Chris Brezski

Questions and Answers

Question 1: What in your background prepares you to be effective in the political office you are seeking?

My professional career demands the ability to make decisions with imperfect information, but with intense data-driven analysis. It also requires the ability to transparently explain decisions, and the process that led to them. I have always been an education advocate/volunteer, and was a volunteer economics teacher in two New York City High Schools.

Locally, I was intimately involved in the return of Newton students to classrooms last year. I led an effort to persuade NPS to adopt a medical advisory committee of resident physicians to guide a safe return to in-person learning.

Question 2: If you're elected, what will be your first priority? Why? How will you address your priority?

My first priority is restoring student learning, and supporting those kids who have not had a robust academic experience over the last 18 months. There is no greater priority for NPS right now than to restore an upward trajectory of learning for all students. Achieving this will take time, and will require iterations of evaluation and support. We need to identify those students still struggling and both expand existing programs and likely enact new programs of support. I encourage the use of our federal pandemic dollars to support these programs that are specifically addressing pandemic-related learning loss.

Question 3: What is your plan to communicate the Newton schools’ plans, decisions, and programs to residents without children in Newton schools? How will you engage with them?

A School Committee member represents not just the parents of NPS students, but all of Newton’s residents. I will encourage the Mayor and City Councilors to include NPS information in their constituent communications. I will seek to expand efforts that NPS has only recently made by hosting virtual office hours and regular emails. I will seek to have transcripts, with translations, of all School Committee meetings posted on the NPS website. Finally, I will encourage a program where NPS students produce summaries of School Committee meetings and submit to the Patch and Tab as articles.