total time: 21.74 minutes
total words: 1041
[XXXXXX00138_SPEAKER_01]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[XXXXXX00138_SPEAKER_00]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[XXXXXX00138_SPEAKER_01]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat.
[Balocca]: All right, thanks so much for joining me today. If you don't mind just by just introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and a bit about who you are.
[Jessica Parks]: Thanks, Danielle. Jessica Parks, she, her, I am. Running for school committee currently. I am a mom to a new fifth grader. I lived in Medford for almost 14 years now. I'm a project manager for energy efficiency projects at MIT and have a background in urban planning. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[Balocca]: Of course. Yeah, it's great to Great to be chatting, and I should mention that we're recording this on the first day back to school for most kids in Medford, so big day for everybody. All right, so before we get too into talking about your campaign, I'm wondering if you could answer the question we ask everybody, which is, what is your favorite place to eat in Medford, and what do you like to eat there?
[Jessica Parks]: Well, I think there are a bunch of things. I like to eat around Medford. Definitely the fried chicken sandwich at Deep Cuts and currently the seafood pie at Mrs. Murphy's. But my all time favorite place is always Colleen's and it's the peppermint stick ice cream with chocolate sprinkles in a sugar cone. I pretty much get that every single time we're there. And sometimes I had a sandwich, but it's pretty, you know, If you're sad, you go to Colleen's for ice cream. If you're happy, you go to celebrate at Colleen's for ice cream. And so that would be my favorite. And it doesn't hurt that you get to play games while you're there.
[Balocca]: My youngest kid loves the gumball machine there. Sometimes he doesn't even get ice cream. He just wants a gumball.
[Jessica Parks]: The gumball machine is a definite draw there.
[Balocca]: And they just added, this is like big news for me and my family, veggie dogs to the menu. So you can get any of their their hot dogs on like with a with a veggie dog instead, which was delicious.
[Jessica Parks]: That's awesome. I didn't realize that they didn't have that option as someone who has a family that eats way too many hot dogs.
[Balocca]: Great. All right. So yeah, I'm curious if you could share as we kind of transition talking about school, if you could share a little bit about kind of what led you to this moment to like decide to run for school committee in Medford?
[Jessica Parks]: I'd say if you asked me about a year ago, if I would have run, I probably would have thought you were crazy. But as someone who is very much scared of the spotlight or anything to do with public speaking, but having worked on the override, the Invest in Medford campaign, And really, with my background, I have a master's in urban planning, and I haven't really truly, you know, used my master's degree as much as I would like to lately. And the urban planning community development aspect of it, I have been missing a lot lately. And so I think that the Invest in Medford campaign definitely tapped into it. And then the canvassing really further drew me in. Getting out there and talking to so many different residents and hearing everyone's thoughts on the schools about what could be better, what we're doing good. It was truly eye-opening to me, a lot of things. I mean, I definitely had a lot of views of my own about how the schools were doing, but hearing some of those views substantiated, but also so many other things from the residents throughout the city. It really drew me in and made me start to dig in more and more. And then that coupled with work on an afterschool task force, it kind of just led to this moment where I said, well, it's either I stop here or I jump all the way in and just see what happens. And I decided to jump all the way in. I just, I felt compelled that I had more to do and more to give to the city.
[Balocca]: Thank you. And it seems like over the last couple of years, especially with the override, that there's been a lot of kind of momentum around this, you know, improving our schools or thinking just more, maybe more intentionally about the school committee, especially since we've recovered from COVID and things can be a little bit more, we can have a little more foresight, less of an emergency. So yeah, I guess I'm wondering, it sounds like you've, you have your own motivations for things that you wanted to see change, or maybe things that are going well, but things that can be improved. And then it sounds like through canvassing for the override that you've heard, maybe similar things and some new things from community members, So, what would you say kind of your goals are, like, your main areas of focus would be if you were elected to sort of continue the work that you've been doing?
[Jessica Parks]: I think some of the top things, so one of the top things I heard about during canvassing, which was not an issue that I faced. And I almost felt like it was a dirty word. And I hated to admit it was the afterschool program problem in the city. It's a massive problem. And we managed to get off the wait list after when my son was in first grade. But It's a massive problem. We don't have enough after school and there are other programs, but they're not quite fitting the need. Some end earlier than parents need them to. Some aren't 5 days a week. And so it's just a problem. And so I think that that that's 1 area. And. I can kind of talk more about work that's been done on that in a little bit. I think another area that I really want to focus on is something that is really what's near and dear to my heart is making sure that all of our students get what they need and basically meeting students where they are. And that's thinking about, you know, our students who are operating below grade level at grade level and above grade level. I think we're losing a lot of students out of the district who are struggling to access the curriculum and. and on all ends of the spectrum. And that is because, I mean, it's a resource issue, obviously funding is necessary, but I think it's also a professional development issue and just identifying needs of different students. and making sure we understand what each student needs to be able to make that student successful. So I think there's a lot of pieces that we need to figure out how to put them all together in order to make sure that all of our students are thriving. Because no matter what, you will always have different students in the classroom. All of them will have individual needs, but And teachers know how to work with that for the most part. But I think that there are certain students who just need a little bit more. Whether it's the child who's operating above grade level finishes their work quickly and is now sitting on a Chromebook for a good portion of the class goofing around. Or it's the child who can't access the curriculum because they still can't read. and keep falling behind and falling behind despite interventions. And we're still not quite figuring out how to work with them. And I think that we need to really focus in on building up our ability to work with each child. I know our IEP program is convoluted at best. We went through the IEP process and it's convoluted. It's based on kind of a numbers game. And even if you see your child struggling and yet they don't fall within a number, they don't qualify. So it's a really hard problem to solve. don't pretend that I have an answer at this time, but I do think it's something worth exploring and looking at what other locations are doing and how are other people and other school districts dealing with this issue? And are they being more successful than we are? And can we learn from them? And that's kind of how I approach all issues is what can we take from other places? Not to say that we're doing it poorly, but just to say, can we learn something new?
[Balocca]: I think it's a really interesting question and approach to a solution, especially for the school system. Every city in Massachusetts and every town has a school system, right? And there's so much difference in how things are approached. I do think like you've maybe spoken to this a little bit, but like resources, like the amount of money we have to spend on these things, I think it's certainly not helpful, right, for Medford. But then also like there's no, you know, I think taking, learning what we can from other communities that are, that are maybe, that maybe have a different approach to this that's help, that's more helpful for their students, it sounds great. Yeah, well I'm curious, what other things are you, on your priority list?
[Jessica Parks]: I mean, I'd say that's probably one of my highest priorities, which has its own tangled web, obviously working through the afterschool one. And that's something that I've worked to start currently, and I'm working as part of. And that's where we kind of look to other communities already. When I worked with a few other amazing Parents to start the after school task force, we kind of came to it from this approach called. You know, lots of people had said, oh. You know, some reveal a Cambridge or this other location. They're not dealing with the same after school problem. They everybody can get after school there. I've heard. And so, you know, I thought about it and I said, is that actually true or is this like Facebook myth, you know, urban legend? And so one of the things I pushed for is let's do case studies of these locations. Let's find out A, how many people do have afterschool that need it? And then B, how are they providing it? What are they doing differently that's allowing this to happen? Because obviously they can't, you know, are they doing something so drastically different that's allowing them to provide this much more? And what we did learn is no, not every child in these, you know, we looked at five different locations and not every child has afterschool in them. They're not meeting 100% of the needs, but they are meeting substantially more of the needs than we are in Medford currently. Um, and they're doing it in 2 different ways. Some are privatizing. They're after school and some are doing it in house through the district. But what they are doing is kind of. Looking at creative ways to pay staff, they're looking at creative use of. Spaces there, you know. increasing their numbers. So there are different kind of models that they're using. And we put together a massive spreadsheet and brought it before the district and said, here, here's a ton of information. We've kind of boiled it down to just the core elements that we're not doing in Medford that we think could help increase numbers. And these are kind of our recommendations. And that's the biggest way that I approach issues is, you know, give me a problem and instead of just kind of sitting and talking about it, I'll just explore all of the possibilities and boil it down and say, okay, let's now look at what's in front of us. What is the best approach? And bring in voices who are gonna be impacted by it rather than pretend I know what's best for anyone. I'm not, you know, I'm an urban planner with a specialty in environmental studies. And so I don't, and even then I wouldn't pretend to know what's best about urban planning. Urban planners are generalists who know how to look at information and bring in community members. And so I think that one of my strengths is just approaching things strategically and bringing in the right people to make decisions. And I think that when it comes to issues, I think that, you know, there are lots of issues that the school is facing. At any one time, there's probably 100 fires that need to be put out. But identifying those fires That is coming from the community. That's coming from the mom I talked to the other day that may need to send their child to the Carroll School because they are struggling with reading. That comes from the other father who can't get off of the waitlist for afterschool and they have yet to get into any of the other external programs and are literally on a waitlist for every single afterschool program in the city. That comes from, you know, the parents of someone who you know, are trying to figure out how to get their child safely from their house over to the middle school. Because while we have the new Clippership Connector, there are still multiple points where their child has to cross the street that aren't necessarily the safest crossing points. And so that's where I feel like the biggest discussion, you know, the biggest issues are raised are by talking to people in the community and then trying to figure out solutions.
[Balocca]: Those are really interesting things. And it sounds like you've already been doing a lot of that work of kind of pulling the community and seeing what sort of important issues are, but maybe the issues that aren't being necessarily heard as broadly as some others. But I'm curious kind of where you landed with the after school stuff. Has there been any progress on
[Jessica Parks]: There has been some small progress. I think 55, maybe a few more spaces have been opened up. The afterschool program has started offering a early pickup because what they realized is there are a number of students that only need afterschool for a small portion of time. Maybe they have parents that are teachers who just need that, you know, an hour extra to get to their child. Like they're finishing up their school day and then they need to get over to pick up their child at school. And so, and there's also a group of staff that are willing to, you know, a certain amount of time longer, but not until 6 p.m. because staffing after school is also problematic. So it's easier to say, hey, can you staff until maybe 430 rather than six. So you pick up those extra staff and you kind of carve out those students who don't need coverage till six. And so that they were able to connect and create more spaces. So that's been great. And they're bringing in a private program that actually operates in Belmont to serve as a consultant, to help kind of basically analyze our program and see where we can make changes. And how do we create a after-school program that serves all Medford students? And when I say all Medford students, I don't necessarily mean open up a spot for every single student, because that's not necessarily possible. But I mean all of our students from a kind of equity and accessibility standpoint, but also that serves all Medford students and does so in a way that we are getting the most spaces in each of our schools. So we're not kind of leaving spaces on the table that could be out there. and helping us look at ways that we can increase staffing and attract more staff and things like that.
[Balocca]: Yeah, what I think I've been hearing since my kid was in kindergarten just how about the shortage of afterschool care. And this seems like the first real organized attempt to tackle this issue. So it's already progressing that way. Hopefully it's just gonna move farther and farther, but great, yeah.
[Jessica Parks]: And I think also that will come with working with the principals and the teachers. And I don't want to forget them in this process. I talked a lot about talking to the residents, but I do think we also need to make sure when we're figuring out issues with the school or what's working in the schools, we need to be talking with the teachers. We need to be talking with the principals, the staff, everyone in the schools. You know, one of the things I think You know, if I'm elected, I would wanna be doing regular coffee hours and getting to each school and finding out what's working in the schools. And so setting that up for the teachers to be able to like meet them on their terms and say, hey, tell me, you know, what's working, what's not working, what do you need? You know, in an ideal world, what would you have? You know, I know there's lots of things that they would have in an ideal world, Or, you know, in a resources constricted ideal world, what would help you, you know, and things like that, like tiers of.
[Balocca]: I think teachers are really good at like common sense solutions too. So yeah, checking in with the people on the ground, like, can always be really helpful.
[Jessica Parks]: Exactly. And you see it all the time is how teachers are making it work right now. You know, limited resources and they're making things work. And it's commendable, but it's not sustainable. Yeah, true.
[Balocca]: Yeah. Thank you. Any other issues that we haven't brought up yet that are important to your campaign?
[Jessica Parks]: I mean, I think it's been a common thread, but I think communication is also important to me. I think that making sure that we are communicating throughout, whether it's administration to parents, parents to administration, that, you know, you hear all the time about 500 emails going to administration on the same topic because something happens. you know, whether it's a change of a teacher or something isn't communicated well, and then parents are sending emails to administration, those 500 emails are emails that need to then be read and responded to, which take time. And that shouldn't have to happen. And, you know, that's someone's, that's time away from someone's actual job. And I feel that if we can be communicating proactively, and we can be having conversations regularly, and we can basically be doing everything possible. I mean, it's not always possible. I'm a realist. I recognize it's not always possible. But if we can be doing as much as we can and having regular check-ins or regular updates about things that we know would potentially cause those 500 emails to come flying, then we can allow conversations to happen before they become issues. And I think that's a critical thing, is allow the dialogue to happen before it becomes an issue. An issue, because once it becomes an issue, the dialogue is no longer able to happen in any sort of constructive manner. And I think that's what's needed is whether it's websites that are routinely being updated that provide more detailed information or emails that are going out more regularly, things like that.
[Balocca]: Yeah, yeah. And I think it's always helpful to know what's upcoming in school committee meetings and city council meetings, because I know the ability to provide feedback can be tricky. So like, that seems, yeah. And I would say that every person I talk to on this podcast or whatever it's about, they're always like, there is a critique about just generally in the city of how people are getting information or the best way to get people that information. So any new ideas are welcome.
[Jessica Parks]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is. And there's disjointed ways to get information. I think if it's, you know, you need to kind of establish baselines. And then from there, you kind of establish expectations, like these types of items will be communicated, whether it's via a newsletter that comes out weekly, whether it's, you know, an email that goes out, you know, every other week and a weekly newsletter, you know, and he's kind of give tears and this is how it's communicated. So it's just establishing expectations and making sure that everyone's on board with them.
[Balocca]: Yeah. It was like good practice for parents, for educators, like consistency and communication. Are there any like events that you want to plug or any ways we can get in touch or learn more about your campaign?
[Jessica Parks]: Email me. Email me, I will also, which I think I'm gonna provide you my email address. My website, I will be at Colleen's for a meet and greet on the, well, September 3rd. I also have another meet and greet on September 4th, which will also, all of these are on my website. And then I will be on October 3rd at the Great American Beer Hall as well for a meet and greet. And I will be canvassing every weekend from now until election. So hopefully I will knock on your door and be able to chat with you then as well. That is probably my favorite way to talk to you.
[Balocca]: I'm always surprised when people say that. It seems really tough. But I'll put all that information in the show notes so people can access your website and find out more information at their leisure. But yeah, anything else that you want to mention before we wrap up?
[Jessica Parks]: No, I mean, I think the one, maybe One thing that, you know, I'm always happy to meet with anyone. This one-on-one is probably what I enjoy the best. But I also think, you know, one of the other things that really spurred me to get involved is truly my kiddo. you know, and I do this for him as well as, you know, many other kiddos in this city. And that's truly what is driving me for, you know, right now and through this election. And so that's kind of where I'm coming from and truly making it that much more personal to me, so.
[Balocca]: Yeah, thank you.
[Jessica Parks]: Yeah, as he sits behind me.
[Balocca]: Yeah. Great basketball player currently on the switch. Yeah, no, I think it's always great modeling for our kids right no matter what we're doing like the involvement and it also just like to be able to model for them that we can have this sort of impact in our community is, it's always great. So yeah.
[Jessica Parks]: Yeah. And in this climate as well, I think it's important to show them that it's, it's important to stand up for what you believe in, you know, no matter how hard it is, no matter what it takes, you know, it just, it's important. Well, thank you. Yeah.
[Balocca]: Thanks for sharing all this with us and good luck with your campaign.
[Jessica Parks]: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity, Dania. Thank you.
[Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman.
[XXXXXX00138_SPEAKER_01]: Music is made by Hendrick Guidonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast.
[Balocca]: You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites. Medford Bites. Good job.
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total time: 21.74 minutes total words: 1041 |
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