This year’s incoming Greenfield School Committee will face several urgent and
challenging issues: tough budget decisions, rising costs, declining enrollment, and the task of hiring a new superintendent. To respond to these matters in a manner that puts students first, voters have a chance to choose a slate of three highly qualified and sincerely invested candidates: Elizabeth de Neeve, Adrienne Craig-Williams, and myself, Jeffrey Diteman. We are offering voters a unified vision and clear strategies to achieve it.
If elected, we will work with district administration to have a smooth budget season, making all relevant information transparently available to the public. We will prioritize hiring a full-time, dedicated business manager for the district. We will hire a superintendent who shares our community’s values of fairness and inclusion — ideally someone with a good track record in student retention. In cooperation with interim superintendent Roland Joyal and his successor, we will work to reverse the trend of declining enrollment through a concerted effort to improve school culture and morale.
Multiple factors contribute to declining public school enrollment: perception of greater college prep opportunities at private or charter schools, perception of better vocational preparation at tech schools, and various problems related to school climate. We know, for example, that some gender non-conforming students in our district have sought more welcoming environments elsewhere. In response, it is not enough to simply prohibit expressions of bigotry; we must reinforce our inclusion policies with strategies to improve school culture by maximizing student engagement, belonging, and accountability.
As an educator, I have an outstanding record of student engagement, which led to being nominated twice for the Distinguished Teaching Award at UMass Amherst. In my current role as Spanish teacher at Pioneer Valley Regional School, I have revitalized the Spanish program and participated in schoolwide efforts to recover from years of administrative instability. The good news that I can report from this experience is that rapid improvements in student motivation and morale are possible, because most students fundamentally desire to learn and participate when provided with appropriate opportunities and challenges.
As a member of School Committee, I will make it my mission to ensure that Greenfield
Public Schools are safe, inclusive, inspiring places to learn. When schools have a strong sense of cohesion, they can be a site of active transformation: from despair to hope, from loneliness to belonging, from disenfranchisement to civic engagement. When we empower students’ voices through effective holistic education including robust humanities curricula, we help them find the courage and vocabulary to articulate their truths. Greenfield students and parents have expressed their desire for expanded arts offerings in public schools. There are solid pedagogical reasons to respond to these wishes: studying music has downstream effects on learning in other subjects (such as math!), and theatre is fantastic preparation for public speaking, a skill that is useful in many careers. Considering the great wealth of arts organizations in our area, I propose to go beyond the usual curricular and extracurricular programming to establish relationships, plan events, and organize mentorships that will help students feel more integrated in the creative life of the broader community.
My co-campaigners, Elizabeth de Neeve and Adrienne Craig-Williams, have excellent qualifications. Craig-Williams holds a mathematics degree from MIT and has experience in professional finance; this expertise will be a great asset in budget management, while her experience as a classroom teacher equips her with awareness of current issues in education.
Meanwhile, de Neeve is a School Committee incumbent and has accomplished an enormous amount in four years. She was part of the first cohort of Greenfield School Committee members to attend training in Hyannis. She has actively engaged with state legislators to bring attention and money to issues facing our district. For such efforts, she was named School Committee Member of the Year in 2024. She also has been involved in a number of measures to improve communications with the public, including archiving meeting records with time stamps, creating parent surveys, and creating an annual committee agenda to share with parents.
This year, Greenfield residents have an opportunity to choose School Committee
candidates that will make student well-being our top priority. From my own classroom
experience, I have firsthand knowledge of the struggles facing the current generation of
students. As the parent of two young children, I want to feel confident that my kids are heading into positive learning environments that will allow them to flourish and meet their potential. That’s why I have decided to run for School Committee, and it is the motivation that will carry me through the many tough decisions and negotiations that the position will involve.
For a School Committee guided by competence, compassion and integrity, vote for de Neeve, Craig-Williams and Diteman on Sept. 9 and again on Nov. 4.
Jeffrey Diteman lives in Greenfield.