Dan Newman

Please share your skills, qualifications, and experiences that will make you a great member of the School Committee. Do you have a candidate website or social media page where voters can learn more about you?

Sharon deserves to be a top school district. Sharon residents pay among the highest taxes and rightfully have high expectations for our schools. The job of Sharon’s schools is to teach students the skills they need to be successful. Parents deserve a professional School Committee that represents and serves them. I’m an attorney. I do mostly policy work. I view the School Committee’s job representing parents exactly the same as an attorney-client relationship. My wife and I have three children in Sharon. I’m a school council representative and PTO member. I also run a parent newsletter in Sharon with hundreds of families subscribed. My entire family are teachers, including my wife, my brother, and my parents. I grew up in an educator household, and I have a special appreciation for the importance of our excellent teachers and administrative staff here in Sharon. My public webpage is: https://facebook.com/NewmanForSC

The Sharon School Committee has to deal with a budget deficit of $1-1.5 million dollars every year. How will you handle these difficult choices?

The School Committee has not conducted a full and proper budget prioritization in several years. Most high-performing organizations conduct a full prioritization annually. Sharon’s schools should as well. During prioritization, the School Committee should review recommendations by the administration and rank the full list of budget items. The School Committee should prioritize retention of essential positions like teaching staff first. When districts cut teacher positions, they disrupt core classroom instruction, increase class sizes, and put school ratings at risk. With year after year budget deficits, Sharon needs to move from its very expensive curriculum coordinator model to the more efficient department head model. Curriculum coordinators are teachers removed from classrooms, which then need to be replaced with additional hires. Most top school districts instead use the department head model, which places teachers back into classrooms, assigns them the title of department head, and pays them a stipend for doing extra coordination work. Moving to the department head model could by itself eliminate Sharon’s kindergarten fee. For all future budget cuts, the School Committee should examine non-essential administrative positions for consolidation. In particular, the School Committee should scrutinize the district’s more recent non-essential administrative positions that did not exist 5-10 years ago.

Deleveling is a popular trend nationwide to eliminate advanced and honors classes. The Sharon superintendent has proposed to eliminate advanced math at the middle school and advanced science classes in early high school. What is your position on deleveling?

Levels are a key component of individualized education. Sharon’s schools have the mission of inspiring and challenging all students and helping them reach their full potential. Parents are right to be skeptical of broad deleveling proposals, which would eliminate honors and advanced placement courses at the middle school and high school. Sharon’s schools have a troubling recent history of proposing to reduce honors and advanced placement offerings. The district should end its multi-year relationship with Novak Consulting, which our schools have paid around $100,000 for consulting services, and which is the same consulting firm behind Barrington High School’s removal of honors courses that tanked its school ranking and received widespread negative media coverage in 2022. Novak Consulting is also against all homework for all grade levels, which is not consistent with parental expectations in Sharon.

Many Sharon parents feel they are forced to hire private tutors or enroll in outside classes because either their child is not being challenged enough or is falling behind. What can you do as a School Committee member to help all children achieve their full academic potential?

Sharon’s schools should prepare students for success with individualized instruction in important subjects like math, science, reading, writing, arts, and music. Parents in Sharon are already paying high taxes and fees and should not need to supplement public education with expensive private tutoring services. The School Committee should ensure that Sharon provides different levels of instruction and that students can move freely between levels as appropriate. The schools should regularly assess students according to objective criteria and identify students who need accelerated work or additional reinforcement. Some students may need to move to a higher or lower grade level in specific subject areas. Students may require a higher or lower courseload or additional homework, and the schools should accommodate such needs to the extent feasible. Sharon’s schools should honor individualized education programs and 504 plans and work with parents to meet the educational needs of all students.