Timothy O’Connor
WESTFIELD – Timothy O’Connor is running for a seat on the School Committee this November. He previously served two full terms from 2000-2008.
O’Connor is a lifelong resident of Westfield (WHS Class of ’82) and married to Terri Quinn O’Connor. He has two daughters who matriculated in Westfield Public Schools; Ashlee, now a senior at UMass Amherst, and Erin, a junior at the University of Rhode Island. O’Connor said both his parents were educators. His mother taught in Westfield public schools for more than 30 years, and his father was a special education placement coordinator for the Board of Education in Hartford, CT.
“Education has been around me all my life,” O’Connor said. He first joined the School Committee in 2000 because he was interested in public service, wanted to give back to the community, and had two daughters in school. He said it was a good fit. He also said his daughters are doing well in college, because of the teaching they had in high school, elementary and middle school in Westfield, which he said has “great teachers, and a strong administration.”
O’Connor said he went off the School Committee in 2008 because his daughters’ school activities became too time consuming. “To do well on the School Committee, you have to put in a lot of time and effort. I always thought I’d like to return some day,” O’Connor said, adding that with both daughters in college, he believes now is the right time to return.
O’Connor said he believes the redistricting plan to establish an intermediate school and elementary school was an excellent decision. He said it’s also going to be a lot of work to ensure a smooth transition for students, parents, teachers and the administration. He said anytime there is a global change, communications must be timely and clear.
He is also in favor of building a new elementary school in the district, and moving Abner Gibbs and Franklin Ave students to a new school. He said those schools haven’t been upgraded with the new technology, even though the teachers and the entire staff have done a wonderful job with the resources made available to them. “It’s time to put those students into a new setting,” O’Connor said.
In his professional life, O’Connor works for a risk management company in Springfield doing disability evaluations. He is the head of claim operations, in charge of over 90 staff and two billion in reserves. In his prior School Committee experience, he said his strong financial background helped him to be a prudent manager with the budget. He also served two alternating two-year terms as vice-chair of the School Committee and serving as chair of the Finance sub-committee the other terms.
O’Connor said technology has come full circle since the early 2000’s, and he supports the recent efforts to put technology in the budget as a line item, and also the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy which is currently before the School Committee. “We continually have to be looking at how best to position ourselves to keep WPS students competitive. This requires an ongoing investment in infrastructure, resources and services,” O’Connor said. He said the challenges are going to remain as to how to keep the budget as level funded as possible into the future, and try to make the dollars stretch.
“We have to put the right tools in the hands of the teachers to make sure they have the resources to do the job they’re capable of doing,” O’Connor said.
