EAST?LONGMEADOW –  When casting your vote at this years preliminary and annual elections, you may recognize a familiar name.  Last year 19-year-old Jon Torcia ran for School Committee, and while he wasn’t elected in 2017, he’s hoping that this year he will be able to fill the open School Committee seat.

Torcia is a graduate of the class of 2017 at East Longmeadow High School.  Currently, he’s a freshman at Western New England University (WNEU) and is majoring in Political Science.  He’s a member of East Longmeadow’s Cultural Council, where he started as a student representative.  Torcia served as president of his class, and attended each school in town.

“I’ve always had an interest in politics and government and the idea of improving peoples lives through a government, local government in particular. I’m a fan of local government because it affects the most amount of people,” Torcia said. “Unfortunately, people don’t tend to care about local government as much as at the Federal level, and I believe very strongly in how important local government is.”

Of his time campaigning for School Committee in 2017, Torcia said he has learned wealth of information.

“We knew we were in an underdog position, but I think while we didn’t win we came closer than most people counted us to be at. I was pretty proud of the campaign that we ran and we got students involved.  It was a diverse campaign,” Torcia said. “Yes, I am a student, so I guess that’s maybe my demographic of choice, but I want to be a representative for a very diverse group of people: taxpayers, students, parents, teachers, senior citizens. When I go door to door there’s all types of people I come across, I want to be a School Committee member to the collective community.”

While initially Torcia was hesitant about running for School Committee again, his friends, family and other town supporters reached out and convinced him to give it another try.  He commented that he still cares about the issues at hand and frequently attends School Committee meetings as a resident, so he saw this year as another opportunity.  In addition, he stated that he doesn’t foresee his school work at WNEU conflicting with his potential time on the School Committee.

“Most local elected officials usually have a job on hand as well, my job is basically college and I have the ability to move around my work if they need me at the schools or if there’s a meeting,” he said.  “I have the flexibility that someone who might have a job or have kids, they may not have. I’m not saying that parents can’t do that, I’m just saying that I have that unique flexibility being younger.”

This year, Torcia noted several issues in town that he would look forward to working on with the School Committee.  One being implementing increased civics in the school system.

“The state is actually working on it now but definitely implementing high-quality civics education.  As someone who is a political science major it’s important to open up those for more activism with students,” he said.

In addition, Torcia highlighted fiscal responsibility, school safety and drug use in the district.

“It’s important to make sure that when we’re making these decisions about expanding the school budget to be very wise to where the money goes,” he said.  “Obviously every dollar matters and so much of our taxes go to education anyways, so making sure that that’s spent very wisely, I would be one of those voices.

“I have to say we have a fantastic school faculty.  We obviously have security in place, but considering everything that’s been happening I’d ask, are there areas we can improve upon in security? Bringing in third parties or people who are experts in this arena,” Torcia said.

Above all else, Torcia says he believes his age provides the School Committee with a unique perspective and energy that could be beneficial.  He noted that this year he was the first individual to pull papers to run in the election and the first person to return papers to make it onto the ballot.

“That’s sort of a testament to who I’m going to be in this race.  I want to hit the ground running, the moment I’m afforded the opportunity I want to use every second,” he explained.

In comparison to last year’s School Committee race, Torcia believes that this year he is being taken more seriously.  He stated he’s had individuals reach out to him this year that had not in the past.

“That’s a good thing. I’m a new voice and it would be a change from the status quo, not that the status quo isn’t good, but I want to promote new ideas and different opinions that may not be representative right now,” he said.

Torcia believes that over the course of the last year he’s grown as a person and been able to better familiarize himself with the issues at hand.  Additionally, he feels that his diplomatic approach will be beneficial to the committee.

“Obviously this isn’t a party race, but I like to solve things in a bipartisan matter and bring all of the stakeholders together and get compromise on an issue. All officials at every section of government should have this type of mentality for the betterment of the people, not just themselves.  I would be a voice for everybody, I want to be a voice for all different types of people.”

On May 1 the town of East Longmeadow will have their preliminary election.  The two individuals with the most votes out of the preliminaries will then move on to the annual general election on June 5.