The four candidates running for two open seats on the Andover School Committee shared differing views on a wide range of issues, including the Andover Public Schools budget and staffing levels, at the first of two candidates forums Wednesday.
The school committee race is the only contested race in the March 25 election and the only race where candidates were invited by the Andover/North Andover League of Women Voters to participate in the forum at Memorial Hall Library. Next week’s Andover Service Club forum will include the candidates in uncontested races, including select board.
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Challengers Christopher Shepley and Jacob Tamarkin portrayed the district as distressed, focusing on budget problems, the decrease in student-facing positions, and the tense relationship between the school committee and the Andover Education Association, which represents the district’s teachers and instructional assistants. Incumbents Emily DiCesaro and Sandis Wright, meanwhile, emphasized the school committee’s efforts to address those problems.
“I think teacher morale is something that doesn’t get talked about enough. It’s very low right now. I can speak as someone who was in the schools very recently, and it does have an impact on our students,” said Shepley, a 2024 graduate of Andover High School. I “think that we need to understand our educators in town have really suffered years of disrespect from the school committee, and to an extent the superintendent, and I feel as though they’re not being heard.”
DicCesaro pointed to the committee’s relationships with other unions and said the relationship with AEA could be strengthened.
“I see that happening with more communication between our administrators and the union,” she said. “We can do it. We can find ways to find common ground, and ultimately, we’re all here for the students. And I think remembering that is really important as we start to build this relationship.”
Addressing Budget Issues
Andover Public Schools narrowly averted a second straight budget deficit when more teachers than expected announced plans to retire. The budget, which the school committee will vote on next week, does not include layoffs, but the vacant positions of educators leaving the district will not be filled.
Wright noted the district’s enrollment decreased 11 percent over the past decade.
“Prior to [Superintendent] Dr. Magda Parvey coming, staffing was increasing. So when she came in and worked with [the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] to do a review of the district, they identified an opportunity to bring staffing levels in line with our declining enrollment,” Wright said. “She has been very intentional in doing that and repurposing positions to put resources where they’re needed to make the systemic improvements we need across the district, like building consistent curriculum. You need administrators to do some of that work. So we have to align our staffing levels with where our student needs are.”
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Tamarkin, whose campaign has played up his career in finance, said APS needs a more sustainable budget to avoid future cuts. He suggested moving money from an unutilized all-day kindergarten revolving fund and looking at under-utilized school buildings as an area for savings.
“My bias is toward maximizing our resources that are delivering value and educating our children and trying to minimize our expenses in areas that aren’t directly related to having an academic impact,” he said.
Shepley said he would not support any budget that cuts student-facing positions, adding that he believes money is being misspent on legal and consultant fees and administrators. He called for reorganizing the administration and diverting the savings to filling teaching positions.
“These are vacancies that are being left unfilled, and I think that is the wrong decision, and I think years down the road, we are going to regret this decision,” Shepley said. “and the projected middle school class sizes are jumping from 20 and 21 from this current year to 25 and 26 to next year. That’s a huge jump, and middle school is a very important time for our students. These are, especially sixth grade is a very formative time. “So we can talk about semantics, we can talk about positions not being cut, but the reality is that we are losing teaching positions, and that’s a big issue.”
DiCesaro noted the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 does include cuts to the administration.
“It’s hard to know what you mean by student facing. I mean, we couldn’t run a school without custodians, but they’re not in the classroom. We couldn’t run a school without medical staff, cafeteria workers, principals, bus drivers,” she said. “I think we need to think about the whole school. We need to think about what the student needs are, and…we need to be thoughtful about that and understand that we’re not working with widgets, we’re working with children.”
Improving Student Outcomes
Tamarkin said he is running for school committee because “our schools are not reaching their potential.”
“It’s a superintendent’s responsibility to make sure that we’re providing the same high quality education and challenging our students regardless of the school and their level of ability. And I think something that has frustrated me a little bit about our approach to leveling our curriculum across our schools has been, it’s felt, at least from the outside looking in, like a bit of a top down kind of approach.”
DiCesaro and Wright pointed to the ongoing work to align curriculum across the district. They pointed to a new math curriculum that boosted standardized test results and the current effort to revamp the literacy curriculum.
“The school committee has a role in supporting consistent curriculum development and implementation across the district,” Wright said. “While a lot of that is done operationally with the…superintendent, and the administrative teams and the building leaders and the teachers in the classrooms, we as a school committee help set that priority through funding those priorities in our budget and supporting our administrative teams who lead a lot of these efforts across the district.”