students’ ability to earn more college credit while in high school?
FF: Right now students can earn college credit through the Dual Enrollment Program at Bunker Hill Community College. During this summer there was an administrator that called me from the high school that said students wouldn’t even be able to attend because there was an issue with funding… I stopped what I was doing and talked to the Bunker Hill people, talked to the finance people, and got it resolved in a week so kids could do that. Another opportunity is the Harvard extension school, which … through the Buckley scholarship … allows students to go to the program for free to get college credit. I was part of the level-up program to increase more participation in advanced college placement.
My hope for the [early college] program I created… is … that [it] will allow students to actually get up to and including an associate’s degree while in high school. And it is dual credit so you would be earning college credit as well as high school credit. The goal of the extra credit is to tie them into a career path so the college credits can transfer to colleges.
Plus, the early college requirement is that you engage in a program called MyCap, which the guidance counselors are trained on. This means that every student will not only have an individual success plan, but every student will have an individual career plan where you might be taking what they call the Holland Exploratory Test, so every year it tells you what you might be interested in as a career … If we are able to pull it off, which I am hopeful we will be, it will change the dynamics of the high school in a very big way.
Cambridge Rindge and Latin is in the center of the city, it should be our pride and joy. It should be the centerpiece of every single city department that there is. The high school should shine, and that is where we and students should work collaboratively to get to.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.