On the Nov. 8 sample ballot for North Reading, there are several positions under the title “Regional School Committee” and one under “Regional Vocational School Committee”. Despite the variation in labels – which appears to be a typo – these positions are all for people running to be members of our regional vocational school district. Unlike our regular school district, which is associated with the town (and whose school committee is determined during our town election in the spring) the vocational school districts span many towns and therefore their school committees are voted on in state elections, with all registered voters in a given regional district being able to vote on all candidates for the regional school committee that are up for election.

There are currently 26 regional vocational school districts in MA. Our regional vocational school is Northeast Metro Tech High School and its school district is the Northeast Metropolitan District, consisting of 12 towns (Chelsea, Malden, Melrose, North Reading, Reading, Revere, Saugus, Stoneham, Wakefield, Winchester, Winthrop, and Woburn). Our school committee is composed of one person from each town, for a total of 12 members who will serve for 4 years. Again, every voter in the district gets to vote on the candidates for each town’s position, not just the candidates from their own town.

Here, we list the candidates from each town, grouped into contested and uncontested races.  Note, it is still important to be aware of the uncontested candidates, as you can decide to vote or withhold a vote for a given uncontested candidate as a way of communicating whether you wish them to have a mandate and to signal for other prospective candidates (for future elections) the level of support for that candidate.

There appears to be no official candidate information for voters about regional school committee candidates. Extensive Googling produced the sparse table of information below. Three of the four contested candidates have some information available on facebook campaign pages, while one uncontested candidate is the subject of a news article with information about the candidacy.

From the limited information available, it appears that many of the committee members have been on the committee through several re-elections. The challengers in the two contested positions appear to have joined forces in an attempt to join the committee. Some of the candidates have previous experience in town government, as teachers or administrators at the vocational school itself, or are attorneys.

Contested

Malden

Revere

Blank

Winthrop (no one listed)

Uncontested