total time: 3.03 minutes
total words: 303
[Lisa Kingsley]: Welcome back to part two of my talk with David and coffee chats with the Kingsleys. So we're still talking about special education and the fifth bit of my platform, which is improving oversight, particularly when it comes to special education. So what you got?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's implied when you just said oversight or governance of special education. it is, talk about the all-important role of the IEP. What can the school committee actually do to influence it?
[Lisa Kingsley]: I think that's a really good question that we don't necessarily talk about enough, particularly during election season. The actual role of the school committee is governance, which is approving, writing, reviewing policy, approving the budget, and hiring and supervising the superintendent. That's it. Now, it is going to be hard for me, I will admit, to keep my involvement in special education in those parameters because before, I have worked across districts when I'm actually designing the systems, right? I'm the one that's determining what our team chairs do and how we engage with families and how do we ensure that the meetings feel like safe and neutral spaces. That won't be my role here. However, my experience of having led those meetings, led like 600 IEP meetings myself, supervised team chairs or evaluation team leaders, blah, blah, blah. All of that experience will help me ask the right questions, be targeted in what we're looking for, ask for appropriate data from our district leaders, and then use it to set policy as appropriate to determine what levers are right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a little bit of a pet peeve when people talk about data. because I think it's actually a lot harder than it sounds from my own work and experience and it's like which data the experience that you outline and knowing which questions to ask to help lead you is meaningful to me but like what data helps you perform that supervision on the school committee.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah so for example when I was in Malden the school committee asked us to survey all of our parents of students with disabilities. It was laborious and the data we got back was some of, or the school committee got back that was then shared with us, was some of the most useful data for decision making at scale that I've ever seen. So I think I've shared, like we have sat at every seat of the IEP table. Well, we've sat at AC as a family. I've led meetings, participated, et cetera. But I don't want my individual experience, our individual experiences, to guide what I recommend, what policy I think is appropriate, which is why ensuring that we're accountable to data collection and looking at scale is so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one part of a larger special ed system within a larger school district with a lot of different priorities.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah, and I think that I've just heard enough from other families going through this process to know that we have room to grow in Medford. I mean, this process is always hard. It's always emotional. It is federally regulated. Some of it feels kind of cold because there are steps and compliance forms you need to fill out. However, there are ways to still really keep the focus on the students' instructional need, on partnering together, so it doesn't have to feel defensive, separate, and that compliance is leading instead of students at the center. And that's what I hope to be able to make progress towards at Medford.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well said.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Hey, thank you. And thank you for joining us. That was actually the last bit of the platform that I'm gonna talk about. So we need new ideas for what we're gonna talk about in Coffee Chats with the Kingsleys.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, thank you.
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total time: 3.03 minutes total words: 303 |
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