Aiming to overturn middle school location, first school board challenger candidate Andrew Winters emerges

Andrew Winters, a lawyer and former public defender living in the South End of Concord who has served on the Concord Zoning Board, filed to run for school board.

Andrew Winters, a lawyer and former public defender living in the South End of Concord who has served on the Concord Zoning Board, filed to run for school board. Geoff Forester—Monitor staff

By CATHERINE McLAUGHLIN

Monitor staff

Published: 09-06-2024 6:01 PM

Modified: 09-06-2024 7:12 PM


Andrew Winters knows that if he won a seat on the Concord School Board, he couldn’t single-handedly overturn its decision to move the middle school to the East Side of the city. But he wants to try.

Like many fellow residents, he can’t see why the board has remained so committed to what he sees as a deeply unpopular decision, and he thinks people who still want to rebuild at Rundlett should have a voice at the table.

“I personally have talked to very few people who are in favor of the relocation. Frankly, I can’t think of one,” he said. “I have the experience to be effective and credible in board situations. And I just feel like someone’s got to do it.”

Over the last eight months, current board members who initially favored the South End location have either declined to reopen the discussion or even been persuaded that the East Side is a better place to build. Winters hopes to persuade them otherwise. He filed to run for an at-large position on the school board Friday morning. There are three seats up for grabs, and only one incumbent, President Pamela Walsh, has so far said she plans to run again.

Winters is a lawyer and former public defender living in the South End who has served on the Concord Zoning Board for a decade. One of his two daughters is a current seventh grader at Rundlett Middle School and the other — if the school were built on the current timeline — would be in seventh grade when the new school opens. He believes there is still time, and that it would be worth it to take that time, to change course on the project and build a new middle school at Rundlett.

“Why they did it in the first place, it still leaves me scratching my head,” he said. The board has argued that reversing now would delay the project, raise costs and put state aid at risk. “I don’t think that should impose a false sense of urgency to go down the road of what otherwise seems like a bad decision… that’s essentially what I would call the sunk cost fallacy.”

Winters doesn’t see himself as a member of the Concord Concerned Citizens group — who have been urging the board to reverse its location decision for months and have organized to put two charter amendments on the ballot in November aimed at undoing it — but he supports their effort.

As a longtime member of the Zoning Board and in his time handling family law cases, Winters feels he has learned the composure, perspective and thoughtfulness needed take on the stress of being on the school board.

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“I appreciate the current members a lot. I realize that they’re dedicated public servants,” he said. But running to challenge them, he said, “it seems like the most logical way to try to reverse this, or speak out against it.”

Beyond middle school debates, Winters sees declining enrollment as a major future threat to the district.

“All the signs are pointing to enrollment to continuing to decline, which means, if the budget keeps going up, then you’re dramatically increasing your total budget per pupil,” he said. “I don’t think that’s an easy thing to do quickly, but we need to be looking at the longer term projections and what type of fixed costs we can unwind.”

If elected, he said he would bring a healthy, measured skepticism to board decision making.

“I wouldn’t call myself a crank or a gadfly, but I’m also far from a rubber stamp,” he said. “We shouldn’t be obstructionist, but we really should be asking tough questions.”

There are three seats up for grabs on the board, and anyone who is a registered voter in the district is eligible to run. The filing period closes on September 16.

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com