Thursday, November 10, 2011

Did Cambridge Voters Just Favor Charter School Ideas Over Public Schools?

The municipal election results are in for Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In the city council race, after you sort out all the noise, Minka vanBeuzekom is replacing incumbent Sam Seidel. Leland Cheung, the newcomer and first Asian-American councilor elected two years ago, has become the highest vote getter.

On the school committee, Mervan Osborne defeated incumbent Nancy Tauber.

Nancy has been on the School Committee for four years and always pointed to her classroom experience as a teacher in Newton and her commitment to public school education.

Mervan is a teacher at Beacon Academy, a charter school in Boston that takes students from around the metro area for a bridge year between eighth and ninth grade. Before that he was a teacher at the private school Buckingham Browne & Nichols. And he is also on the board of directors at Concord Academy.

In other words, Cambridge voters just traded a public school teacher for a charter/private school teacher. That could be a sea change.

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