09/09/2026
LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
What Makes Cambridge Central School Worth Funding?
Submitted by Matt Braymer-Hayes.
CAMBRIDGE - Last spring, our budget failed a revote by the narrowest of margins: 648 yes to 456 no, just short of the 60 percent supermajority a contingency budget now requires to clear. We've lived under that contingency status ever since, and everyone in our community has an opinion about why.
On September 10th, the Board of Education finalizes the goals it will use to evaluate the Superintendent for the year ahead, an exercise easy to wave off as paperwork. It shouldn't be. Those goals are, in effect, the community's working answer to a real question: what matters most about our school right now?
If the answer to that is “get off the contingency budget, keep costs down”, that should worry us. Fiscal discipline is urgent — no one who watched last year doubts that. The worry here is different: a district that measures its own success primarily by what it costs is a district that has quietly stopped making the case for why it's worth paying for. And next spring, that's exactly the case we'll need to make again.
Here's my read: our community values our school, yet clearing 60 percent doesn't come easy. It required a coalition of people who are genuinely stretched financially, people who aren't sure the money is well spent, people who assumed it would pass and didn't bother to vote, and people — myself included — who worked hard to pass it and still couldn't build a coalition wide enough. We missed the mark.
A believable, visible story about value is what moves a vote like this — something residents can see for themselves, proving that a dollar spent here means something real for kids and our community. Cost control matters, but it's rarely what changes a vote at the margin. Trust and verify.
That's what this year's evaluation goals could start to build, alongside the fiscal one the district clearly still needs. A few examples of what "value" goals might look like.
First, a plan to bring down chronic absenteeism, currently running near one in five students across all grades. Elementary and middle grades have been stuck near two and a half times pre-COVID levels for two years, even as the high school has cut its own rate substantially from pandemic highs.
Second, a serious effort to support and keep good teachers, after years of losing institutional experience, with more retirements already filed this year.
And third, concrete steps toward aligning class schedules with neighboring districts, so students aren't shut out of courses just because bell times don't line up.
None of that is radical, and none of it is free. They're the kinds of things a district can commit to and be held to. It's the difference between saying "trust us, we're being careful" and pointing to something visible and saying "here's what your money is doing."
I don't think anyone on the Board or administration wants a repeat of last spring. I believe they, like most people, want to do right by this community and its kids, and are working within real constraints. Think of this as a request about priorities, made at the one moment each year those priorities actually get written down.
If you agree that our school needs to make the case for its own value, and not only its cost, the most useful thing you can do is small: a short, respectful note to a Board member. Ask that the district follow through on its own policy and publish this year's evaluation goals, and that they speak to that value. Then tell them what you'd want this year's goals to include: the school can't do everything at once, so what matters most to you? Keep it short. Keep it neighborly. That's the whole ask — a conversation about what we're actually funding here.
Get that answer right, and the budget conversation next year starts from a much better place.
- Matt Braymer-Hayes is a CCS parent and lives in the Village of Cambridge. -
