[SPEAKER_01]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and change maker. 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.
[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 being with me tonight. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name pronouns and a bit about who you are.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. Hello. My name is Lisa Kingsley and I use the she series of pronouns and I am a candidate for Medford school committee. I'm excited to be running.
[Balocca]: So yeah, we'll get a lot more into that in a minute. But before we start to talk more about your campaign for school committee, 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?
[SPEAKER_05]: So I spent a lot of time thinking about this in preparation, and it's hard. So I'm going to give some caveats. For breakfast, it's Goldilocks bagels. And I really like to try different things, but most frequently, it's something that involves lox. Whether or not it's a sandwich or a bagel with it, that's often my jam. Semolina is my favorite fancy occasion, don't get there enough and very often. And I always get a special because everything they do for specials I get excited about, so I don't have a standby. And then I think day to day, it's definitely Bob's. And their Alfredo pasta with broccolini and sausage is like a family go-to, and it has been for probably the whole 13 years we've lived in Medford.
[Balocca]: Oh, very comprehensive. I do wonder on a weekday what you would get for breakfast, but we can talk about that the next time. Okay, very fair.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's probably McMuffin, because it's closest to my house. So it's the easiest to swing by. And then I get the Biggie breakfast sandwich, but I sub jalapeno cream cheese for regular cheese.
[Balocca]: Well, you were prepared for that. Great. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: I like food. It's a good fit. I like the question.
[Balocca]: A lot of good options in Medford too. Thanks, Lisa. So I'm wondering if you could share a little bit with us about kind of how you arrived at this moment when you decided to run for school committee.
[SPEAKER_05]: All right, so it's been a journey, but a journey that's really centered around public education. So I started teaching in the South Bronx. I did the New York City Teaching Fellows. So it was an alternative certification program, which meant I was thrown into a classroom at age 23 with a theater major and was teaching self-contained special ed. I simultaneously got my master's degree in special education at the time. and spent the next eight years teaching special ed in both New York and then the Boston area. which I had moved to because I met my husband David while living in New York and the buses got really frustrating. So eventually one of us had to give and I fell in love with the Boston area. So after that time in the classroom, I moved into administrative roles. I spent five years as a functional special ed director at Prospect Hill Academy. Then I was principal of Curtis Tufts High School here in Medford, a role I was so excited to take on because it was a population of students that I loved working with and at that point. I'd been living in Medford for five years and it was home and I wanted the experience of getting to give back and work within a community I cared so much about. From there, I worked in Malden as the district's director of therapeutic services in which I ran all of our subseparate special education programs that worked with students with emotional impairment. I ran our hospital reentry program for students that were coming back from mental health hospitalizations. And I ran the high school alternative program kind of a dropout prevention program. So what I found in each of these roles, my individual efforts would have a limit of how effective they could be. You know, I would be able to make progress on a specific program, or I'd be able to improve, you know, the efficacy of a certain teacher, you know, I could make moves within the given system, but sometimes the system itself needed to be addressed. And it was that kind of desire to figure out how to be a systems-level leader and make more sustainable change that led me to go get my doctorate. So I've spent the last three years at Harvard's Graduate School of Education earning this practitioner doctorate. So I don't have a PhD. I have so much deep respect of my colleagues that have spent the multiple years writing the dissertation and that are more researchers. I am a practitioner. So I spent this three-year program, I got to take classes at the business school and the Kennedy School of Government and the law school. So really getting to put together some of these different threads to think through how they can be applied to a systems lens in education. I graduated in May. I still am looking to figure out where my permanent role will be after graduation, but Realizing that this moment in Medford feels important. And I have a certain set of skills and have been spending a lot of time thinking deeply how to improve schools in general. And like, I have three kids in Medford public schools and they're going to be there for a long time. So all of those things together led me to feel like this is the moment to throw my hat in the ring. So here I am.
[Balocca]: Well, thank you. There's a lot in that answer that I want to kind of like pick apart a little bit. But I want to just like reflect the phrase you said that like something about this moment, right, this moment in Medford. Can you say more about what you mean about that? Like, how do you how do you kind of like picture what's happening in Medford right now?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of things happening in the city in general. And, you know, there's a lot of candidates talking about that in, you know, the really largely the city council race. But for the school committee, it's a narrow job. The role of the school committee is governance of the school district. So setting and reviewing policy, setting priorities, approving the budget, you know, to ensure it's aligned with those priorities. But the other big and I might argue the most important role of the school committee is the hiring and supervision of the superintendent. Well, most of the time when a candidate is deciding if they're going to run or not, you don't know if you're going to have a superintendent search.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's very unusual to have an interim superintendent, so we absolutely know in this next term, a new permanent superintendent will be brought on board. And because of that, I believe this is the moment that my unique skill set is going to benefit, could potentially benefit the city the most. I hold my superintendent's license. A lot of the training that I did in this last three years was to prepare us to be superintendents. Many colleagues in my cohort are now serving as superintendents. So having somebody who kind of understands the role, deeply involved in this selection process, I think is really important and I hope is something I will be able to do as a member of the school committee.
[Balocca]: Right? Yeah, yeah. So that's like a really interesting point, right? There's a lot of like, Medford is kind of primed for some big changes right now. One of them being the search for a new superintendent. Another one being like, that comes to mind is like the idea, like the idea of how we're going to build a new high school. And lots of, and you know, we've recently passed like our first ever override, right? And like, so different amounts of revenue are going into the schools and different things, right? And so it does seem like, a time that we're kind of like primed for some big moves, hopefully. So, and I wonder, with like a background in special ed and that being something that I've heard a lot of critiques of in the city of Medford, like what, what other kind of goals you would have or ideas would you have around increasing equity and inclusivity in your, as part of your role in the school committee?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so one of the things that I think you mentioned And that question, you know, we passed the override. There will be different budget funding coming in. And as we look at how to use our resources, we have to have some guiding kind of North Star, some plan. So two of the things that I would want to prioritize before we even think about the how, is setting what our goals are. So right now, the district has begun working on a vision for effective instruction. You know, Dr. Galussi shared it at the beginning of the year in her family email, and it's great. It's exactly the work that we need to do. We can go further with that and make sure that that vision is pretty clear and specific and is something that we've shared with families and something that hasn't accompanied, like, look for what does this mean? You know, there's a lot of really good priorities. And then what does that mean in practice for us in Medford? Like some districts go all in on personalized learning, and that's how they seek to create more equitable environments. Some districts go all in on project-based that allow students, you know, these different hooks. Whichever way we decide to go about it, we need as a city and as a district to set that vision. But that vision is just like a poster on the wall if we don't also have a strategic plan. And right now, that's an area that we don't yet have as a district. And I don't know how we can effectively make consistent and equitable choices regarding how we're spending our money, how we're allocating our money, what are we funding if we haven't set our priorities and if we haven't created a plan for how we move from A to B. So that's kind of the underpinnings that I think are necessary in order for us to ensure we are moving towards more equitable outcomes for all students.
[Balocca]: And maybe like in your role at Curtis Tufts or as a parent in Medford, do you have any sort of observations or hopes for how maybe Medford could do better in terms of equity for students?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. So I think that particularly when it comes to special education, It is such a complicated and complex topic. I have run a whole lot of IEP meetings in my day and I've trained a whole lot of people whose job it is to run IEP meetings, but I've also sat in the parent seat of the IEP table. I have both both in my home and in my family, but I also serve as a special education surrogate parent for students that are in state custody. Because again, having this specialized knowledge, I want to use it to help ensure more students are getting what they need. And we are not alone as a district to take kind of I fear we take too much of a compliance stance when it comes to special education, and that our parents don't always get brought into the process with a partnership lens, and instead it can too often feel like a checklist, it can too often feel like we are, you know, prioritizing forms instead of real instructional conversations about students. And that's certainly not across the board, but systemically, the amount of families I've talked to over the past 10 years, somebody finds out I'm in special ed, and then this becomes what our discussions are about. I really do believe that that's an area that we can improve and that that we can set some goals around because as school committee member I wouldn't be the one to decide you know what those improvements look like but as part of our superintendent goal setting as part of our hiring we set that as a priority that then allows our superintendent to address it because you know we are as school committee members not going to do the management, but we're going to do the governance and help ensure that people are prioritizing what we feel is important.
[Balocca]: Yeah, I learned a lot about this from talking to Jenny Graham during COVID about like how it's really helpful to hear that kind of depth of knowledge around special education. I do think it's helpful to mention, you know, sort of how right now in our country, there's like this national agenda that is sort of being imposed on schools or being attempted to be imposed on schools in terms of what schools can teach, what they can't teach, what they can talk about, what they can't talk about. Um, so I wonder if you see how you see that as like, um, maybe something that you're thinking about, um, as in, as you run for school committee or how you see that as like impacting Medford.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so. I mean, the most honest answer when I think about what's happening nationally is how grateful I am to live in Massachusetts. So I in the last three years through my doctoral program I was working with school leaders I worked at a bunch of like national institutes and was were was. coaching school leaders from around the country, many of whom are from like Texas and Florida. And when they described what their day-to-day life looked like in terms of the words they had to avoid saying that they had teachers in their building that were like waiting for them to say things they're not supposed to say. I was so grateful that that was unfamiliar to me. And so I want to further lean in to who we can be. You know, how I think it applies to Medford is I'm grateful we don't have those constraints. How can we be the best version of ourselves given that we don't have those constraints? I think one of the things that happens is when school districts are told you can't do this, you have to do this, you must look back. They lose their ability to really effectively be responsive to their communities, and they lose their ability to really be responsive to families. And that's an area that I care really deeply about, and I think we can lean in. We are allowed to have the tough conversations, so we should. We can bring up the messy challenges with our families. We can be honest with our families and seek their expertise. about what our growing edges are and where we can move forward or where we want input. We can do that here, so let's do it and let's do it more. And I think that is a way that we can, at least on a local level, represent something different than what some of our colleagues in other states and districts aren't able to do.
[Balocca]: Yeah, I like that answer, yeah. So being able to sort of enjoy these choices that we have as long as we have them, which is hopefully for a long time. One would help. Yeah, I'm wondering too, you mentioned about input from community members. So as you're running for this office, how do people share feedback with you or share things that are important to them?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I am trying to talk to as many people as possible. One of the benefits of really liking to talk about schools, if you haven't noticed from already our conversation thus far, I can do this all day, is for the last 12 years of living in Medford, many conversations I find myself in at Spotlight, on the soccer field, standing, waiting for a student at pickup becomes about schools. And sometimes they're about things that are going really, really well and how we're so excited about things happening in Medford. And as we know as human nature, sometimes the things people wanna talk about are the things that they're struggling with with the districts or frustration that they're having. So I am lucky enough to have entered this race, with these conversations, you know, under my belt and these conversations being things that I thought of, I also was a principal in this district. So I had the experience of working on two administrative teams, the Curtis Tufts, I was a secondary principal. So I got to, you know, work and collaborate with the other principals. But I also was a special ed administrator. So I got to work with and collaborate and be a part of the special ed administrative
[SPEAKER_04]: team.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I had information about areas in which I knew we might want to continue to attend to or, you know, to work on, but I'm doing my best right now to talk to as many people as possible to further understand in 2025 right now what are priorities for our community, for our schools. So I I'm running independently. I'm figuring this out as I go, which is probably eminent. I've never done this before, but I am going to doors. I've had some wonderful community members host meet and greets and been able to talk to people. I'm so grateful when folks are willing to share with me what they're excited about in our schools, what their concerns are. And I'm using that to help inform. I think the most important thing we need to do with that information is to put it into our conversations about the strategic plan and put it into our conversations about our next permanent superintendent. So what I'm trying to do now is what I would like to more formally do If I, you know, have the privilege of being elected to school committee, I would want to make sure we bring in the community to really help us set and identify priorities. And I would want to make sure that we collect a lot of data, you know, to make sure that we are doing. A robust process of that to be to be informed. So it's not just a few of the most vocal voices. It's not just my own personal experience, but we really have a deep representative sample of our community to help us make some of those really important decisions that will be coming up in this term.
[Balocca]: Yeah, I think that that's a it's a can be a difficult thing in Medford. I think in conversations that I've had with all different sorts of people that are running for different positions in Medford, it can be a hard place to know how to elicit all that input from people. I think hopefully with schools and people's children are involved, it's a little bit easier, but I did serve on the charter commission and get trying to get, which is a very dull subject for lots of people, but to be fair, but to get People to like come to us with their feedback was very hard. And so I wonder about like, you know there we had David Harris on like a long time ago, but his whole thing was like it's you know Like people kept saying like you need to cut people need to come to the table He was saying well, maybe we need like a we need to get rid of the table or like whatever it was Forget how exactly it was. It was brilliant. But so I guess I wonder about like, how do you see yourself? maybe like changing that approach or adapting that approach in order to get as much input and feedback as you can.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, Danielle, you're reading my mind. When you said the like, come to us for the feedback, what stands out to me is no, we got to go to them, right? And it's about creating a myriad of opportunities, a myriad of methods, being comfortable. I said data before, and it's probably worth explaining. I don't just mean quantitative survey data. We should do some of that, sure. Survey response rates are historically really low. And part of what I've learned about as I'm thinking through how to be more equitable and how to be more family and community focused is the idea of street data. Going and having conversations with people and documenting those conversations, that's street data. Going and watching what drop-off and pickup looks like at some of the schools, going and just grabbing people, how's this going? That's street data. Now, you shouldn't only have quantitative and you shouldn't only have street data, but if we can show our community as a school district, if we can open the doors and make the process not cumbersome to give feedback if we can show like we actually really, really care what it is that you say. And not only that, here's what we're gonna do with the information when you give it to us. I think too often in all walks of life, when we're asked to like fill out a survey or participate in a forum or participate in some sort of focus group, you don't get the feedback afterwards. You don't know what they did with that. And as a district, I think we need to commit to, if we do this deep selection process, or if we do this deep data gathering process to help us inform priorities for the superintendent selection, we need to be reporting out to the community. We need to keep the community along with us, to keep them interested, to see and be transparent. Say we've spoken to this many families. We now want to speak to this many more. Our goal is to have X amount of voices. included. And then once we do all that, we share the findings. We go to people and we say, hey, these are the five priorities and some people mentioned this and that. And we're not afraid to be transparent with what our findings are. And I think even though that happens on the back end of this process, if we start doing that with regularity as a district, and probably as a town in general, but definitely as a district, because I'm narrowly focused on schools. If we start doing that regularly, then people will be more willing to engage in the future. They'll take time out of their busy days, out of their family dinner. Like I have three little kids, it can be really busy. And if I feel like I am, participating in something that isn't impactful, like I probably won't keep doing it. So I think that's a way, a commitment and a practice and a transparency and a consistency will help increase our engagement overall.
[Balocca]: Thank you. Yeah, thanks for that answer. And I'm wondering sort of if there's anything that you wanna plug, any events you have coming up or anything, any ways that people can see you in the community?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, thank you. So there's two things that are on my mind. One is for myself, and one is for a different community organization. So I have been on the board of the Medford Family Network for the last four years, and we are currently trying to recruit new board members for both the Medford Family Network and for the Friends of the Medford Family Network. Both of the organizations meet once a month. The Friends is the fundraising arm. The Parent Advisory Board does advising and programming and that. So if anyone listening is interested in either of those boards, reach out, reach out to me, reach out to the MFN, reach out to Marie Cassidy. So that's one of my plugs for just greater community involvement in general. That role has been really, really important to me. And we wanna make sure that we have more and more families continuing. And then a little bit more selfish answer. I have a couple of meet and greets coming up I think from when this airs, the next one will be at Colleen's, who has so generously donated their space to all of the candidates. My meet and greet at Colleen's is on September 25th, it's a Thursday, and I'll be there from six to eight. So that would be a wonderful opportunity to talk. There's a few other events that we're trying to put together, but I'll repeat, I'm new at this, I'm figuring it out. So I have a website in which I try really hard to keep updated. And then the other thing I'll say is if you wanna hear more about kind of my thoughts on things in that, please reach out. I'd love to have a conversation, but I've also been recording some videos with my kids who are fantastic interviewers. Danielle, they're not quite as professional as you, but they're trying. And so both on my campaign Facebook page, which is Lisa Kingsley for Medford School Committee and electlisakingsley.com, you can hear us talk. through more elements of my platform in a way that maybe is a little, uh, engaging. My son is pretty phenomenal at Canva and he's created a bunch of graphics.
[Balocca]: They're kind of fun to watch. I've seen some of these. They're very impressive. Um, yeah. Uh, great. Well, thank you. So, um, yeah, and we can put all that information in our show notes for people so they can see that more easily. Um, but anything else that you want to mention before we wrap up for tonight?
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I mean, I want to say I love talking about schools. I've spent a really long time studying it. And then, of course, I lived it. This was my career for the last 20 years. But I also want to just make sure I take the time to mention how much I love Medford and how much I I lead a Girl Scout troop for the last five years and coach girls on the run. And I've worked at the swap, which is like my favorite day of the year, three days of the year for the last decade. And I just really feel so grateful that my family landed in this community. And man, it would be exciting to get to put some of this specialized knowledge to use in service of this community. But I just want to make sure that I end on this gratitude for where we live, the community we get to be a part of, the fact that this process exists, the fact that, Danielle, you do this podcast and are working to get the information out there. I just think we live in a really special place.
[Balocca]: Yeah, I agree. And I think doing these interviews really always reminds me of that. So thank you so much for your time and good luck.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to 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. Music is made by Hendrick Guidonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. 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.