1. How will the consolidation process of last year play into this election, if at all? What did the consolidation process teach you about civic participation in Cambridge?
Incumbents: What do you think of what you did on the Committee during the consolidation process?
Challengers: What would you have done had you been on the Committee during the consolidation process?
2. What can be done to improve achievement at the high school?
3. Would you change the way the schools budget is spent? If so, how?
4. What should be the role of standardized testing in Cambridge?
5. Should the school system standardize its curriculum? How can elementary schools retain their individual character?
6. How can the school department better tap the resources of area colleges and universities?
Christopher Craig
1. The decision to close three of the Elementary Schools in Cambridge was a response to declining enrollment and budget shortages...Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about the consolidation process is the way in which the School Committee handled the decision.
2. If our goal is to keep students from falling through the cracks, we need to pay attention to them and not to the school structure. Cambridge is committed to small class sizes, and this is the important point. Our teachers can do the job if we give them the time and resources they need.
3. We spend an enormous amount of money on our school system—approximately $18,000 per student this year...[W]e must have the will to evaluate many employees in terms of their direct contribution to the essential work in the classrooms and make some tough decisions.
4. The MCAS tests are designed to measure students’ progress in mastering the material outlined in the State Education Frameworks. The tests are not perfect, nor are they fatally flawed. The main problem has been the way that the test results have been used.
5. Cambridge needs to adopt a set of Educational Frameworks to establish what is to be learned by our students. I support the State Frameworks in the absence of anything better. The choice of what curriculum should be used to achieve these goals should be left up to the teachers.
6. This is one of the areas where I feel the School Committee is most deficient. I have even heard incumbent candidates say that “We don’t need Harvard’s help.” I am in favor of doing as much as possible to establish a strong and productive relationship between our schools and these institutions of higher learning in Cambridge.
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