Paranoid But Still Powerful

No one cares about the School Committee. Candidates spend as much time convincing the public to take them seriously as they do debating issues. While City Council candidates bask in the limelight, school committee candidates patiently remind voters that they wield as much power as their more esteemed colleagues.

First, candidates point out that the committee controls all appointments within the system, from top administrators down to driver's administrators. The council can only make noise over City Manager James L. Sullivan's personnel decisions, they say. Then they explain how the school committee makes up its own budget, while control of the city budget rests mainly with Sullivan. Once satisfied that the audience knows they do more than decide what year to teach "Health," candidates can turn to the real issues.

And there are important issues in the campaign. Violence in Boston has candidates worrying over racial imbalance in Cambridge schools. Twenty-five per cent of Cambridge high school students are minorities (40 per cent if you use federal, not state, guidelines). Incumbents nervously defend the committee's "Racial Balance Plan." Passed last year, the plan attempts to avoid forced busing by encouraging parents to voluntarily send children to racially-imbalanced schools by providing special "magnet" programs.

Integrating minorities into school administration has split candidates into two groups: those who give affirmative action top priority and those who favor promotion from within the predominantly white school system. Last year there were no minorities on the school committee. This year, two of the 13 candidates--Henrietta S. Attles and David C. Blackman--are black.

Affirmative action will have trouble making headway in a year when budget cuts affect hiring at all levels. Those cuts became necessary last year when the state imposed a cap on spending increases. Candidates argue over just where those cuts will fall, since contract negotiations with the Cambridge Teacher's Union are coming up this year. Declining enrollments suggest that it might be necessary to close schools, but few candidates actively support giving up classroom space to save money. They talk of renovating older schools before closing them completely.

Some money will have to come from the many special programs in the school system: occupational education, bilingual transition programs, alternative schools and extended kindergartens. These are the programs that elect candidates and no one is talking of cutting them now.

Voters elect six members of the school committee. The mayor, chosen by the City Council from among its members, serves as the seventh member and often holds the deciding vote.

This year the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) slate is sponsoring five candidates on a platform of voluntary integration and commitment to affirmative action. The two new candidates, Attles and Blackman, have made minority problems their special concern, citing the high percentage of minority dropouts and the tracking of minority students away from career training.

Of the CCA incumbents, Sara Mae Berman, former world record holder in the marathon, is known as the champion of equal spending for women's athletics, and Glenn S. Koocher '71 as spokesman for special students with learning and physical disabilities. Alice K. Wolf, a graduate of the Kennedy School, is leading the fight against patronage in school administration appointments.

There are eight independent candidates, including three incumbents, in the running. Veterans Joseph E. Maynard and Donald A. Fantini joined with Mayor Thomas Danehy last term to form the conservative bloc, voting against the CCA members on issues like school reorganization. Maynard watches out for vocational education, and Fantini protects bilingual programs while forcing the council to spend carefully. The third incumbent, David J. Holway, has provided the swing vote between independent and convention blocs, and calls himself the "boat person" of Cambridge politics.

Of the independent challengers, David P. Kennedy is making "competence" the theme of his campaign, but fails to back up his concern with concrete programs. James F. Fitzgerald, who has served off and on the committee for the past thirty years, favors promotion from within and return to neighborhood schools over the racial balance plan. Nicholas R. Ragno turns every issue into one of "saving the taxpayer's money," and Robert A. Carroll has declined to talk to reporters.