Back to School Newsletter: Updates from the Trail & How to Volunteer
Ben Schlesinger, Candidate for School Committee, Ward 5
September 12, 2025 - Hi Friends! I hope everyone enjoyed the summer. It always feels too short… The start of the school year has been exciting in our house as Noah began middle school (Oak Hill) and Julia moved up to the big kid floor at Zervas for 3rd grade. The fall sports season hit like a ton of bricks - my effort to lighten my coaching load failed when both Newton Girls Soccer and Newton Youth Soccer asked me to step back in and help coach teams, on top of the baseball team I planned to lead. I’ll sleep in November.
I’ll start with some notes from the campaign trail and get to a hot topic at the end: Multi-level classes. Away we go…
Endorsements
I’m thrilled to have earned the endorsement of City Council President and mayoral candidate Marc Laredo. As a former School Committee Chair himself, Marc brings terrific experience and interest in the schools to his work on the Council and I’m confident he will be a strong advocate for NPS as Mayor. I’ve known Marc since I coached his son, Matt, in baseball 20 years ago and I know he’s a thoughtful leader who I’ll be able to work with effectively.
I’m also honored to have earned the endorsement of Anping Shen, who is completing his 4th and final (per term limits) term on the School Committee. Anping is a veteran educator and I have deep respect in particular for the work he’s done to give voice to our large and growing Chinese population.
I’m now up to 16 City Council endorsements (with the additions of Randy Block, Vicky Danberg, Tarik Lucas, David Micley and Pam Wright since the last newsletter) and six School Committee endorsements. There is broad excitement for my candidacy and I’m grateful for their support.
I’m also thankful for over 150 other community leaders who have endorsed me (see full list). If you’d like your name here, please email me (ben@ben4newton.com) or fill out the contact form.
Unfortunately, as the Newton Beacon has reported, signs are being stolen from me and the other candidates who have been endorsed by Marc Laredo and School Committee Chair Chris Brezski. That’s disappointing but I’m focused on the things I can control. Please let me know if your sign disappears and I will get you a replacement.
Fundraising
I guess if I need to keep replacing signs, I better keep fundraising! Still a ways to go to hit my target. Thank you again if you’ve contributed. If you haven’t contributed yet, or if you want to contribute more (must be US resident, max $1,000 per person), you can click here.
Campaigning
I spent most of the summer campaigning and I’m really enjoying speaking with so many Newtonians, hearing different perspectives and learning about people’s experiences in the City and schools. The door-knocking odyssey has far exceeded expectations; there are so many interesting people in this City and I’ve had terrific conversations with neighbors I never knew. It’s very helpful for keeping a finger on the pulse of the many people who aren’t immersed in Newton politics all the time (good for them!) and I’m excited that my messages resonate as well with this group as they do with the elected officials.
And the family needed a vacation, so in late August we headed west and enjoyed some time off the grid in Big Sky, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons before the final sprint to November 4th.
At Nonantum’s Festa with my friend and Ward 8 candidate Victor Lee.
After the League of Women Voters’ Debate at NewTV, with Iris.
Volunteers Wanted!
Many people have kindly asked how they can help the campaign. There are a lot of things you can do over the next 7+ weeks. Here are some:
Staffing an Event: Hang around with my button on and some literature, talking me up to passers-by at a village day or similar event.
Door-Knocking: I will train you on talk tracks and how to use an app.
Phone Banking: This will come next month - it’s like the door-knocking, but without the exercise and fresh air.
Holding a Sign: You can get out to the polling places on November 4th, and there are some opportunities between now and then.
Talking Me Up: Tell your friends to vote for me! By bothering to read this, you’re more engaged than most voters. People respond to word of mouth so please help me get the word out.
Please let me know if you have a little time to help.
Voting Plan
Municipal elections in Newton usually get about 25% voter participation. I’d love to see that number be much higher. Many people intend to vote and just don’t get around to it. So make a plan now! You can register online for a mail-in ballot (see here) or you can vote early at City Hall, or you can vote at your local polling place on Election Day. If you’re going to be too busy to get it done on a Tuesday in November, plan ahead and use one of the other options!
Issue of the Day: Multi-Level Classes
This is a topic that’s brought a lot of attention in the local media, most recently through an opinion piece in the Boston Globe, and it’s the #1 topic I’m asked about in my canvassing.
There is nuance and complexity but the core concept is that high school classes that had traditionally been taught in a leveled manner (ie, grouping students with similar skills in classrooms) started to be taught with two levels in the same classroom. Students at different levels shared the classroom experience but received different assignments and tests. Traditionally, once students get assigned to a level, it’s very hard to move up because the classroom they are in is being outpaced by the more advanced classroom and there’s no mechanism to catch up. So they are stuck. This program is meant to solve that problem.
The academic literature on this concept is mixed. There is data that supports the idea and data that says it doesn’t work.
The concept seems intuitively flawed to me. I think about the educator standing in front of a classroom with such a wide set of skills and I wonder how that educator can feel like s/he is serving all the students well. And it turns out, a lot of the educators are unhappy too - they took up a petition, spoke out to the School Committee, and even wrote their own opinion pieces to the Globe last year. Most of the students I’ve spoken with don’t like the setup either. I’ve heard students say that the less advanced students don’t participate because they are intimidated, and the more advanced students don’t participate because they don’t want to make anyone else feel bad. All of which makes sense, especially when I remember how my high school brain worked.
Beyond anecdotes, the MCAS data we have says that scores in these classrooms have declined and achievement gaps have widened. Unfortunately, when this initiative was launched under the prior administration there were no targeted outcomes and no data-oriented measurement protocols put in place, so it’s hard to use the numbers to draw a simple conclusion. But what we have looks bad.
Superintendent Nolin and her team have been studying this issue. I am convinced that what we are doing now isn’t working and I’d like to see us move on from it. There are arguments that maybe it works better in certain places, like subject areas that are less sequential - it may be easier to pull off in humanities or social sciences than STEM or foreign language. Classrooms with two educators are more likely to make it work. But what we’re doing now is broadly unpopular and needs to be corrected.
I’m looking forward to seeing Dr. Nolin’s plan for moving on from a system that isn’t serving our students well.
I hope to connect with you soon on the campaign trail.
Ben