This year’s election for three seats on the Needham School Committee features an element that has been missing in Needham since 2021: challengers, three of them.
All three candidates have young children in the Needham schools and all work either full time or part time in the education field. None has ever run for any public office in Needham or served on a standing appointed board, although all are active in their respective school communities.
Sri Baqri, Scott Marder and Leanne Ratti will be on the ballot seeking three-year terms along with incumbents Connie Barr, Andrea Longo Carter and Alisa Skatrud. They will be trying to unseat an incumbent School Committee member, something that has not been done in Needham since 2017.
Last week, the Observer spoke with the three incumbents, and this week we profile their challengers.
SRI DEVI BAQRI
Sri Baqri has a passion for science and boundless faith in its methods, believing they can be applied in domains that aren’t wholly scientific, such as a public school system.
“I do believe that science is the solution for everything. It brings people together to solve problems that are common to us,” she said when asked broadly how she’d approach being a member of the School Committee.
“Science is diverse. Science is critical. We look at the facts. We look at the data, There’s peer review. There’s lots of things. I can keep going on but I won’t, though,” she says, acknowledging that her enthusiasm for science sometimes gets the better of her.
Baqri can bring the receipts when it comes to applying scientific methods. She is a microbiologist and molecular geneticist by training, having been educated at the National University of Singapore, the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Harvard Medical School. She has worked since 2012 at Cell, where she is deputy editor of scientific journals produced by the Dutch academic publishing company Elsevier.
“I’m very passionate about learning,” she said. “I have immense respect for teachers at large. My mother was a teacher for 45 years before she retired. I teach one class a year to graduate students at Harvard.”
“But more generally, I do think that understanding the process of science — hypothesis generation, working together in a team, the joy of discovery, not being let down by failure. Realizing, ‘Hey, someone did something there that didn’t quite work. How do you go back? What are we not seeing?’”
A Needham resident since 2017, she and her husband have two girls at Mitchell Elementary School, where Baqri serves as vice president of the Parent Teacher Council. She is also a member of the town’s Resilience Network and the Real Coalition, and participated in the development of the Portrait of a Needham Graduate Strategic Plan 2026-2030.
“Running for School Committee just seemed like a very natural drift towards some sort of role beyond the PTC,” Baqri said. She has a high opinion of the Needham schools, but also sees opportunities for improvement in STEM and other areas.
“I’m not seeing this as a problem to be solved necessarily, but I do think there’s an opportunity for improvement, where our STEM could be much, much stronger,” she said.
As for declines in math scores, Baqri said, “This is not unique to Needham but it does seem like in the last decade or so math scores in the United States have been going down, even preceding the pandemic. That is something that deserves attention.
“I have, I think, a very different background and experience in that I didn’t go to school here in the United States,” she said of growing up elsewhere. “I have jumped around different educational systems and they have very different measures of excellence. Some are very very grades-oriented, some are more holistic.”
Baqri said she would consider how approaches used elsewhere might work in Needham. “I would not want to go and directly do something where I have no qualification or education. That’s why you hire really good teachers, really good administrators and educators.”
“If I wasn’t running, I would still be very, very happy with the leaders that we’ve had thus far. But I do think there’s always opportunity to make it even better. And I’m hoping that having new faces and new committee members will be that push towards the opportunity for making it even better.”
SCOTT MARDER
Scott Marder says he grew up in a household where education was effectively the family business.
The middle child of five kids, his father was a professor, his mom a sign language interpreter. His three sisters all work in school settings as a teacher, librarian and mental health counselor respectively. And his younger brother was a middle school science teacher who now works for the American Federation of Teachers.
“And I was in business. The black sheep,” he said. It wasn’t until he was in his early 30s that Marder shifted course away from a career in real estate and onto a path that led him to his current role as a school psychologist at Isaac Sprague Elementary School in Wellesley.
That journey began with working at Children’s Hospital and later as an intern at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, a state facility run by the Department of Public Health that provides medical and psychiatric care.
“I was working with young adults, many from a lower socioeconomic status, a lot of them homeless,” Marder said. At that juncture he said, “I didn’t think I ever wanted to work in school. But I didn’t really understand what a school psychologist did.”
Studying at UMass-Boston and in a master’s program at Lesley University opened his eyes to what a school psychologist does.
“When I learned how it utilizes the psychological and behavioral assessments to really understand a child’s needs, that’s when I said, ‘You know what? This is really interesting.’”
After spending some time in the Mansfield schools, he is now in his 11th year in the Wellesley schools. He said his belief that his particular skill set will be helpful on the School Committee, combined with world events, motivated him to seek a spot on the School Committee.
“Kids need support,” he said. “If kids’ social emotional learning isn’t addressed, they’ll never be able to address their academics.”
And then there’s the impact of seismic shifts in national politics.
“Politics shift in our world. Seeing the new administration with education at the forefront — even cutting the Department of Education and all that. If you think about LGBTQ+ youth, the impact that could have on them. Thinking about the kids in my own school and my children and their programs, and other friends who have kids in school and the overall impact that social, emotional is having on all these kids,” Marder said.
“Post-COVID, there has been a huge paradigm shift in the amount of support that students have been requiring in schools. There’s been a huge increase in anxiety. I’ve seen skyrocketing attentional difficulties, behavioral difficulties, kids being unable to access learning because of the behavioral obstacles that are getting in their way.”
The father of two elementary school age children born almost exactly one year apart, he is the PTC rep for his son’s class. Having moved to Needham in 2022, he acknowledges that he does not have a deep history of town involvement.
“I think it’s a valid point, but I think I bring a lot to the table from working in a school, both from the students’ perspectives and the teacher’s perspective. Plus, I do have a business background so I understand how budgets work.
“I’ll be the first to say, I certainly don’t know everything. There’s a ton I have to learn, but I’m willing to learn. I’m willing to put in the work. I know how to do research, and I know how to collaborate well with others. And I’m not afraid to ask the tough questions.”
LEANNE RATTI
Leanne Ratti knows her way around an elementary school. She has taught in the Boston public schools since 2009, all at the William H. Ohrenberger School, a Grade 3-8 magnet school in West Roxbury.
She taught various grade levels in a variety of subjects before she switched to working with the special education population exclusively, “because I really felt passionate about it.”
She and her husband moved to Needham in 2012 and now have three children — a kindergartener and a third grader at Sunita Williams, and a sixth grader at High Rock.
“We moved to Needham for the schools,” she said. “You hear the schools are good in Needham and you trust that. And then some things came up that I was concerned about, and it also came up to a lot of parents that I know.”
The issue that concerned her related to struggles her middle child was having with reading while in the second grade. Ratti said the school conducted an evaluation which qualified him to receive services. By third grade, she was told his reading was now “proficient” and he would no longer require services.
“Now, from my experience, that doesn’t happen,” Ratti said. “You don’t just have a reading disability, and then all of a sudden not have it.”
When she probed further into how the assessments were conducted, Ratti said, “I learned that Needham was using Lucy Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell to assess reading level.
“And I was shocked because, in my education world, these are blacklisted programs. These are widely criticized. No one’s using them in Boston where I work. So I said, ‘Is there anything else that you can use?’”
Ratti eventually met up with other parents with similar concerns at a literacy forum held by the Needham schools in January. Shortly after, she helped found the Needham Literacy Coalition, which is circulating a petition “to support the adoption of a more effective literacy curriculum and demand our school committee and leaders take action now!”
“That was when someone, one of those parents, said to me, ‘You know, you really should get involved with School Committee.’”
“So that was the moment when I thought I should run because I feel like I have the background. I have the expertise in the curriculum. I have the experience in the classroom and maybe I can help.”
In addition to her literacy curriculum concerns, Ratti said she would also advocate for more teacher training. “The teachers need more professional development training, not just a new program. I’ve had curriculum thrown at me without professional development, and then I had to advocate for the professional development.
“I feel the School Committee’s number one role is advocating — to hear what the needs are, the concerns are, the questions are, and then bring it to the leadership of Needham public schools to see if we can work together.”
“It’s time for some change. Time for some new faces,” Ratti said. “We are evolving as a community. And I am the face of a Needham public school parent and also the face of a teacher.”
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