Alan Steinert, Jr.
2009 Candidate for Cambridge School Committee

Home address:
993 Memorial Dr. Apt 203
Cambridge, MA 02138

Contact information:
Tel: 617-290-4222
e-mail: Steinert.Campaign@gmail.com
website: www.steinertcampaign.com

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Additional information for 2009 will be added soon.

Background: Please go to my web site, www.steinertcampaign.com, for a complete description of my background.

Top Priorities:

• All Cambridge children should receive an excellent education from the Cambridge Public Schools
• All teachers deserve to work in a supportive, stimulating, and rewarding environment
• All taxpayers should receive value for the taxes they pay
• All employers should have access to highly qualified, educated Cambridge people prepared to go to work

School Department Administration: I believe that more authority to run the schools should be given to the principals. The principals, like other professionals in the system, should be held to rigorous goals, but be given the latitude and the tools to make those goals. The Central Administration would become a support and coordination function only, from whom the principals would buy central services as needed. The principals, therefore, would have both the responsibility, which they have now, and the authority to run their schools (within very broad parameters established in negotiation with the Superintendent, on behalf of the School Committee). The schools would have annual and multi-year, measurable goals.

Superintendent Contract: The Superintendent needs at least a five year tenure to be effective. The most important function of the School Committee is to select the Superintendent and it must be done with extreme diligence and care. A minimum of a five year contract (with an expensive buy out) would add to the rigor of the selection process.

Controlled Choice, Student Assignment Policies, and the "Achievement Gap": Excellence everywhere in the Cambridge School System will obviate the need to spend time on those issues that are significant, but tangential to the main educational, academic issues that should be the priorities of the school system. The first duty duty of all adults in Cambridge is to maximize the education of each individual child, our successors in running the country.

Enrichment Programs: When they are a means to advance the education of our young people they are important. When they have little or no relationship to the main mission of providing an excellent education, then enrichment programs are not critical.

Enrollment and the Marketing of Public Schools vs. Charter Schools and Private Schools: Substance is more important than form. If the schools are excellent, the world will know without an advertising or marketing program. The spreading by word of mouth of the excellence of the school system is far more effective and real than a marketing program.

Charter Schools: By and large, charter schools exist in those municipalities where significant numbers of parents want something that is not available in the local public schools. Why are there no charter schools in Newton, Brookline, Belmont, Arlington, et al, but there are in Boston, Lawrence, Lowell, and other urban cities?

Elementary Schools and Curriculum: I don't believe it's the role of the School Committee to approve curricula any more than I believe it's the role of the Board of Trustees of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to select the music played by the orchestra. I do believe it's the role of the board to demand excellence based on a collection of measures that the constituencies agree are the ones to be measured. The School Committee should confine itself to the results that Cambridge \schools provide, not the means of achieving those results. The School Committee is not made up of professional educators any more than the board of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is or should be made up of musicians.

High School Programs and Curriculum: The same is true in the high school.

School Department Budget and Capital Needs (including CRLS renovations), and the Disposition of Surplus Buildings: Capital expenses are always too high and property dispositions always too slow. However, both are necessary evils.

CRLS Renovations and Surplus Buildings: Ditto.

MCAS and Measuring Student Achievement: MCAS is simply the tool used by the state to compare the 300 Massachusetts schools systems with one another. MCAS is the reality of the moment until someone comes up with something better. I prefer continuous assessment of each child because it allows teachers to know individual progress so that extra help can be provided those who need it and extra challenges and opportunities can be presented to those children who are ready.
I acknowledge the complaint and am concerned that there is too much testing. I do not know the solution to that problem, but suggest that it be kept in mind by the schools.

School Safety and Student Behavior: Schools must be islands of safety. The community must be fully engaged in seeing to it that schools are safe. (See next subject)

Parent Involvement and School Councils: One of the secrets of a principal's success and evidence of leadership is the vitality of the parent body. Show me a successful school and I will show you a principal who has engaged the parents in the life of that school. Safety is an example. So is the culture of rigor and success. Parents are absolutely essential for the success of each school. Their involvement must be actively cultivated.

Civics Education: This subject should be integrated into every grade, but seamlessly so that the children don't even realize they're learning it. It can be integrated with reading, writing, and, even, arithmetic in such a way that it's the way learning should be: fun for the children and for the teachers as well.

WiFi and Digital Divide: Cambridge should be the leader. If there is a digital divide, shame on us. Broad distribution of WiFi is inexpensive and easy to do, witness the Harvard Square Miracle.

Safe and Welcoming Schools: That goes without saying. The whole community must be involved: parents, faculty, administration, and the children, too. It is possible to smile and be safe at the same time.

Military Recruitment: It is the responsibility of every community to do its share.

Standardized Report Cards?: I believe each child should be measured on his or her progress against his or her starting point at the beginning of the school year. That is the most important assessment measure because it indicates to the teachers where attention is needed, where the child is falling behind or exceeding expectations. The standardization would come in terms of the content that was to be learned in a given period vs. what the child actually learned.

Adult Education: Not relevant to the public schools, in my opinion.

Special Education: A knotty issue, if there ever was one. I don't have a perfect solution to this problem. There is such variability in children who have special education needs that it is almost impossible to talk in general terms about the population. It is highly individualized, a point that must be impressed on the administrative and teaching folks who are responsible for it. The general principle is that each child must be treated individually and helped to maximize his or her potential. The Devil is in the details, but with that overarching principle as a guide, the special needs children will be dealt with as if they were our own.