Bruce Hedison, who retired to Newton in 2024 after 33 years of teaching in Boston, seeks to bring his decades of experience to the Ward 7 seat of the School Committee.

“I just bring a different perspective to the table,” Hedison said. “I have 33 years of teaching under my belt in the same district.”

Hedison, 59, who grew up in Chelmsford, is the fourth generation in his family to pursue a career in education. He earned a technology education degree at Fitchburg State University, got his first job in Hudson in 1990 as a drafting and architecture teacher, and developed Hudson High School’s first physics and robotics class with grants from the National Science Foundation.

He is up against incumbent Alicia Piedalue for the Ward 7 seat. Before Piedalue ran for Ward 7, she served on the governing board for The Eliot Innovation School, a K-8 school that, because of school choice, has become disproportionately white. White students, who make up only 15 percent of the population in Boston public schools, account for 63 percent of Eliot’s enrollment.

Hedison said Piedalue and several other Boston families tried to take over Charlestown High School in Boston to make it just as exclusionary. He compared the Eliot school to a charter school. He said that making Charlestown an innovation school would make it difficult for students in low-income areas to attend the school.

“When [The Eliot] turned into this innovation charter school, which is still under Boston Public Schools, children in those schools had like a single percent of getting in versus living in the affluent areas of Boston,” Hedison said, “I just believe that public education is for all, no matter what.”

Piedalue counters that criticism by pointing out that both Eliot and Charlestown are open-enrollment public schools. The Eliot School cannot choose its students based on exam scores or other metrics. Students attend Eliot through zoning and a lottery system, she said, and Charlestown High would be no different if it had earned innovation school status.

“With respect to the Charlestown High innovation plan, it is accurate that there were a group of families who attempted to get Charlestown High ‘innovation school status.’ which is the status the Eliot school has,” Piedalue said. “They are still absolutely open-enrollment schools. You do not choose who goes there, and, in fact, Charlestown High draws from areas that have plenty of low-income students.”

Over the course of his career, Hedison said he grew the school’s technology department and taught everything from computer design to photo editing.

“It went from me at my school as the only technology teacher to currently now there’s seven,” Hedison said.

Hedison, who does not have children, said he decided to run after hearing about the two-week teachers’ strike in 2024, in which the teachers demanded higher wages.

“I always wondered why there weren’t many people on school committees with a background in education that had been in the trenches,” Hedison said.

He said it is important to have a voice on the school board that can empathize with school employees and advocate for the teachers.

“To hear about the disconnect between the teachers and the school committee and the city council and the mayor and the previous superintendent, it was really disheartening,” he said.

Hedison experienced budget cuts as a teacher in Hudson and was moved around to various positions as a result. He later chaired a council that advises the government on Hudson’s insurance needs and became president of the Hudson Teachers Association.

“We went into interest-based bargaining where everybody goes into the same room as equals,” he said, “and you have honest conversations and you are fully transparent with, you know, budgeting, what the needs are on both sides.”

His experience has also helped shape his opinions on such topics as multi-level learning and school choice.

Multi-level classrooms, which have been controversial in Newton, can be effective in some cases, he said, but the committee should prioritize teachers’ feedback before implementation. Multi-level learning involves placing students of different levels in the same classroom to learn a subject at different paces.

“I believe that it should be happening at the high school level,” Hedison said. “Now, when we talk about humanities, that’s a whole different subject. We have to listen to the educators in the classroom, and they are saying that in math or science, it is needed.”

Hedison witnessed the outcomes of school choice in his previous district and didn’t think the program was beneficial.

“I don’t agree with school choice for Newton,” Hedison said. “The reason behind it is that we need to have our resources right now for our kids in Newton and to fund our schools and to take care of our own right now.”

Discrimination and Islamophobia have been on the rise in Newton Schools amid the war in Gaza, and Hedison said there’s no room for that in the school system.

“My feeling is that schools have to deal with any type of discrimination needs to be dealt with,” Hedison said. “And schools need to be a neutral zone when it comes to politics. You can have discussions, but it all has to be with a level of respect.”

This story is part of a partnership between the Newton Beacon and the Boston University Department of Journalism.