One of the biggest misperceptions we’ve heard about our candidacy is that this race is about replacing the superintendent.

It is not. This election is about leadership at the Board of Education, and the future of Westport schools. It’s about whether the BOE can govern confidently and proactively, working with our superintendent to overcome blind spots and protect our public schools.

Another major misperception has to do with “endorsed” candidates.

The Westport Democratic Town Committee endorsed 2 candidates for the Board of Education, highlighting their vetting process. In August, one of those candidates withdrew from the race. The other candidate, who is an appointee on the current board, has access to party-provided resources like funding, voter data and campaign coordination.

We did not receive the 72-member DTC endorsement, so we don’t have access to party resources. But we wouldn’t trade our route to the ballot for anything. We earned our spot by securing the handwritten, in-person signatures of more than 440 registered Westport Democrats. That grassroots effort represents real people valuing choice beyond party-appointed candidates, and it allowed us to hear directly from residents about their most pressing concerns.

This choice between party endorsements and grassroots-driven candidates is playing out across the entire race. While 5 candidates have been endorsed by official political committees (including 4 Republicans), the other 3 candidates for the BOE are challenging that system: the two of us, who petitioned our way into the race, and Robert Harrington, who is running as a write-in candidate after the Republican Town Committee shut him out. We believe Westport deserves a choice that places people over politics.

Another misperception is that protecting special education requires direct personal SpEd experience. While one of us has unique personal experience, the real issue is systemic. We’ve heard from many families about their enormous, costly challenges securing the services their children need.

Though some experiences are positive, this uneven access to support has festered for years. The board needs independent voices willing to challenge this status quo and its high costs to both families and taxpayers. We will be those voices.

This brings us back to the larger misperception: that this race is about one person, one event, or one group of stakeholders. It is not.

It is about whether the BOE has the strength, skills and independence to set direction, manage risk, and provide effective oversight. When boards lose confidence in their own role, they invite chaos. When they fail to lead, they leave the administration and community vulnerable to missteps.

Healthy debate is not dysfunction; it’s how good governance works. The real danger comes when boards avoid deliberation, shy away from transparency, or operate without clear priorities.

That vacuum leads to confusion and unnecessary conflict. It also creates an opening for louder, more ideological voices to dominate the conversation — voices that want to bring national culture wars into local classrooms, question professional educators, and erode support for public education itself.

Between us, we bring deep experience in law, communications, negotiation, strategic planning and community leadership. We are not running to dismantle the system, but to strengthen it — by restoring accountability, elevating standards of leadership, and ensuring decisions are made transparently.

The relationship between a Board of Education and a superintendent is a partnership, not a rubber stamp. The superintendent’s role is multifaceted. He has numerous managerial responsibilities (including ultimate responsibility for a large staff), but he also should be the district’s visionary leader, challenge assumptions, and propose bold initiatives to move our schools forward.

The board’s role, as the elected voice of the community, is to ensure that vision is thoroughly vetted, financially sound, and easily measured for maximum impact.

Finding this balance requires mutual respect, transparency, and a shared commitment to excellence. But effective oversight is not passive agreement. A board that simply “gets out of the way” abdicates its primary responsibility to the voters and taxpayers who elected them. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this happen all too often.

Too many board meetings have featured major proposals approved with minimal questioning from the majority, despite valid concerns raised by the community and even other board members. This lockstep approach is not healthy governance. It fails our students, our educators, and ultimately our superintendent.

A case in point is the prolonged debate over the Staples cellphone ban. While we support the goal, the process revealed a flaw in the system.

For over a year, the administration advocated for the ban without presenting a detailed implementation plan or budget, despite repeated requests from parents, teachers, and students. A proactive board would have insisted on answers to crucial questions: What is the impact on curriculum? What technology alternatives are needed? What are the costs? What success metrics will we use to determine effectiveness? Instead, these questions were largely deferred. A board exercising proper oversight would have demanded a complete plan before the discussion could advance, ensuring a smoother, more successful rollout.

This pattern of reactive governance has other consequences. A lack of motivated questioning and failure to demand transparent processes has preceded controversial personnel decisions and costly lawsuits that have consumed district resources and eroded public trust.

Rigorous oversight is not about micromanagement; it is about foresight. It’s about asking the hard questions, and insisting on actual answers before moving forward, so we can achieve the best outcomes and avoid negative consequences in our schools and community.

A well-functioning board is also one that brings issues to light that the administration may have missed, or not properly prioritized. Part of the board’s job, as the democratically elected officials responsible for our school system, is also to serve as a key point of contact for Westport voters (and other stakeholders) with concerns about our schools. We’ve heard too many stories lately of concerns being raised to the board and then completely ignored or minimized without any real explanation, let alone discussion.

Let us be clear: Our goal is not to obstruct, but to strengthen. We are running to be constructive partners. A board of independent thinkers, willing to engage in robust and respectful debate, will challenge the administration to bring forward its best, most well developed ideas.

True leadership welcomes accountability. We believe a better balance is possible. One where the board and superintendent work together, with healthy debate and transparent decision-making leading to superior results for our entire community and a restoration of trust. We are confident that we can work constructively with Superintendent Scarice to continue to accomplish great things for Westport’s schools.

The district’s budget must respect separate but distinct stakeholders: residents whose children currently attend the public schools and deserve the very best service and programming, and those who have watched their children graduate or who have moved to Westport for everything but the schools, and need to protect their most valuable asset (their home) and pay reasonable taxes.

To be sure, the $150 million annual budget for schools seems generous. But more than 80 percent of that is contractual: salaries and benefits for our hardworking teachers and school staff.

What’s left can’t begin to cover building updates, curriculum and program enhancements, and the modernization demanded of a 21st-century school system. It just can’t.

So despite their best intentions, the district and BOE are left playing Whac-a-Mole, repairing things here, replacing things there, often only after a problem has gone from bad to worse, instead of tackling the district’s needs in a truly holistic, top-down, forward-thinking approach.

A few examples: The Staples auditorium hasn’t been touched in more than 30 years. Much of it is original and over 60 years old. The lighting mechanism got stuck on the stage last spring, rendering the auditorium inoperable for 6 weeks.

The Staples football field was built for a population of around 1,400, and now we’re at 1,700 and climbing. The stands are too small, bent and even wobbly in sections. The “away side” is cramped, dark, and surrounded by brush. The sound system is broken, there is no handicapped access or seating, and there are no bathrooms.

What’s more, Staples has no working girls’ locker room. Girls’ teams change in hallway bathrooms.

And we all know what happened after Coleytown Middle and Long Lots were neglected … and now Coleytown Elementary is reported to be close behind.

Kings Highway has a basement gymnasium and cafeteria that don’t meet ADA requirements. Concerns abound within the special-education system. Additionally, the district remains woefully short on substitutes and paraprofessionals.

A facilities committee meeting — the first since January — was quickly scheduled just recently, in response to many of these growing concerns. But wouldn’t everyone benefit from year-round follow-through — not just during campaign season?

So how do we address buildings and staffing while remaining fiscally responsible, forward-thinking and adaptable? First, we have to identify issues that haven’t made their way to the BOE yet, and then we have to do the hard work of creating real budgets for dealing with all of them, so we can make intelligent trade-offs, in both timing and funding, across our whole portfolio of problems.

Second, we have to find the money to tackle these projects. One solution we propose for consideration is a public-private partnership in which the district would accept outside donations.

This hinges on the district — in concert with the First Selectman’s office — approving the consideration of features like naming rights. Imagine a capital improvement campaign that allows our cherished alumni, current families and future graduates to make meaningful financial contributions in exchange for a named brick, plaque, or even an entire structure? How else does a public school district — even one the caliber of Westport — find the vast funds that are absolutely necessary to fix up its crown jewels?

Of course, nobody has a monopoly on knowing where the problems lie, or what the best solutions are. Our doors are open to all stakeholders who are ready to flag problems and propose solutions, and that’s exactly how we will operate if you elect us — people with new ideas, new experiences, new connections, and renewed passion for our kids and their education — to the BOE.

Before going into what needs immediate attention, we want to call out what’s working: the dedicated teachers and staff of the Westport Public Schools and our generous force of parent volunteers. They all work together to support each other and, most importantly, the next generation of Westporters.

Simply put, the most important issue facing our schools is one of leadership. The Board of Education and the administration must use their roles and resources to address the concerns of every stakeholder. And they must do that efficiently, effectively, and transparently.

For some reason it is taking years to fix small problems, which become big problems, which in turn become seemingly intractable — and expensive — problems. In recent years, too many teachers and staff members have been held to a higher standard than the administrators they report to.

The administration’s role is to eliminate obstacles so our teachers and staff can succeed. The role of the BOE is twofold: to manage the superintendent, and to serve as the elected voices for our schools.

Yet in one meeting after another, the BOE is doing less and less to engage our superintendent in meaningful debate about what needs to improve and what he is getting right. If we don’t make smart decisions, we risk failing to attract the most talented educators and staff to our schools. Here are just a few recent examples:

Many elementary school teachers have desperately called for more paraprofessional support, yet last year’s budget proposal instead added additional assistant principals, expanding an already top-heavy organization without providing classroom support.

Additionally, a lack of substitute teachers means our educators are losing their prep periods to cover classes, a problem particularly noted at the middle-school level. The systemic issues extend beyond the classroom: A single overworked plumber services all 8schools, leading to long wait times for critical repairs. There are many more stories we don’t have room for here.

The School Climate Survey presented in September 2024 showed a troubling drop in student engagement. Where are the 2025 scores? Why haven’t they been presented? Parents and students deserve transparent reporting of the latest scores and a clear plan to address any issues. The north star for both the administration and the BOE is continuous improvement and a positive outcome for our students.

As board members, we’d take a different approach from that of many of the current members. The BOE must be proactive, not reactive, and be honest with our community. First, we’d directly engage with our teachers and staff. Do they feel adequately supported and respected? Why do they think hiring pools are shrinking so dramatically, and what changes do they think are critical for success in the classroom?

Next, we’d engage more purposefully with our students. For years the BOE has promised to survey Staples students for inside knowledge on their coursework, and to capture the pulse of student life — but it hasn’t happened. This needs to change immediately. Giving our students a voice and a forum for feedback is the least we can do. Good ideas can come from anywhere, and sometimes it’s as though our kids are actually the adults in the room.

It’s time for the BOE to stop making excuses, and start engaging and executing on solutions. We want to help move our schools from good to great — with transparency, accountability and accessibility at the forefront.

We need a board that is inclusive, not exclusive. We want to meet the needs of our students with the teachers, staffers, facilities and curriculum they deserve. And that starts with board members who understand and embrace the critical role they play.