Ben Schlesinger: Ward 5

Ben Schlesinger is a candidate for the Newton school committee in Ward 5. Learn more about his views from her campaign website, the Beacon’s profile, and his responses to the Beacon’s candidate survey:

Would you support a Proposition 2 1/2 operating override to fund schools and other city expenses?

Yes. An override should be the last option, but it may well be necessary.  The cost of living in our city is high, and we owe it to our residents to exhaust all other options before asking them to pay higher taxes.  We should explore adjusting the pension funding timeline, reducing free cash, lobbying for increased state funding, and generating new income from NPS, namely through grants and sponsorships, which are in the Superintendent’s strategic plan.

Most of the people I speak to in the city government believe that even when all that work is done, we will face the choice of either passing an override or reducing school quality.  If we get there, I will strongly support an override.  As a community, we cherish our children and we know that education has been the path to prosperity for generations of Americans.  We value great public education – I am a K-12 product of NPS.  Our schools are core to who we are as a city, investing in them is how we express our values.

Did you support the NTA going on strike last year?

No. I focus on what’s best for the kids.  The strike was terrible for the kids.  And it was the most terrible for the most disadvantaged kids – the special needs kids who went two weeks without their services, the single-parent and low-income families whose parents had to decide between working and caretaking, and many others.

It was a complicated situation and there was plenty of blame to go around.  Many educators felt disrespected by the prior administration.  The prior School Committee and the NTA did not negotiate effectively.  The Mayor did not find a path to a solution.

I understand and empathize with the concerns I’ve heard from educators.  The Superintendent and School Committee have been working hard to repair relationships and get us onto better footing.  I am committed to continuing this work, to listening to and respecting educators and collaborating effectively with the next Mayor to ensure that the adults are doing everything in our power to keep the kids in school.

Would you keep the district’s multilevel classroom learning?

No. The data says it isn’t working – MCAS scores in these classes are down and achievement gaps are widening. The teachers say it isn’t working – they are writing OpEds in the Globe and signing petitions for change. Most of the students and parents I’ve spoken to say it isn’t working – more advanced students don’t feel challenged and less advanced students feel intimidated.  So it is time to move on.

Some research says that under certain circumstances (small classes, multiple educators), multi-level classes can be effective. I will always be open-minded to Superintendent Nolin’s initiatives. If she wants to try a new pilot, and she says that NPS is able to provide the right support and measure the outcomes, I would be open to considering it.

We do have to create opportunities for students to move between levels – that could be an enrichment program, summer school, tutoring. I’m convinced we can find a way. But we must move on from what we’re doing now.

Would you support the district joining School Choice, which would permit parents to send their children to public school in communities other than that in which they reside?

No. I agree with most of what Superintendent Nolin has said and done, but on this topic I felt she did not adequately make the case last year.  From a financial standpoint, the revenue we would get – around $5,000 per student – seemed likely to be consumed by the cost of the program, especially given the unpredictability of the applicant pool.  The upside was not big enough to make this worthwhile as a financial play.

And there’s more than the financial side.  NPS needs to restore trust with the community.  We need to get back to having parents who are confident their students are getting the best public education in the state, and that confidence needs to be backed by data.  Once we’ve restored that trust, we can revisit the benefits of opening our system to students from other communities.

Would you support keeping the schools’ DEI initiatives even if it may mean losing millions of dollars in federal funding?

No position. I truly hope we don’t wind up in this situation, but given the recklessness of the administration in Washington, we must be prepared.

Losing millions of dollars would mean losing dozens of our talented educators. That is the simple reality of our budget. Putting kids first means we recognize the impact that loss would have on our kids, and we weigh it against the impact of making changes in our system.

The details matter. If we can avoid losing so many educators by, for example, changing language on our website or job titles in the Ed Center, the students would be best served if we make those changes. But if the demand is to ban books or classroom programs that are core to our values and materially enhance our education, then the harm to our students would be too great.

I know my instinct is to fight back, don’t appease, don’t surrender. But if optical or low-cost solutions save dozens of educator jobs, I know that our commitment to belonging will still shine through in our schools.

Are you prepared to close one or more of the city’s elementary schools if data supports doing so?

No position. Our neighborhood schools are the lifeblood of NPS and a big part of what makes Newton such a special place to live. No one is eager to see their local school close.

At the same time: a) we have many schools in need of serious renovation or replacement; b) some schools have seen severely declining enrollment; c) the cost of building new schools has spiked – the new Countryside will cost $75 million.

NPS commissioned a demographer, who forecasted that the school age population in Newton will increase as Baby Boomer homes turn over to young families. We also hope that the percentage of students in private schools will keep declining – it historically sat around 18%, peaked during COVID at 25%, and is now back down around 22%. Both factors could change the enrollment math.

We owe it to our communities to do the work to try to drive up enrollment, and see if we can get all our schools to the healthy and sustainable sizes that justify renewing, rebuilding or reimagining them.

What one big idea or initiative would you champion, once elected?

The biggest thing I can do is help restore trust.  Trust between NPS and educators, NPS and parents, educators and parents. That means doing a lot of empathetic listening to a lot of stakeholders, to understand all the causes of the trust deficit we’ve built over the last few years. And it means communicating very openly about what the schools are doing, why they are doing it, why it’s a good thing.

This is not an executive position, it’s an oversight position.  But in addition to doing the core work like building trust, I will advocate for a deeper strategy on AI. Educators are rightfully concerned about the impact AI is having on their students and we should all be paying attention. How can we teach students to use AI as a lever and not a crutch? How can we prepare them to enter a world where AI will have changed jobs like the PC did 30 years ago? We should also think about how AI can help our educators by lightening their workloads and freeing time to focus on impacting students.