Editor’s note: So far four candidates have declared to run for the Ward 3 seat of the East Providence School Committee. Its current incumbent, David Luiz, is running for city council. Each candidate will get their own introductory article, in the order that interviews were conducted.

Libby Merrill isn’t running for school committee to tear down the system. Quite the opposite, she thinks East Providence is doing a lot of stuff right.

“I don't have grievances against the school department that I am looking to try to solve,” she said. “I'm not coming in with an agenda where I want to change how we do special education or anything like that.”

At the same time, Merrill certainly has skin in the game and a compelling reason to want to enter the political arena for the first time. She is mother to a third-grader in the district, and one of the reasons she and her husband picked East Providence as a place to put down their roots with their young family was due to the schools.

“I did a bit of research on schools before we moved and something that was really important to me was that wherever my daughter went to school, it would be a public school, and it would also be a school that was representative of the socioeconomic, ethnic diversity of the state,” she said. “In other words, so she would get a realistic experience of her surroundings. And East Providence was attractive for all those reasons.”

From the ability to send her child to state-funded Pre-K, to the experience she’s had with teachers in each subsequent classroom, Merrill said that she has been impressed with the quality of education East Providence offers.

“My experience with district employees have been positive and we have a lot of smart folks that work in the district who I think by large do a pretty good job,” she said. “Obviously there's always room for improvement, but we have some good folks on the team that are smart and making smart decisions, I think.”

Merrill said that her motivations for being on school committee relate more to being a shepherd of the district’s more-than $100 million budget, discussing and setting policies, and evaluating the job of the superintendent.

“Obviously the school budget is really tight, so we have to be smart about future spending. And a lot of the school budget is pretty respected in terms of what it has already been promised for. So there's not a lot out of wiggle room in the school budget,” Merrill said, adding that students should be at the center of budgetary priorities. “I think just being really smart and making sure that the funds we're spending are going to have the greatest benefit to student academics especially.”

Asked for some other priorities, Merrill said that the future of the current home of the district’s Pre-K operations at Meadow Crest (which will be moved to Martin Middle School when the second phase of that project is completed in a year or so) was a big one.

Additionally, Merrill mentioned wanting to help be a protective shield against the thrust of federal interference — such as budget cuts to things like SNAP and other grant-funded initiatives that have been targeted by the Trump administration.

“I want to make sure that students and teachers are protected from interference that would make it hard for them to learn,” she said. “Ensuring that students have access to their right to education even no matter what their immigration status is. I think the school committee can do a job like a football player, blocking some of the harmful federal intrusion that is trying to make education harder for students and teachers.”

A Warwick native and East Providence resident since 2017, Merrill has been employed within the educational field for the past 20 years. She was an elementary school teacher at public schools in Chicago, Boston, and Newton, Mass. before transitioning to the administration side of things. She has been involved with high school admissions and for the last decade has been involved in teacher recruitment.