2 candidates seek School Committee seat
BILLERICA >> Two candidates are seeking a seat on the town’s School Committee as the district faces staffing cuts in the new budget.
Resident Teresa Bottoni and incumbent Mike Domina are facing off in the April 6 town election.
Domina is in his first term on the committee, having first been elected in 2021. He grew up in Athol and has been living in Billerica for 17 years, with two kids going through Billerica Public Schools.
Domina has a 29-year career in education. He said he began teaching in 1995, and he has spent the last 10 years as the principal of Mcavinnue Elementary School in Lowell. While living in Billerica, Domina said he spent a lot of time watching School Committee meetings and educating himself on school policy and politics before he was elected.
“I spent a lot of time attending meetings live for a while before making my bid for School Committee, even to the point of often being the only audience member,” said Domina.
When he decided to run in 2021, Domina said he had observed animosity between members of the committee, which he said sometimes caused issues in the schools to not be properly addressed.
“I struggle because it is an election, and you do have to have a platform, and people vote, so it is political. But I believe there cannot be political alliances on the School Committee because its decision-making always impacts the kids,” said Domina.
“It doesn’t matter whose idea it is, as long as the idea is good and it benefits our kids and benefits our teachers.”
Domina said that in the three years of his first term, he has felt the committee has been as productive as it has ever been. While they sometimes disagree on certain policies and votes, and even sometimes do not get along, Domina said they have not undermined or disrespected each other.
“Even with our previous superintendent, we all felt differently about him, and the evaluation reflected that,” said Domina, referring to former Superintendent of Schools Tim Piwowar, who left the role last year to become the superintendent of Westwood Public Schools. “I was more vocal publicly, taking shots at him and taking them back from him, but that didn’t cause ripple effects.”
If reelected, Domina said he wants to push for individual schools to have more of a voice in the district to advocate for what they really need as schools.
“I want to put ownership back into the schools so they have a confidence level and a level of comfort to advocate for what they need. Going up and saying, ‘This is my case, this is what I need,’ and they get what they need,” said Domina.
The committee recently had to take up a vote on the budget for the next fiscal year to send it to Town Meeting. While the $82 million budget is a significant increase from the current budget, it would have needed an additional $1.6 million to avoid staffing cuts that are now expected
before the next school year. When it came to a vote, Domina supported the $84 million version that would have preserved those positions, which he said was in part because he wanted schools to have the room to advocate for their own needs.
Bottoni has been a resident of Billerica for 17 years, before which she had lived much of her life in Arlington. She has a bachelor’s degree in sociology, master’s degrees in theology and education,
and attended St. John’s Seminary.
Bottoni was a substitute teacher in Cambridge Public Schools for 10 years, having received certification to teach grades 5-12, but she retired because the district would only allow her to substitute, and would not let her talk to the students about her expertise in history and theology. She has two books published, “The Monotheism of Abraham: And How it Shaped World History,” and “Bloodletting of the Chosen Few,” both of which heavily tackle the themes and similarities of the three Abrahamic religions.
“Kids aren’t being taught the world religions in schools. They should be teaching religion in schools, and they teach very little about Eastern civilizations while focusing on Western civilizations,” said Bottoni, mainly referring to the histories of U.S. adversaries like Russia and China. “How do you learn the history of the world that way? And that is who we are fighting.”
Bottoni had many qualms over what she saw as the state of Billerica’s curriculum, including mandatory foreign language classes like Spanish.
“I wasted four years of my
life in Spanish class when I could have been learning more about Eastern civilizations like Russia and China,” said Bottoni. “What does Mexico and South America have to help us? They’re all problems.”
Bottoni said that there should be more focus in Billerica’s schools on the details of different ideologies of the world, both religious and political, like Marxism and communism.
“And things like psychology, when they are always just talking about the LGBTQ stuff,” said Bottoni. “We’ve lost the humanities too, and everybody just wants math and science.”
Bottoni also took issue with the endorsement the Billerica Federation of Teachers gave to Domina, and advocated in favor of charter schools.
“The teachers’ union is corrupt, telling everybody who to vote for,” said Bottoni. “They should have charter schools, but the teachers’ union doesn’t want it because then they can’t control it.”
She accused the five members of the School Committee of misappropriating $6 million of town funds, and said that if she wins the election she will investigate where that money has gone. When it
came to the budget crunch the committee faced earlier this month for the coming fiscal year, Bottoni said she was admittedly not well versed in the issue.
“I can’t investigate it unless I am in there,” said Bottoni.
Early voting for the Billerica town election begins Monday, April 1 at the Town Hall auditorium at 365 Boston Road from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, and 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday. The list of polling locations for different precincts on election day is available at town.billerica.ma.us/377/election-results-information.