Plan To Fund Public Schools Criticized

Cambridge Public School (CPS) committee newcomer Patricia M. Nolan ’80 received a harsh drubbing yesterday when colleagues blasted her proposal to allocate an additional $75,000 dollars to principals of local elementary schools.

Nolan said the motion, which she filed last Thursday, would give principals more autonomy and provide needed funds for the creation of an additional staff member at each school.

But committee veterans criticized Nolan at last night’s CPS committee meeting for circumventing the budget planning that has consumed the board’s attention in the last weeks.

“The timing is very unfortunate,” Superintendent Thomas Fowler-Finn said, “[The motion] comes as a total surprise—at a public hearing.”

Nolan apologized for offending board members’ sense of procedure, but maintained that the motion contained ideas she had brought forth at previous meetings and should not come as a surprise.

Numerous parents attended the meeting at Cambridge Ringe & Latin High School last night to speak in support of the motion.

“It makes such sense,” said Maureen Manning, who has two children enrolled in the Cambridge school system and has lived in the city for 28 years.

“If you’re trying to reach the kids who are not at grade level, it seems like we have to have the money to do it.”

Fowler-Finn said he did not think giving schools more money would improve test scores.

“We’ve had that for the last decade and we’re not happy with the results,” he said.

Though Cambridge currently spends about $5,000 more on each student than the national average, its test scores lag far behind other middle class cities in the state.

Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72 said he was surprised that “with [her] Harvard and Yale background,” it appeared Nolan had not thoroughly researched her motion, saying that looming deficits made Nolan’s proposal impractical.

Nolan, who then distributed a handout to the board detailing funding proposals, said she was not advocating additional spending.

“This is a redeployment, not an adding,” Nolan said.

Another new committee member, Luc D. Schuster, calendared the motion, preventing a vote from being taken tonight.

—Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.