Annissa-Essaibi George: at Stitch House, her business in Dorchester. Jennifer Smith photoAnnissa Essaibi-George is tired, in the best way.

“I think if I weren’t tired, it would mean I haven’t been working very hard,” she said on Tuesday at Stitch House, her Dorchester business and her political base of operations.

Essaibi-George, 40, is making her second run at an at-large City Council seat, looking to replace one of the four at-large incumbents – Michael Flaherty, Stephen Murphy, Ayanna Pressley, and Michelle Wu.
And she has a full dance card, as evidenced by a calendar bursting with post-it notes and packed with scrawled appointments for civic meetings, parades, and face-to-face sit-downs with community leaders.  While juggling her roles as a wife, mother of four boys, business owner, civically engaged resident, and all-around busy person, Essaibi-George has a surprising amount of pep in her voice as she talks about the upcoming election.

Nov. 3 is five weeks away, and after 11 months of campaigning, the finish line is in sight. “I’m so anxious to get there,” she said.
The issues closest to her heart revolve around education as she draws on her 13 years as an East Boston High School coach and teacher. She is on leave from teaching now, and does not plan to take it up again if she were to win a seat on the council.

Essaibi-George’s school experience as a teacher and a mom mean she is able “to talk about what’s happening,” she said, “with a very direct perspective of what’s taking place in schools.” Juggling with Douglas, 10, and 9-year-old triplets Charlie, Kayden and Samir, all of whom play hockey and a host of other sports, Essaibi-George values the balance of athletics and academics. But there are gaps in the public school system, she said, ones that can and should be fixed.

Along with making the school system more efficient, an effort about which she is vague on specifics, Essaibi-George would like to see more of a focus on access to transportation. She also wants to dedicate efforts to “the issue around our homeless students and how we can take care of them as a city.”

Having been a teacher, she said, she has seen the struggle of such students, who are always worried about having food to eat and getting to and from distant shelters to keep up with their studies. “When you’re homeless, the unknown of day-to-day life is a burden and a distraction,” Essaibi-George said, adding, “Let’s figure out a way to keep these kids in school; these are our most vulnerable kids.”

In 2013, she placed a respectable fifth in a packed field of 19 at-large candidates, receiving 9.19 percent of the final vote. In her home neighborhood, Ward 13, she collected the second highest amount of votes, behind only Pressley.

The 2013 election season gave all campaigns a boost due to the mayoral race, but this year is a different situation. In the preliminary municipal election in September, turnout was 7.07 percent, a dismal number when compared with other city council-only preliminaries.
As the only challenger for an at-large seat, Essaibi-George did not have a preliminary contest, but that hasn’t dampened her enthusiasm, or changed her approach as she said she bounces between wishing for more time and just “wanting election day to be here already.”

Her Bostonian credentials are beyond reproach: Raised in Dorchester, she attended St. Margaret’s Grammar School (now the Columbia campus of Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy), Boston Technical High School, graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in political science, and later earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She lives with her husband, local developer Doug George, and their sons in Dorchester’s Polish Triangle.

Essaibi-George feels strongly that her local-teacher-mother-businesswoman resume will be a boon to the council. She remains an active civic association attendee, having once served as president of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association.

As the owner of Stitch House, a local brick-and-mortar knitting shop, she hopes to connect neighborhood businesses with the booming growth of downtown Boston.

While acknowledging that an exceptional amount of work has been done in areas like the Seaport District, “it could be Anywhere USA. It’s almost all national chains,” she said. “And small businesses that have committed to the neighborhoods of Boston should have the opportunity to do business in a renovated district.”

In this regard, and with other issues brought up in council debates, Essaibi-George has been vocal. She disparaged the council’s push for a raise beyond its current $87,000 per member, especially in light of a Boston Globe analysis that found some councillors attending 25 percent of council hearings.

“Enough is enough,” she said in a statement at the time. “Bostonians demand more from their elected officials, especially when it comes to improving our schools, making our streets safer, and creating economic opportunity in all of Boston’s neighborhoods.”

Which brings her back to her many responsibilities. Though she would no longer teach if elected, Essaibi-George likes to be busy. “When you need something done, ask a busy person,” she said, as they are usually the ones best able to get jobs done efficiently and calmly.

On Tuesday, when looking for way to pass a few moments between an interview and before her shop began a knitting class, she was on the move, perusing skeins of brightly-colored yarn. “I need a project,” she said. “I’m always looking for another project.”