[Lisa Kingsley]: When we talk about student data, we're not talking about numbers. We're talking about kids, their growth, their access, their future. Every decision should start with the question, what does the data tell us about how our students are doing? Let's make that the heart of every school committee discussion.
[Lisa Kingsley]: English language proficiency dropped from 54% to 50% in the lower grades. But at the same time, our high school EL progress rose from 27% to 34%. The data tells us what's working and where to invest next. We just have to look.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Now, nearly one in five high school students is still chronically absent, but that's an improvement from 26% to 21%. Progress is possible, but only if we keep using data to understand what's working and why.
[Lisa Kingsley]: In addition, fewer students are completing advanced coursework, down from 48.8% to 42.3%. Every student deserves access to challenging and engaging classes to prepare them for college, career, and life. Tracking this data and then acting upon it ensures that opportunity reaches every student.
[Lisa Kingsley]: In just one year, Medford's graduation rate dropped four points, from 90.8 to 86.2%. Now, that change might seem small, but it represents dozens of students not crossing the stage. For our high-need students, those battling language, income, learning challenges, the drop is even deeper. Those are the students who most need our attention. Data tells us who's falling through the cracks. We can't help students we don't see.
[Lisa Kingsley]: While our district's average score has changed little year over year, our high-needs students are falling further behind. In 2024, one in four high-needs student wasn't meeting grade level expectations. In 2025, that number grew, representing one more student per classroom slipping below grade level. A one-point change in data represents dozens of students, real kids, who need more support. When we stop talking about student data, we stop seeing who's being left behind. We can't close gaps we don't name.
[Lisa Kingsley]: According to the 2025 MCAS data, Medford is meeting minimum expectations, but only making moderate progress towards our accountability targets, with a percentage of 45%. That means we're standing still while other districts are moving forward. But we can't fix what we don't measure, and it's why it's time to put student data back into the center of the conversation.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Hi, I'm Lisa Kingsley, and I'm the mom of three Medford public school students and a lifelong educator who spent nearly 20 years helping schools work better for kids and families. I began my career as a special education teacher, where I saw firsthand how powerful it can be when students feel seen and supported, and how frustrating it can be when systems seem to get in their way. That's what led me to go into leadership. I wanted to help build schools that centered student needs and improved outcomes for all. I led a special education at a nearby charter school. I served as principal of Curtis Tufts High School here in Medford. I ran therapeutic and alternative programs in Malden. Most recently, I've been earning my doctorate in education leadership from Harvard, also graduating with my superintendent license and experience coaching superintendent teams from across the country. But my heart hasn't left Medford. As a board member for the MFN, a Girl Scout leader, and a Girls on the Run coach, I am deeply connected to the community and am constantly listening when families want to share what's working and what's not in our school system. I'm running for school committee now because Medford is at a turning point. This term, we are selecting a permanent superintendent and shaping a long-term strategic plan. Rare opportunities to set a clear vision, align resources, and build trust with our families. And while the new high school continues to be an exciting priority, we also must keep sight of the day-to-day work of teaching, learning, and governing well. It's essential that somebody at the table has lived experience of how system decisions ripple down into classrooms and understands the importance of centering student need in all conversations. I know the inside of the classroom and the governance levers that can shape student experience. I hope to serve on the school committee to ensure that we can move from good intentions to data-driven results. Thank you.
[Lisa Kingsley]: There is so much to be proud of in Medford. When my family made the choice 12 years ago to determine which community to move into, it was pretty easy to determine that Medford was where we wanted to be. The diversity that we have in the community that we've built continue to be things that are drive me to want to be here and that have been a hallmark of my children's experience in the schools. This is my first year of graduating out of Brooks Elementary School with one of my children. And the middle school transition is scary. I spent a long time as a middle school teacher. And the fact that he has been welcomed and successful and happy in this really tough transition into sixth grade is just one mini example of what Medford and our schools can do for everyone. An area that I want to make sure we continue to attend to and grow is the use of data and to make sure that we don't just feel good in our schools, but that our student outcomes are reflecting how we feel. We have our most recent MCAS results resulted in a lot of things and a lot of areas of growth. We also have areas in which we need to continue to attend to. The disproportionality of our students with disabilities and their achievement as compared to some of their peers across the state continue to be an area that I would want to attend to and that I'm uniquely qualified to support given 20 years in special education. So, taking that feeling of community and belonging and combining it with some of our need for data-driven analysis and using that information to set policy kind of, I hope, speaks to both sides of that question. Thank you.
[Lisa Kingsley]: So parent engagement has to be a key focus for both the governance and management. You know, the school committee itself needs to prioritize parent engagement, and we need to hold our leadership at the district level, the superintendent and their team, accountable for the same thing. But it can't be a passive process. We cannot reach out once, send one survey, and if no one responds to it, say, okay. It's really, really important that we seek out, we go to community spaces, we have multiple invitations, we ensure that translation is available, we have interpretation available. There's a lot of strategies that we can use, but it all comes back to whether or not it's something we're prioritizing. You know, I wanted to continue this idea of making sure that we're engaging our community, particularly those that have not been successfully served, which we know are many of our families of students with disabilities. When I was working in Malden, the school committee asked us to call every single family of a child on an IEP to check in to see how services happened during COVID and to see how they felt about it and whether or not compensatory services were needed. Was that a laborious task? Yes. Was it a big undertaking? Yes. But that data caused us to shape what we were doing on the district level and helped us ensure that we were targeting our supports and using our resources to address where the deficits actually were, not based on one or two parents that reached out or our own personal experiences, but rather based on data that we strategically collected. So I think ensuring that it's a priority is step one, and then the actual strategies that we use will be dependent on the goals of the purpose of the outreach. Thank you.
[Lisa Kingsley]: So I'm gonna answer the question, but in a fairly roundabout way. So whenever we're thinking about a specific program or a curriculum, we're kind of farther down the line of decisions, and we're kind of beyond what the school committee itself has control over. So the school committee sets our strategic direction. One of the things that we, I hope to do if I have the opportunity to serve on the school committee, is lean in to the beginning of a vision of effective instruction that has begun in Medford Public Schools. We have started a vision for instruction and started an idea of what we think our position as a district, what we think good teaching and learning looks like. Once that decision is made, then we can evaluate between research-backed, high-quality instructional materials to determine which one best fits our vision. Because what we know in education is there is not one good way to teach and learn. What matters is coherence. It matters that we have taken a perspective as a district and made a decision about what we believe in Medford good teaching and learning looks like. That comes from listening to all stakeholders involved. And once that decision is made and once it's clear and actionable then we can assess our current reading program our math program and ensure that it fits. Now this is not work that would be done in a year or two years. The reading and math programs that we've adopted we are moving in the right track towards coherence and that every elementary school is using the same program for the first time. That's a step in the right direction. But as we work to codify what our vision of teaching and learning looks like we will then be in a better position to ensure that all of the different curricular components match the vision that we're seeking to achieve for our students.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Thank you. So if you haven't noticed tonight, I'm somebody who really digs into data, but it's not for the sake of numbers. It's because every piece of data tells a story about a student, a teacher, or a system that we can make even stronger. When you look at our current school committee data, it tells a story of opportunity. Our school committee members have been working so hard. There was 31 meetings that were held last year. But the special education subcommittee, the superintendent evaluation subcommittee, and the curriculum assessment accountability didn't meet. Across all of our school committee meetings from September to June student outcomes are indirectly mentioned on the agenda about 10 times. So I'm running to support progress to close these gaps and support the school committee moving forward with my deeply experienced lens. I want to help us connect the promises that we make to students and the systems that must deliver on them. That starts with clarity and accountability using data to understand what's working naming where we need to improve and following through on our commitments. It also means coherence, aligning our goals, budgets, and strategies so we're pulling in the same direction. And it means trust, built through transparent communication and consistent action. These are all levers that create lasting improvement. I bring the lived experience of a teacher and principal, the systems perspective of a district leader and Harvard-trained strategist, but the heart of a Medford parent who sees the incredible potential in our students and knows how to run or how to turn that potential into progress. On doorsteps across the city, families name the same priorities, better after school access, clearer communication, supportive special education processes, and real enrichment for kids. But unless we name our goals, design a plan to reach them, and hold ourselves accountable, those needs remain dreams without follow through. I'm ready to help us connect that vision to action with strategy data and collaboration so every child in Medford can learn, grow, and thrive. Thank you.
[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?
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Well, hello. For today's installment of Coffee Chats with the Kingsleys, two points I'd like to make. First, I'm joined by my husband, David.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Second, this is the only time that we are both drinking real coffee. Inquiring minds have been worried about what's in my children's cup, and I can assure you and everyone out there that it has been, in fact, water or seltzer.
[Lisa Kingsley]: But this is the real thing today. All right, what do you want to ask me about improving oversight of special education?
[Lisa Kingsley]: That's fair. I take for granted that It's something that everyone's aware of, but no, special education is actually based on a federal law called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. And what it is, it's the procedures and program that's required for us to give any student, regardless of their ability, a free and appropriate public education. The other kind of, so that means all kids get to go to school, no matter who they are, and that it needs to match their needs. It needs to be appropriate for them. and that they are entitled to make what's called effective progress. Now, I've been to seminars about what effective progress means. It doesn't necessarily mean grade-level work, but it means students make progress that should be expected from their profile.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yes, so the individual education plan is the document that is kind of the foundation of individual child special education services. So the individual education plan is something that the team, you're right, it's the family and the school, writes together as partners and it outlines the specially designed instruction, which is The learning that's a little extra or different than just the standard curriculum that any student who's on an IEP requires. That's part of being eligible is you need to be taught something that's a little extra different. And it also outlines any accommodations or tools students use to access learning or modification or any changes to the expected content the student's going to learn. He's playing coy. We've sat at all sides of the IEP table, and the process is one that, like anything that's legally mandated, there's a lot of rules and compliance and timeline around it, but foundationally, the point of it is an instructional tool for families and schools to outline to meet every individual child's needs.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Okay, so that might have to be part two. It's our first two-parter. All right, see you soon.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Welcome back for our next installment of Coffee Chats with the Kingsleys. And I am again joined by Annie.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Wow. Thank you for asking. So the next part of my platform is the belief that families and schools need authentic and real engagement. Okay. So what that means is we know that schools have a lot of expertise and we know that families have a lot of expertise. So what are schools experts on? and what our families experts are. So when you put those things together, we are going to be able to better meet the needs of our students. But right now that happens too infrequently, or we rely on just individual teachers that have that belief instead of really investing in a system that supports that at all levels of Medford Public Schools.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Well, so a system might be that we say this is like the one type of software we're going to use. The system might be we make it really easy for teachers to reach out to parents because we like set up recommendations of when they do it. A system might be the district creates opportunities to bring families in and talk to them. So it's not always up to one teacher. And right now we have some systems in place that actually make it harder for families and teachers to communicate, like not sharing testing information until, you know, report cards come out. There's ways that we can make it easier for teachers and students, or teachers and families to work together.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah, so like the math test that you take, Right? It would be great if once those tests are done, families have access to that information and they're able to help teachers say like, sometimes we know you're really, really good in one area, but you're still struggling with a different area. Right? So if parents know that and teachers know that as it's happening, we can work together to help build those skills as opposed to kind of keeping information and what I would call a silo, like keeping information separate. So you don't get those authentic partnerships.
[Lisa Kingsley]: It's true. And like what their child is doing great. And when their child isn't doing so great, sometimes they might need to talk to their kid, right?
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah. And that's no good.
[Lisa Kingsley]: So what do you think? Would that be a good idea?
[Lisa Kingsley]: Welcome back to the next edition of Coffee Chat with the Kingsleys. Nathan's back today as I talk about my third element of my platform, which is oversee a community-informed, comprehensive, permanent superintendent search. What questions do you have about that? Why is the superintendent so important to the district? Yeah, so the superintendent's role in the district is the overall manager. They're the leader of the district. They set the direction. They make the day-to-day decisions. They're key. Their leadership makes all the difference. What the school committee does is they do governance. They set policy, but then they hire and supervise and set priorities for that leader. So the school committee's job is to bring in the right superintendent that's going to be able to make the decisions we need to move Medford forward. I hear that. What are your qualifications in a right superintendent? Yeah, so what I think, Medved, is such a good question. And there's two things. So the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has a really comprehensive rubric of what it means to be effective as a superintendent. Now, I have been evaluated on that rubric before when I was working in Malden, and I hold my superintendent's license. So I know more than most, you know, the collection of skills and responsibilities. But it has to do everything with being a strategic thinker, doing change management, being willing to hold people accountable. And when systems aren't working, being willing to say that, but then work towards a solution. Interesting. Yeah. And so right now we have an interim superintendent. So most of the time when you run for school committee, you don't know if there will be a superintendent search within the next two years. Well, because we have an interim, we know that we will absolutely have to offer a new permanent contract this next year. So I think it's really important for the perspective of somebody who has that training and that background to be in the room as we have those discussions over the next year. I hear that. What sort of discussions are we talking about? in terms of deciding what the search process will look like, what perspectives do we want from the community in determining what our priorities are, deciding what's important in our who we hire, and then ultimately making that hiring decision. Interesting. Isn't it just? Okay, that's another edition of Coffee Talk.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Welcome back to our next edition of Coffee Chats with Kingsley's. My special guest is going to introduce herself today.
[Lisa Kingsley]: What are we talking about today, Caroline?
[Lisa Kingsley]: What's a strategic plan?
[Lisa Kingsley]: So when you start doing something, do you have a plan beforehand?
[Lisa Kingsley]: Sometimes yes, sometimes no, or always?
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah. So the same thing should be true for our schools. So if you're running a school district or a company or something, Kind of knowing the basics of what you wanna do before you get started helps you do it in a way that makes more sense and that's easier. Does that make sense? What do you think would happen if you try to do something without a plan?
[Lisa Kingsley]: Welcome back to our second edition of Coffee Chats with the Kingsleys. I am joined with another new interviewer today. This is Annie, my middle child. Yeah. All right. Annie's going to help us talk through, uh, kind of some of my platform for why I'm running for school committee. Um, so, um, what was the first reason why you're running? Yeah. So I have a lot of reasons for running, right? But one of the things that I see that Medford Public Schools that I want to kind of continue to push for is that I think we really need a clear vision of what we think good and effective instruction looks like. I think that every teacher in the district and every family in the district needs to know kind of what Medford's beliefs are about what good teaching and learning looks like. Because once you have that, you can decide how do you allocate resources, like how do you give away money on different things. You can choose curriculum. You can decide how to make staffing decisions. And Medford as a district doesn't have enough money. Most school districts don't, but I think it's especially tricky here. And so, if you really have that vision, it helps you decide how to make decisions that best support that vision. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, what happens if you can't do that vision? If you can't do it? Well, so if you don't have a vision, right, then every time you need to make a new decision, you're kind of making it without any sort of like shared understanding of what's important. So you might think one thing is super important, I might think something else is super important, and then it's hard to determine what we're going to do. Right? But if you have a vision that you realize you can't do, you don't know how to, or you don't have the skills to, then you know how to help support different people in building skills. That make sense? Yeah. All right. Well, do you want to say goodbye? Goodbye. Thank you for joining us on this edition of Coffee Chat with the Kingsleys. Cheers.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Hello and welcome to Coffee Chats with the Kingsleys. My name is Lisa Kingsley and I'm running for Medford School Committee. Over the next week I'm going to share a series of videos that give a little bit more information about who I am, my background, and why I'm running. And I'm going to be joined in these interviews by somebody interviewing me and I figured who better to start than my oldest child.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah, so I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas city. Um, and while it was a great place to grow up, I knew that I wanted to live in a place that was a little bit larger, a little bit more diverse, had a few more differing perspectives and opportunities. Uh, so I city hopped for a while going to undergraduate at Loyola University in Chicago. Then I moved to New York City and did the New York City Teaching Fellows, where I got my master's degree in special education and became a special education teacher, first in the South Bronx, and then on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Did you meet anyone special in New York? I did. So while I was living in New York, I met my now husband, David, who was already living in the Boston area. So after a year of buses back and forth, he won the rock, paper, scissors contest, and I found myself moving to Boston.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah, so we were living in Cambridge and Nathan was about six months old and we realized that we were quickly outgrowing the apartment that we were in. And so we started looking around for a house and we're so lucky to find our house near Playstead Park in 2013 and we've lived here ever since. What were your first impressions of Medford? I loved the community. So I was working at Prospect Hill Academy at the time and we had a lot of students that came from Medford public schools. I was the director of special education and what I found universally is that the people that I was liaisoning with and the people I was working with in Medford were folks I really liked talking to. So professionally, I had a lot of respect for the schools. And then I found myself in the community quickly discovering the MFN. So with a seven-month-old, the playroom and the park play groups became a fixture of our lives. And then as our family grew to include now Annie, who's 10, and Caroline, who's seven, 10 years of volunteering at the swap, four years of serving on the parent advisory board, including two years in which I was chair, I just became more and more in love with the people in Medford and the community. I then started leading Annie's, my middle child's Girl Scout troop for the last five years, in addition to coaching girls on the run and just looking for any opportunity to get involved and give back with a community that I loved.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah, so while I was doing all this stuff, getting involved in the community on a personal level, I also wanted to get involved with the community professionally. So your first day of kindergarten in Medford Public Schools was my first day as principal of the Curtis Tufts High School. So I had the opportunity to get to work within the Medford Public School system before moving on to Malden, where I was the district's director of therapeutic services and the director of their alternative high school. And then I spent my last three years, as you know, going back to school, getting my doctorate in education leadership at Harvard. So when I thought about the combination of my love for Medford and the people, my experience within the Medford public schools, but then also my deep experience in education in general, having been everything from a para-educator to a district leader to then like a systems level doctorate, I figured this would be an opportunity to further give back to this community.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: I like food. It's a good fit. I like the question.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: 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.
[Lisa Kingsley]: Yeah, thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you.