Election roundup: Baker to run again in Dorchester; Wu talks BPS reinvention

Incumbent District 3 Councilor Frank Baker finally announced this week that, yes, he's running for re-election - and he posted the photos of him getting nomination papers at City Hall to prove it.

So far, he faces two potential candidates: Stephen McBride and Romilda Pereira.

Michelle Wu today released her education agenda to make Boston schools work, including creation of a "family cabinet" of key city officials to deal with education and related family issues, bolster funding to ensure every school has facilities such as libraries and science labs, a "Green New Deal" to update all BPS schools, creation of a "Family Corps" that would assign a guide to each family to help them through the often confusing BPS system and finally turn around Madison Park.

Wu currently has one son at the Sumner School, with her second set to join him in the fall.

A poll by MassInc for WBUR, the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston Foundation shows 46 percent of Boston voters still undecided whom to pick for mayor, although among choosy Boston voters, City Councilor Michelle Wu (at large) and acting Mayor Kim Janey are in the lead. The other major candidates polled in single digits.

Did we mention major candidates? The Charlestown Patriot-Bridge reports 11 people took out mayoral nomination papers this week, including several people whose names you probably haven't heard of, plus perennial candidate Roy Owens, who, if he gets enough signatures, would be making an unusual bid for a citywide office. Unlike fellow annual aspirant Althea Garrison, who runs citywide from time to time (which finally rewarded her with a one-year term on the council after at-large councilor Ayanna Pressley left for Washington), Owens has typically contented himself each year with running for whatever local office is on the ballot in Roxbury.

WGBH considers whether Boston, half of which elected a native of Chicago to Congress in 2018, is ready to elect a native of Chicago for mayor. The station notes that Janey and Andrea Campbell are playing up their native roots and that the city hasn't elected somebody from away since 1925.