I’m excited to be running for Cambridge School Committee with the endorsement of the Cambridge Green-Rainbow Party. I teach GED (General Educational Development) classes in Boston and, before that, I taught at the King Open School in Cambridge.

As an educator and recent graduate of the Cambridge Public Schools (CRLS ’98), I have much to offer.

The current Cambridge School Committee includes a social worker, a real estate appraiser, and an educational consultant—but not a single educator. Perhaps this is not surprising during a time when educational policy making continues to devalue and distrust the role of individual classroom teachers, but there is no reason that it has to be this way.

As a teacher, I will fill this void on the School Committee. And as a GED teacher in particular, I will advocate for at-risk students who are often the most underserved.

I have lived in Cambridge my whole life, and I have seen my city change tremendously. Many of our schools continue to lead with educational innovations, but far too many students slip through the cracks.

Our schools must provide a more consistent educational experience district-wide while still maintaining the unique community based learning that our schools are known for. During the recent years of school restructuring, the School Committee has been struggling to strike this balance.

As young adults who went to Cambridge Public Schools, my core campaign team experienced the first stages of this restructuring while students at the high school. We love our schools and want to participate directly in improving them!

Here is a look at my platform:

Let teachers teach.

High standards are a good thing, but drilling students in test prep courses is an ineffective strategy for teaching essential life skills. Students become proficient readers and confident problem solvers only once they become engaged in the learning process. This does not happen within the anxiety-filled environment of high-stakes testing.

Students develop basic skills when they are engaged in projects, when they take a range of interesting high school courses, and when they are required to analyze critically the world in which they live. Therefore, I will work to mitigate the effects of MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) testing on the district’s curricula.

Get the military out of our schools.

I never met a single military recruiter when I was a student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. Since recruiters never came to campus, my classmates and I understood that joining the armed forces was just one of countless post-graduation possibilities. Guidance counselors never couched the option of military service in moral or patriotic terms. This is the way it should be.

Unfortunately, the federal government, primarily through clauses in the No Child Left Behind Act, has bullied Cambridge into increasing access for military recruiters. Our school district’s demographics are changing as increasing numbers of wealthy Cambridge parents opt for private schools, making CRLS an ever more attractive hunting ground for the military. But Cambridge is an anti-war city and I am committed to fighting the militarization of our city’s youth.

Close the racial and economic achievement gaps.

The increased use of standardized testing and the imposition of more streamlined curriculum mandates have their greatest impacts on at-risk students—students of color, immigrant students, students in single-parent homes, low-income students. These are the students most dependent on the city to provide a holistic educational experience. For this reason, I will work to further integrate Cambridge’s different educational programs in school, before school, after school, and during the summer.

I have been active in the Green Party since the contested presidential election of 2000 when I was impressed with the Greens’ widespread advocacy for radical democratic reforms. The U.S. Green Party has become the electoral arm of social justice movements in this country.

In Cambridge, where the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party is already strong, we must start winning representation on municipal boards. Continuing to build the party here will have implications nationwide.