School Committee Candidates Say They Want to Close Achievement Gaps. Arjun Jaikumar Says He Has A Plan.

When Arjun K. Jaikumar left his private practice to work for Massachusetts as a public attorney, he made a commitment to the public good. Now, he is committing to children in Cambridge, running for School Committee with concrete plans to eliminate achievement gaps and improve transparency.

A Cambridge Public Schools parent, Jaikumar has lived in the district for more than a decade, and said that the district currently suffers from a “top-down culture of leadership.”

“We’re not doing enough to engage educators as experts in what they do, and we’re not doing enough to engage caregivers and families as partners,” he said. “I think that needs to change. In fact, the district knows it needs to change.”

Last month, the Cambridge Education Association — the union representing teachers and staff in the district — endorsed six challengers, including Jaikumar, for the School Committee race. Jaikumar said that the lack of incumbents in the endorsement reflects a failure of the district to properly elevate the voices of teachers and caregivers.

“They’ve endorsed six candidates — none of them are incumbents,” he said. “That speaks to, among our professional workforce, a sentiment that they are not being viewed as experts.”

Many candidates this year, including Jaikumar, have pledged to address deep inequities and achievement gaps in the district. The 2024-25 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams showed that the achievement gaps between Black and white Cambridge students widened from last year — reaching gaps of nearly 50 percent in both English and Math.

Jaikumar said that reducing these gaps requires a deep understanding of the issue, and that some people in the district are too quick to blame educators without acknowledging root causes of systemic racism and economic inequality.

“It’s very easy to point the finger at educators — ‘We understand that kids are coming into kindergarten a couple of years behind their peers, but if they’re not caught up to grade level by third grade without any additional resources, we’re going to point the finger at you and we’re going to sound the alarm about teacher effectiveness,’” he said.

“I just think that’s an unserious way to approach the issues,” he added. “I think we need leadership that understands inequality and that understands that to address achievement gaps, we need to take on these issues head on.”

Jaikumar proposed several policies to address these inequalities, including overstaffing early grades to close learning gaps as soon as possible and expanding universal preschool to 3-year-olds. He also supports investing in programs to prevent summer learning loss, which he noted is more severe for low-income students.

But Jaikumar is not only invested in closing the achievement gap. The challenger also said that the district must improve transparency, noting the recent superintendent search and the closure of the Kennedy-Longfellow Elementary school have left parents and teachers in the dark.

CPS wrapped up the search for a permanent superintendent this week, appointing David G. Murphy for the role after a year of him serving as interim. Some caregivers and teachers fiercely criticized the process, accusing the School Committee of running a process lacking public engagement and transparency. Jaikumar has been an outspoken critic of the search, speaking out at School Committee meetings and public forums throughout the fall.

“For months, we have watched as the School Committee has executed a superintendent search flawed in an almost incomprehensible number of ways. It has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion, yet being powerless to stop it,” Jaikumar wrote in an emailed statement.

Jaikumar also criticized the district’s communication about the closure of K-Lo in December. The school, which primarily served “high-needs” students, long suffered from persistent underperformance and under enrollment. Jaikumar said that discourse around the closure was “not fully open.”

“I think that as a district, we were not candid about the future of the school until after the decision. That I think is really unfortunate,” he said. “We need to be much more sensitive in the future to the fact that school communities are our communities.”

As Jaikumar gears up for election day, he said that he’ll continue to be driven by his devotion to these “school communities.”

“I’ve been devoted to the public interest and to the public good. That’s the thing that I think, the personal experience that serves me best as a candidate,” he said. “I’m not doing this for self aggrandization — I’m doing this because I am committed to the public interest.”

—Staff writer Ayaan Ahmad can be reached at ayaan.ahmad@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AyaanAhmad2024.