Alex Bowers for Cambridge School Committee
About Me
I’d like to give you all a brief overview of my candidacy, my experience and skills, and if elected, how I would view my role as a school committee member.
I have twin daughters who started junior kindergarten at Martin Luther King Jr. elementary school, then one graduated from the Putnam Avenue Upper School and the other from the Community Charter School of Cambridge, and both are now sophomores at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School high school.
As a family we value education, not only mastering material, but understanding how things work, and why things are the way they are, and that we can change things for the better. Our elementary school experience was stellar, providing caring, exceptional teachers and fostering a close-knit caregiver community, and CRLS has the breadth and depth of academic, athletic, and outside activities that rival the offerings of a small college.
But there are areas where the District can do better. Opportunities are available, but not always offered in an equitable way. On a personal level, District policies have impacted our children, ranging from how a child’s IEP is handled, to supporting a child with a drive to master advanced math, to a lack of communication that may have led to missed opportunities.
I want to help make our District more open, accessible, and transparent for everyone.
On Being a Candidate
Regarding my candidacy, I decided to run after more than a decade of involvement with the Cambridge schools. I’ve been active with my children’s schools since they entered JK in 2014. I volunteered with Friends groups, chaired book fairs, helped with the Weekend Backpack Program and Food for Free. I’ve been elected to three school councils (currently serving at CRLS). I was on the working group led by Robin Harris to update the School Council Handbook. I authored the 2025-26 CRLS Student Guidebook. I was the Education reporter at the Cambridge Day newspaper for over five years ( see a selection of my stories). My teaching experience includes schools in Lahore, Pakistan and Changsha, China.
I’m a professional writer and editor and project manager. Technical writing requires attention to minute detail, tailoring material to reader’s needs, and presenting information clearly. Technical editing requires management skills; I was the lead editor on a $4 million contract, managing a team of writers that worked with computer scientists to create 6,500 pages of technical documentation for a complex computer system.
I was the Managing Editor of the Charlestown Patriot-Bridge newspaper for two years, handling all aspects of its weekly print cycle long before I became a reporter for Cambridge Day. While technical writing pays the bills, journalism allows me to be curious, asking the most irritating and illuminating question in the world…Why?
On Being a Committee Member (if elected)
As a reporter it all starts with curiosity. Then it’s a patient game of talking with people with different viewpoints, reviewing documentation, parsing data, and pursuing hints, oblique references, and casual omissions until the puzzle pieces come together to reveal a narrative.
This is what I would bring to the school committee – my ability to talk with people with diverse points of view, my experience in managing projects, and my analytical and communication skills.
I have teaching experience, working abroad in local schools, but I am not a trained educator. As a committee member I would work with those with experience or expertise – students, families, educators, administrators, community groups – to strengthen our schools.
Here’s a small sample of general questions I’d love to analyze:
-- How does the District identify pilots and programs that are effective, equitable, and scalable, and that can be integrated into our school system?-- How can the District best serve its diverse student population, with families from many cultures with a wide range of assumptions and expectations, multiple languages, a range of racial and ethnic identification, vastly different access to economic resources, gender expectations and stereotypes?-- What policies – sometimes referred to as procedures and guidelines – should the District put in place to give teachers the flexibility and autonomy to tailor their instruction to the needs of each student in a specific classroom cohort?-- What types of testing do we conduct, and what do we do with the test results? How do we identify what each student needs, from advanced learners to twice exceptional learners to learners who have fallen behind?-- How does the emphasis we put on tests and test results affect our students, including the stress of testing? Do test results alter students’ perception of their abilities? Their self-worth? How do their peers impose or reflect this perception?
On Being Calm and Telling Stories
Taking a step back from my own candidacy and looking at the election as a voter, I think that each candidate’s philosophy is important – not just the issues they feel passionate about, but how they approach the concerns of students, families, educators, and administrators.
I read a piece in The Atlantic in early October about Jane Goodall, who over the course of a 60 year career revolutionized the study of primates and devoted her life to protecting them. This passage caught my attention:
“Though she regularly acknowledged her anger about the many kinds of suffering she witnessed, she relied on her characteristic composure to win her audience to her cause. “I suppose I was born a fighter, but a fighter in a rather different way from getting out there and being aggressive, because I don’t think that works,” she reflected on her podcast in 2020. “You’ve just got to be calm and tell stories, and get people to change from within.”
This is the kind of person I aspire to be, helping our community change from within, so that the changes we make will last.
I have twin daughters who started junior kindergarten at Martin Luther King Jr. elementary school, then one graduated from the Putnam Avenue Upper School and the other from the Community Charter School of Cambridge, and both are now sophomores at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School high school.
As a family we value education, not only mastering material, but understanding how things work, and why things are the way they are, and that we can change things for the better. Our elementary school experience was stellar, providing caring, exceptional teachers and fostering a close-knit caregiver community, and CRLS has the breadth and depth of academic, athletic, and outside activities that rival the offerings of a small college.
But there are areas where the District can do better. Opportunities are available, but not always offered in an equitable way. On a personal level, District policies have impacted our children, ranging from how a child’s IEP is handled, to supporting a child with a drive to master advanced math, to a lack of communication that may have led to missed opportunities.
I want to help make our District more open, accessible, and transparent for everyone.
On Being a Candidate
Regarding my candidacy, I decided to run after more than a decade of involvement with the Cambridge schools. I’ve been active with my children’s schools since they entered JK in 2014. I volunteered with Friends groups, chaired book fairs, helped with the Weekend Backpack Program and Food for Free. I’ve been elected to three school councils (currently serving at CRLS). I was on the working group led by Robin Harris to update the School Council Handbook. I authored the 2025-26 CRLS Student Guidebook. I was the Education reporter at the Cambridge Day newspaper for over five years ( see a selection of my stories). My teaching experience includes schools in Lahore, Pakistan and Changsha, China.
I’m a professional writer and editor and project manager. Technical writing requires attention to minute detail, tailoring material to reader’s needs, and presenting information clearly. Technical editing requires management skills; I was the lead editor on a $4 million contract, managing a team of writers that worked with computer scientists to create 6,500 pages of technical documentation for a complex computer system.
I was the Managing Editor of the Charlestown Patriot-Bridge newspaper for two years, handling all aspects of its weekly print cycle long before I became a reporter for Cambridge Day. While technical writing pays the bills, journalism allows me to be curious, asking the most irritating and illuminating question in the world…Why?
On Being a Committee Member (if elected)
As a reporter it all starts with curiosity. Then it’s a patient game of talking with people with different viewpoints, reviewing documentation, parsing data, and pursuing hints, oblique references, and casual omissions until the puzzle pieces come together to reveal a narrative.
This is what I would bring to the school committee – my ability to talk with people with diverse points of view, my experience in managing projects, and my analytical and communication skills.
I have teaching experience, working abroad in local schools, but I am not a trained educator. As a committee member I would work with those with experience or expertise – students, families, educators, administrators, community groups – to strengthen our schools.
Here’s a small sample of general questions I’d love to analyze:
-- How does the District identify pilots and programs that are effective, equitable, and scalable, and that can be integrated into our school system?-- How can the District best serve its diverse student population, with families from many cultures with a wide range of assumptions and expectations, multiple languages, a range of racial and ethnic identification, vastly different access to economic resources, gender expectations and stereotypes?-- What policies – sometimes referred to as procedures and guidelines – should the District put in place to give teachers the flexibility and autonomy to tailor their instruction to the needs of each student in a specific classroom cohort?-- What types of testing do we conduct, and what do we do with the test results? How do we identify what each student needs, from advanced learners to twice exceptional learners to learners who have fallen behind?-- How does the emphasis we put on tests and test results affect our students, including the stress of testing? Do test results alter students’ perception of their abilities? Their self-worth? How do their peers impose or reflect this perception?
On Being Calm and Telling Stories
Taking a step back from my own candidacy and looking at the election as a voter, I think that each candidate’s philosophy is important – not just the issues they feel passionate about, but how they approach the concerns of students, families, educators, and administrators.
I read a piece in The Atlantic in early October about Jane Goodall, who over the course of a 60 year career revolutionized the study of primates and devoted her life to protecting them. This passage caught my attention:
“Though she regularly acknowledged her anger about the many kinds of suffering she witnessed, she relied on her characteristic composure to win her audience to her cause. “I suppose I was born a fighter, but a fighter in a rather different way from getting out there and being aggressive, because I don’t think that works,” she reflected on her podcast in 2020. “You’ve just got to be calm and tell stories, and get people to change from within.”
This is the kind of person I aspire to be, helping our community change from within, so that the changes we make will last.
Contact Info - I'd love to hear from you! +1.617.247.1969 | votealexbowers@gmail.com | https://www.facebook.com/votealexbowers/