Kelly Garcia finished second in the at-large field in 2025 with 1,081 votes. She is also the councillor most willing to say out loud that Chelsea’s public schools are failing.
Chelsea, one of five
Garcia grew up in Chelsea in a low-income family, one of five children. In testimony to the Legislature she described what her mother was told: “Oh, you won’t be going to college. Your accent is too thick.”
Her parents, she said, “couldn’t afford a private school for 5 kids or moving to a wealthier community.”
She went to Excel Academy, the charter school in East Boston, and credits it with changing the arithmetic of her life. Its “mission was to prepare all kids for college,” she said, and it “instilled in me that it was possible for a girl from Chelsea to attend college.” She became the first in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree, and then the first to earn a master’s.
The bachelor’s is in psychology, with a minor in women and gender studies, from the College of the Holy Cross. The master’s in education is from Boston University.
Teacher, then administrator
She joined the Teach For America corps in 2015 and taught special education to grades 9 through 12. She worked as a special education teacher and case manager at City on a Hill Charter Public School, and she is now an administrator at Excel Academy, the school she attended, working on student supports and transition planning.
Eight years on the school committee, four in the chair
Garcia served eight years on the Chelsea School Committee, four of them as chairwoman.
Two things happened on her watch worth stating specifically. She served on the superintendent search committee that hired the district’s first Latinx superintendent, in a district whose student body is overwhelmingly Latino and which had never had a superintendent who reflected it. The same process produced the district’s first Officer of Equity, Diversity and Excellence. She also co-founded the district’s Equity Committee.
The position that sets her apart
Most Chelsea officials defend the school district. Garcia, who chaired it, has publicly argued that it is not good enough.
Testifying against Section 4 of the Thrive Act, S.374, which would have lowered the cap on charter schools in the lowest-performing districts, she said: “Lowering the already-strict charter cap in our most vulnerable districts would be devastating for our kids and our families.”
She went further, noting that “Chelsea Public Schools are in the bottom 10% of districts here in Massachusetts,” and that while educators work hard, “families simply cannot wait.”
That is a former school committee chair, sitting on the city council that votes the school budget, telling the state that the district she helped run is among the worst in the Commonwealth and that families need an exit. Agree with her or not, it is the most substantive public position any member of this council has taken on education.
The budget she now votes on
Garcia moved from the body that spends the school money to the body that votes it, and arrived in time for the worst school budget in years. Chelsea Public Schools lost close to 350 students in a single year, which the city attributed to federal immigration enforcement. Because state aid follows enrolment, that meant a shortfall of roughly $6.6 million and about 50 positions cut.
The FY27 budget approved in June came to $272,378,292, of which $156,248,491 went to the schools. The council approved it unanimously.
Family
Kelly Garcia and District 4 Councillor Tanairi Garcia are sisters. They campaigned together as the “García Sisters.” Both are nieces of Gladys Vega.
A note on a connection readers should know about. La Colaborativa is the largest community organization in Chelsea, in a city that is roughly 70 per cent immigrant, and it has been led since 2006 by Gladys Vega, now its president and chief executive. In a December 2021 Boston Globe piece on the rise of Latina officials in Chelsea, three of the four women profiled were related to or employed by Vega. Nothing about that is improper, and every one of them was elected on their own votes. It is simply a real feature of how power is organised in a small city, and worth stating plainly rather than leaving for someone to discover.
The numbers
On 4 November 2025 she took 1,081 votes, second among the at-large candidates. Her term runs through 2027.
The rest of the council is in our guide to all eleven members.
Update, September 14, 2026: How this councillor has voted and what they have filed in 2026, part of our council record series.