Re-Elect Elaine Brighty for School Committee
Experienced in putting all the pieces together
-- to support what works and where we want to go
Elaine was appointed to the Amherst School Committee in 1999, and has served as chair since 2002. She has been an active participant in Town Meeting and the Joint Capital Planning Committee for almost 7 years, and recognizes how all the pieces of our governing structure and community are related. She has seen how a decision in one arena may ripple throughout the community.
Elaine lives with her husband David Cox, their two children, and four cats on Woodside Avenue. She has a PhD in biology, and came to Amherst in 1979. Both her children attended local preschools and Wildwood Elementary School. Her son graduated from our high school in 2003 and has attended Hampshire College; her daughter will graduate in 2007.
Elaine understands where our schools have been, where we are now, and where our community wants to go. She's working in partnership with people throughout our community to protect our core values despite our budget challenges. Under Massachusetts law, School Committees do not control the day-to-day workings of any school or any individual in them. No School Committee member can dictate what happens in your child's classroom, or change the practices in your child's school. Elaine knows how to leverage policy and budget to keep our focus on the achievement of every child, every day.
Elaine knows our children graduate into a very challenging world. She has a good understanding of what competitive colleges expect due to her admissions work for Amherst College. She also knows that every student needs to have a sense of belonging so they can find their own niche to achieve their best, whether that niche is advanced physics, cooking, Chinese, or Ultimate. Her work on the Amherst & Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committees has supported all our children by:
What our School Committee did during my first term that makes me most proud:
- Continued providing excellent preK-12 education, despite harsh economic realities
- Maintained reasonable elementary school class sizes
- Hired & evaluated excellent Superintendent
- Initiated more effective evaluation of administrators & teachers
- Improved transparency of both data & decision making process
- Improved communication & relationship between elementary parent groups, & between elementary parent groups & School Committee members & the rest of Town Government
Challenges I am prepared for us to tackle if re-elected:
- Achievement for every student, & a sense of belonging for every student
- Eliminating the achievement gap between children of color & white children
- Eliminating differences of discipline issues between children of color & white children
- More creative recruitment & retention of teachers of color
- Renewed & reinvigorated professional development: giving teachers the resources they need to more fully meet the challenges of heterogeneous classrooms
- Long term planning for school buildings, including a thorough examination of class/grade configurations preK-12
- Ways of both informing & involving more people in discussions, ranging from how to interpret standardized test scores, to how not to lose the home-school partnership when your child moves on to Middle School & High School
- Restructuring the Regional Assessment agreement to provide equity for all 4 towns
- Reducing high school class size while not increasing directed study (study hall)
- Continued efficiencies in town-school collaboration on facilities & infrastructure