Jessica Goetz
2025 Candidate for Cambridge School Committee

Home address:
97 Pemberton St.
Cambridge, MA 02140

Contact information:
email: jessforcambridgesc@gmail.com
phone:
website: jessforcambridgesc.com

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Jessica Goetz is a new candidate for 2025.

Hello! I’m running for School Committee because I want to be a part of making it more effective and bringing it into alignment with the lived experiences in our schools.

About Me
I grew up in an environment where my school was my community and this is a mindset I have carried forth into my children’s schooling. I have been a public school parent for nearly a decade and have served on parent boards, been a frequent volunteer, and have consistently attended school council and school committee meetings.

If I am elected, you will get a school Committee member who works hard. I will bring humility to the School Committee; I am not an education policy expert and I won’t pretend to be. But, as an epidemiologist, I have plenty of experience using data to answer questions and target interventions. I feel strongly that school is about more than academic achievement, and also that the other goals we have for our kids in schools, including self-regulation and connection, will pay dividends towards academic success.

My Campaign

Process
My campaign is primarily about process. I am focused on how the School Committee works. I believe there are 4 main factors that will improve the effectiveness of the School Committee. They are accessibility, accountability, responsiveness, and transparency. I know these are somewhat abstract concepts, but they can be enacted in simple ways. Here are just a few concrete examples:

To increase access, we could move away from rigid adherence to archaic parliamentary procedure - it is a frequent distraction and source of confusion. To improve accountability, the School Committee should publicly assign and review action items at each meeting - nothing motivates like a deadline. For better responsiveness, the committee should create a Statement of Expectations that details their obligations to the public when responding to communications and making themselves available for contact. To achieve transparency, the School Committee needs a relevant and up-to-date website that, among other things, details School Committee work that is in the pipeline.

Alignment
I also want a school committee that is in alignment with the day-to-day experiences in our schools. I believe there are three culture shifts that can move us towards that goal:

• Engagement and awareness. This includes visiting schools and being familiar with their unique communities.
• Curiosity and collaboration. This includes allowing for teacher union representation at the School Committee table.
• Respect and resourcefulness. This includes verifying that the Superintendent has sought and/or consulted with within-district experts before approving larger contracts.

Issues
Process matters because it is how we build trust, support engagement, ensure representation, and get stuff done. That said, I do recognize that voters will want to know which issues are important to me and where I stand on them. So:

• Yes to always protecting the rights of students, especially those who are political targets.
• Yes to working hard to identify and act upon the many factors that contribute to differing outcomes by race.
• Yes to focusing on family engagement at the school, not district, level.
• Yes to respecting the professionalism of teachers and supporting them through relevant professional development and fair evaluations.
• Yes to evaluating CPS employees at all levels, including principals and superintendents.
• Yes to restarting the superintendent search to ensure we thoughtfully hire an experienced superintendent who is committed to Cambridge for the long term.
• Yes to teaching the untestable like executive functioning, critical thinking, and social emotional intelligence.
• Yes to reducing screen use during the school day, not limited to phones.
• Yes to improving how kids are getting to school including safe biking and walking routes and encouraging the use of public transportation.
• Yes to taking a good hard look at controlled choice and our upper schools, two district weak spots that need attention.
• And lastly, yes to remembering we are in Cambridge and purposefully exposing students to all our city has to offer.

Closing Thoughts
In Cambridge we have a lot of conversations about equity. Conversations that I genuinely believe are begun in good faith, but it is a sticky and refractory issue with no silver bullet solution. I feel strongly that one key way to help our school system work towards equity is through processes that increase access for and encourage engagement of all of us here in Cambridge. The beauty of democracy is that we all have the right to add our voice to the conversations that shape our communities. The school committee belongs to the citizens of Cambridge, and should work in service of every student and school.

CCTV candidate video (2025)