Paul Murphy ’84, Instructor in Mathematics, Statistics, & Computer Science and Head Coach of Girls Swimming, has won one of the five seats as a representative on the Andover Public School Committee after beginning his campaign in early January.
The position entails working alongside the four other committee members at meetings every other week in order to determine a budget and other policies for the school system. Murphy decided to run for the three-year term as a way to give back to his town.
“This felt like a way to do something outside of [Andover] that would be helpful to the town… Everyone should have their little bit of extracurricular that they could do. I think it will balance well. I love being back in the classroom. The last seven years, I was the Dean of Students, so I was pretty involved, and I couldn’t have possibly done anything extra outside. It’s a little bit of an opportunity to do something extra,” said Murphy in an interview with The Phillipian.
As the only teacher on the committee, Murphy looks forward to learning more about the way the Andover Public School System is run, contributing to the conversation about how tax dollars are spent in the system.
“I’ve learned a great deal about the people in town and the school system in general since starting to run… Right now there’s a lot of conversation about the priorities in town, because you have to have a conversation about priorities in order to have a conversation on how the tax dollars are spent. So I’m looking forward to that,” said Murphy. Murphy will continue to teach and coach at Andover, while volunteering on the committee in his spare time.
“I decided a long time ago that I was going to lean into it and ask for people’s votes, so I had a lot of folks helping me, writing postcards, holding signs on Saturday mornings downtown… Because I grew up in Andover, my parents are both still here and my sister works nearby, so there’s a lot of good networking that happened. I’m super grateful that everyone got out and voted,” said Murphy.
