They may disagree on specifics, but candidates for Cambridge School Committee agreed Saturday at a forum that structural changes are needed to increase the body’s community engagement, including changing election cycles, becoming more transparent and strengthening school councils.
The event, which drew a dozen candidates on November’s ballot for dialogue with each other, was hosted by Cambridge Day and Cambridge Community Television.
The forum featured three of the five incumbents running: David Weinstein, Caroline Hunter and Jose Luis Rojas Villarreal. Nine challengers attended: Anne Coburn, Eugenia Schraa Huh, Luisa de Paula Santos, Caitlin Dube, Alex Bowers, Jia-Jing Lee, Jessica Goetz, Lilly Havstad and Arjun Jaikumar.
The nine challengers were more interested overall than incumbents in uprooting the status quo.
Any recommendation or policy that is not “putting kids first” should be reexamined, challenger Jia-Jing Lee said.
Transparency
This distinction was most apparent when the conversation turned to the topic of transparency, including when a moderator question noted Massachusetts Association of School Committees guidance that school committees try to speak with one, unified voice.
Challenger Lilly Havstad called the recommendation “problematic” in that it acts as a “muzzle on our School Committee members,” leading to “major decisions being made without explanation” and ultimately resulting in mistrust.
Incumbents seemed to reject that the guidance led to silence on the part of members to the public or media.
Rojas said that committee members are encouraged to share individual perspectives during the decision-making process, and that the state guidance is there to ensure that “once a decision is made, even if you disagree with that decision, it’s the decision of the body and we need to respect that decision.”
Vice chair Caroline Hunter agreed that there is more work to be done to improve public relations, but added that “once people get onboarded” to the committee, “they begin to see all the limits that the law provides for the protection of the community.”
“We’re not supposed to talk about things that were deliberated in public spirit. Three more of us in a casual conversation about policy, online, on cellphone, is against the law,” Hunter added, referring to Open Meeting Law, a separate issue.
Challenger Anne Coburn questioned restrictions from committee rules on public comment, which require commenters to address an item on the meeting’s agenda and limit conversation between committee members and commenters.
“The thing that feels most frustrating to me about the actual way that the School Committee runs is that there is no conversation in which a School Committee member can directly respond to a public commenter,” Coburn said. “That seems problematic, that feels like stifling free and open debate and free speech.”
Challenger Luisa de Paula Santos added that restrictions on public conversation stifle “dialectical, iterative thinking” and often result in committee members presenting “polished responses” to the community without explaining the process behind a policy.
For challenger Eugenia Schraa Huh, language matters. Schraa Huh wants to see real action put behind buzzwords such as “equity” and “leadership,” which she said are often included in official titles in the district with no evidence to support follow-through.
Rebuilding structures
Candidates found common ground over a desire to increase community engagement, but diverged on how to do it.
Engagement needs to be a focal point of committee meetings, Havstad said, suggesting “taking meetings to community members” and “hosting regular listening sessions” – ideas that have been raised in past campaigns by other candidates without being enacted when elections are over.
Incumbent David Weinstein cited school councils as an example of current community engagement. Havstad disagreed. “You know I’m on a school council, right? And it’s not working,” she said.
Weinstein agreed in part that some councils could benefit from structural improvement. In some cases councils are “working incredibly well” and in other cases “really need support,” he said.
Many agreed that the councils are not being used effectively as feeders of ideas and engagement to the committee.“I’m not sure anyone would even notice if we didn’t have school councils,” challenger Jessica Goetz said.
Challenger Alex Bowers, who was on a working group that drafted a school council handbook, said it had been disappointing to see the work “watered down” when it got to the administration.
Term length may represent another structural hurdle to the work of the committee. “Just as you are into the work, you have to run again,” Hunter said. She is in favor of expanding terms to four years – and was dismayed that a request to consider it wasn’t taken up by a charter commission looking recently at changing the city’s governing document.
Challenger Arjun Jaikumar agreed that four-year terms would be an “excellent idea” and challenger Caitlin Dube added that it is “exceptionally difficult to create policy and see it through with a two-year term.” She advocated further that a standing board of former committee members, educators and community members be formed who would “carry on institutional wisdom and serve as a nonvoting member on the committee.”
Newcomer guaranteed a seat
Those who attended the forum make up 12 out of 18 candidates in this year’s committee race, the richest pool of candidates in more than two decades.
The mayor leads what are typically twice-monthly meetings of the six-member board, many of its members parents of children within the school system. Current committee member Rachel Weinstein is the only serving member not seeking reelection; if all incumbents are reelected, one of the 13 challengers is still guaranteed a spot in the next committee.
The co-moderators of the forum were Marc Levy, senior editor at Cambridge Day, and Niko Emack, a board member of Cambridge Day’s parent organization, Cambridge News. The two-hour discussion took place at the CCTV studio in Central Square.
Why they are running
During the Saturday forum, committee candidates were asked if they were being fueled to run for office out of a sense of “rage” at the current system – a moment of hyperbole that nonetheless caught participants’ attention. Here’s what they said about what inspired them to run:
Alex Bowers: A former education reporter now seeing her beat from the inside.
Anne Coburn: “I really want people to have a school system and a school district that works.”
Caitlin Dube: “Directly impacting young people’s ability to shift and change culture.”
Jessica Goetz: As a parent, you can either keep complaining or do something about it.
Lilly Havstad: Rage is a normal human emotion that we need to help our children direct towards making change.
Eugenia Schraa Huh: What’s at stake is the future of 7,000 children.
Caroline Hunter: Postponing a comfortable retirement to be of service.
Arjun Jaikumar: Serving to do something, not to be someone.
Jia-Jing Lee: Called to serve after the closing of the Kennedy-Longfellow School in East Cambridge after 51 years, over time drawing a disproportionate number of high-needs students that resulted in low test scores.
Jose Luis Rojas Villarreal: “Rage is not enough to be constructive … how can [we] be constructive?”
Luisa de Paula Santos: A paraprofessional who wants to help dysregulated students with unmet needs.
David Weinstein: “It’s not rage, it’s love and care.”
Watch the forum.
This post was updated Sept. 30, 2025, with a change of language for candidate Lilly Havstad’s response in the “Why they are running” section.
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Four year terms? No way. Low voter turnout doesn’t get us the best candidates elected, and then you want to give them four years to do nothing until the last year of their term when they scramble to justify another, like the current incumbents are doing? Absolutely not. Two year terms should force them to hit the ground running and make progress – no one expects the systemic failures of our district to be fixed overnight. Their progress should make the case of whether they should be re-elected for another term. Obviously, the incumbents cannot make up for the time lost with a superintendent search that has dragged on for a year and a half thanks to Vice Chair Hunter & Co. And she wants four years?