Christine Fisher moved to Newton with her husband and two kids from Cincinnati, Ohio, two years ago for Newton’s acclaimed school system.

Her son William, 12, attends F.A. Day Middle School, and her son Benjamin, 10, attends Cabot Elementary School.

Now, Fisher is running for Newton’s Ward 2 School Committee seat, currently held by Chair Chris Brezski, who’s not running for reelection.

“Newton schools have a fantastic reputation,” she said. “We really need to work to rebuild trust between the community and the schools…and so I really want to make sure that we’re elevating parent voice in our decision-making process as a school committee.”

Budgets and curriculum

After she graduated with an engineering degree from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, Fisher moved to Ohio, where she worked for the manufacturing and marketing company Procter & Gamble for almost 13 years.

In Newton, Fisher served on the Cabot Council as a parent representative for two years, including a term as chair. She has also served on the board of Temple Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Newton.

She plans to continue her community involvement on the F.A. Day Middle School council this upcoming year.

She co-founded Possip, a technology company that surveys about 1 million families across the country every year to help school districts get better feedback from families.

Every year, Newton Public School District has a budget overhaul, in which it uses funds from the previous years to account for shortfalls. Fisher believes the solution to the budget conflicts facing the district over the last couple of years is to listen to community voices.

“I just see the impact that having strong education systems in a community can have on the outcomes for those kids,” Fisher said.

Fisher believes that her background in data analysis and experience with school district finances will be useful to the committee, but she says she also values qualitative input and human perspective.

“I think at the high schools we need to move away from multilevel in one classroom environments and go back to having multiple levels of offerings for students, particularly in math,” Fisher said.

Fisher believes that multilevel classroom learning should not be implemented at the high school level because data shows students are not learning at the rates the district wants. She says they shouldn’t implement it at the elementary level either because it may pigeonhole students into a learning path too early.

“While we’re making data-based decisions as a school district,” Fisher said, “People’s lived experiences are really important in that process as well, and it’s important that we’re not just listening to the loudest voices in our community, but that we’re understanding broadly the impact that the decisions we’re making are having on the people living with them.”

Building support

When Mayor Ruthanne Fuller requested a Proposition 2 1/2 override in 2023, which would have increased Newton’s tax levy above 2.5% to add $9.2 million to the 2024 fiscal year budget, voters rejected it.

In response to this lack of support, Fisher says she wants to focus on community outreach over the next couple of years to ensure all Newton residents understand how NPS plans to allocate its funds.

“I think moving forward, we really do need to work on getting more community support so that there is a potential to go back and ask for funding for the community sometime in the future,” Fisher said.

She doesn’t think the proposition will get passed in the next couple of years. As a solution, Fisher suggests taking communication a step further and reaching out to all Newton residents for support, even if they do not have children in the school system.

Rates of bias-related incidents have increased in Newton schools as a result of the Israel-Gaza war, and combating these incidents is a priority for Fisher.

“We are raising two Jewish boys in this community and are deeply involved in our synagogue life, and one of the reasons that we left Ohio was because of some increasing rates of antisemitism,” Fisher said.

She says her solution is to build up community dialogue to help all members feel safe and ensure staff are well trained on how to handle discrimination when it does occur.

“When I left my big corporate job, I said that ‘every room I’m in I want to be about improving outcomes for kids’,” Fisher said. “I see a lot of opportunity for me to bring that experience and passion to the committee.”