Community Update

Hi, 

I want to address some misinformation I have seen recently about the Connolly campaign.

John Connolly’s does NOT have significant experience as a teacher. His ONLY experience as a public school teacher is a single year in a CHARTER school. He does not have ANY experience as a teacher in a traditional public school. Different from what his most recent ad might imply, his public school experience is limited to a year in the Renaissance CHARTER Public School in Boston. He taught briefly in a Catholic school in NY. He was then a recent college graduate and it is not clear in what condition he taught (substitute teacher? Classroom aid? Lead teacher?). (info confirmed by Boston Globe article at http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-20927557.html) 

John Connolly is NOT the “education candidate.” ALL mayoral candidates are committed to this goal. The difference among candidates, however, is between those who intend to do so by focusing resources, energy, and innovative ideas on public schools, and those who want to scatter resources and energies, diverting them from public schools and into charter schools. John Connolly belongs to the latter group. Given that many Boston schools are under-enrolled, lifting the cap on charters is a very problematic proposition, as it weakens exiting public schools rather than revitalizing the system. It is however BECAUSE John Connolly has been in full support of charter schools that the very controversial group Stand for Children as well as other groups from outside Massachusetts who share the same agenda, have been fully invested in John Connolly’s campaign. 

John Connolly proactively SOUGHT OUT the support from Stand for Children, a pro-charter schools lobby group from outside the state. He answered an extensive questionnaire and sat through an interview, which were part of a selection process organized by Stand for Children in order to identify the candidate most aligned with the organization’s agenda. To claim, as he did, that he acted on a principle when he turned down Stand for Children’s money is disingenuous. He rejected the money as a PR move to respond to the public backlash against the level of influence that financing from interest groups from outside the state generated among Boston voters, By the way, Connolly has accepted considerable financial support from other out of the state groups pushing a charter schools agenda, including hired canvassing in support of his candidacy as can be seen by going to the ocpf page at:

http://www.efs.cpf.state.ma.us/IndependentExpenditures.aspx 

John Connolly is not THE front-runner candidate in the race. While he might be shown as a front-runner in some polls, I would invite all to scrutinize the numbers and those who are running them. It is very easily to manipulate numbers. But if one wants to take polls seriously, I recommend that one look at those who tell us that more than 35% of voters remain undecided. Since Connolly was the first to launch his campaign, doesn’t it raise questions that a candidate who started to campaign months before any of the others has failed to break away from such a crowded field?