AI-generated transcript of Mike Mastrobuoni, Candidate for School Committee

[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.

[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.

[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, thanks so much for joining me tonight. If you don't mind introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a bit about who you are.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. Thanks, Danielle. I'm really excited to be here. My name's Mike Mastroboni. I am a father of two Medford Public Schools kids. I'm the budget director for our neighbor down south, Somerville. And I am a first-time candidate for school committee on November 4th.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks, Mike. And what are your pronouns?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure, he, him. Yes, thank you.

[Danielle Balocca]: So yeah, before we get into talking about your campaign for school committee, I'm just wondering if you could answer the question that we ask everybody on the podcast, which is, what is your favorite place to eat in Medford and what do you like to eat there?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: So I live in Fulton Heights, so for breakfast for me, it's Jim's Market. I just learned that they have a Taylor Ham b-boy called the J-Boy. Strongly recommend that. Lunch, definitely Tenoch fish tacos. I love their fish tacos. Dinner for me, it's Nigea. I don't know how that place can do it so consistently. And then I will mention the ghost of Ebisuya, gone but not forgotten.

[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thanks, Mike. Yeah, the b-boy is a popular one in our house too. But we are vegetarians, but they will do like a spinach. I usually like spinach, egg, cheese, and hash brown. It's so good. Thank you. Okay, so- That sounds awesome. Yeah. It's great to know that you can be a vegetarian and also eat at gyms. So for tonight, we want to talk a little bit more about your campaign for school committee. So I'm wondering if we could just start by sharing a little bit with us about what kind of led you to the moment when you decided to run for school committee.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. Thanks for that. And it's a little bit of a long story, but my wife, Christina, and I moved to Medford in 2021. Our kids, my son, Lincoln, is seven. My daughter, Violet, is four. They're going to be in schools here until, I think, 2038 or 2039, right? We are rooted here. We are grounded here. We're so excited to be here. Our story is like a lot of folks who came to Boston for college, spent some time there, graduated into a recession, made their way around different neighborhoods of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville. We spent 10 years in Somerville before we moved here to Medford. We wanted to find a place where we could really lay our roots, get invested in, have our kids grow up in. The coolest part, I think, that I've found about your kids starting school is when my son started kindergarten, your community just totally explodes and you get surrounded by, um, new friends, um, you know, uh, your, your kid's friends. Um, and you start going to these, these new activities and start making new connections. And for me, uh, I want to give back to that community. I've been thinking about how best can I use my skillset to benefit Medford. Um, I've tried a couple things I'm currently on the water and sewer commission, which has been awesome. But for me, the next step is to. To get back to that community that's been so great for us. I've seen the really great strengths of Medford Public Schools so far. I've seen some opportunities, right? I've gone through the after school lottery. I've had my W's and L's there for sure. I've kind of struggled to find the right information or the right app or the right way to contact my teacher because we use 10 different systems. I volunteered at PTO events, you know, had a great time there. just really, I think, for me, in the time that we're in, my skill set can lend a lot to the school committee.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. And thank you. So it sounds like experiencing the schools with your kids and sort of wanting to contribute in a way that makes sense for kind of your background. What are the particular skills that you're bringing to or that you would bring to the role of school committee member?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. So in my day job, I'm the budget director for Somerville. So what that means is I lead the team that develops and manages our $380 million a year operating budget. I help plan ahead through our financial forecast, our 10-year financial outlook, trying to make sure that the future looks bright for the community that I work for. And I also plan for and enable some of the really big capital projects, really big building projects, water and sewer projects, through my municipal finance training and background. A big part of my job is taking complicated financial issues and trying to explain them in plain language, whether that's to our subject matter experts, right, to a transportation expert or a public health expert, to elected officials. I've done trainings and spend a lot of time with our city council and school committee in Somerville. And then also to residents. So we try and do a lot of, you know, our budget division within finance tries to do a lot of outreach to residents to help them understand and engage with municipal finance because it's really complicated and it's really hard. And the more residents and colleagues and elected officials understand it, the better we can make good investments together.

[Danielle Balocca]: Wow. So you manage or you plan the whole budget for the budget for the whole city of Somerville, not just schools.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Yes. So I work on the city side. So we have a whole finance team on the schools that handle the school's budget. But I coordinate across our 60 plus departments with department heads, with finance managers, with our CFO, with our decision team to make sure that you know, we're aligning our dollars with the outcomes that we want to see. So it's a really challenging, fun job. You're kind of at the epicenter of everything, which is what I think what's really cool about municipal finance is it's a skill set that helps everyone. And it's something you really want to make sure you have as part of your team.

[Danielle Balocca]: So, so bringing that, like, what you do at work in your day job to the school committee in Medford, what, what sort of what have you noticed how things are going about how things are going now? And what was sort of your hopes be for the future?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: So a lot of things are going really great right now, absolutely. I'm really proud of the work that Jenny and Paul, who are both on the school committee, have done on labor negotiations. That's been really, really fantastic in terms of compensating our employees well. we've been able to get community support for two overrides. That's great. That's awesome. Like I said, a lot of things are going really well. But the things that the school committee is primarily responsible are They're nuts and bolts, they're executive type things. So I'm talking labor negotiations, I'm talking approving and developing a budget, hiring a superintendent, outlining the vision for the district, whether that's through strategic planning, thinking long term, or policy, thinking near term. So a lot of that work is the stuff that I do on a day-to-day basis. So I hope that By being on the school committee, by being able to be the biggest cheerleader of Medford public schools out there, I can help folks understand school budgets, that they're complex, and how state law, grants, contracts, program evaluation, how all that fits together so that we can again turn our resources into results for our kids and our families and our community. Because I think that's foundational. We have to really make sure that, before anything else, we're investing in our kids.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and I think that's the budget has been something that I that we just hear so much about and there's so many critiques about in Medford and like the, you know, I think over the few over the past few years it's just kind of listening to people try to be creative with like a pretty small pot of money. And hopefully the the override is helping with that. And hopefully there's like some continued growth there in different ways. But one big project that I think a lot of people are hoping for is like the building of a new high school. And so I wonder like where that sort of sits in your future plans or priorities.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Absolutely. So the Medford High School project is going to be the biggest decision that we're going to make in this generation. It needs to serve kids of today, it needs to serve kids of the next generation, my seven-year-old and four-year-old, and it's going to have to serve their kids as well. We need to get this right, and it's something that we really can't compromise on. Thankfully, my entire career in Somerville has been working on some of these really big projects. Some of my first meetings in Somerville were planning meetings for the Somerville High School renovation project. It was a $290 million high school renovation in a challenging environment during COVID. And it was a really successful project. It's a school that we're really proud of. I want to use what I learned there to make sure that we get the best project for Medford. That's something that's going to be flexible for the future in a way that our current building is not, right? It's something that needs to be accessible and energy efficient in ways that weren't priorities when that original building was built. It's got to be right sized for the future, and it's got to be planned for the long term to protect taxpayers, because the challenge that we're going to face is to fund that. a debt exclusion. So I don't think there's any way around building a citywide school project in Massachusetts in 2025 without a debt exclusion. So we need school parents. We need non-school parents. We need every voter out there supporting this project. And it's got to be the right project for Medford. So that's, I think, really huge. And my experience having done that in the Somerville High School project, and my experience doing that right now in the Winter Hill High School project, in Somerville is going to be really important for the next couple of years.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I mean, that's really nice to hear that you've had this like exact experience in a different city. And I imagine part of that experience was helping to convince residents of Somerville that this was an important project to invest their money in. We've talked about this in past episodes about just explaining what a debt exclusion is, but that would be a temporary increase to taxes in order to pay for a big project. Exactly. Different from an override, which would be like a permanent increase in taxes. That's right. Yeah. Wow. So aside from the high school, which I think is a huge project, and I think one that lots of people are thinking about as they vote, what are your other sort of thoughts for the future of Medford Public Schools?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. So something that really keeps me up at night is preservation of our progress. Everywhere you go right now, you listen to NPR, you listen to the radio, you listen to a podcast. These are uncertain times. We don't know what's going to happen next. That's not OK for education. That's not OK for our kids. I'm worried about federal or state cuts in aid. I'm worried about potential slow pace of development in Medford if we have some economic headwinds not in our control. Pair that with consistently increasing expectations of our schools. We need to do better every day. That's a recipe for risk. Part of what I do is trying to make sure that we mitigate those risks. I want to work with the public schools administration, the superintendent, the city council, and the mayor to get on the same page about how we're going to approach these risks together. I don't think that it's helpful for Medford residents If the school committee is holding the mayor or the city council is holding the mayor or someone is holding someone hostage, we need to work together because residents rely on what we do. I also want to work with city staff to make a sustainable multi-year plan to preserve services, including some kind of planning of what if we lose Grant A, what if we lose school lunch funding? What if the state drops our Chapter 70 resources for next year because the feds did something to the state? So those are the things that keep me up at night. We are also in a really, really important opportunity for this upcoming school committee, you know, who are going to be able to hire a superintendent that aligns with our values. We all know the superintendent is just so, so critical to the success of the district and we got to hire the right person and then we got to work with them to start thinking strategically about. What do we want Medford schools to look like? And what are the steps we got to take to get there? Um, I want to be thinking ahead. I want to be looking around corners and I want to make sure that at the end of the day, it's in service of maintaining the core function of what, what a city does, which is, um, funding school for our kids.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Yeah, I think this question came up on, or something similar, a similar topic came up about like the federal landscape and how it's impacting us locally and what we think about the role of the school committee in that. And I think you're making some great points that are related to finance and how that impacts, you know, the health of the school system. I also wonder about like ideological topics. So like how, you know, and, you know, I've heard this phrase like, being grateful to be in Massachusetts, but I don't think that's something that we can continue to take for granted. We had our preliminary election for city council last week, and there was a surprising outcome in terms of how people were voting for more conservative candidates, candidates that have expressed pretty problematic views about lots of things, in my opinion. And I think that there's only like a small role maybe in how the school committee kind of impacts those sorts of things, but I kind of wonder how you think about that, what your hopes are in terms of preserving some of these things.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Sure. You know, I consider myself a very, very strong progressive. I'm really psyched and fired up. to be running with some great new friends with Our Revolution Medford. I think we have a really important job to do over the next six or seven weeks here, which is talk to residents about the Medford that we want to see. right, which funds public schools, which fixes streets and sidewalks, which moves us towards more community safety and removes barriers to participation in government. The reason I wanted to run with those folks is because that vision of what Medford can be is really compelling to me. I think that We have work to do to make sure that the election goes the way we'd like, but I think in school committee, the way I picture it is think about the team that you want facing challenges that Medford schools are being presented with. I wanna make sure that you have folks with finance experience, folks with curriculum experience, folks with really, really close knit ties to the students, right? You're building a team that's gonna respond to these challenges. Think about how, you know, your vote, who you want on your team with your vote, what you wanna build as a group. And I think, you know, just because The challenge that I'm really focusing on is the high school and the sustainable investments. I'm really fired up to work on a lot of the other issues that we're seeing in the schools, including things like supporting the after-school ecosystem and taking an all-hands approach on figuring out how we build that out with our nonprofit partners, how we improve language access, how we try and get a single point of contact for families to tap into the system. All those kind of concrete things are really exciting as well. So I'm fired up to work with a team that has values, that has a vision for what they want Medford to look like. I'm not sure all the candidates are maybe brave enough to put that out there, what they want to see it look like. And that's why I want to run with these progressive folks who have put a lot of work into making Medford, to improving Medford and making it the place that we all want it to be.

[Danielle Balocca]: Any other priorities or parts of your platform that we haven't talked about that you want to make sure to mention?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: You know, when I talk about kind of what team do you want to build for the school committee, you want to kind of piece together skills. I think something that's important to always know is that we don't know what challenges we're going to face. But what are the core values of the people that you're putting in office who are going to take on the next challenge that we don't know? We can't even imagine what it might be. So what I want folks to know is that core values for me are having well-resourced classrooms in well-maintained buildings. I want fairly paid educators and staff. I want afterschool programs with capacity, and I want special education that allows Medford kids to stay here in district. I think we've made a lot of progress there, and I wanna keep that going. And I wanna bring my skills, my energy, my perspective as a parent as a public servant and hopefully in the future as a member of the school committee to help make that happen and help the community that has really embraced us. And I'm really looking forward to that. It's been so fun so far.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. It's a lot of exciting ideas. Any ways that people can communicate with you if they want to share their thoughts or places that we can find you if you're doing any events or things like that?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Best way to reach me is MikeMastroboni.com, M-I-K-E, and then Mastroboni is M-A-S-T-R-O-B-U-O-N-I. Also on Instagram at Mike4Medford, F-O-R Medford. So those are the best places to reach me. My email is also Mike4Medford at gmail.com. I've learned so much canvassing. I didn't realize that our community was so full of teachers with so much great experience and so many great ideas. They've all been willing to chat with me about stuff. So if you've got questions or you want to talk about something, just shoot me an email and hope I can earn your vote on November 4th.

[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thanks, Mike. Anything else before we wrap up?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thanks so much, Janet. I really appreciate you. And thanks to the volunteers, everybody who's out there, everybody who's voting. You know, Medford politics is so much fun.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks, Mike. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrik Idonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites. Medford Bites. Good job.

Mike Mastrobuoni total time: 16.66 minutes total words: 1031