School Committee Chair Sousa one of three candidates for 6th Middlesex seat

Three Framingham Democrats are running to represent the new minority-majority 6th Middlesex District in the State House. On Monday through Wednesday of this week, we are profiling each candidate. Today's candidate is School Committee Chair Priscila Sousa. 

Framingham’s first minority-majority district — the newly formed 6th Middlesex — covers much of the city's Southside. The new district is free of incumbents. No Republicans are running for the seat, so whichever of three Democratic candidates wins the Sept. 6 primary election will be the only person on the ballot in the general election on Nov. 8.

One of those candidates is Priscila Sousa.

A bit about Sousa

Sousa is a 34-year-old Framingham resident and graduate of Framingham schools. She works in the solar industry. She’s a School Committee member who this year became the first woman of color to be elected chair.

“I love this community so much, and I’m running because Framingham represents home to me,” she said. “It is an exciting moment to know that Southside is not going to have to share representation on Beacon Hill.”

Sousa is serves on several community boards: Hoops & Homework, Framingham FORCE, Friends of Resiliency for Life and Voices Against Violence Purple Passion Committee.

Sousa said becoming chair of the School Committee had taught her a lot about serving a legislative body.

“It was a great opportunity to fine-tune skills of building coalitions, gathering support,” she said. “In any situation, you only have as many votes as you can get to support your cause.”

She said she’s “uniquely qualified” to represent the Southside, and wants to hit the ground running — with input from community leaders throughout the district and all over the Southside.

Goals: Equity in education and open spaces, clean up contaminated sites, help downtown businesses

One thing Sousa would like to prioritize is helping downtown businesses; she’s run one herself and knows how difficult it is to succeed there, even though Framingham is surrounded by communities with bustling downtowns.

“Every day that your shop stays open is another little miracle — and it shouldn’t be that way,” she said. “Our small business owners work incredibly hard.”

Sousa said many of her goals, if she were to be elected, are set through an educational lens. She said that north of Route 9, many children have access to preschool. But that number drops dramatically on the Southside.

She said she’d work to make sure education is not a matter of privilege.

“The data is there: Having access to preschool education impacts social development, academic development — even earning capacity,” she said. “It is unfair to have a 5-year-old sit down on the first day of kindergarten already miles behind than the child next to them because one of them had access to preschool and one didn’t.”

She also wants to tackle the cleanup of the contaminated sites on the Southside, surmising that if such contamination had been found north of Route 9 it would likely already be cleaned up.

“What a way to tell these families — indirectly — that they matter less,” Sousa said. “It’s incredibly important that we secure funding and make every possible effort to clean up these contaminated sites.”

She said parents and teachers alike have said that students are working incredibly hard to come back to where they were before the pandemic, and that access to open spaces is critical for social and emotional learning.

Endorsements and past elections

Sousa has been endorsed by Framingham City Councilors Michael Cannon, Noval Alexander, Philip Ottaviani, John Stefanini and George King. School Committee Vice Chair Jessica Barnhill also endorsed Sousa.

Sousa also picked up endorsements from the National Association of Social Workers, the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts and the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the country.

Sousa ran for mayor in 2017, placing fourth among seven candidates in the preliminary election, with 538 votes. The top two candidates in that race, Yvonne Spicer and John  Stefanini, moved on, with Spicer prevailing that November.

“As a former five-term state representative, I know what it takes to serve our community at the State House," Stefanini said in a statement endorsing Sousa. "Our district needs a strong leader, who will use her voice to tirelessly work on South Framingham’s behalf on the issues important to us, not Beacon Hill insiders. We need a collaborator who works with everyone and understands the people she serves. She (Sousa) has the energy, passion and purpose to be our voice.”

History of the district

Democrat Maria Robinson was the most recent legislator in the former 6th Middlesex District (it changed as part of the U.S. Census redistricting). She was nominated last fall by President Joe Biden to fill the role of an assistant secretary at the Department of Energy, but her nomination stalled and was withdrawn in June.

Robinson resigned from the State House in July and joined the Department of Energy as director of the DOE's Grid Deployment Office, according to her LinkedIn page. She no longer resides in the 6th Middlesex District.

More: A Framingham state representative is joining the Biden administration

With the redistricting, residents should check their polling locations on the city’s website.

The voter registration deadline for the Sept. 6 state primary is Aug. 27. Vote-by-mail applications for the primary are due Aug. 29.

The general election takes place on Nov. 8. The voter registration deadline for the general election is Oct. 29, and vote-by-mail applications are due Nov. 1.

This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Framingham school board Chair Priscila runs for 6th Middlesex District