Deval Patrick

Our plans changed rather suddenly this evening. We were not able to go to the rabbi’s house for dinner, so I instead went to our synagogue’s community Seder. And this was no ordinary seder. Deval Patrick himself, the governor of Massachusetts, arrived, and ate with us. I managed to corner him before he left, and talked to him about charter schools. I had heard that he opposed them (which I doubted, as it is an oversimplification), and he vigorously denied it as I had thought he would. He did make the very interesting point that what Massachusetts has not done such a good job of is using charter schools as “laboratories”, as he put it, and applying what we learn from these schools to the district system. Building off of this, I would say that the reason people are often angry about charter schools is because they don’t see any benefit to having them. If we look at charter schools as a government investment that allows a new perspective on public education, we see an immediate benefit, as long as those perspectives are used constructively. I don’t know what specific legal steps Patrick plans to take to make this more of a reality, but I appreciate the clarity of his goals, and his willingness to communicate them.

I got a photo with him, but I was using my mom’s celphone camera, and did not save it properly, so it is gone forever. So it goes.