Natick 2021 Candidate Profile: Catherine Brunell For School Board

NATICK, MA — The School Committee race in Natick in 2021 is a three-way contest for two seats.

Two incumbents — Matt Brand and Shai Fuxman — are aiming to keep their seats, but first-time candidate Catherine Brunell is hoping to earn a spot on the committee.

Ahead of Natick's March 30 election, Patch asked School Committee and Select Board candidates to answer our questionnaire to help voters get to know them better. Here's how Brunell answered:

Catherine Brunell

Age (as of Election Day): 44
Position Sought: School Committee
Party Affiliation: Independent
Family: Spouse: Matt Children: Turner (16), Jane (13), Hank (11), Georgia (9), Ross (7) - Jules our Goldendoodle, Coco our Fish, and "the Girls" our Hens.
Education: BA in Economics, cum laude
Occupation Elementary Teacher - 3 years; Teacher Support Staff - 1 Year; Campus Minister at Boston College - 4 years
Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office: Town Meeting Member, Precinct 9
Campaign website: www.catherine2021.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

I am running for the Natick School Committee for two important reasons. First, I have a unique ability to advocate for our students across the district. Our family has attended Natick Public Schools for more than a decade and we now have five children ranging from first grade to high school in the district. We have seen the ages and stages multiple times with very different learners and are deeply involved in this community because of our children. As a former elementary school teacher in 2nd and 4th grades and now as a dedicated coach to any team I serve, I have spent my life working to impact children in positive ways. I would be honored to serve as a School Committee member through a community focused, student centered lens.

Secondly, I have a tenacious curiosity. I will not give up on complicated subjects and will seek out people to help me understand them from all sides. I will ask questions publicly, yours and mine, so that our district can make the best decisions in a thorough process. The School Committee in Natick oversees a budget that is close to $100M. The way we spend that money is a moral statement on our priorities. I have been and will continue to dive deep into the budget to ensure that the priorities of our community are explicitly discussed and clearly tied to our dollars.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

The single most pressing issue facing our district is getting our children back to school in the safest way for our students and teachers. I intend to dig into the data about 3 key areas: COVID, learning loss, and the students’ social emotional needs. My questions will start with what our administration’s plan is to address each of these areas in specific and age appropriate ways and I will follow up continuously over the next 3 years of my term asking how effective the plan is and where we need to adjust.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I differ from the other two candidates because I see a need for changes within our School Committee norms and practices. I want to see our committee using best practices when it comes to three key areas - how they use the time in their meetings, in the school’s budgeting process and in how they involve the community.

In our school committee meetings, working together with the administration is important but best practice emphasizes that boundaries exist between the two entities. The administration is the HOW we do anything while the School Committee provides oversight about why we do things the way we do and how any of it is going. When it can do this well, it strengthens our schools because the schools are able to stand in the confidence that thoroughness provides. When we see very little work actually happening in the only place where the School Committee members are allowed to debate, and when we see very few subcommittee meetings of our full committee, it's hard to understand how our committee comes to consensus so often. The public should be able to see the committee work through the data that is being considered, hear the debate between our members and understand the processes upon coming to a decision.

Our budgeting process also needs improvement for clarity, thoroughness and public confidence. Our Finance Committee should be able to tune into our School Committee meetings and see a thorough vetting of the budget. The School Committee is ultimately responsible for bringing forth what is needed for our students and reflecting our community priorities through the numbers. They are also responsible for tracking that spending all year long. When the next budget begins each fall, the net zero budgeting that the schools use should be obvious to anyone who watches the budgeting process.

Finally, the way in which we engage with the public needs to be improved. This is hard relational work that requires task forces, advisory committees, school councils and accessibility to our leaders. We do a lot of inviting people to the table in Natick in controlled processes but we lack a desire to be hospitable to the chaotic frenzy that an open process brings. Community is no doubt messy, but as a leader, I find it absolutely worth engaging. When done well, it offers the promise of emerging on the other side with a plan that will stand up better because of the process. The best process yields the best outcome - more people with one another than against because they have been authentically involved.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

First, I deeply respect the efforts and time commitment that those who serve on the entire school committee make. This respect extends, of course, to the two incumbents. Second, I am also sure that in three years, anyone will be able to name a few of my shortcomings.

I am getting into this race ready to learn but also willing to point out some areas where our schools and current committee could improve. With that spirit, I am answering this question to draw a distinction from the two incumbents.

It is one thing to possess the knowledge in Technology (Mr. Brand) and Social Emotional Learning (Dr. Fuxman) and it is quite another thing to activate that knowledge base so that it directly impacts our students. In short, both incumbents have careers and backgrounds that I wish they would have activated more while in office. Both had time on the school committee to fiercely advocate in these areas and they did not.

Let’s start with an issue that straddles both technology and social-emotional learning: our high school hybrid learning model, a model which the school committee, including Dr. Fuxman and Mr. Brand, voted unanimously to approve. The hybrid learning model for the High School is not a model across the state, as the incumbents say it is. Our High School students saw a teacher live for 5 days out of the month in any one subject in the fall and now have 4 days live and 2 remote synchronous days in each subject. This is leaving many of our High School students without the rigor that they are capable of nor the consistent adult presence that their social emotional needs call for.

Focusing in on technology, NPS has a goal to expand our 1:1 (device to student) program into the 5th and 6th grades in the FY22 school year. If that happens, 4 technicians will support all of the devices in NPS with a ratio of 1 technician to 800 devices. If we count all of the devices used by students, teachers and staff, 4 technicians are currently supporting over 10,000 devices in our district. These are ratios whereby devices do not get properly serviced. Natick has been a 1:1 district for some time, and as we have added devices, we have actually decreased our technicians. In the last three years, and especially before COVID, I would have liked Mr. Brand to have argued more explicitly for the technicians that are needed to support these investments.

Finally, there is the roll-out of the remote learning academy, which the School Committee approved for implementation. We chose a near entirely asynchronous platform for the district, without sophisticated family-level surveying of what those families (who were in RLA) wanted and without a vetting of the third party vendor used at the elementary level. For grades K-5, this came with a $100K price tag for the Edgenuity platform. The asynchronous program at the elementary level proved to be so challenging for students that the district abandoned it entirely half-way through the year. The committee could have made a different choice at the outset supported by data and community input. It also could have provided more support to those teachers and staff had they asked questions about how it was going and what the experience of the learners was in the program. Two of my children were in this academy at the start of the year and while I can say the teachers made lemonade out of lemons, our School Committee’s approval of this program was not informed.

Moving onto social-emotional learning, I want to highlight the proposed cuts in the Spring of 2020 which threatened the Social Emotional security of families and students which were handled in such a poor manner. Both of these happened on Dr. Fuxman and Mr. Brand’s watch, but, with Dr. Fuxman, this is a place I especially would have liked to have seen him use his expertise. The school committee, not the administration, chose to keep attention-grabbing cuts on the table for theatre, sports and a potential mid-pandemic closure of Johnson Elementary School. This now feels as if it was a way to somehow rally the community, rather than looking for different solutions. Dr. Fuxman had a chance to stand up for the social emotional needs of theatre kids, athletes and students at Johnson and he did so only a month into what was panic inducing. I was grateful for the honesty that both incumbents shared the night of the PTO forum when they admitted that this was handled poorly but I won’t wait for campaign season to speak up for our kids. Dr. Fuxman also shared that the committee eventually found other places to cut and avoided the drastic “scorched earth” tactics. While true, everyone involved would have preferred the School Committee had found those cuts in the first place instead of bringing our kids into this in the middle of a pandemic. I know I will make mistakes, but I will not go along with any plan like this that impacted students and families without a careful and public discussion of those plans.

While I’m grateful for the public service that both incumbents have taken on, I am running because we can do better for our kids and for this community.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

Overall, they had to respond to an unprecedented global health crisis and it is no surprise that our leaders did some truly great things and missed on a few others. As for truly great, the response that was coordinated by the Board of Health, Natick Public Schools, Facilities and our first responders was tremendous. Nurses from the schools were redeployed over the summer to support an understaffed Board of Health, Department Heads met weekly with the School’s administration and careful choices were made to ensure that PPE, cleaning materials and structural supports were shared across the Town and Schools.

The mistakes were made when the virus spread into our budget. And, to be fair, the fault lines for the crisis that ensued were laid before COVID. I’ve actually reached out to former School Committee members and Dr. Joe Keefe, the former Superintendent of Natick Public Schools, to understand what the relationships in the town and schools looked like before COVID and even before the seemingly widening Town/School split that has characterized the past decade. Balanced leadership, a focus on cross government relationships and efforts to inform and educate residents were all things that Natick worked on and excelled at at times. I am committed to being a leader that is grounded in such an ethic so that a budget crisis does not turn into a personnel crisis (having lost two excellent department heads last year) nor does it reinforce old lines and pit our government agencies - town and schools - against one another. Our residents don't have time, or the money, for our leaders not to work together. I have a lot to learn and people to meet but I'm excited to continue to put the effort in!

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

The ABC’s of my campaign can be found at www.bit.ly/CatherineABC:

• Align our budgets with community priorities
• Back budget decisions with data
• Create policies with meaningful community input

In everything I do, I am grounded in the belief that our community is our best resource for one another and that details build confidence.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I am a former elementary school teacher.

I have a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, cum laude and a Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry from Boston College.

I served as a Campus Minister at Boston College before staying home for the last 12 years with my 5 children.

I am a published author, "Becoming Catholic Again, a Spiritual memoir" (Loyal Press, Chicago).

I created material, led small groups and presented for SPARK Kindness

I co-founded Protect Natick’s Future and served as a Town Meeting member last year.

I completed the Boston Marathon in 1999 and more recently, 3 Olympic Triathlons. I love to coach soccer and hockey.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

From my dad… “Listen more than you talk.”

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

I am ready to listen and work with our administration and current committee to achieve the best things for our students. As a challenger to two incumbents, I understand people’s hesitancy to change and yet I hope that we are brave enough to believe that our Schools and School Committee can always get better. We say to our students and children that “not yet” is a powerfully hopeful thing to say. I would be so proud to represent you on the Natick Public School Committee as a listener and an active community advocate. Thank you for considering me in the March 30th election!