Beacon Election Guide Reponses

To the Editor,

Thank you for your coverage of this year’s elections! It’s a tremendous service to voters and the city. Amidst campaigning, I overlooked the publication deadline for your Election Guide, and want to ensure I shared my responses and positions for your readers as well as all voters across Newton. We’ve published my answers to each question below in the format and character limits specified by the Beacon’s questionnaire.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Greene

• Would you support a Proposition 2 1/2 operating override to fund schools and other city expenses?

  Yes.

  I know the city’s finances are complex, but 3-4% inflation and 2.5% property tax collection increases doesn’t work over the long-term, and that’s before expanding the services we provide to our students in the schools.

  Looking at the last override ballot initiatives, voters made it clear that they are willing to invest in the schools when the investment and the payback are clear.

  The two targeted debt overrides to fund elementary school building renovations passed. 

  The operating override that was less clearly for funding specific NPS investments did not.  I think our Superintendent Dr. Nolin is particularly talented at communicating a long-term vision for the schools that is compelling for parents and voters. 

  I hope that vision, and demonstrated progress on her agenda over the next couple years, will help give voters the confidence to make a different choice in a future override initiative.

• Did you support the NTA going on strike last year?

  No.

  Like a lot of NPS parents I am supportive of many of the things the NTA asked for at the start of the strike. I believe teachers should be respected and fairly compensated. I believe that schools have changed and we need social workers in the schools to support the current student population. I think we should be paying classroom aides a fair wage.

  That said, it’s against the law for teachers to strike in Massachusetts precisely because it holds our most vulnerable students hostage in a negotiation between adults which the students are powerless to resolve.

  What’s more, it became clear as the strike wore on that it was being dragged out by the Mass Teachers Association’s desire to make an example of a wealthy city like Newton as part of a broader political agenda to demonstrate their own political power.  I don’t think that’s in Newton’s interest and it’s certainly not what’s best for our kids no matter the contractual outcome on the other end.

• Would you keep the district’s multilevel classroom learning?

  No.

  The feedback on multilevel classrooms seems consistent.  Teachers find it hard to make this work in practice in the classroom.  Parents don’t understand it which creates a breakdown in trust and if they do understand it, they don’t support it. The students I’ve talked to either don’t like it or don’t seem to value it. 

  But most importantly it’s not improving outcomes for the kids we created it for.  There’s no shame in trying something new. We should be teaching our kids to take risks in the name of a better outcome. There's also no shame in getting something wrong.  But we need to have the courage to be honest with ourselves when something isn’t working and change course. It’s time to move on and I would make that clear to the superintendent thru my seat on the school committee.

• Would you support the district joining School Choice, which would permit parents to send their children to public school in communities other than that in which they reside?

  No - Not given what I know right now.

  I think it’s important to get NPS enrollment growing, but voters don’t generally support school choice for Newton and I think that’s an important factor.

  From a policy perspective, I’m skeptical of school choice for the same reason I don’t like vouchers for private school tuition.  It seems to create an incentive for students and families with the most resources and the greatest understanding of how the system works to leave their local public schools. 

  This fundamentally leaves behind many of the kids with the greatest needs while draining the system of the money and the incentives to fix the root cause reasons families are leaving in the first place. I’m open to learning more as an elected school committee member and coming to a different point of view if participating in the program is fundamentally in our kids best interests, but given what I know now, I’m not supportive.

• Would you support keeping the schools’ DEI initiatives even if it may mean losing millions of dollars in federal funding?

  No Position.

  I think diversity is critically important and I think teaching kids about it’s importance is a central responsibility of the schools.

  I would also love to make a stand against the administration in Washington like Harvard did earlier this year. I’m not, however, willing to do harm to our kids in the name of a political fight between adults and NPS doesn’t have Harvard’s resources.
  

  Finally, DEI is a very broad term with different meanings to different people, so my position here would depend heavily on the precise circumstances of the choice forced on our schools.

• Are you prepared to close one or more of the city’s elementary schools if data supports doing so?

  No Position - It’s Complicated.

  We need our elementary schools to have enough students to form classes and support a rich school experience including the arts and extra curricular activities.

  Voters I’ve spoken to have also been quite clear that neighborhood schools matter for our kids and parents’ quality of life.  My son walks to Bowen with our dog everyday and it’s really special.  This is a reason why families move to our city.  So I am committed to maintaining our neighborhood schools approach and I think it’s critical that we get enrollment growing again so that we can support it long term.

  The harder question is how we sequence the construction and financing needed to support desperately needed capital improvements.  Realistically, we cannot do all of them at the same time. However we sequence it, I don’t support selling a school building. The city’s needs change (I went to Bigelow the first year it reopened) and finding another site won’t get easier with time.

• What one big idea or initiative would you champion, once elected?

  A world class education requires a modern curriculum and benchmarks for measuring student achievement.  Prior to the launch of our new ELA curriculum 3 years ago, and the math pilots starting this year, NPS hadn’t formally coordinated updated curriculum materials in more than 20 years. 

  We ask our teachers to do a lot without also asking them to develop and maintain all of their own materials. Without objective benchmarking, we can’t know that we are meeting the needs of all students.

  Finally, without a consistent curriculum, we can’t ensure that students arrive at the middle and high schools with the same baseline math and reading skills that are the foundation for the next phase of their education.

  We must make these investments an ongoing part of how we run the schools - not a one time discretionary funding project. Providing transparency on the roadmap and giving parents visibility into the curriculum cycle also builds needed trust between the schools and the community.