This year Medford finally has an opportunity to elect a progressive candidate to its school committee. Since July, Sharon Guzik and her supporters have been walking the breadth of Medford to listen to residents’ thoughts on the state of the city’s public schools, the quality of education children are receiving, and the degree to which city government is responding to changing demographics and recession-era budgets.
In a city where an entirely at-large voting system almost ensures incumbent re-election, voters have greeted Sharon warmly. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northeastern University, Sharon’s qualifications for office are obvious:
* she holds a master’s degree in biology and has experience teaching science
* she has two children in the public school system
* she is extremely active in the Columbus School PTO and in after-school programs
* she is vice-president of the Medford Historical Society and head of Friends of the Medford Public Library, which raises a significant amount of money for an institution that suffers from city budget cuts.
Locally Sharon is being endorsed by Advocating for Medford Public Schools – http://tinyurl.com/yfa8cmx . Statewide she is one of only three people being endorsed by Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts in this year’s municipal elections – http://tinyurl.com/yzpvb77 .
With 11 people (including five incumbents) running for 6 school-committee seats, the final days of campaigning are heating up. To learn more about Sharon and her campaign, go to http://www.voteforsharon.org. If you would like to donate a few hours of time to the campaign between now and Tuesday’s election, you can do so by visiting http://tinyurl.com/yk3ymz3 .
Since in MA, at least as far as I can tell from experience, we don’t elect ideologue creationists to our school committees, I’m just wondering what issues are important and what criteria PDM used to endorse candidates at this level.
Sharon stands for the ideals that the progressive movement has been identified with. With regard to education, this means significant and well-targeted investment in public education and reality-based assessment of the needs of our schools. Aside from this Sharon brings to the table a strong record of involvement in her community and great energy and enthusiasm for the role of school board member.
I also support Sharon, I think she’s going to be a fantastic School Committee member.
charter schools?
She’s played significant parts in the local puppet organizations of the teachers’ union, so I doubt strong support for charter schools is a strong probability.
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p>I like her support for differentiated schooling, though.
Puppet organizations? Are you talking about the Columbus School PTO or after school programs?
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p>To the main point of charter schools…. I’ve spoken to Sharon at length about charter schools. She is not against them (what does “against them” even mean?) and she believes that from the successful ones some public schools can learn a variety of useful teaching approaches. The one that most interests me (and one that is not found exclusively in charter schools) is child-centered learning. This simply means teaching a basic curriculum within the classroom but incorporating into homework, special projects and in-class activities the interests and aptitudes of each student. John likes to draw? Let him render a view from the Acropolis as part of his homework on Classical Greece. Julie loves math? Let her do a project on Greek currency. A classroom can forge through a curriculum without losing students to boredom.
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p>If you would like to know more, you can contact Sharon directly through her website. I don’t want to pretend to be speaking for her!
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p>But what about funding formulas? One concern I’ve discussed with Sharon is the financial stress put onto some public school systems where tax dollars follow children to charter schools. When a children move over to charter schools, money that would otherwise have been spent in public schools goes to the charters. That makes sense. However, some of that money taken out of the public system was also being used for special education, which in many cases costs more on a per student basis. The result can be making scant financial resources for special education even more difficult to come by.
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p>There are probably solutions to this. One would be for government to provide financial support to local schools through two separate streams: one for special education and the other for mainstream classroom education. People in special education have an absolute right to a decent education, as do all children. The current system, I think, indirectly pits one group of children against the other in terms of funding. This is not the fault of charter schools; it’s the fault of our current funding practices.
The puppet comment is my opinion of the Stand for Children and A4MPS groups, specifically. If you can point me to a significant issue that those groups differ with the teachers’ union, I’ll happily change opinions on the matter.
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p>I’m also having trouble calling $11 million for SPED out of a total of $43 million in the newest MPS budget “scant financial resources.” We’re spending almost twice per capita on special education children than other kids. What is adequate funding?
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p>Maybe making the SPED money portable with the special needs student will make those students more attractive to charters, which detractors say underserve special needs children.
It would be good for me to know who you are and where you live. I am uncomfortable continuing an online dialog with an anonymous person. My name is is Jim Kiely (as my member name suggests) and I live in Medford.
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p>As to your comments….
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p>Paragraph 1: Stand for Children a teacher’s union front? Well here’s the link, perhaps you could tell everyone how it is such a front. http://www.stand.org/ma .
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p>Paragraph 2: Would you be willing to tell us what an adequate dollar figure should be? You imply you know what it is; at least that’s what I’m inferring from your post.
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p>The reality is that you can’t affix a price tag to education without knowing what it’s like for parents and teachers to reach all kids within school systems. But, since you asked, perhaps adequate funding could be measured in terms of hours saved by parents’ not having to struggle to get IEP objectives met or by teachers’ not having to struggle to meet them. Perhaps it could be measured in terms of having an adequate number of sign-language teachers available to children who are deaf or who cannot speak so mainstreaming objectives within public schools can be more easily satisfied.
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p>Paragraph 3: It would be a godsend if all school (public, private and charters) could fulfill the needs of all children. A godsend indeed. To do as you suggest, however, first funding streams would have to be differentiated, which is what I said in my other reply.
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p>Thank you for reading my rather lengthy posts. Sharon Guzik is an amazing candidate for Medford School Committee. I’ve worked with her in educational and community groups and have been impressed every step of the way.
Vote for her, Medford; it isn’t every day that you get someone this committed and thoughtful running for local office.
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p>I know Sharon from the ultimately unsuccessful efforts to organize in Medford to move Donato’s vote on marriage equality. She was unstinting in her help and good advice for that team and in sharing her connections.
Sharon was heavily involved in Carl Sciortino’s successful State Representative campaigns in 2004 and 2008.
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p>This is somewhat of an aside, but given how close that first election against Ciampa was (117 votes in the primary), it has occurred to me that much in Massachusetts and even beyond might be different and much for the worse if not for Sharon’s hard work to help get Carl elected, for I think that his election was a bit of a tipping point.
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p>Sharon also led the campaign (twice) for another worthy candidate for Medford school committee. After this candidate decided against making another try — and since she understood the deep need for more School Committee members who are engaged with the schools and aware — Sharon took it upon herself to step up.
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p> In Medford it can be so hard to displace the comfortably incumbent. But I’m hopeful that odds this year may be a little better given that one position has opened up (vacated by a 91 year old School Committee member who has decided not to seek reelection).
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