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Elizabeth C.P. Hudson has established herself as one of the most vocal — and controversial — members on the Cambridge School Committee, despite only serving one term. Now, she is running again, and is not afraid to go against the grain.
Hudson, a neuroscientist by training, has three children in the district and brings experience in public policy, research, venture capital, biotech, and engineering. Hudson has used her position on the School Committee to press for greater accountability and a clearer focus on student outcomes.
“I am personally of the opinion — other people will disagree — that the purpose of public education is to eliminate poverty. It is to lift up every kid, it’s to prepare kids to compete in a modern economy,” she said.
Hudson has been a strong advocate for teacher evaluations and has pushed for a greater focus on test scores and student outcomes as measures of district performance. She has frequently raised concerns that nearly half of third graders in the district are not reading at grade level, and that overall test scores have remained stagnant for the past three decades.
“How is it possible that we’ve gone 30 years with no measurable progress?” Hudson said.
“Tests aren’t perfect. Tests don’t tap everything,” she said. “But you’d imagine that if you take 30 years — 20 to 30 years — and you double your staff at a cost of an inflation adjusted $100 million every single year that you’d see something.”
“We don’t see shit,” she added.
Hudson was one of two members to vote against CPS’s $280 million budget in April, saying that she would “vote no on every single budget” until the district properly utilizes all of its assets. Hudson advocated for the budget to increase paraprofessional staffing and reemphasize teacher evaluations.
While Hudson said she stands behind policies the School Committee passed in the last term, she hopes to use the next two years to improve student outcomes by hiring new school leadership.
“We need to be great, we need to hire great leadership, recruit and retain great leaders, and fire all leadership who doesn’t meet that bar,” she said “We need to be honest about where we’re not getting great instruction in the classroom, as well.”
“When we say we’ve got an execution problem, it doesn’t mean we don’t have spectacular faculty are working their asses off every day,” she added. “It means that we've made the job impossible.”
On her campaign website, Hudson wrote that she is committed to eliminating programs and positions that do not demonstrate a “clear impact,” adding that the resources should instead go towards increasing compensation and support of CPS educators.
During her time on the School Committee, Hudson has maintained a commitment to transparency and engagement with the public — something she says the body is generally “terrible” at.
“It’s also just not that hard, right?” Hudson said about transparency. “You vote for people who answer your emails and your phone calls and you don’t vote for them if they ignore you. That is the only accountability mechanism that is out there.”
Hudson frequently uses a CPS parent listserv to publicize and analyze School Committee meetings — often getting into heated back-and-forths with parents. Hudson previously said she does this to bridge the gap between the district and stakeholders, and some parents have praised Hudson as the most responsive School Committee member.
Hudson’s most recent activity on the listserv has highlighted the ongoing superintendent search — a central issue in the election garnering significant backlash from teachers and caregivers. The Cambridge Education Association released an August statement calling for the search to be restarted, criticizing the process for lacking transparency and public engagement.
As controversy swelled, Hudson was one of the only members to vocally raise concern about the process. In an August meeting, she pressed Mayor E. Denise Simmons, who was leading the search, to provide more clarity about how finalists were selected. When Simmons did not provide a definitive answer, Hudson said she was “alarmed” at the lack of transparency.
“I’m not gonna just defend the leadership’s approach to communicating internally or externally about the process,” Hudson said.
The CEA’s statement, which came two days after the meeting, noted that Hudson was the only member to call for increased transparency, but called to vote in a new School Committee in the November elections. When the union released its endorsements last week, it snubbed all of the current members.
Despite her criticism of the process, Hudson is still committed to seeing the superintendent search to the end. She said that voters should hold the School Committee responsible for how the search was conducted, but added that stopping the search now with “some great people” in the finalist pool would only “punish the kids.”
“It’s going to be a race down to the wire,” she said. “Then we can go back to talking about what we should be talking about.”
—Staff writer Ayaan Ahmad can be reached at ayaan.ahmad@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AyaanAhmad2024.
—Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at claire.michal@thecrimson.com.
