Politics & Government

Marlborough School Committee Candidates

Four candidates are running for three available seats on the Marlborough School Committee.

Editor's Note: Michelle Bodin-Hettinger, Mark Hediger, Earl Geary and Denise Ryan are running for three available seats on the Marlborough School Committee. Each received a questionnaire from Marlborough Patch. What follows are their responses, which are edited only for grammar, punctuation and AP style. The election is Tuesday.

Michelle Bodin-Hettinger

Q: Why do you want to serve on the Marlborough School Committee?  

A: Prior to running for School Committee eight years ago, I had worked with a few other parents to form the Marlborough Education Foundation with the purpose of raising money to provide funds to teachers for projects that were not covered in the budget. In addition I was very involved in PTO activities in my childrens' schools, serving as president of the Jaworek PTO for two years. Through those experiences, I came to find that I was seeing issues in the schools that were not being addressed and I wanted to participate in the process of improving the school district in a more formalized way. After eight years I have a much better understanding of the way school districts work and of what the change process entails. I am very excited to work with our new superintendent who comes to us with a proven track record of raising student achievement and realigning school districts for positive results.

Q: What is your experience, if any, in public office?  

A: I have been on the Marlborough School Committee for eight years.

Q: What qualifies you, personally or professionally, to serve on the committee?
  
A: My primary responsibilities in my work as a social worker are to assess situations, determine where the problems or areas needing improvement lie, and use resources to solve problems. Working with people to help them improve their lives has been my life's work and the skills that I have honed professionally have helped immensely in my work on the committee. In addition, I have held numerous leadership positions both professionally and in volunteer organizations. Lastly, having done the job for two terms, I have learned first-hand about the role of a school committee member and the various responsibilities that it entails.

Q: What is the most significant issue facing Marlborough Schools? Please choose one issue, not several, and elaborate in your answer. Please also explain what you think should be done to address the issue.   

A: Student achievement. The purpose of school districts is to educate children and help to form them into productive members of society. In a diverse community like Marlborough, educating all of our children in ways that work for them is a daunting task. Teachers need to be given the tools in the form of targeted professional development to meet the challenges that the students in their classrooms bring each year, as well as appropriate supplies and educational materials to do their jobs effectively. To raise student achievement, teachers and administrators need to know what their students are doing by way of test scores and other forms of data and they need both guidance and time to analyze that data and to put strategies in place to fill the learning gaps. This is difficult and time consuming work. It depends on committed, consistent leadership over time to see the process through. Unfortunately, Marlborough has seen such high rates of turnover in the superintendency that the district has not had the opportunity to function with a leader long enough to sustain a positive change process. I am confident that we are now moving in the right direction with our new superintendent who has both the skills and commitment to the work that the district needs to make positive gains. As school committee members, it is our role to support the superintendent in his work, to ensure that policies are in place to support the safety, order, and direction that the district needs to move, and to ensure that the resources needed to get the job done are identified. By using data, we need to identify the areas of weakness, commit resources to that need, and support the teachers and administrators in their work.

Q: What do you think should be done to improve Marlborough High School.

A: Marlborough High School is a comprehensive high school that strives to educate a very diverse student body in ways that bring out the strengths in each student. The wide range of academic and co-curricular choices that students have at their disposal rivals any high school in the region. Improving the achievement of the students at Marlborough High is of paramount importance and as stated in question #4, this is a process that is well under way and will continue to be the focus of the administration, staff, faculty, and School Committee.

Q: How long have you lived in Marlborough? What is your occupation and age?

A: I have lived with my husband and our two children in Marlborough for 19 years. I am 51 years old and am a social worker.


Mark Hediger

Q: Why do you want to serve on the Marlborough School Committee?  

A: My interest in serving once again on the Marlborough School Committee stems from my firsthand knowledge of the transformational experiences education may impart upon individuals as individuals. The range of opportunities available to students here in the traditional Marlborough Public Schools is truly vast and going further forward, deserves to be richly framed in the context of a 21st century global economy for the youth of Marlborough. As a consequence of my edifications and experiences, I believe I am uniquely suited to bring a broader view to the School Committee table and the students we serve that reaches beyond the geographical borders of the city.

Q: What is your experience, if any, in public office? 

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A: I am approaching the end of my second four-year term on the Marlborough School Committee. Over that time, I have forged strong professional relationships with parties reaching from the commissioner’s office as well as superintendents, site managers and teaching professionals in other commonwealth and national districts. I have been a touch point for such colleagues, especially over the past four years and believe all of these relationships have elevated my knowledge base and expertise in serving the community of Marlborough. This is my only experience as an adult in public office.

Q: What qualifies you, personally or professionally, to serve on the committee?

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A: My educational experience began in a one-room prairie schoolhouse and culminated with a doctoral dissertation correcting an error in the literature propagated by the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and his laboratories — a transformational experience both personally and professionally. In post-secondary environs, I have been recognized five times in five unique settings for excellence in student instruction by my students and the course administrators. At this time, I am so much more complete a person in these spaces as launching my firm has entailed so many experts in diverse fields beyond the realm of biological chemistries. 

Q: What is the most significant issue facing Marlborough Schools? Please choose one issue, not several, and elaborate in your answer. Please also explain what you think should be done to address the issue. 

A: This is truly a high quality question. I will do my best to supply a reciprocal caliber reply. The single most important issue facing the Marlborough Public Schools is the need for a genuinely content appropriate, professional and timely level of employee assessment and development at all levels of the organization. Our most recent entering Superintendent, Richard Langlois, was not provided a single employee assessment upon taking the helm of the district. This shortcoming was further brought into sharp focus with the findings report from the Commissioner’s Assessment Team from their visit during the last academic year (2012-13).

Furthermore, the failure of the School Committee to provide a comprehensive and complete start-to-finish professional assessment of the superintendent over the past eight years is a most culpable reality. Just recently, the School Committee has chosen not to face its own performance realities as documented by its own self-assessment. No other single action with unification at all levels of the district (contextually repeated within as a fractal by a table member in providing a general visualization for related material) would elevate the educational and social capacities and professionalism of the learning experience our young people are receiving in the traditional public schools in Marlborough. The burden such expectations would place on our district administrators has been discussed at the table, yet in my large organization days, the assessment of up to 200 MS and PhD level professionals was the unwritten expectation and a foundational component of high-level performance – it could be called upon at any time. As a taxpayer and a single vote and table voice, the resistance to this reality enabling performance growth must be confronted and resolved for the best interests of all the District’s students and the imperative need to improve district performance ratings.

All of us have more ladder-to-climb above us than below us. External points of view can only assist in defining the next progressive rungs in that journey. For the Marlborough Public Schools, this endeavor will be a process and not an instantaneous occurrence. The time to initiate such a shift is in its early stages and all should look forward to experiencing the benefits it will bring as it is so long overdue.

Q: What do you think should be done to improve Marlborough High School?

A: The basis of improving the high school in Marlborough beyond providing excellence in assessment of staff as outlined above resides in respecting talent, technology and tolerance in all learning community settings. This trinity of student/staff performance expectations aligns quite smartly with the instructional core — a relevant and strong curriculum, professional staffing and instruction in all settings and engaged learners at all levels. The greatest challenge within the high school setting might reside around the third point, tolerance, in that ‘principled dissent’ must always be held up a sacred avenue of discussion ( see the Federalist Papers). Notwithstanding, dissent for the sole purpose of disruption has no place in a 21st Century learning environment as the principled foundation is non-existent in such a scenario. Strong site administration with expertise in supporting authentic urban student populations as well as prioritizing value-added programming must be free to intervene at such times and redirect the building’s focus and mission to learning for the whole population as opposed to permitting anything less to metastasize and prove toxic to strong educational outcomes. The student body of 20 years ago is demographically extinct at Marlborough High School today and those in the district that have chosen not prepared administratively, intellectually or professionally for this as the 2013 reality in Marlborough are the responsibility of the superintendent and his administrative team as a personnel matter.

Q: How long have you lived in Marlborough? What is your occupation and age? 

A: I have been a Marlborough resident since 1993. My profession is medicinal chemist and I am Founder and President of MEH Associates, Inc. My age is 51 yet I would offer this Lincoln-esque assessment of that question for Marlborough: In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Earl Geary 

Q: Why do you want to serve on the Marlborough School Committee? 

A: I will bring a different approach to the School Committee than I have seen in the last few years. I believe there have been some hinderances to the committee being as efficient as they should be. I feel that personalities shouldn't come into play because it is, after all, about the schools, our teachers, our city, and our kids. We must act responsibly.

Q: What is your experience, if any, in public office?

A: I have no experience in public office. This is the first time I have run for an elected position.

Q: What qualifies you, personally or professionally, to serve on the committee?

A: Retail management is a dynamic profession, every day/month/year brings new challenges. There are so many external factors that affect your success. The more successful people are able to be proactive as well as reactive. You must make logical plans that account for all variables but you must also be able to react when the unforeseen comes along. Over 30 years doing that exact thing, has more than prepared me to deal with the variables facing the School Committee.

Q: What is the most significant issue facing Marlborough Schools? Please choose one issue, not several, and elaborate in your answer. Please also explain what you think should be done to address the issue.

A: First of all I think all the issues facing the School Committee are important and almost none of them have a "quick fix."  There is one issue that will be coming up that is of interest to me. There is a lot of construction happening in the western part of the city. Some of that construction is residential. It will house a lot of families, which also means a lot of new students. Richer School is already at capacity so this will involve some redistricting and perhaps exploring some expansion of schools.

Q: What do you think should be done to improve Marlborough High School?

A: I don't have a glaring issue for the High School. We will continue to work at narrowing the acheivement gap and improving our test scores (STEM is a step toward that), but that is ongoing.

Q: How long have you lived in Marlborough? What is your occupation and age?

A: I have lived in Marlborough for 18 years. I manage the Society of St. Vincent de Paul retail store in Framingham.

Denise Ryan 

Q: Why do you want to serve on the Marlborough School Committee? 

A: From the work I have done with the Kane Elementary School PTO I find that I want to involve myself in the improvement of Marlborough's schools in a broader way. With a son in the STEM Program at the Whitcomb School, another son and a daughter at Kane School, and my youngest daughter at the Early Childhood Center, I realize my family is impacted by almost every decision that the School Committee makes now and in the future. My involvement in the recent principal search at Kane School brought this to the forefront for me. I want to be part of the decision making process that will keep Marlborough's Public School system moving in the right direction. My four children are the motivations that will drive me to make thoughtful decisions as a member of the School Committee. 

Q: What is your experience, if any, in public office? 

A: I do not have any experience in public office. 

Q: What qualifies you, personally or professionally, to serve on the committee? 

A: Personally, I have been the Kane School PTO Co-President since 2011. Not only am I an active parent and volunteer in my children's schools, I am also an active member of the Marlborough community. As a Marlborough Junior Woman's Club member for the last six years, I have participated in numerous annual community events that help people in Marlborough and the surrounding areas. I have a strong commitment to my community and am willing to put in the time and effort it takes to make sure every child has the best education possible. 

Professionally, as a project manager for an interior design and construction   management company, I have managed multi-million dollar projects and have experience with budgeting, implementation, and oversight. 

Q: What is the most significant issue facing Marlborough Schools? Please choose one issue, not several, and elaborate in your answer. Please also explain what you think should be done to address the issue.

A: I think everyone was disappointed by the recent MCAS results. It is up to the           School Committee to collaborate with the Superintendent and other education professionals to find the best way to close the achievement gap and meet the state level of standards. That is not something I can solely determine. 

Q: What do you think should be done to improve Marlborough High School?

A: I have heard good things from several parents of Marlborough High School   students about the education that their children are receiving. As one of the seven members of the school committee, it is my goal to work together to raise the bar for everyone throughout the district. 

Q: How long have you lived in Marlborough? What is your occupation and age?

A: I am a lifelong resident of Massachusetts and have lived in Marlborough for 12 years. Until recently, I have worked in the furniture, interior design and   construction management business for more than 20 years. I am 41 years old. 


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