WORCESTER—Earning more votes in her race for school committee at-large than Mayor Joseph Petty earned to win the mayorship showed that people recognize the work Maureen Binienda did as Worcester superintendent, she told the Worcester Guardian Thursday.
Binienda earned 11,040 votes (or nearly 34 percent of the total) in the at-large school committee race, which is more than the 10,687 votes Petty pulled in for the mayor’s race. Incumbent School Committee Member Sue Coghlin Mailman earned the second-most votes and the only other available at-large seat with 8,539 votes (which is close to 26 percent of the vote).
“[The voters] want me back working to continue to improve Worcester Public Schools,” Binienda said.
She said she was especially pleased to be the top vote-getter in the school committee at-large race.
Binienda served as Worcester Public Schools’ superintendent from 2016 to 2022, after which the school committee voted not to renew her contract.
“I think that 46 years in the Worcester Public Schools dealing with thousands and thousands of families and students that still live there, working with community agencies, support of the police – I even had bus drivers, WRTA and Worcester Public Schools bus drivers going by blowing their horn at me – I think that my work spoke for itself,” Binienda said.
She faced some criticism during her time as superintendent with the Worcester Coalition for Education Equity calling for her to be fired in 2019 for metrics that showed students of color were facing harsher discipline and dropping out at higher rates than their white counterparts, according to reporting from the Telegram & Gazette.
On Thursday, Binienda said she ran a positive campaign despite “negative things” that were thrown at her.
In the weeks leading up to the election, Binienda’s connection to former school committee member John Monfredo was raised. Monfredo, who was accused of sexual abuse of a minor in the 1990s, was seen campaigning for Binienda. No charges were filed against Monfredo and he has maintained his innocence, Worcester Magazine reported.
When asked about her connection to Monfredo, Binienda said she had no comment, other than to say the people who raised the connection had a “very political agenda.”
Another message the election sent, Binienda said, was that voters want “common sense” people on the committee.
“They didn’t want these progressive people that were going down the wrong path,” Binienda said. “I think for the city council, the mayor and the school committee people made their voices heard.”
The committee now has a largely different makeup than the one that voted not to renew Binienda’s contract, aside from Petty and Dianna Biancheria, the latter of whom made her way back onto the school committee Tuesday. Binienda said she’s happy to work with all of the committee members.
Binienda added that voting to bring Kathleen Roy onto the school committee was a “good decision.”
Going into her term on the committee, Binienda said she wants to focus on fiscal responsibility, school safety and what opportunities the district is providing students of all abilities, specifically in terms of social emotional learning.
The latter involves looking at what community agencies the district can bring in to help support the students.
Referencing safety concerns, Binienda said she was to make sure “that staff and students feel safe in their schools.”
“If schools aren’t safe, kids don’t learn,” Binienda said. “They’re too anxious, they’re too worried. So we want to have safe schools.”
The educator said she didn’t support it when the Worcester City Council voted to remove school resource officers and replace them with school liaison officers who are assigned to quadrants rather than specific schools.
When asked if she wants school resource officers back in schools she said, “I think that that’s a longer conversation, obviously, to have. But if that’s what we need for our schools to still be safe, then yes, I would support that.”
Binienda is currently serving as the interim superintendent of Easthampton Public Schools, a job she intends to keep.
“Everybody that works on the school committee has another job right?” Binienda remarked. “Everybody’s working. So it’s not different that everybody else is balancing their roles.”
Working as an interim superintendent while she’s on the school committee will actually be a positive, according to Binienda, because she is also meeting with the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and taking on the other work of a superintendent.
She called finding out she won Tuesday wonderful and said she would love to reach out to everyone who voted for her personally and thank them for their vote.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford and Antigua and Barbuda. She’s been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
