AI-generated transcript of Jenny Graham (School Committee)

[Danielle Balocca]: The following interview is with school committee member Jenny Graham. Information for this intro was taken from Jenny's campaign website, which will be linked in the show notes for further reading. Jenny is currently in her first term on the school committee and is running for re-election. Jenny is a parent of two kids in the Medford Public Schools and is proud of her work so far, related to the pandemic and beyond. She has worked with the school committee to move forward key initiatives including evaluation of current curricula's ability to meet current needs, modernizing rules and policies, updating the school calendar to clearly identify and prioritize religious observances that reflect the school community that had previously lacked representation. Jenny has also worked on plans to address equity at many levels throughout the Medford public school system during the pandemic and beyond. Hi Jenny, thanks so much for joining me today on the podcast Before we get started about talking about your role in the school committee I've been asking everybody that I'm interviewing about their favorite food in Medford So do you have a favorite like restaurant or cafe that you go to?

[Jenny Graham]: You know, I really love tamper over by Tufts for a relaxing cup of coffee and I'm a big fan of Hopefully El Tacuba someday. We're all crossing our fingers waiting for how great El Tacuba is going to be someday. But yeah, we frequent a lot of the different restaurants across the city, and it's so interesting how much there is to offer. We, you know, we'll get takeout from all kinds of places. Neighborhood Kitchen is one of our favorites because of their red velvet waffles. And then for like a, you know, my kids love snappy patties. They always sort of request snappy patties whenever we're having an opportunity to get out the door and go somewhere. But yeah, there's so many great places. And I've just loved all the folks that are putting up outdoor dining now. And I really, really hope that stays. Like that's so great. And I'm willing to, I'm always willing to sit outside. I always have been, but seeing that and even it being an option into October has been so nice for us.

[Danielle Balocca]: I know Snappy Patty's people love their back patio. It's really cute back there. And they've had that for a while. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I'm a huge Tampa fan. I don't get to that side of the city too much, but when I do, I make sure to stop there. Awesome. So thank you so much for making the time. I know everyone is very busy with their campaigns and their work outside of school committee and running and families and all that. But could you talk a little bit about what led you to run for school committee in the first place and your path to this position for you?

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, so I think I went when Lila was maybe a first or second grader. I went to a volunteer meeting for the fundraising committee at her school and so that was sort of like the beginning of the of the Trail, but I got involved you know I hadn't been super involved up until that point because I Lucas was not yet in school So you know once they both were in school that became a little bit easier for us to engage in and I started working on the fundraising committee and then really got involved in the PTO. I ended up as the chair at one point of the PTO. And one of the things that we did from a fundraising perspective is convene a group called the Citywide Elementary Alliance, which does fundraising across and collaborates with all the elementary schools because they previously were like really separate and distinct entities and they still are, but there wasn't really a lot of collaboration across the four elementary schools. And so we started a group that met in my dining room back in the before times. And we talked about some ideas and things we might want to do together that would allow us to do different kinds of fundraising that we would not have been able to do as individual schools because they just required some scale that an individual school didn't have. And then so we kicked that off the first year and did a Disney vacation raffle, which was really well received by the community. And we hosted the Harlem Wizards. at a basketball game. Again, in the before times when you come back and gym full of kids. But we did both of those events in our first year. We were really, really successful. And sort of that collaboration across all the elementary schools. was just so informative in terms of how unique the schools really are from each other, even though there's so many things about them that are the same in terms of the curriculum and who they report to and all of those things. Just watching the different PTOs and how they operate, the things that they focus on tended to be really different between them. So that just sort of piqued my interest. And I really started to lean in to the more global school committee stuff as the city was getting ready to replace the outgoing superintendent four years ago. And I actually attended some of the initial committee of the whole meetings, and I put together flyer of sorts about what we were looking for as a community based on the discussion. And then I served on the search committee to select Superintendent Edouard-Vincent. So we identified some finalists and passed them along to the school committee for their consideration. And at that point, I sort of thought, maybe I'll do this someday. And then in 2019, I was sort of thinking about whether it was the right time to do it, just because my professional life was really busy and I just wasn't quite sure whether it was the right time. And Scott and I sat down and we're like, if this isn't the right time, when is it? We're always busy. I own a business. It's always busy. So we just decided we're going to make this a priority. I threw my hat in the ring, and I started calling all my friends saying, I need you to help me run this campaign. And I got my team together, and then the rest is history.

[Danielle Balocca]: Wow, yeah, it sounds like you had a lot of preparation for that run and coordinating with the different schools and helping to select the new superintendent. I guess it sounds like you've begun to make some changes within the school system already. What do you think would be, if you continue to be on the school committee, what would you continue to want to see change, or what would your priorities be there?

[Jenny Graham]: One of the things that I've always felt like a bigger to do than it really needs to be in Medford is making sure that schools, teachers, students have the really basic things that they need. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Some of them are process-oriented. Some of them are sort of structural in terms of how our schools and our departments are organized. Some of them boil down to money. And when you think about all of those basic needs that we have, Each time we don't provide one, it gets in the way of the outcomes that we're looking for for our students. So one of the things I'm really happy that we have accomplished in the last couple of years is we now have a strategic plan for Medford Public Schools. And to my knowledge, I won't say we've never had one because I am not the historian of the Denver Public Schools. But as far as I can tell, that's not a thing that was central to how the district has ever operated while I've been watching. And one of the things that's so important about a strategic plan is it sort of allows us to set a path forward that starts to create systemic wins. And that could be stuff that's really under the covers. modernizing an internal administrative system. But if that gets better, the question becomes, does it allow our teachers, our principals, our administrators to focus their energy on something else rather than manually collating data, for example? So the strategic plan, I think, is really such a nice starting place. I fully expect it will change a lot as we go forward. But one of the things that is great about it is now we have this grounding document to say, this is what we said our priorities were. And are we making the right moves to get us to those priorities? Or do we need to change our priorities for one reason or another? And I think the last few years are a good example of having had to change your priorities to some degree. But I also think that the real value of the strategic plan is, as it sort of takes hold, it's like the way we think about what's coming for our district, it also can help us inform the budget in a way that we've not had the luxury of before. So, you know, in organizations that I work with in my business, We help folks say, OK, here's where I am. Here's where I want to go. And how do I get there? That's where the strategic plan really helps us get there and be able to have that meaningful conversation. And then it also allows us to say, if this is where we're going, what does the budget need to support in order to allow us to get there? And if the budget can't support an investment of some kind, What does that mean for our strategic plan? Is there another way there? Does it have to be delayed? Et cetera, et cetera. So I think the real value, perhaps in these upcoming years, is really to see and to continue to let that strategic plan guide our budget priorities and really inform the conversation with the community about why investing in Medford Public Schools is so important.

[Danielle Balocca]: No, I like that concept of where am I, where do I want to go, and how do I get there. It sounds so simple, but I feel like those are these huge systems. Yeah. It's really very complicated.

[Jenny Graham]: And that's one of the most interesting things about being a member of the school committee is you sort of get this different point of view about what it takes to make a school system function. And it's an incredibly complex operation, really, because we're covering everything from how do we get kids to school to how do we feed them to what curricula are we using to actually teach them. That's the whole mission of the school, right? To teach and to educate and to prepare students. in order to, on the way there, right, you have to fill all these other basic needs in order to allow that teaching and learning to really happen. And then certainly the emphasis for so many students is that they don't fit sort of, I think, what we've always considered like the model of school in one way or another, and they need some sort of support. And I think, you know, in the end, the model of school was never really intended to serve everybody. It was intended to be sort of a jumping off point, perhaps, because really every student needs something quite different. Just some of those things that are different sort of fit the mold better than others. And really thinking about how do we make sure that whether the thing that you need falls sort of on the path or is somewhere else entirely, How do we get that to you so that you can access that curriculum? It's incredibly complicated to think about all of those things that a school system has to do. So often people will say, can't we just, whatever the question might be, and usually the answer is no. We can't just because there are so many extenuating circumstances about how you might do that and what all systems need to line up foundationally to allow that to happen. So that complexity is just sort of baked into the model of education in a way. I don't think that we're going to change dramatically, but it does inform how we move and how quickly we can move. And when we undertake initiatives, there's just so many facets to them that we have to be thinking about as we go.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah no and hearing that I think it was helpful perspective to like the last 18 months and how you've been able to make some like I think it sounds like implement some good changes and adapt to all the sort of expectations with COVID and it does make me think about like at least for me being more aware of like how much school is not only about educating and preparing students, but also caretaking. It's a large part of how we're able to continue to go to work and support our families, because we know our kids are taken care of. And I think that idea that you mentioned about the more macro idea for the system, where are we, where do we want to go, and how do we get there, it sounds like there's also a micro student level of that. So not every student is like, tracked to go to college, or that's not always the end goal. And I remember being in seventh grade, and if I didn't get into this one math class, what was I going to do in high school? And then where was I going to get accepted to college? And so if folks have different ideas of where they want to go, it sounds like this complexity of the system is also able to support that. What are the different needs of each kid? And that's great to hear.

[Jenny Graham]: Certainly, as kids progress up through the system, the opportunity for choice really opens up. And when you get to the high school, students have a choice of a more traditional high school track that's focused on English and science. languages and college prep. And then there's another path there that I think Medford's done really well in cultivating, which is that doesn't resonate with every kid, with every child. But there are kids out there who really know what they want to do. They know that they want to go into medical assisting. They know they want to be a carpenter. They know they want to be an electrician. Or they're not even sure, but they're interested in that. So they're willing to invest their learning time. into sort of acquiring a set of skills, right? And so that's where the vocational program comes into play. And there's a really big offering there for Medford that not all communities enjoy. Lots of communities have to send their kids to regional vocational schools. And the work that Medford has done really to bring back the vocational education to the high school largely predated me. I think there was a lot of work that happened in the years leading to me being elected in 2019, where we did make a pretty strategic decision to invest in the vocational school at some point in time and to really bolster that education. And now that it's there, the question is always, how do we make the most out of these resources that we have? And the principal at the vocational school was always looking for those community-based partnerships, how to get students out in the field. seen really interesting growth and interest in enrollment to the point where we've had to hire some additional teachers for vocational programs because there's so much interest that it couldn't be serviced by the teachers that we had. So when you think about sort of your path, it sort of starts out the same for everyone in elementary school. Everyone sort of tracks down the same path. And then the options sort of broaden. And in order to be able to provide that offering, you do have to have a decent-sized school to be able to even begin to provide those options. And then that school needs to have a commitment to it, because it's a tremendous amount of work to run any school, but to run a comprehensive high school that covers the college the traditional, I'll say traditional college prep path and the vocational side of the house is really you know just sort of the next level of what it takes to really provide a good offering in today's time.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah and you've kind of spoken to this a little bit I think in some of the themes that you've brought up but do you have any thoughts about like how Medford public schools could be more equitable?

[Jenny Graham]: I think one of the things about some of the work that we are doing certainly acknowledges that I think we have a lot of work to do when it comes to equity, whether that's racial equity, whether that's equity across our buildings, whether that's equity in how kids get to school. When you think about equity, it sort of touches every facet of education. And I think the fact that we're talking about it in earnest is a huge step in the right direction. And I think as we bring new programming online, I think we're endeavoring to think about equity in a proactive sense, so that as we bring new initiatives, we're really thinking about that. But also, we have to sort of re-examine things like transportation. So when you think about transportation at the high school, there are lots of ways kids get to school. Some of them we provide. And in the past, some of them we provided for free, some of them we provided for pay, and some of them we didn't provide at all. So our students, and I live right by the high school, and I do drive by often around that time of day and think, I don't know how anybody gets to school on time because the traffic is just unbelievable at that time of day getting in and out of the high school. But part of that is because we provide busing for students that are more than two miles away. There's quite a lot of students inside that two mile radius, many of whom have to cross Winthrop Street, Winthrop Circle, all kinds of really high traffic areas. But that makes it such that even though you're inside of two miles, it's really not reasonable for you to walk to school every day, or maybe bike if there were some additional bike lanes in place. But we have always provided some free busing, and then we have offered MBTA passes to other students. that cost money. So late last year during the budget we were talking about transportation and I made a motion to end the practice of charging students to get to school. At the time it was successful and at the time we did decide to keep that two mile radius in place because it was a big shift in terms of how we would operate the transportation function of the school. And of course now there's a nationwide transportation crisis that's impacting bus drivers, that's sort of getting in the way of the plans. But what we were able to do was put a pilot program in place that is going on right now where students who live more than two miles away get, if they are taking advantage of MBTA buses to get to school, they're not charged for those passes. It's like, you know, a step in the right direction. We have asked the administration who is looking at sort of optimizing bus routes across the district to come back to us and tell us what would it take to bring that two mile radius into one mile so that some of those students who fall between one and two miles would also have the option of free transportation. And then I think the other piece of transportation says the MBTA buses can be late fairly chronically based on feedback that I get from lots of folks and when I used to ride the bus myself. And so if your kid can't get to school on time, they can't access the education that we're providing. So to me, like, That next step in the plan would be really revisiting, are these MBTA buses the way we want to ask our students to get to school? Or do we need to invest in yellow bus service provided by the district in places where we previously used MBTA buses? So that's like one of those situations where the current system is not equitable, And I would love to just be able to sort of jump to the end. And if the funding allowed, I think we would absolutely do that. But in the meantime, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing forward, I think is what we have to do until such time as we have a sort of bigger budget that allows us to really sort of jump through a number of those incremental steps a little bit more quickly, which would certainly be my preference. But in the meantime. I'm not OK with just saying, well, we can't do it because. I'm much more focused on saying, what can we do? How can we do it? What would it take to do it? And then let's start to make those moves in the right direction.

[Danielle Balocca]: No, that's really informative. I didn't know a lot of that stuff. And I would guess that other people don't as well. And so it's helpful to hear the planning around that and what you all are considering. So we're going to move to sort of like the more kind of fun questions. Sure. Not that these weren't fun. So I'm curious like if you could talk about what you appreciate most about the city of Medford and being a part of the community.

[Jenny Graham]: You know, I think Medford, it's a city, right? And so I grew up in a very small town. I think we didn't even have a Dunkin' Donuts until I went to college.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's how small.

[Jenny Graham]: It's not very far. It's only about 45 minutes from here, but a really small town. And so if we wanted, when I was a kid, to do anything, we had to leave. We had to go somewhere else. And everyone I went to school with looked pretty much like me in one way, shape, or form. So some of the things that I really appreciate about Medford is it is a city. There's a lot of opportunity here. There's a real diversity about the members of our community that I didn't experience growing up. And I would say Scott didn't experience that either. And that's one of the things that sort of drew us here, even though we came here before we had kids, but really kept us here as well for the long term to say, we appreciate that diversity. We didn't get to experience that diversity ourselves, so we went off to college, really. And our kids get to appreciate what comes from being in an environment where not everybody is like you. a little bit much, much sooner than we ever did. So certainly the willingness of the community to jump in when it's needed and be passionate, for good and for bad, about whatever the topic of the moment is, and that you don't have to leave to do lots of great things. You know, I'm going to go see Stacey Abrams in Medford. So it's like that's never a thing I could have experienced as a child. So I appreciate sort of the, I guess just overall the opportunity. And I think that's something that is really unique and special about Medford in the right now is We're sitting at the beginning, like to me, at the beginning of so much opportunity, and we get to be part of it. We get to be part of how you change and how you take advantage of opportunity. It's different than being in a place that has already harnessed all that opportunity. And then you're sort of fighting a different kind of change. But really being able to shape what the opportunity is, how we take advantage of it, and then what it means to our community is sort of a really exciting thing for me.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. No, and I also appreciate being able to sit here with you and the other folks that I'm interviewing. The access is, it's like, it is a city and it's like our city officials are pretty accessible, which is really, or at least they are to me. Yeah. Which is like, it's surprising and it's really nice. Awesome. And what about, so this question might hopefully, I don't know, it's kind of an odd one, but what's something about you that might surprise us?

[Jenny Graham]: actually what we were just talking about transportation and my grandfather used to own the bus company in the town that I lived in so he and my grandmother both drove when my dad was a kid so yeah so my transportation roots are deep but so that's just like a little fun fact about my Yeah, my family's history. He was a volunteer firefighter too, but the bus is obviously a little bit more relevant to school. And then I think about me personally, like I'm a pretty committed practitioner of yoga. I've been doing yoga for a long time, really since 2001, I guess I would say. And I've sort of faded out here and there over the years. But I'm currently working on, and I feel like I will probably say this for the next 10 years, I am working on being able to do a handstand. So that's my current goal. And every time I sort of get close, then I get distracted and do something, stop focusing on it. And so someday I will be able to do a handstand. Hopefully before I'm too old to be able to do a handstand. Can your kids do handstands? They can, like the way kids do. They're just so nimble and easy. They don't even think about it. Neither of them is in gymnastics, so they can't hold a handstand. I can do a handstand, but just not a handstand.

[Danielle Balocca]: Handstand, yeah. And I feel like the fall is way less bad when you're a kid, too. Yes. And for us, yeah, for sure. And what is some advice that you've received that you would pass on to others?

[Jenny Graham]: Um, you know, I had a manager once and she was, uh, she was just such an interesting person, but she always said to us, like, we should help if we can. And usually that would happen when our client was asking like sort of the impossible of us or something really complicated or something really difficult. Um, And that really has stuck with me for a number of years. And I think one of the things about helping if you can is sometimes people need help with hard things. And there's always lots of help available for the easy stuff. But sometimes when someone taps you on the shoulder and asks you to do something really hard, usually it means they really need your help and you should find a way. So those are the things that I think about in terms of how I engage on different projects and, you know, hearing from, when I hear from parents about some challenge they're having with their, you know, child at school, like, you know, sort of that drives me to say, yeah, of course I can help. Of course I will try to help. I'll do what I can. So I'm not very good at saying no as a result because instead I just say I should help if I can. So that's, you know, that's something that's always sort of stuck with me.

[Danielle Balocca]: feels like a really meaningful advice for the next generation to be motivated to be helpers in whatever way they can. And yeah, I just think about what you were saying, when people are really looking for help, that sometimes it's not about the problem, but about the connection that they can make with somebody and feel supported by them. And yeah, I feel that from you right now and coming out here, I think, in probably one of the busier weeks of your life right now. So is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that you would want voters to know about?

[Jenny Graham]: You know, I think one of the, the pandemic has obviously been not something I planned to do. I don't think any of us planned it, right? But, you know, a couple of things that I think are important, particularly for folks who don't have kids in the school to know about what we've tried to do over the last couple of years and why. You know, one of the things that we set forward to do very early in the game was communicate more frequently than we ever had before. And we actually, we did that. The bar was very low because as a district, we really weren't communicators. And we really endeavored to up our communication game. And I think that has stuck around. That is something that is still in place today. So every Friday, everyone gets a note from the superintendent with whatever the updates of the week are. That never happened before for many years that my kids were in school before the pandemic, really, for a variety of reasons, I think. So first, we definitely endeavored to up the communication game with the full knowledge that sometimes we would be communicating things that weren't going to make everybody happy, right? And that's, I think, sort of the challenge always. But in terms of getting kids back to school, the testing program that we set up here in Medford was a leader across the state. So I think people talk about Medford as not a place where you find the innovation. And I think this is an example of where we were in front. We were testing all teachers and students from the beginning. We at various points in time we tested bi-weekly. We were one of the first schools in the state to move to pooled testing which allows us to keep up the testing program at a more cost-effective pace because funds are not unlimited. We also had to do a lot of work to fix our schools, to make sure that the air exchange rates in our buildings, in our classrooms, were sufficient to combat this virus. And frankly, the work that we had to do there did impact how quickly we could get kids back to school. The high school didn't get back sort of as the whole student body really until January, which was felt like way too long. But the repairs were so significant. So, you know, as we think about like, what could we have done better? What could we have done differently? I think the pandemic was like a good example of the unintended consequence of putting off something till tomorrow and kicking that can down the road. So we had to overcome a lot of history of why we hadn't maintained our buildings really rapidly. We did years worth of maintenance in a really short period of time in order to get kids back to school. And I think for all the conversation about how long that took, We were way ahead of lots of others, not just here in Massachusetts, but really across the country. And that's probably because our administrative team did not sleep for the better part of probably about 18 months now, that it has just been a nonstop every single day. There's another thing cropping up that's happening that's pandemic related, and now it's like, bus driver shortages, and food shortages that are impacting our food services program. So I think for all the things that we've tried to do, just making sure that particularly people who are not as plugged into the schools know that Whether we, as a committee and even with the administration, with the mayor, always agreed on exactly how to move forward, there was never a shortage of interest in making sure that we could get kids back to school and to do it safely. So I think that's something that probably gets it gets lost at times in in what is not perfect um and i think everyone voters in particular are right to think you know to scrutinize like what have you done what haven't you done when they're thinking about who to vote for and and why um but certainly the dedication of the collective team that i'm happy that i was able to be a part of um was not, is not a thing that voters should worry about on behalf of any of the people that have been involved in these last couple of years because it's been pretty tireless and constant work to make these things happen and to make them happen in a really streamlined way like back to school this year was pretty streamlined. I think it was a big change from what we did last year, but still a really smooth back to school season, despite bus driver shortages and staff shortages and all the things. And that's because I think the administration is really working at that. strategic plan, trying to put systems in place to sort of streamline the things that used to be labor intensive, like manual and labor intensive on the administration side to free everybody up to do the thing that gets us a little bit closer to being focused on kids and not on the administrative side of what we do.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, that's really helpful to know. And I think it says a lot that you've been through so much in your first term, and you're setting up again.

[Jenny Graham]: Everyone says the second term can't possibly be like the first, but I'm not willing to say that because I don't know what could come.

[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, for sure. Wow. Well, thank you. This has been really helpful and informative. And thank you so much. And I wish you luck in the election.

[Jenny Graham]: Thank you.

[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you for listening to this interview. A link to the campaign website is listed in the show notes. For any feedback or questions about the podcast, please email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe and rate the podcast on Spotify and follow the podcast on Instagram at medfordbitespodcast. That's M-E-D F-O-R-D B-Y-T-E-S P-O-D C-A-S-T for updates about upcoming episodes and other announcements. Thank you to all who have supported this podcast, but especially to my wife, Brittany. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites!

Jenny Graham total time: 29.92 minutes total words: 1076