by Laura A. Brodin

The only state representative for Somerville whose district does not include another city spoke at the Aug. 13 contributors meeting of The Somerville News.

“Most of my ideas come out of my experience being a mother, a grandmother, a school committee member,” said State Rep. Patricia D. Jehlen, D-Somerville, who has lived in Somerville for 37 years and has served as a state rep. since 1991.

Jehlen said she served on the Somerville school committee for 16 years from 1976 to 1991, so it is natural that many of her top ideas and issues focus on education.

When she was on the school committee, Jehlen said he was proud of fighting for a hot lunch programs for the city’s children, supporting the physical aid of the city’s schools, getting more volunteers in the schools and consolidating the high school.

She also championed the CHOICE alternative public elementary school program,in which parents could choose different kinds of education for their children, Jehlen said.

Jehlen has brought the same concerns to her work at the state house, she said. “Children are not getting an adequate education,’ she said.

“They are coming to school unprepared. Early childhood education is part of that.”

Although she sent her own children to Catholic schools, Jehlen said that she does not support tax rebates for families who send their children to parochial schools or private school voucher programs.

Right now, the public schools are so strapped for resources that nothing can be diverted for them, she said. “I’m against vouchers until we have adequately and stately funded public education.”

Jehlen said she is very concerned about the level of state funding for higher education. Massachusetts has cut higher education more than any state in the union. “We are 44th in the nation in higher education spending. And we did the biggest cuts during the current fiscal crisis.”

When she was on the school committee, Jehlen said she represented Ward 2, which has a more traditional and conservative population than she is usually associated with.

“I am very conscious of the division of the city between old Somerville and new Somerville, and I think it’s very unfortunate that people feel divided,” she said.

“I have made an effort over my lifetime. I wouldn’t have been elected if I hadn’t represented both,” she said.

“The things people in Somerville are concerned about are how they are going to raise their families and support themselves,” she said.

“There are people who have lived in Somerville their whole lives whose children cannot afford to live here, or who can no longer afford to live here themselves,” she said.

Unlike her November opponent, Republican Dane Baird, Jehlen said the solution to the housing crisis is not to create more supply, but to help people afford the housing we have now. “I worked for rent control. But, we’re not going to have rent control in the state. We basically eliminated state subsidies.”

“But, new housing is not going to solve our housing problems, a living wage is,” she said.

“I’m in favor of a living wage. That’s the kind of thing we can do pay people adequately so they can afford housing,” she said.

“I strongly support an increase in the minimum wage and a revitalized union movement. I support tax cuts that benefit ordinary people, like the Earned Income Tax Credit and increasing personal exemptions,” she said.

“I oppose shifting the tax burden to working people,” she said. Jehlen said she was confused and surprised when she learned that the extension of the Green Line to Somerville and beyond was dropped from the just passed state transportation bond.

She said she finds it interesting that the subway extension to the South Shore was approved when there is significant local opposition, and that the people of Somerville denied.

“I would say the people of Somerville are rightfully angry about the Green Line not going into the bond,” she said.

Jehlen said that the Somerville extension was in the House version, but was dropped in the Senate side. By the time she learned what had happen parliamentary rules and the procedures of the legislature made action impossible. “I wish I had been able to do something.”

Jehlen said she graduated from Swarthmore College and received her M.A.T. from Harvard University. Her own parents were activists in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, who traveled throughout the South to end segregation.

A former history teacher, Jehlen is a founding member of such programs as the Council for Fair School Finance, OPENAIR Circus, Mystic View Task Force, and the Workers’ Rights Board.

As chair of the House’s Progressive Caucus, Jehlen succeeded in passing bills to increase the minimum wage, cut taxes for working families and seniors, make insurance policies cover contraception and hormone therapy, and tax capital gains at the same rate as paychecks, she said.

During her career as state rep., Jehlen said she is proud to have been one of the first to question how the state runs prisons.

She also led the fight against the $2 billion for the convention center, and she was one of the two representatives to vote against it, she said.