total time: 24.84 minutes
total words: 1095
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey Medford Bites listeners. Before we go to today's interview, I wanted to promote an exciting fundraiser. Medford Bites is selling t-shirts to celebrate Medford's first Pride event. All the proceeds will go to the Medford High School GSA. Thanks to the many people who have already supported this fundraiser. There's a link in today's show notes and also in the podcast Instagram bio. You have until May 4th to place your orders. More information and details about the actual Pride celebration should be coming soon. Today I had the privilege of meeting with a member of our school committee, a conversation I really enjoyed, and I hope you do too. Thank you so much for joining me today. If we could start just by introducing yourself with your name and pronouns and who you are.
[Sharon Hays]: Sure. Sharon Hayes, pronouns she, her. I am the newest school committee member. I was just elected in November and started in January.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great, congratulations. Thank you. So yeah, the first question that I ask everyone else or everybody that I interview is what their favorite place to eat is in Medford and what they like to eat there. Sometimes the hardest part.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, let's see. I'm going to have to go for two. Sorry, I'm not going to limit it to one. My family loves, I have two little boys. We love both Wellington's Pizza, because my boys love their pizza, and my youngest son has developed a friendship with the owner, Adriano, and of course, Colleen's. We've loved Colleen's since Colleen was there, and then when she passed away and Colin took over, and he's absolutely wonderful, and we love him, so we go there a lot too.
[Danielle Balocca]: Colleen's is one that comes up a lot, and I'm always interested to hear which pizza places people are choosing. I think it's a common answer for folks with kids. It's nice to hear that everyone else is feeding their kids pizza as much as I am probably.
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, yes. We get large pizza and it lasts for several days. So we're a big pizza family.
[Danielle Balocca]: So we hadn't gotten a chance to talk before the election, but I'm interested to hear kind of what drove you to run for school committee.
[Sharon Hays]: Sure. Well, I had attended a lot of the school committee meetings for a few years. My youngest son, I mean, my oldest son is now in fourth grade. So I probably started attending almost everyone when I could, when he was maybe in first grade. So, you know, I was really familiar with school committee very interested on my background is in teaching. So, very interested in education. I didn't end up jumping into this race until I think it was two days before the deadline for pulling what they call pulling papers. So I think what drove me to do it in the end was I watched most of the, I'll accept one of the Columbus School, now Missittook School, renaming committee meetings. And I was concerned about a lot of the conversation that went on with that. And then out of that, I saw that we had a number of people who decided to run for school committee And whose, I'd say, beliefs and ideas for what they wanted the school system, the direction for the school system did not match what I really wanted for the school system and I thought okay well now's the time to jump in and and see if I can make a difference if I can get elected and I did, I called, I emailed Mia, in fact, Mia Mustone and said, you know, what's the deadline? I actually wasn't even really thinking at that point, definitely, of running this. What's the deadline? And she said, it's tomorrow. I think it was actually next day, maybe. She said, it's tomorrow, go now. I said, oh, okay. She just assumed I was asking because I wanted to run. She said, go, go now. So I did. That's just history.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. And it sounds like you're talking a little bit about some concerns about diversity, equity, inclusion that came up around the renaming of the Mississippi. Can you speak to that a little bit, sort of what your hopes were, what sort of you saw as necessary change for Medford schools?
[Sharon Hays]: Sure. I think it wasn't well, obviously, yes, we need changes as everyone does everywhere in terms of equity and diversity. I think the schools were already going in the right direction or right by my standards anyway. And I think by a lot of people in Medford, hopefully judging by the fact that I got elected. So it was more making sure it continued in that direction towards moving towards more looking at the various areas where we need to ensure that we're meeting the needs of everyone. And I know the superintendent has definitely been moving in that direction, starting with pretty much at the beginning of her tenure, she started the lottery at the middle schools to try to make those more equitable. And I think that that was a challenging and difficult process for parents. And I think it continues to be each time new parents get into the lottery process, but it's certainly I've looked at the statistics around it and looked at the data on the, the Desi Department of Education website. And it's made a huge difference in terms of evening out the schools in terms of both racial and socioeconomic diversity in the schools, making sure they're a little more equal. Again, it's a lottery. So it's kind of a random draw. So it's nobody's putting their hand in there and making sure that everything's exactly equal. But just by that process, things have already started equalizing quite a bit. And she's now got this, this company and working with the schools, the equity process, who, you know, I've done a couple of interviews now with the woman who's who runs the she's the owner, she's the founder of the for that equity process. And she's wonderful. And I think she's going to do great things for the school. So I'm looking forward to that. And you just look at things like the MCAS scores. Again, there's a wealth of information on the Department of Education website. And while I know the MCAS is controversial, it certainly does give us some very stark information about where where we're not being equitable in our education. There's a definite difference in terms of, again, socioeconomic status, white students versus students of color. So it gives us some information whether you think it's a great test or not. And I think there's a lot of reasons not to love it, but it does give us some information that we need to look at seriously. And we do, so.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's interesting to hear. And I could ask a clarifying question about the school lottery. So I'm not having a child that age yet. Is it so is it that it used to be the common practice that the sort of districted elementary schools, each school got sent to like a designated middle school, and now you're sort of trying to mix it up? Or how does that work?
[Sharon Hays]: So I do not yet have kids at that level either. So some of this obviously predates me in terms of my real understanding about how the process worked, but I know that, or my understanding, I should say, because no is a little strong, the other school committee members might be able to give more information, but I know, well, I understand that in the past before the lottery, And what remains still is that if there's already a sibling in one of the schools, and they're still in one of the middle schools, the family can choose to stay, have their next sibling go if they're gonna be in the school at the same time, just in terms of building relationships with the school, being able to plan and organize because they have different events at different times sometimes. But I think it also used to be that if you, had a child who, who had been in the middle school now was no longer in the middle school and your next child came up, you, you could also request the middle school you had been in before, because you could say, well, we built relationships. I'm not sure this was like a standardized process, but it's what kind of happened. I also get the sense that maybe there wasn't a real clear process. Um, so that it was, there was a lot of, or there could be a lot of parents requesting certain things based on certain whatever they felt strongly about and could get their choice of schools that way. So I think it's more, my sense is more that it was not a real standardized process possibly. And that, you know, so then there was a lot of, like I say, parent requests for things. So parents who knew to request, requested, those parents who didn't know to request, didn't request. And so it just was not really, clear or equitable process for determining where the kids went is my understanding.
[Danielle Balocca]: And was the practice that, so like, say like my son goes to the Roberts before this lottery, would you have just gone to a designated, like all of him and his friends? Okay. How would that work?
[Sharon Hays]: I don't believe so. No, which is how I grew up. But we had more, I think partly because the middle schools are in the same place, like neighborhood to consider, like what's easier to get to, what's easier to bus kids to, if you need to, you know, So being in the same location, there's no feeding in from certain elementary schools.
[Danielle Balocca]: Interesting. Yeah, that's something that has not made sense to me yet, but I haven't had to really deal with it. But yeah, it's interesting to think about that sort of mixing of schools and neighborhoods and areas of the city. in middle school rather than waiting for high school. Cause like, like you probably, I remember it was like the two, you know, different sides of towns had the two middle schools. And like, once you got to high school, everyone was like, well, they went to the other school and we have all these assumptions about that school. And maybe that's where, you know, one side of town was where the like less affluent kids were. Right. And this is interesting. It sounds like an interesting social experience for kids and different exposure to, you know, different students that they might not have otherwise encountered until high school.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes. Yeah. Interesting. Looking forward to going into fifth grade. So next year we'll be doing the lottery.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, yeah. Good luck. That sounds like an exciting project. Thank you. So I'm interested to hear, since you started your work on the school committee, has anything surprised you or what's the experience been like so far?
[Sharon Hays]: think anything surprised me again, because I attended so many meetings, or at least in that sense, I think it's very different being on the school committee, then watching the school committee, even as someone who attended a lot of meetings, once you're in there, and you have the responsibility of making helping to make decisions, you know, you're one of seven, but your vote carries weight. It's very different. It's kind of I mean, I know as a parent, before I was on the school committee, I used to write to them a lot and, you know, you should be doing this. So why aren't we doing that? And then I'm like, oh, that's why. Oh, money, money is an issue. Yes, we need funding. And yes, there's, you know, everything's kind of a domino effect. And so I think that part Certainly is different, a lot different. I think also what's one of the things that I'm finding really difficult is, you know, I really in jobs, and I haven't. This is my first job is since my oldest son was born. I was a teacher but I left teaching and stayed home with my voice. uh, you know, you like to build relationships with people, you know, your coworkers, a whole lot of making decisions together, I think works more smoothly if you have relationships and can do what kind of a team building, but with open meeting law, and I'm, I'm not, I'm obviously very much in favor of open meeting law, but it does make it hard. We can't, we can't meet together outside of meetings to just kind of talk about things and kind of, you know, build that team understanding, even if we have differences of opinions, kind of building understanding of each other's, you know, backgrounds, understanding of where they're coming from in terms of their decisions or their thoughts about certain school issues. And, you know, you have to be really, really careful, you know, especially as a new member, I do seek out advice or background information from other school committee members. But I am very careful, they are very careful of saying, first of all, have you talked to any other school committee member about this? Because you can't talk to more than two other school committee members before it's considered a quorum. And you just can't do that outside of the open meeting law, having an open meeting in front of everyone. So that is, I find that a challenge personally, just because I do wanna get to know everyone else and kind of, I don't know, I think decisions are better made when you understand where other people are coming from.
[Danielle Balocca]: But I didn't realize that was what that law meant. And it made me think about like politics on a larger scale and how there is such an importance into like, you know, sort of have like building an understanding of each other where everyone's coming from. And that sounds hard on unlike this, you know, the smaller scale where talking to more than two people is sort of prohibited. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. That's Yeah, I did not know that. And what do you think? So what were some of your goals coming in as a new school committee member? And sort of what have what have you what have you been excited to work on? And what are you sort of looking to work on in the future?
[Sharon Hays]: Well, you know, I have my whole platform. I'm giving my elevator speech about that platform but I mean my biggest goal, I think, or two or three. Well, there's a bunch. Once you get into like oh but that's when you do that, do and not to and not to. I think for me, one of the biggest things especially now with budget season coming up. We did have to list our personal priorities, you know, mental health for the students, mental health supports, understanding what we already have, which I had requested, and they just it was just the last meeting where there was a presentation on the different what we have in the schools, because there's like different titles for things and understanding what each role what the role is for each and the job description for each and where they overlap and differ. Um, and so my, my goal is to just try to make sure we have enough, whatever that means, or as much as we can afford. I mean, sometimes it comes down to that as, as the director Stacey Shulman said, I forget what, I'm sorry, I'm going to forget her exact title, but she's the one who oversees all of the support and counseling, you know, there's never going to be enough. I mean, enough is not something to really define. So that's not necessarily the best word to use. But as much as we can get in there, you know, we know that there was already a youth mental health crisis before the pandemic. And it's been made, you know, how many times worse since the pandemic, both in terms of just people who've, kids who directly experienced the effects of the pandemic with either a family loss, you know, food insecurity, anything, any of those things, job loss of a parent, that stress on the family, or just the coming back to school after being out for so long. I can see that with my own boys, especially my youngest son, who was in kindergarten when school got out, almost ended for a while. There's definitely a lag there in terms of the emotional growth, the maturity, I think we're seeing, I know as a parent, we noticed, especially at the beginning of the year, and maybe we're seeing more of it now that spring is coming again, just an increased physicality. Like after school, when we pick up our kids, and I have two boys, so boys are often about to be stereotypical, but they often are more physical, but just there's just a level of physicality. And I hate to use the word aggression because that's so strong, It's like they missed being with each other and now they're still learning how to be back together again without constantly banging into each other and hitting each other. So that level of, you know, loss from or developmental lag from being in the pandemic. So that again, going back, that's mental health supports and just general supports for that kind of stuff. is a big thing. You know, again, working on the equity piece, I think that's just going to be an ongoing as it is across the country everywhere, making sure especially the diversity and making sure that we have more diverse teaching staff making sure that our curriculum accurately reflects our true history and our diversity of cultures and ethnicities in Medford and across the country. Yeah, those are kind of my major hopes and long-term goals for our school system. And then, you know, you get into the curriculum where we're using a new math program, we started some new math programs and hoping to see those flourish and help the kids really get math as a teacher for a long time teacher. And just remembering into my childhood, math has always been a difficult thing for education, especially like elementary, I think kind of figuring out the foundational piece and how do you build that so that then when they're getting into more specialized areas of math or, you know, that they've done that, just feel like that's, that cycles around and around in education of how to do that. And there's, Theories come back, I see that in all of education. Reading is the same too, although I think now we have much more of a scientific basis to understand what we need to put in place at the very early grades to be able to make sure that as they get older, they can get into the reading comprehension and reading to learn as the terminology goes. And supposedly we're gonna be, we're supposed to, not supposedly, we're gonna be piloting elementary reading programs next year. We've got a new assessment that the map assessment that. I think parents haven't necessarily been excited about, but I think it's it has the potential to be. As a teacher, if it's really supporting the teachers in the classroom, whereas the MCAS doesn't give them information that they can really use in the classroom and not not in a timely way. Hopefully the map assessment will do that. So there's a lot on teachers plates right now and. But if we can implement these things really well I think it's it's curriculum wise, we could be in really good shape, it would be great so. Thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: We'll see comprehensive and it's hard to sort of separate all those things isn't there. And the pandemic does seem to be like a through line and all of that and yeah, it's not like before, you know when we had our kids home my son just started kindergarten this year so luckily we didn't have to do any like remote learning but it was like it became so clear like how much we rely on school and teachers and just not even like education but like just caregiving and like this is this allows us to continue to do what we need to do to support our families and so I imagine some of that um equity that you spoke about and the mental health issues like that those just became like the disparity became bigger right with with the with the pandemic and um I do appreciate that as a focus I think my job outside of the podcast isn't my job but outside of the podcast I do also work in mental health and it's a tricky demographic to try to figure out like how to successfully support youth right because there's and I think with the pandemic everything we're sort of catching up to everything sort of happening in real time right and we're all impacted by it so we're trying to figure out how to support our kids how to support ourselves how to like and even what the impact is right i don't think we know fully what's what's happening and we my son like in kindergarten i didn't realize this was happening that like they were the kids were in pods so like yes what in the classroom so we were you know he was having some issues with like exactly what you said, like, how do I play with my friends? Because it wasn't really happening. It wasn't, you know, understandably, there was like, his friend could have been in a different pod, so he can't interact with him until they're at recess. And then they're all over each other. And so try to managing all those different challenges. I have a lot of, you know, respect for everyone involved in that process.
[Sharon Hays]: Right. And especially those early grades that, you know, K through two, K through three, even so much of learning, well, even older, but at least as kids get older, they can, I think they can integrate it more into their understanding of how school works. But at those early grades, there's just so much of education is built on interacting with each other. And kindergarten is really all about learning, not all about, sorry, but There's a lot of educational pieces to a curriculum, but there's learning to be in school, learning how to work with other kids. And there's generally a more, what's the right word? Organic or however you want to put it, interaction among kids and with the pods. So this year even, yes, we're all back in school, which is wonderful, but it was a pretty artificial in some ways experience, especially for younger kids being in those pods. they didn't get the same level of interaction. And I got to imagine it was a struggle for teachers still to figure out how to get those pieces in for kids where there'd be that natural interaction and learning how to be in the classroom, how to be with other kids, how not to be distracted by other kids, how to work with other kids, you know, do projects or sit at a table together and still do your own work while, you know, occasionally chatting with your friend. all of those pieces with kids being in pods. I mean, there's some of it because they're still together, but sometimes they had those screens up. It still was a pretty weird year as much as we kind of like, phew, we're back to some semblance of normal. School in and of itself was not still the typical, far from the typical experience in many ways, especially for younger kids. So, yeah. I was actually at this is a tangent so we could do this but I was just before the pandemic for the 2019 2020 school year, I had started looking for jobs to go back into teaching. And I didn't, I was looking mostly for part time because my youngest was in kindergarten I kind of wanted to have that slow. I wanted to be available. And I didn't, I didn't find a job. And I'm like, actually, I feel like I kind of dodged it with that because I can't imagine teaching remotely. And, you know, at that, at the younger ages, because I, I was a reading specialist when I, you know, at the time I left, I started off in special education, but I was a reading specialist and I can't imagine. trying to teach that remotely. And I, you know, I got to watch it. We had, my son had a fabulous first grade teacher and my older son had had her too. And to watch her trying to teach, I was like, oh my gosh, she was amazing. But it, you know, there's only so much it can do over a screen with first graders to, you know, distracted by what's going on around them. And just my, my, my two boys by like February were just done with, remote and it was a struggle from there on in and the teachers kept them at least engaged. So like all honor to teachers for doing what they did last year. It was amazing. And this year, for me trying to again, like I said, it still was a fairly artificial or very different way of teaching And I'm not as familiar, I have to say, when I talk about these things, I know I'm talking mostly about elementary, because that's where my experience and my children are. I can't, I would imagine, I need to get more, I need to get more knowledge of middle and high school, what things are going on there. But, you know, same thing. It's just got to be, it's a different level where you're in, I don't know what ages you were, what you're, you know, when you said you're involved in youth counseling or youth mental health, but that those upper ages, those middle school and high school, where it's really all about socialization, it's, you know, breaking away from your parents and forming your social group and learning how to be in the world on your own in a way. And many of them were at home with their families and how, you know, that I'm sure integrating back into schools and trying to, again, build that social emotional, those social emotional skills that were not, they were not able to be there last year.
[Danielle Balocca]: Even for adults, I think the anxiety of going back to that life where you haven't been, like, I found myself, like, I don't, you know, I don't have, I was out of practice of, like, being out in the world. And so the level of anxiety of just, like, you know, going to a park in a different city, like, that's scary. That was scary. And so I can't imagine what it was for, what it was like for kids, you know, and, like, especially those, like, sort of middle grades where the social pressures are, you know, intense. Thank you for sharing that. Is there anything else that you want to mention about your work on the school committee? I have some fun questions.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, yeah, what I would love to, I'm trying to figure out, and I would love any listeners who could either, you know, email me or text me, whatever is most comfortable. You know, office hours and where are, if people have suggestions of where are You know places where that are more accessible to a lot of people, and times that are accessible to a lot of people I you know I plan to start earlier with office hours and then, you know, January, my family ended up with coven. you know, the after effects rippled into February. And so now I'm kind of getting in, I had one office hour with, with me, I'm a stone and we did it at, um, at car park. And unfortunately it probably, probably didn't have quite enough notice for people. We really, we didn't get anybody showing up. Um, so I would love to hear from people, what, what they, what suggestions they have in upcoming months of places, times, um, because I'd like to get out and hear more from more people.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. That was one of my questions was what's the best way for people to reach out to you? It sounds like email and text maybe, and also looking out for announcements about some in-person office hours. Yes, definitely. Great. So I have a sort of a fun question. It's been also fun for me to hear about your work and the school committee, but what's something that like about you that people might not know or might surprise us?
[Sharon Hays]: You get things running through your head like, oh, but that might be too personal. Well, let's see. When I was in middle school, I wanted to be a hippie. I was very into the 60s and the whole peace love and the civil rights movement. And I just, I wanted to be a hippie. So you'll see me wearing peace signs. That's the one kind of remnant of it is I still love. It doesn't sound silly to people. Oh, but you know I was very lucky to have parents who while they were very, they weren't conservative but they certainly weren't. They, they were probably at the right age at that time that they could have been involved in all that they were the furthest from that from being involved in that. But I still. love my, I still well I love my dad anyway but he took my sister and I when I was in I think eighth grade to my first rally and it was a no nukes rally in New York City, huge concert. And I still remember that as being like, wow, this is what people do when they want to be involved.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's a great story, sort of your introduction to advocacy and activism there. Very sweet of your dad.
[Sharon Hays]: It was. I mean, he drove us all the way to New York. And again, it wasn't necessarily something, it definitely wasn't something he would have done, except that we really wanted to do it. And he said, okay, and he drove us. What, five hours is it a drive down there? Three, four? I don't know. Down to New York City. There were hundreds of thousands of people. And I don't even remember, like, I'm sure we had no idea where to park. It was Central Park and it was huge. And yeah, it was great.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. Those are all the questions that I had. I can put the... your information in our show notes and people can contact you that way. But is there anything else you want to make sure to mention?
[Sharon Hays]: just, you know, as much as people can to, to, I know the time that school committee meetings occur is not convenient for probably the vast majority of people. They're always recorded. Be as involved as you can listen to the meetings, get in contact with us. If there's something you hear that you either want to support or you feel strongly against, or, you know, we are the role of school committee is to take the concerns and questions and needs of the community to the school to the schools and make things happen in the school so we, we need to hear from the community so.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, it sounds like you all are working on ways to make that more accessible, being able to hear from our community in different ways with the different outreach that you all are doing. And I've heard this, I forget what it is, but it's a pretty low number of folks that you need to hear from to actually bring an idea forward. So I always like reminding people of that, that it's like, if you hear the same idea from just one or two people, that it can have a bigger impact. I think people maybe feel like, I'm just one person, what am I going to do? But it's, you know, sort of worth the outreach. Yeah.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah. And if you're, you know, if you're like, well, again, I'm bringing my elementary experience because that's mine with my kids. But, you know, you stand after school talking with a group of parents and you say, wow, we all feel, you know, you get into this conversation where, you know, you're all feeling the same way about a certain issue, big or small, or, you know, If there's three of you, two of you, four of you, all email, email together. It's not that we don't listen to one parent or we can't bring something forward if one parent says it, but certainly to hear it from a number of people obviously makes a different impact to say, okay, well, a number of people are experiencing this same concern, the same issue. We should bring it up at a meeting and talk about it. you know, certainly it helps to hear from more people to understand what level of issue this is.
[Danielle Balocca]: Makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you for your time today. I learned a lot. Some questions that I hadn't even thought about. So thank you so much for your time and hopefully we can talk again in the future.
[Sharon Hays]: Sure. Thank you. It was fun.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much to Sharon Hayes. More information about how to get in touch with her is in today's show notes. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode, and as always, if you have feedback about this episode or ideas for future episodes, you can email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites!
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