School Election Results Announced

A few minutes after midnight, the conversations of the 40 townspeople and 30 staff members in the Cambridge Senior Center quieted down.

After a four hour wait, the Cambridge Public School Committee election results were to be announced. The three candidates present, Patricia M. Nolan ’80, Alan R. Steinert, Jr. ’58. and Alice L. Turkel stood with the rest of the Cantabrigian present to hear the results.

The candidates were announced in order of decreasing vote count: Nancy Tauber, Richard N. Harding, Jr., Marc C. McGovern, Alfred B. Fantini, Nolan, Turkel, Joseph G. Grassi, Steinert, and Charles L. Stead, Sr.Of this list of nine, the first six are to seat the school committee for the next two years.

The turnout of 14,944 voters–an increase of nearly 1,500 votes from the last election—represents an anomaly to the recent trend of declining voter participation.

The results announced early this morning are considered “unofficial,” however, as the remaining 1017 ballots will be counted later today.

Although the final results have yet to be formally declared, it is unlikely that the election results will change, according to Ethridge King, one of the Cambridge election commissioners.

The voting scheme requires voters to initially rank their top six candidates in order to narrow the pool down to five. The candidate with the fewest number one rankings is eliminated and the ballots in favor of this candidate are redistributed to the voter’s second choice. The process is repeated until six candidates remain.  A final vote of 2135 is required in order to gain a seat in the school committee.

Stead was eliminated first, followed by Steinert and Grassi.

Current and former Cambridge School Committee members said they were surprised at Grassi’s elimination. “We always knew that one of us would lose—I just didn’t think Grassi would be one of them,” said Nolan.

John Hill, a senior member of the City of Cambridge, said she hoped the election results would create “transparency and power for the council.”

Like many others present in the room, she was optimistic towards the possibility for change in the dynamics of the school committee. “I’m hoping that we’ll have a radical result, perhaps some new members,” said Alan Dobson, another Cambridge resident.

A central issue in the election was the recent announcement of the Cambridge public school district’s failing test scores—despite spending $25,000 on each student.

“I don’t understand why our kids are not coming out with a competitive edge. It is definitely not the budget. It has to be the administration; it has to be the teachers; it has to be the committee,” said Saundra Granjin, a mother of five Cambridge Public School graduates. “They have to find a way to boost these kids’ confidence and get them more involved,” she added.

According to Robert Winters, creator of a website providing each candidate’s platform, “the school committee is not what’s going to turn it around. It’s the administration.”

With three women and two new members, the school committee’s dynamics will most likely be different from previous years, said Luc Schuster, a former member of the school committee.