When Larry Freeman and his family moved to Lexington from Florida one January a decade ago, they arrived in T-shirts and shorts, unprepared to be greeted by New England’s trademark winter ice and snow. It was a big adjustment at first, Freeman said, but his family quickly made Lexington a home, and Freeman wasted little time looking for ways to get involved in the town.
He began by joining Lexington’s Human Rights Committee and later became a board member of LPS’s parent-teacher organization and co-chair of the Student Health Advisory Council. In 2019, Freeman successfully ran for Town Meeting to represent Precinct 1, and in 2022, LexPride — an organization for which Freeman sits on the board — named him LGBTQIA+ Person of the Year. The same year, he was elected to Lexington’s School Committee.
Now, three years into his tenure, Freeman is running for a second term with a lot on his to-do list.
Freeman was first elected to the School Committee in 2022. He and his husband moved to Lexington because of the town’s education system and sent their two children to Lexington Public Schools.
“Civic engagement has always been very important to me,” Freeman said. “We’ve lived in probably five different states, and I’ve been active in each location we live, typically within the school systems.”
Priorities
As the first Black male and first openly gay male School Committee member, Freeman says he has largely prioritized inclusion and giving voice to student identities “that typically haven’t had a voice” during his first term on the committee, and believes “we still have a lot to do.”
“Our saying of ‘we all belong,’ I take that very seriously, and to me, it goes beyond just race,” Freeman said. “It includes culture, religion, sexual identity, sexual orientation. All of those things have to be recognized, and we have to be more inclusive as a district.”
As President Donald Trump orders K-12 schools around the country to purge so-called “discriminatory equity ideology” and attempts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across all levels of education, Freeman believes Lexington is not immune to the impact of the administration’s attacks. Along with the four other current School Committee members and LPS Superintendent Julie Hackett, Freeman signed onto a Feb. 4 letter standing by the district’s diversity, equity and inclusion principles.
“These attacks on DEI are going to continue to increase and escalate, and the fact that we are somewhat in a safe haven state, we may end up getting singled out at some point if administration tries to prove a point,” Freeman said. “Here in Lexington, we’re just going to have to really hold tight to values that we share as a community.”
Freeman hopes to use a second term to focus on improving Lexington Public Schools’ literacy rates, which he called a “huge” issue for him and a “fundamental building block” for student achievement. He added that he personally believes phonics should play a bigger role in LPS’s literacy program.
“While our numbers are great compared to our districts around us, I still think we can do better,” Freeman said. “Here in Lexington, we really encourage students to be thinkers, and math is reading … science is reading.”
Additionally, he hopes to make curriculum reviews more efficient and take a close look at how the district’s history curriculum can prioritize truth-telling.
“Right now, the Hindu community is really suffering because of some of our approaches to history when it comes to their religion, and I would just like us to take a more comprehensive look,” he said. “Our teachers do a great job, and I think we should partner more with the Hindus in our community to understand their lived experiences.”
Lexington High School proposal
Like all of the candidates for School Committee, Freeman supports the construction of a new Lexington High School to update the current building’s facilities and alleviate overcrowding.
He supports the “Bloom” concept proposal for the building, which comes with an estimated price tag of $650 million, approximately $100 million of which will be funded by the Massachusetts School Building Authority, and will take about 4.5 years to build.
“I feel like we kicked this can down the road long enough to the point where the price tag increases year over year,” Freeman said. “For years now, the high school has been overcrowded. We don’t have adequate space to provide a 21st century education.”
Some residents have expressed concern that the new school, intended to address overcrowding, could end up crowded itself as Lexington’s population grows, particularly with the new multi-family housing projects in the works.
As far as attempting to anticipate population growth in Lexington to account for school population fluctuation, “we just don’t know what’s going to happen,” Freeman said.
“Right now, our elementary numbers are lower, so we do anticipate a decrease in students at the high school,” he said, adding that the MBTA Communities zoning law will also impact school population. “But this opportunity that the state is providing us with, providing funds to help pay for this new high school, that’s an opportunity we should not lose.”
Budgeting
Freeman is also prepared to tighten the school district’s belt in future budget decisions, he said. In December 2024, the district implemented a budget freeze after forecasting a $1.5-2 million budget shortfall, largely due to the growth of the district’s special education program.
“We’re going to have to do more with less,” Freeman said. “We have to remember we don’t want to reduce any student facing positions.” He added that he is considering looking into how technology can perform administrative tasks and pursuing partnerships with the town of Lexington to alleviate budget pressures.
As for why Freeman views himself as an asset to the School Committee, he said he continues to speak out for marginalized students and is always willing to have conversations about how to put students first.
“If you’ve been watching over the last three years, I definitely speak up in our school committee meetings, even when I’m alone. Quite often, I do feel like an island in those meetings, because my perspective is just different from some of the other members,” Freeman said. I respect all of their points of view … but at the same time, I try to keep things in perspective by saying, ‘students first.’”