David J. Weinstein
2015 Candidate for Cambridge School Committee

Home address:
45 S. Normandy Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138

Contact information:
Tel:
website: votedavidweinstein.com
e-mail: votedavidweinstein@gmail.com
Facebook: facebook.com/votedavidweinstein
Twitter: twitter.com/voteDWeinstein
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djweinstein

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David Weinstein for Cambridge School Committee
45 S. Normandy Ave.
Cambridge MA 02138

I am a first-time candidate for School Committee. I ask you for your # 1 vote on November 3rd.

I am ready for the role:

• I am the only candidate who has served as a full time public school classroom teacher, working K-12.
• I earned a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus on school and teacher leadership and school reform.
• I am deeply engaged with the Cambridge Public Schools: I served on a Cambridge elementary school council, a principal search advisory committee, and as a rep to the Cambridge Citywide School Advisory Group (CSAG).
• I have specialized in outreach, engagement, communications, and program management of projects for a dozen years in education-focused nonprofit organizations and at Brandeis University.
• I am a Cambridge Public Schools parent: my daughter is in 3rd grade; my son will enter junior kindergarten next year. My wife and I have lived in Cambridge for 14 years.

My priorities include:

• Expanding public junior kindergarten to include all four year olds. All children should have the opportunity to benefit from the boost that quality early childhood programs provide.

• Strengthening the new upper schools (grades 6-8) by supporting teacher collaboration and curriculum planning in and between the schools, hiring family liaisons, and implementing evidence-based, effective social and emotional learning (SEL) programming.

The upper school model was put in place just three years ago with the Innovation Agenda. This restructuring to JK to 5 and grade 6 to grade 8 schools was a major shift with an important goal: excellent educational opportunities, and access to a rich and challenging curriculum for all of our children.

I am committed to ensuring that we reach that goal and that every child finishes 8th grade well prepared for high school. And then that every child is challenged and supported to reach their highest potential at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. We must ensure that students of color, students with special learning needs, advanced learners, students of every cultural and home background succeed. No one should sell our children short – not the schools, not their friends, not they themselves.

• Ensuring a strong start for the new superintendent, guided by a vision and direction shared by the school community and the city. The next school committee will be welcoming a new superintendent to Cambridge. This will be one of the committee’s most important roles. We need to thoughtfully induct the new superintendent so we can move forward quickly and effectively with a vision and direction that is broadly shared by the school community and the City as a whole. My graduate studies of school leadership and school reform and my experience in several school districts will inform how I approach this important responsibility.

• Building on Cambridge’s hiring successes to increase the percentage of teachers of color to at least 30%. All of our children benefit from learning from excellent, committed teachers with a range of lived experience. Teachers of color are role models to children of color and to other children. As a former classroom teacher I know my students learned from the “curriculum” that was me. And their learning was strengthened when my colleagues and my supervisors and my students included more people not like me in terms of race, as well as other aspects of identity and experience.

In my five years of teaching, primarily at the high school level, I taught in a range of public schools, including a socioeconomically diverse mainstream public high school, a public alternative school established by a collaborative of MetroWest Boston communities, and a public charter high school in Boston, then in its startup phase.

I know what it means to write curriculum, align it to frameworks and state standards while innovating and responding to the needs of the children in the school.

I know what it means to assess student learning and support student growth.

I know what it means to face a classroom of children – actually, several classrooms of children each day – and for the next hour or more have full responsibility for their academic growth, their social and emotional learning, and their safety…. and I know what it means to feel the weight of that responsibility on your shoulders 24 hours a day, all year long while working together with children, families, administrators and the broader community to do right by those children.

As a member of the Cambridge School Committee I will do right by our children.

I will be dedicated to working collaboratively with our teachers, administrators, fellow school committee members, city councilors, students and families ensuring that we provide the best possible education to every child in our wonderfully diverse community. This collaborative approach is the way I work at Brandeis University, how I worked as a teacher, and how I have approached my engagement with the schools as a parent here in Cambridge.

I grew up in a community that, while smaller than Cambridge, shares the incredible social, economic, cultural, and racial diversity of this City. That diversity and the Cambridge Public Schools were the key reasons my family and I chose to make our home in this City.

We face many challenges…and we are up to the challenges. I look forward to talking with you about how we can work together.

Please vote David Weinstein #1 for School Committee on November 3rd. Thank you.

I have been a classroom teacher in a range of public school settings and a scholar of education, and now work in higher education. Cambridge has been my home for 14 years. I am currently the parent of a Cambridge Public Schools elementary student, with another entering soon.

The Cambridge Public Schools can and should be a model for the country. We do so much so well, and must do better.

As a member of the school committee I will be dedicated to working collaboratively with our teachers, administrators, fellow school committee members, city councilors, students and families ensuring that we provide the best possible education to every child in our wonderfully diverse community. We face many challenges…and we are up to the challenges. I look forward to talking with you about how we can work together.

CCTV candidate video (2015)