‘A Conduit For the Public’: Jessica Goetz Promises School Committee Accountability, Transparency

In a densely packed field of eighteen candidates for Cambridge School Committee, Jessica D. Goetz said she stands out, promising to make the School Committee more efficient and accessible.

A parent of two students at Darby Vassall Upper School and a Cambridge resident since 2011, Goetz wants to increase the ransparency of the School Committee. Her work as an epidemiologist, she said, equips her to find the root causes of issues in the district.

“I have been working with data to target interventions and to find patterns and figure out how to attend to things that need change,” she said.

Calls for transparency have permeated through the district after a contentious superintendent search, ongoing achievement gaps, and the past committee’s decision to close Kennedy-Longfellow elementary school. Goetz said she wants to transform processes of the School Committee to make decisions more transparent and to reach goals more effectively.

This focus on procedure, she said, is what makes her campaign unique.

“I am really focused on how we are getting things done, because thoughts and dreams for our schools are important and lovely, but if we are not codifying the way that we do things being neat and transparent processes, then we’re always going to be behind in terms of community buy-in and implementation,” she said.

Goetz said that the practices and organization of the present School Committee is a significant reason why she decided to run.

“We elect School Committee members to help govern our schools and to act as a conduit for the public in the governance process, and we have a School Committee that doesn't do that,” she said.

If elected, Goetz promised to hold weekly office hours and monthly listening meetings to hear input from the public. She also has plans to improve the website and meeting streaming platform to make information and news about the schools more accessible.

“We could use technology way better, like the School Committee website is just a jumbled mess of uselessness,” she said.

Another key area of improvement for Goetz are the School Committee meetings themselves.

“I’d really love to see meetings just not feel like a waste of time,” she said. “I’ve never left a School Committee meeting and thought to myself, 'Well, thank goodness I didn't have dinner with my family tonight.'”

Among the many ideas Goetz has to improve School Committee meetings and process is to establish report back deadlines for the Superintendent for committee-assigned tasks, as well as creating a public timeline for the School Committee's specific goals.

She also called for greater transparency from School Committee members on working policies to allow for public input before voting and the addition of a non-voting member of the Cambridge Education Association — the union representing teachers and staff in the district — to the meeting to include teacher perspectives.

“I would love for them to be thoughtful, community based, exercises in democracy, where missing dinner with your family was worth it because now you fully understand what the situation of upper schools is, and what we're thinking about doing to change some things,” she said.

Goetz said that focusing on process would help to address many of the important issues the district is facing, including ongoing achievement gaps, by facilitating family engagement. She added that family engagement is the “crux” to closing the achievement gap.

“Creating a School Committee that is committed to being accountable and accessible and responsive and transparent, that is almost more important than the variety of extremely important issues that face our schools,” she said. “If we do not have good governance, it’s not clear to me how we're going to do anything for our schools.”

— Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at claire.michal@thecrimson.com.