Incumbents Andrea Longo Carter and Alisa Skatrud easily earned new three-year terms on the School Committee.
Carter topped the ticket and she and Skatrud will be joined by newcomer Sri Baqri, who outpolled her fellow challengers, Leanne Ratti and Scott Marder, for the third seat.
“I’m delighted for the opportunity to serve Needham as part of the School Committee for another three years,” said Skatrud. “Despite what sometimes felt like an anti-incumbent bias, Needham voters chose two experienced school committee members, and I’m delighted that Sri Baqri’s election means I will no longer be the newcomer!”
This was the first contested School Committee race since 2021, when three candidates campaigned for two seats left vacant by retiring committee members.
This year’s campaign had been launched with a certain symmetry — three incumbents facing off against three challengers. That dynamic shifted on March 22 when six-term incumbent Connie Barr announced she was no longer going to campaign for re-election and pledged her support for Baqri.
“Our schools are the bedrock of our town,” said Baqri. “Our kids are the future. It is my pledge to carry out this responsibility with integrity, diligence and inclusivity.”
Barr’s decision came too late for her name to be removed from the ballot and she received 1,479 votes, but her endorsement may have provided Baqri with an advantage over Ratti and Marder. Baqri finished just 250 votes behind second-place finisher Skatrud, and her total of 3,530 surpassed both Ratti and Marder by more than 1,000 votes.
The race was in many ways conventional, with incumbents Carter and Skatrud stressing their depth of experience, knowledge of the system and cohesion in working with the school department’s administrative team under long-time Superintendent Dan Gutekanst.
But there was some divergence with two of the challengers, with Ratti in particular over the role of the committee itself and how active a role the committee should play in the day-to-day operations of the schools, especially in the area of curriculum implementation — specifically the town’s approach to literacy in the early elementary grades which is undergoing a pilot.
All five candidates shared many of the same priorities on key issues. With the schools looking at lean budget projections for the near-term future, all emphasized the need to place the highest priority on spending on direct instruction. They also all said they would prioritize remaining resources to support social and emotional initiatives while looking for savings in administrative areas.
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