Why Vote HELEN CHARLUPSKI for School Committee? Experience Matters
Why Vote HELEN CHARLUPSKI for School Committee? Experience Matters
Like you, I care deeply about the Public Schools of Brookline. Like you, I am concerned and frustrated by recent budget challenges and especially this year’s difficult choices. Unlike any of the other candidates, I have been on the School Committee when we have faced times just as difficult as these, and I know what we need to make it through.
Experience matters.
Knowing the Brookline community, the School community, our state and local partners in education, and our partners on the Town side is all critical to building the kind of broad-based support that the schools need to weather this moment and return to the stability they urgently need to rebuild and thrive. No other candidate can provide that experienced leadership on the School Committee to help return our schools to the sustainable excellence our community expects and deserves.
I have been a leader in the Brookline schools for decades, and I’m proud of my record:
I led on the School Committee to invest in developing BEEP and focus on high quality early childhood education, the foundation of how we make progress on educational equity.
I led the effort to have full-day Kindergarten in Brookline and to keep it when the first years of special grants ended.
I helped lead the effort to partner more closely with the Community Mental Health Center, bringing critical programming like BRYT into the schools to support students returning after long absences.
I was a founding member of the 21st Century Fund that began raising private funds so that BHS teachers could innovate in the classroom, and then I advocated on the School Committee to continue the most successful programming in our operating budget.
I have led more than five major school renovation projects for the School Committee and helped on every override we’ve needed for operating and capital improvements.
I have done all that because I care deeply about our community, our schools, our students, and our educators. I am particularly concerned in this moment about how to support our talented educators whose work defines the excellence of this system. We want to be the place they aspire to be and want to stay. When Brookline is that kind of place, our paraprofessionals stay and become teachers; our teachers stay and become school leaders; our school leaders stay and lead the innovation that makes us a destination district for families and staff alike.
I also know there are no easy answers, no “new approach” that hasn’t been considered. The School Committee will have to make some hard choices that have real consequences; we already have done that to eliminate our current year deficit. We are working toward doing that to close the gap for next year.
Yes, the system is struggling, and when that happens some people want to point fingers. I want to point to how we’ve managed similar times in the past because I know we will manage this time too. We can do this: together.
I ask that you cast one of your three School Committee votes for Helen Charlupski so that I can continue helping lead our schools back to excellence.