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School Committee candidates agree that recent cuts to the U.S. Department of Education could affect New Bedford’s most vulnerable students. But each has different ideas on how best to support those students should public schools lose out on federal funding.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the federal agency responsible for allocating funding for special education, free meals, and other integral programs has shrunk by nearly half. Some public education advocates are wary that the department’s operations could nearly cease altogether.
New Bedford Public Schools receives nearly 10% of its total budget from the federal government — a significant hole to fill should the Department of Education go belly up. In April, the Trump administration terminated $106 million in grant funding for Massachusetts’ K-12 public schools, including more than $15 million marked for New Bedford, before eventually restoring the funds in June.
The Light reached out to all four School Committee candidates for their thoughts on how best to support New Bedford students in a shifting political and fiscal landscape. Candidates Marcus Coward and Rick Porter agreed to sit-down interviews. Neither challenger Von Marie Moniz nor incumbent Melissa Costa scheduled an interview after multiple requests over a two-week period.
Porter, a former principal and Dartmouth union leader, emphasized the need for advocacy at the local and state levels to ensure that school districts continue to receive the funding they need — while also taking a hard look at where the district’s money is already going.
“Of the money that’s being allocated, can we make a direct throughline to what students need?” Porter asked.
Porter said he would make sure the district’s budget ties directly back to its stated goals in the district improvement plan. He has not yet read the district improvement plan, he added, but he would also draw from his personal experience as a campus leader in Dartmouth Public Schools.
“You have to talk to the people that are on the ground,” Porter said. “I’ll use, for example, our bilingual students, or ELL [English Language Learner] population. Yes, we should be taking some data of progress, monitoring different levels of assessments, but we should be talking to those teachers that are working with our data and say, ‘What do you see as identifying their needs?’ and then making that connection to, ‘What do they need as resources to meet those needs?’”
Like Porter, Coward said the district should remain equally committed to exploring new funding opportunities and making sure the district’s budget is as efficient as possible. The district could also cut costs by relying more heavily on parent volunteers, he said, to chaperone classrooms or lead after-school activities.
“Obviously, we need trusted adults in the building, but any family members who are willing and have the time to do it, I think would be a net positive for everyone, decreasing teacher burnout and helping students feel more comfortable in school,” Coward said.
A proud member of Generation Z, Coward stressed the importance of leadership that can directly relate to students and their academic needs. Part of his goal, he said, is to support a curriculum that better engages students, in turn driving up the district’s attendance rates. Coward said both financial literacy courses and AI literacy courses would help better prepare students for the working world.
“So many young adults, even kids in schools, want to know how to pay taxes,” Coward said. “They just want to know what the mortgage is, or how to take out a loan. Basic budgeting skills, also, to prepare them to be an adult and know how important money is.”
New Bedford students’ standardized test scores continue to struggle post-pandemic, and chronic absenteeism remains a districtwide challenge despite recent progress. New Bedford students’ most recent MCAS scores have shown either little to no improvement or a decline in math, science, and English language arts.
In a recent virtual roundtable with Light columnist Jack Spillane, none of the participating School Committee candidates, which included Porter, Coward, and Moniz, endorsed the state-issued MCAS test as the primary way the school district should evaluate students. Only Porter acknowledged that New Bedford students’ poor MCAS scores could be a cause for alarm. Still, candidates agreed that there should be some way to measure student progress.
Recent federal policies have also affected school culture outside of education. In light of recent Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, this past summer, activists pressured the New Bedford School Committee to take a stand to support the district’s immigrant students and families and pass a “Safe Zone” resolution affirming existing policies on how to interact with immigration enforcement officials.
Both Porter and Coward said the best way to support immigrant and bilingual students is to hire instructors with similar cultural backgrounds. Coward said the district could offer bilingual instructors a higher starting salary.
Porter said he often considered personal background when hiring in Dartmouth, evaluating for both competence and environmental “fit.” In turn, the relationships instructors built with students and families would often increase engagement and attendance.
“When kids are not making that connection with staff, when they’re not seeing themselves in their teachers, what is the impetus to come to school then?” Porter said.
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org
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