Ricky Finlay Running For Framingham School Committee In 2021

FRAMINGHAM, MA — District 2 School Committee member Ricky Finlay will run for a full term in 2021, which would return him to committee for a fourth time.

Finlay, 49, was most recently appointed to the District 2 seat in March following the unexpected death of Karen Dempsey in late 2020. But Finlay's School Committee career began more than a decade ago when he first won a seat.

In 2009, Finlay picked up a one-year term in a special election, and then won a full term in 2010. He resigned from the School Committee in late 2011 due to his job responsibilities, but then won election in 2016 and in the first city election in 2017. Finlay resigned from the School Committee in 2019 to run for City Council, ultimately losing to District 2 Councilor Cesar Stewart-Morales.

Finlay is running for a full term in 2021 for a variety of reasons, he said: creating a universal pre-kindergarten system, helping get a new school built south of Route 9 and working on mental health issues for students in the wake of the pandemic.

"This past year has been hard on students and families," he said in an election announcement Tuesday. "The pandemic changed everything and has brought new challenges to the way we educate our kids. As a School Committee member, I am committed to working with my fellow members to make sure we are tackling these new challenges in the best way for our students, as we collectively emerge from this pandemic."

Outside the School Committee, Finlay has been a youth football coach, a member of the Fuller Middle School building committee and chairs the Framingham Disability Commission — which was founded by Dempsey two decades ago. He has a daughter at Framingham High School and a son attending Cameron Middle School.

Candidates in Framingham's 2021 election can begin pulling papers to run on June 1. All but the two City Council At-Large seats are up for election in November.