During her first term on Cambridge’s School Committee, Elizabeth Hudson became known for her blunt communication and openness with the press. Now she’s seeking a second term with a focus on increasing transparency and identifying practical goals for progress.
Before Hudson put in her first bid for public office in 2023, she specialized in neuroscience, robotics and software engineering. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale and continued her education at schools such as the University of Chicago and Yale Law School.
Hudson moved her three sons to Cambridge for the school system, specifically eyeing the district’s unique Mandarin immersion program. She was compelled to run for the committee when middle schools in the district began phasing out Algebra 1 offerings in 2017, she said, referring to it as the “last advanced course” in middle school curricula at the time.
“I found the suggestion that you can improve equity by holding kids back who are ready for something just farcical on its face,” Hudson said. Rolling back Algebra 1 offerings for middle schools put “equity of optics over actual student achievement.”
Once elected in 2023, Hudson prioritized addressing middle school Algebra 1 offerings. After initial problems around including it in eighth-grade curricula, “the School Committee stepped in” and passed a motion requiring it on the original schedule for this year, Hudson said. That was important for her this term, along with “replacing the superintendent under whom decisions like this were allowed to persist” – a reference to Victoria Greer, whom the committee ousted from her leadership role in May.
The need for “concrete detail” when advocating for policy change was a key takeaway from the term, she said.
Members of the community and challenger candidates for the committee have complained repeatedly of a lack of transparency from members. Hudson has been an exception, frequently the most outspoken person on the committee and the only member to speak directly to the press about the controversies of this year’s superintendent search.
“I don’t know what people are so afraid of,” Hudson said. The committee’s problem with community engagement boils down to “a lot of information and very little understanding,” when “the committee’s actions and intentions for goals are by no means self-explanatory.”
“We tend to drown people in PowerPoints where we have 12-point initiatives, or we’ll say ‘Here’s the MCAS data’ but split up by every one of our 127 classrooms.” Hudson said a lack of clear communication from the committee has hindered progress, and vowed to explain her own policy initiatives in “plain English.”
For Hudson, those must address persistent gaps in student achievement, which she called “deplorable” and “categorically unacceptable.”
“It should be a scandal that half our kids are working below grade level,” Hudson said. “We have a middle school where 94 percent of our low-income families, our kids, are working below grade level. That’s embarrassing, and we never talk about it.”
There are 18 candidates running for the Cambridge School Committee’s six seats, to be decided Tuesday. With one incumbent opting not to run, one new face is guaranteed when the committee sits in January.
The feature image (not the image seen above) was added to in the far right in a digital retouching process. The background at the far right of the image is the only part affected; the people in the photo were photographed and are real, and were not changed.
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