Priorities
1. Access for Every Family
Cambridge schools should guarantee opportunities and excellent options for every child. By continuing to invest in early intervention, wraparound services, and teaching practices that reach all learners, we can provide exceptional education for all of our students in a community-based model that centers partnership and access for every family.
2. Challenging, Relevant, Inclusive Learning
Students deserve learning that is rigorous, relevant, and inclusive, preparing them for college, career, and civic life. While there are many approaches that allow students of all abilities to learn together and educators to effectively reach all students, Project-Based Learning is an approach that allows for both inclusion and culturally responsive teaching and engaging, hands-on learning that reflects all of our district’s core values.
3. Educator Voice and Support
Educators are the heart of our schools, and their voice must shape every decision. Cambridge needs to prioritize a student-centered, relationship-based collaboration with our educators because teachers are experts in our children’s learning and development.
4. Safe and Supportive School Communities
Students need schools where they feel safe, respected, and known in order to learn.
5. Leverage the Power of Early Childhood Education
A strong start is the foundation for lifelong learning and equity. Close opportunity gaps upstream by investing early, before barriers widen into achievement gaps. Early childhood is one of the most powerful levers for equity. Strong foundations in literacy, belonging, and social-emotional skills ensure every child enters kindergarten ready to thrive.
6. Accountability and Continuous Improvement
In order for our schools to be places where students and educators thrive, we must build cultures rooted in both high accountability and high psychological safety. That means rethinking how we evaluate, learn, and hold ourselves accountable as a district.
7. Strengthen School Councils
Strong school councils are the democratic backbone of Cambridge Public Schools. When councils are inclusive, trained, resourced, and connected to decision-making, they become engines of equity, accountability, and trust between families, educators, and the district.
8. Rethink School Models and Choice
Controlled Choice only works if every family has access to the types of schools they actually want and need. That means building models that reflect our community’s aspirations- whether that’s dual language, project-based learning, STEAM, inclusion co-teaching, or community school hubs- and ensuring they are available citywide. Every option for students should be excellent, responsive to family demand, and designed for integration, joy, and deeper learning.
9. Spotlight on Project-Based Learning
Project-Based Learning is the best way to serve all student abilities while preparing young people for the future. It is rigorous, relevant, and relational. And, it ensures that Cambridge students are not only learning content but also practicing the skills and mindsets to thrive as changemakers in our diverse democracy.
1. Equity and Access for Every Family
Close the achievement gap by addressing root causes. Target resources to families most impacted by inequity, expand program offerings in under-chosen schools (dual language, PBL, inclusion co-teaching, restorative supports), and align all schools under a shared vision of equity and excellence.
Reform controlled choice with equity at the center. Create a robust community evaluation process that includes families historically excluded from decision-making. Pilot an equity-weighted lottery using multi-band income, housing instability, language status, and disability status. Publish live seat availability, historical match rates by demographic group, and conduct annual independent audits.
Make school choice transparent and navigable. Operate neighborhood “choice support” centers where families can get in-person help. Provide whole-family solutions for transportation so school access is not limited by commute challenges. Release an annual Controlled Choice Equity Report with data on assignment weights, transportation, appeals, and outcomes.
Strengthen family engagement citywide. CPS is committed to family engagement (which is different from involvement- engagement means schools recognize families as equal partners in student learning and development), implement home visits, multilingual outreach, stipends and childcare for family participation, and consistent reporting on how family input shapes policy.
Measure family partnership with a public index. Establish a Family Engagement Index that tracks home visits, multilingual outreach, stipends, and participation data, with annual public reporting on how family input shapes policy.
Make every school a true community school. Align CPS with city and community partners so schools function as hubs of health, housing, food access, enrichment, and family supports — reducing barriers and strengthening belonging for students and families.
2. Challenging, Relevant, Inclusive Learning
Learning that reflects the identities of the students in our schools, AND engages all learners in engaging, hands-on learning. Pair anti-bias and culturally relevant teaching with the six deeper learning competencies:
Content expertise
Critical thinking & problem solving
Collaboration
Effective communication
Self-directed learning
Academic mindset
Support curriculum design that is teacher-driven and community-informed. Instead of top-down rollouts of pre-packaged curriculum, build curriculum in-house with educators and families as co-designers. Ensure any purchased curriculum (like CKLA) is adapted and evaluated transparently across schools.
Ensure fidelity and support in implementation. Recognize that implementing a new curriculum with fidelity takes 3–5 years. Build structures for sharing best practices across schools so teachers are not working in silos.
Center inclusion and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Make Universal Design for Learning the norm, not the exception, so that all students- multilingual learners, students with IEPs, students with different learning styles- have multiple entry points into content.
Embed restorative practices and Social Emotional Learning. Normalize perspective-taking, fairness, and feedback through daily routines, restorative circles, and SEL skill-building.
Close the achievement gap by ensuring all students — especially those historically underserved — have access to rigorous, joyful, and relevant learning experiences that connect to their lives and communities.
3. Educator Voice and Support
Establish a formal educator voice. Create a non-voting CEA advisory seat on the School Committee with a standing agenda item for CEA reports. Offer space for educators to share input at meetings and hold quarterly educator forums with language access, childcare, and stipends.
Redesign teacher evaluation to build communities of practice. Shift from compliance-driven checklists to an evaluation system that fosters collaboration, continuous learning, and professional trust. Evaluations should highlight educator strengths, connect teachers into communities of practice across schools, and provide coaching-oriented feedback aligned with deeper learning goals. Make the process transparent, supportive, and responsive to educator voice so that evaluation becomes a driver of collective improvement.
Re-allocate and increase paraprofessional staffing. Close the current systemwide gap by staffing every general education classroom with at least one paraprofessional. Ensure equitable ratios at upper schools and CRLS, not just elementary levels.
Redesign feedback systems. Replace the current practice of routing all staff input through the Superintendent with direct access to School Committee members via in-school office hours, walk-and-talks, and lunch bunches. Launch an anonymous online input form for staff with report-backs at Committee meetings.
Ensure feedback turns into action. Publish a “we heard, we’re doing” tracker that shows how educator input leads to concrete changes. Tie feedback into Superintendent and administrator evaluations to make responsiveness an accountability measure.
Invest in educator wellness and professional learning. Recognize that teacher wellness is student wellness. Expand opportunities for professional collaboration, educator-led design teams, and micro-grants for piloting solutions.
Expand innovation through educator-led mini-grants. Cambridge already funds larger Equity Innovation Grants, but we also need a nimble micro-grant program where teachers, paraprofessionals, and school teams can access $500–$2,000 quickly to pilot new ideas. These mini-grants would reduce barriers, support everyday innovations in classrooms and family engagement, and create a public “what worked” showcase so great practices spread across schools. For example, an educator might use a mini-grant to launch a family math night, build a multilingual classroom library, or pilot restorative practice circles. Most importantly, they build morale and trust by showing educators that their ideas are valued, resourced, and central to district improvement.
4. Safe and Supportive School Communities
Increase mental health support. Hire more social workers, counselors, and behavioral specialists to provide Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions before students reach crisis.
Grow restorative cultures. Implement restorative justice practices across schools, including training for administrators and staff and dedicated time in the school day for circles. Empower youth as partners in repairing harm and shaping community norms.
Expand wraparound services through city partnerships/Leverage Cambridge’s unique resources to expand wraparound services. Partner with the City of Cambridge, universities, and local organizations to bring on-site health and mental health clinics, food and housing assistance, afterschool and summer enrichment, adult education, and family legal/financial services into schools. Position schools as community hubs that meet the needs of the whole child and family.
Add CPS educators to Special Start and Special Education vans. Ensure that our youngest and highest-need students have consistent adult support during transportation, reducing stress for children, improving safety, and creating stronger continuity of care between home and school. Teacher check-in time should happen for all students and families, not just those who can pick-up or drop-off in person.
Address systemic root causes. Examine school structures that undermine belonging, autonomy, or dignity and redesign them for equity and care. Explore smaller school communities, trauma-informed design, and community school models that also support families.
Train all staff in trauma-informed approaches. Provide professional learning on de-escalation, understanding trauma responses, and addressing the secondary trauma educators experience when working with students in crisis.
Prioritize educator wellbeing. Create policies and practices that tend to staff wellness, recognizing its direct impact on student safety and success.
5. Leverage the Power of Early Childhood Education
Strengthen Universal Pre-K. Ensure all CPP classrooms are literacy-rich, play-centered, and relationship-driven. Build inclusive environments that honor the whole child and support social-emotional development.
Provide multilingual and trauma-informed supports. Equip early childhood educators with training and resources to support young multilingual learners and children who have experienced trauma.
Engage families from the start. Build early partnership structures with families through home visits, culturally responsive family engagement, and ongoing communication that recognizes families as co-educators.
Guarantee after-school access for every family. Ensure that 100% of Cambridge families who need an after-school spot for their child can get one, with programs that are affordable, inclusive, and aligned with the district’s commitment to play, belonging, and whole-child development.
Prevent achievement gaps before they begin. Use early childhood as the foundation for closing gaps in literacy, belonging, and opportunity, ensuring all children enter kindergarten ready to thrive.
Design smaller, trauma-informed early learning communities. Create early childhood settings where children feel safe, known, and supported, with strong educator-student relationships and structures that reduce stress and foster belonging.
Build community school models in the early grades. Align early learning centers with wraparound services — healthcare, mental health, food access, and family supports — so families experience schools as hubs of stability and opportunity.
6. Accountability and Continuous Improvement
We need accountability that goes beyond test scores to measure whether we are building school cultures where all students and families feel respected, cherished, and known; and where educators feel safe to take risks, innovate, and grow.
Cambridge deserves leadership that is transparent and responsive. I will push for equity-centered evaluation, public reporting, and continuous learning so schools reflect our values and meet our community’s goals.
How can we do this?
Strategic audit to make sure we’re deploying our resources properly. We have a great opportunity with a new superintendent to build upon what’s going well and to address areas of growth and improvement.
Expand administrator evaluation to include 360-degree feedback from families, students, school councils, and educators.
Establish equity-centered goal setting with public progress reporting on inclusion and community engagement.
Create a School Committee self-assessment with public goals and community-created success metrics.
School Improvement Plan Transparency, School by School: Public, living SIP pages with “what changed this quarter” updates.
Provide micro-grants for educator-led innovation and share best practices across schools.
Connect evaluation results to professional development and coaching support.
School Committee Report Card: Annual SC self-assessment with public goals, mid-year checks, and community-created metrics.
7. Strengthen School Councils
School councils are the only spaces where non-citizen families can vote for representation in our school community. They’re meant to be the foundation of authentic family engagement and shared decision-making, but in Cambridge they’re inconsistent, under-resourced, and too often sidelined. Strengthening them is essential if we want equity and accountability to reach every school.
How can we do this?
Make every council inclusive and representative. Expand membership (as I did at Baldwin) to include more family and educator voices— especially those historically excluded—so councils reflect the school’s racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity.
Resource participation. Provide stipends, childcare, interpretation/translation, hybrid options, and transportation so families can participate equitably.
Build capacity (deliver the training that’s been promised). Launch a district-funded training program for council members covering family engagement, equity/anti-bias, participatory decision-making, restorative practices, budget basics, assessment literacy, and legal roles. Publish the schedule and completion rates.
Give councils real influence over school culture and SIPs. Councils co-author and review School Improvement Plans (SIPs) and help run school-specific climate surveys (as we did at Baldwin) so we can gather school-level data on whether students and families feel respected, cherished, and known. SIP progress feeds into administrator evaluations.
Make councils the family-engagement engine. Create a standing Family Engagement Subcommittee in every council to run listening sessions and micro-surveys—and to track whether family input leads to visible changes (“We heard → We’re doing”).
Pilot “Partnership School Labs.” Councils co-design and test “open-door” models—communal dining, weekend libraries/gyms, childcare spaces—and report results to their communities and the School Committee.
Ensure accountability to the School Committee. Add a quarterly council report on SIP progress, family-engagement metrics, and “what changed this month” updates to the SC agenda.
Standardize transparency. Post agendas, minutes, and progress in easily accessible formats, with multilingual summaries and plain-language highlights.
Create a school-level Family Engagement Index. Councils help build and publish an index (home visits, multilingual outreach, participation rates, compensated roles) so families can see movement over time.
Connect councils districtwide. Establish a Council Network/Annual Summit to share practices, align on equity goals, and scale what works. The current ad-hoc structure offers this in theory; this makes it real.
8. Rethink School Models and Choice
Listen first. Launch a robust community process to ask families and educators: “If you could create the most amazing school you can imagine for your child, your community, your city, what would that look like?
Diversify school offerings. Use community input to expand or create new models — from dual language programs to PBL/STEAM schools — especially in under-chosen schools so families have equally compelling options across the city.
Revisit the K–8 structure. Cambridge has not collected meaningful data on the Innovation Agenda, nor delivered on its promises to support upper school students. Evidence shows that K–8 models foster stronger belonging, continuity, and academic outcomes. It’s time to evaluate whether returning to K–8, or piloting alternative structures, would better serve students.
Align choice with equity. Pilot an equity-weighted lottery that prioritizes families most impacted by inequity while guaranteeing all families exciting, high-quality options.
Make choice transparent. Publish live seat availability, program information, and historical match rates by demographic group so families can make informed decisions.
9. Spotlight on Project-Based Learning
What is Project-Based Learning?
Project-Based Learning (PBL) is an approach where students learn by doing: tackling meaningful, real-world questions and creating work that has purpose beyond the classroom. Instead of only memorizing for a test, students might design a public art installation, build a prototype, or conduct oral histories. Along the way, they master core academic content while developing critical skills like problem-solving, collaboration, and communication.
Successful schools have been using this model for years. Project-based learning is one solution that solves many problems: students of all abilities can participate in learning at the same time, each at their level. Teachers can provide relevant, challenging learning experiences that connect directly to the real-world, which we know is the way that students learn best. And,
Why it matters for equity and justice:
PBL is inherently socially just because it connects learning to students’ identities, cultures, and communities. It allows every child — multilingual learners, students with IEPs, advanced learners — to enter the work from different strengths and to demonstrate knowledge in multiple ways. In a PBL classroom, students aren’t tracked or separated by perceived ability. They are collaborators, each contributing unique perspectives and skills to solve shared challenges.
Why it works for all students:
Because projects are open-ended and rooted in authentic problems, teachers can easily differentiate — offering multiple entry points, scaffolds, and extensions. A student who needs more support can contribute through hands-on creation or reflection, while another who’s ready for advanced work can dig into deeper research, design, or data analysis. PBL also creates natural opportunities for cooperative learning, making classrooms more inclusive and engaging.
How can we do this in Cambridge?
Pilot at 158 Spring Street. Use the new building as a PBL/STEAM lab where educators can co-design and test projects, and students can experience cutting-edge, hands-on learning.
Build a K–12 PBL pathway. Ensure students experience sustained projects at every grade level, culminating in exhibitions, portfolios, and defenses that make their learning visible.
Support teachers. Provide collaboration time, coaching, and cross-school communities of practice so educators can design and refine projects together.
Center equity. Design projects that reflect students’ identities and lived experiences while connecting them with mentors, community partners, and authentic audiences.
Celebrate student work. Showcase projects in city buildings, libraries, and online so the community can see Cambridge students’ creativity and critical thinking.