With 100% of Somerville Ward 3’s vote counted, Lee Erica Palmer was honored to earn a seat on the Somerville School Committee with 81% of the vote, according to the unofficial tally.

Palmer ran for Somerville School Committee on a platform of: advocating for appropriate testing and assessments that are right for our community and our students, eschewing high-stakes, single-metric testing for a multi-metric approach; promoting increased physical activity and nutrition education in the schools; urging expansion of our multilingual services to better engage with all our families; and, supporting high-quality and affordable out-of-school childcare and enrichment opportunities.

“I am very proud of the campaign we ran and the issues on which we ran,” said Palmer. “I look forward to continuing the many thought-provoking conversations I had with neighbors across Ward 3 over the course of the campaign, and I’m eager to hear from all ward residents regarding their hopes for and concerns about our city’s schools.”

Palmer is an educator, union organizer, and civil rights attorney. In her role as an educator, Palmer taught high school Spanish in the Boston Public Schools. More recently, she served as Executive Director of Kesher, a Somerville-based after-school and pre-school program. Additionally, she has worked with the Somerville School Department and the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative as the coordinator for the Early Childhood Literacy Fair and the Summer Camp Fair. Palmer’s legal background includes positions as a bilingual legal services attorney serving low-income immigrant families, and as a civil rights attorney/educator working in public school districts to train school administrators and teachers on Title IX.

Palmer graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (dual major in Political Science and Spanish Language) from the University of Michigan in 2001, earned her Master’s degree in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts in 2003, and received her Juris Doctor from the Northeastern University of School of Law in 2011. Her son, Andrew, began kindergarten this Fall at the East Somerville Community School.