As a government concentrator at Harvard, first-term School Committee member Patricia M. Nolan ’80 campaigned to get the University to withdraw its investments from South Africa.

Today, Nolan says her participation in that movement, which led to the Harvard Corporation’s partial divestment from its South African stock in 1986, taught her that with enough support grassroots movements could be successful.

“That gave me a sense that you can effect change if you have enough dedicated people working on it and you mobilize the entire community,” she says.

A quarter-century later, Nolan, now a mother of two, is using her desire for social change and the analytical tools that she learned while working as a consultant to try to reform the Cambridge Public Schools (CPS).

In late March, during the last stages of the school system’s budget-drafting process, Nolan raised eyebrows with a proposal that would have reallocated $1.5 million to principals next year.

“Resources have not shifted directly into our schools,” she said at the April 4 School Committee meeting where a similar proposal by another committee member was voted down. “I feel very strongly based on what I’ve read...that the more successful schools are the ones in which principals have more control over how resources are spent in the schools.”

However, Kenneth E. Reeves ’72, School Committee chairman and Cambridge’s mayor, said that, “throwing money at the issue...isn’t a solution to the problem” and that raising school achievement is “not a money question.”

Ultimately, the proposal failed to pass by a 5-2 vote.

But Nolan says that just raising questions is important.

“I’m not an educator, and I don’t pretend to be an educator,” she says during an interview in her home, a five-minute walk from Radcliffe Yard. “But I think I make a difference by asking questions that haven’t been asked before.”

While Nolan’s budget question caused a few ripples in the budget-drafting process, some School Committee members say they value Nolan’s inquisitive presence on the committee.

“I think she’s what the Cambridge Public Schools needed at this time, someone that’s good with data, someone that asks a lot of questions, someone that wants to push the agenda to a new level,” says senior School Committee member Alfred B. Fantini.

BACK TO CAMBRIDGE

Before Nolan earned a seat on the School Committee, her post-Harvard life was filled with non-government jobs.

“My life after graduation has been so varied,” says Nolan. “That’s probably one of the best things Harvard armed me for, as far as reinforcing the notion that you could take on new tasks or challenges.”

After graduation, Nolan conducted research in social history in New York. Later, she earned her MBA at Yale University’s School of Management and subsequently worked at McKinsey & Co., a consulting firm in Chicago.

In 1991, when Nolan and a friend wanted to start a telecommunications re-seller company, she found the city of her undergraduate days to be the perfect location.

“I love the Boston area,” she says. “Boston was a city I had loved as an undergraduate; I missed it.”

But it was not until Nolan’s son Joshua, now a fourth grader at The Amigos School, a Cambridge public school that implements a dual English-Spanish language immersion program, entered kindergarten that the political activism of her undergraduate days and her business training combined.

“I look at the numbers, and I say ‘what is going on here?’” Nolan says referring to the mismatch between the spending per pupil at CPS and its achievement scores.

CPS spent an average of $13,363 per regular-education student last fiscal year, about $5,000 more than the national average. According to school officials, those numbers have risen to over $16,000 for this fiscal year.

But despite this spending, Cambridge placed 253 out of 278 districts statewide on the 2005 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) 10th grade English exam. And it scored just slightly better—at 251—on the MCAS 10th grade math exam.

Nolan’s interest in the system as a parent led her to become involved with Cambridge United for Education (CUE), a group that addressed citywide issues concerning CPS.

Nolan’s time in the group led her to apply her consulting skills to the school system.

“I was spending a lot of time looking at numbers,” she says. Nolan also says that this led her to want to “bring a more rational approach” to the system.

In 2003, when the issue of consolidating two Cambridge schools arose in response to declining enrollment, which has plagued the school system for the last 25 years, Nolan, whose children attended one of the schools, The Peabody School, and other CUE parents fought to stop the merger. The Peabody School is located a few blocks north of Radcliffe Yard.

But when the consolidation occurred despite the protest, causing some of those parents who also fought against the motion to leave the district, Nolan considered running for a seat on the School Committee.

After failing to establish a charter school of her own and working for a corporate environmental organization in 2004, Nolan decided to become involved in politics again.

“When I had a little free time, I found myself getting sucked right back into going to School Committee meetings and trying to make a change,” she says.

“Finally, I said...I’ve got to run because I’ve got to be at the table. I want to at least have a voice and have a vote.”

She was elected in November and received more first-place votes than any other candidate.

SETTLING IN

School Committee member Nancy Walser first met Nolan in 2001 during a School Committee recount in which Walser, Susana Seagat, and Richard Harding were separated by seven votes.

Walser, who says that Nolan and herself have “similar goals,” adds that Nolan’s lively personality is a good addition to the committee.

“Patty’s got a lot of energy,” she says. “It’s great to see she’s really enthusiastic about making a difference on the School Committee.”

Other committee members say that Nolan’s background in consulting brings a lot to the table.

“She possesses a great ability to analyze data and to offer intelligent and insightful conclusions,” says committee member Joseph G. Grassi.

But many long-time School Committee members were taken aback by Nolan’s April proposal to reallocate funds to schools.

The proposal was presented only one meeting before the final vote.

“She surprised us all,” Fantini says.

However, Fantini also says that he thinks that Nolan’s proposal stems from “her enthusiasm to do well for schools, but I think she had to recognize you don’t surprise people with a motion to reallocate funds without the groundwork.”

Nolan says that while her “analytical horsepower” and her political activism prepared her for her role as a committee member, she acknowledges that there are things she still needs to learn.

“It’s been three months, and I realize that there are unwritten rules that I’m not aware of,” she says.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m naïve, but it’s very different from working on boards of directors that aren’t elected.”

—Staff writer Laura A. Moore can be reached at lamoore@fas.harvard.edu.