Ed. Note: During August, Fig City News conducted interviews with each of the 10 School Committee candidates who are running in competitive elections. This notice was sent to all candidates prior to the interviews. All interviews were completed before any were published.
Your campaign highlights your experience as an educator – a school adjustment counselor. What is that?
A school adjustment counselor is a term that is primarily used in Massachusetts. Similar to a school social worker, it’s a cross between a school academic counselor (formerly guidance counselor) and a school social worker. The training that I did included all the training and classwork for a school counselor plus mental health counseling.
How is that training distinct from training for a therapist or a licensed social worker?
The focus is primarily on school and school-to-home issues, rather than deep embedded trauma, substance abuse, or things like that – which are things that I have coursework on and practice, but it’s not usually the focus of the work. It’s about helping kids thrive in school and working with families and outside providers to give consistent care. I consult with outside therapists and pediatricians to make sure that strategies being discussed outside of school are also being implemented in school. I help families find resources. When issues that are being addressed outside the school come up in school, as the mental health clinician in the school, I can address it. School refusal, anxiety, difficulties with focusing, peer conflict – all those kinds of things.
As you think about starting work again shortly, how do your campaign experiences influence how you might approach issues you see at school?
What has been the most wonderful part of campaigning for me is to see more parts of the city than I ever had, and to meet more people than I had. We moved to Newton 10 years ago, with very young kids, and we were in our little bubble, and then the COVID bubble. So I feel like we’re emerging and getting to know the city so much better. Hearing from people of all different backgrounds and different parts of the city, different focuses for their kids, or if they don’t have kids in school, hearing the common issues that people are facing but also some things that maybe come up very often with some people and not with others. I’ve experienced two school communities in Newton – Mason-Rice and Brown. In education, things are consistently changing. So anytime you hear more about what people are concerned about or their experiences, it helps shape your work.
What are things you’ve heard as concerns that maybe would not be top-of-mind for Mason-Rice or Brown parents?
In different parts of the city, I’ve heard a lot of financial concerns. The expanding fees for some of the schools. If there are lots of programings in school, it means that you need to find those services outside of school, which are not always available through insurance and different things. Also, the sort of school culture issues that families have brought up. I have not heard the same in Mason-Rice and Brown. Mason-Rice is a very small, tight-knit community with heavily involved families, and I hear from some [other] parents that they wish that there were more of that in their schools.
You have made funding of NPS a campaign issue. Fees are part of the revenue column of NPS. If one of the goals of the next school committee is to increase funding, then does that mean keeping or raising fees? How would you respond to a parent saying,“I want my fees to go down”?
[Increasing revenue] is not the sole goal, and I don’t think that revenue should be increased by fees. I have three kids who are paying for buses, for sports. It really does add up. [I am] a public educator. My husband works at a nonprofit. It’s substantial for us. So I understand that completely, and I do think that funding needs to be made sustainable, and schools need to be fully funded. But no, I would not advocate doing that through fees primarily. They are a part of schools, and we have mechanisms to support families [who need help], but it puts the onus on the families to ask and culturally, that may not be something that families are willing to do. So I would not rely on fees for that.
What would you rely on?
There are a few different mechanisms, and we know that the Mayor ultimately has control over the budget. There are still some costs that can be cut or rearranged within the school budget, but because we have been chronically underfunding our schools, the budget has not been rising at the rightpace. We really need to make up for that. And that will probably rely on some Proposition 2½ override. Unlike other communities, [Newton] has not done that consistently or on smaller levels. There are many communities that do that every few years, and not as big an ask as Newton has done, which has seemed to work well for them. The Mayor needs to make sure that we are fully funding the schools, because it’s necessary and has a huge impact on the community at large.
What would be your process for analyzing whether or not to support a municipal override, if that came before the School Committee to endorse?
I want more transparency in the budget to see where money is being allocated, spent, and where there may be places to cut or to move. Before, you were asking the public to pay more in taxes. But my sense after talking to many people is there’s not really a way to fully fund the schools without some sort of override. And I think that is true for other city services as well, the same for police, for roads, [etc.] Costs are growing at a higher rate than our 2.5% that we’re allowed to increase. So as long as there was transparency with the budget, and I felt like what was being asked for was reasonable, I would support it.
You said the mayor needs to do everything they can to fund the schools. You spoke about an override. What other actions should the current or future mayor be taking that isn’t happening now?
When Ruthanne Fuller came in, we were in a financial mess, and she acted very conservatively and set up our finances to sort of calm things down and set things up the way that they should be. We don’t need to be as conservative now. We are paying the pension [liability] to a higher rate than we need to, and the state, from what I’ve heard, is probably going to extend that deadline again. I know it is the Retirement Board that decides that, but I think there’s a lot that the mayor has to advocate for that. And then the use of free cash. It’s not the best answer, but it is an answer to try to close some of these gaps, because I do think we’re at a critical point in education, and it’s really important that we use those rainy day funds effectively and efficiently.
Why is this a critical point in education? I think every day my kid’s in school, that’s a critical day. Why is this moment more critical than others?
I was a middle school classroom teacher for English and humanities, and made the switch to school counseling because I saw such a dramatic increase in the social emotional deficits in kids. I wanted to be able to help them because I saw they were unable to access the academics and to thrive. We saw in education a steady rise from when I started in the early 2000s, and then just a dramatic increase after COVID and during COVID. We haven’t seen needs like this in school before. I wouldn’t say that we’re at a crisis point, but it’s a critical point. If we don’t do what needs to be addressed,it will turn from critical to crisis.
You’ve said NPS needs more funding, and the reason it’s critical is social emotional needs right now, which is something you highlight on your website. Given your perspective as a counselor, working in another district, what does NPS in your view need to be doing that it’s not currently doing?
Each school in NPS at every level is sometimes very different in curriculum, programming, and school culture. There are schools that are addressing this very well. We need to make it universal, expanding the programming when it works, and giving every student in NPS access to it. We need to prioritize direct services to kids. In the budget, we need to prioritize funding, staff and programming that directly supports kids. There are programs that I’ve used as an educator, as a counselor, that I know work. Making sure that all schools have access to those, advisory programs in the middle and high schools, things like responsive elementary classrooms, and really having enough staff to meet the need.
What do phrases like programming or “make it universal” mean to someone who is not an educator?
[Angier] instituted MTSS, the multi-tier system of support, and was a blue ribbon winner, and got a lot of praise for that. That’s not new to education. It was newer to Newton. Angier was picked as a place to pilot it. Imagine it being available to all schools, and that needs funding, and it needs training, which needs staff. But when you have a child who is dysregulated in the classroom, there are classrooms that need to evacuate, you need to bring everybody else out of the classroom because of the social emotional needs of that child. If there was staffing to support that child, that would not be necessary.
During the [teachers] strike, you wrote a letter to Fig City News, well into the strike, pressuring the City and School Committee to change what they were doing without a commensurate message to the union side. What was your thinking behind that, and have your views evolved?
I was witnessing the strike as a parent, like many other people who work. Our lives were disrupted, just like others’ were. And I had no connection to anybody that was intimately involved in it. So I was relying on reporting and messaging from both the School Committee and the union. What I heard was a judge had to say to the School Committee, “You need to bargain in good faith,” so I took that as they were not upholding their end. I did think that some of the rhetoric coming from the union was fiery and not helpful. As an educator, I took that with a grain of salt. I know the role of unions, but after speaking to more people now, I think that I understand how big an impact that had, more than I did at that time. I definitely thought the rhetoric on both sides was not helpful, but from what I understood from the messaging and the reporting was that the School Committee was not bargaining in good faith, and that’s their will, and I took exception to that. The rhetoric from the union was very fiery, but as an educator, I know the role of unions and I know how union leaders speak. It didn’t have as big an impact on me. But after talking to people, my view has shifted a little bit on that. I understand that somebody not working in education, how much of an impact that had on them too, and on the process.
On your website, you highlight interest-based bargaining, which is something Anna Nolin has discussed. It’s collective bargaining with both parties at the table talking through issues, as opposed to sending a contract back and forth with redlines. However, the strike began when the two parties were millions of dollars apart. How does interest-based bargaining solve being millions of dollars apart?
I think it’s really in the approach. I wasn’t there, but it seems that a lot of the issues actually stemmed from the last two contracts that had been negotiated. What educators saw is a lack of respect, a lack of transparency and advocacy on the part of the school community. And I think that was the environment in which the negotiations for the current contract started. So we have an allocation, we can advocate for more, but ultimately, it’s up to the mayor to decide, and the School Committee has to work with whatever is given to them.
Although the Union’s job is to try to get the best deal they can for their members, what educators really want is respect, collaboration, and an acknowledgement that what they are doing is, yes, a public service, but it’s also a profession. Often teachers and teachers’ unions are treated very differently than police and fire, which are also public sector unions, and very different from other professions, like doctors, lawyers, engineers. I think also because it’s very heavily dominated by women, there’s the element of skepticism to a degree to expect that people should do it because of their love for the children. I mean, nobody goes into teaching for money. It’s absurd, but cost-of-living increases haven’t been increased for teachers at the same rate as other municipal departments. And I think that is something to acknowledge, but what teachers want is to be able to do their job to the best of their ability.
Regarding respect and perception, your website makes a critical comment about outsiders determining the value and worth of teachers. However, public education is a public process, and voters choose representatives, like the mayor, who decide how schools get funded. So stated bluntly, in our civic system, yes, outsiders determine the worth of educators. What’s wrong with that?
Unfortunately, Newton is following the national trend that is anti-educator. If you ask most people, they love their kids’ teachers, they’re happy with their own schools, and they will say that they absolutely respect teachers. But it is not seen [that way] in terms of the broader profession. It’s necessary to make sure that our schools stay excellent and improve, and you do that with retaining excellent teachers. I know that statistic gets thrown around a lot – “only 20% of families are using schools” – and maybe it doesn’t matter as much to other people. But the schools are the bedrock of Newton. It’s why people move here. It’s reputation, it’s what makes property values high, and what we allocate for the schools. It says what our value is. But I think our rhetoric needs to match what we’ve actually done. We do invest in the schools. I’m just saying that we need to invest wholly to make sure that we are supporting them as much as we need right now.
Is Newton following a national trend of being anti-teacher, and if you were elected what would you do to change that?
I think a lot about relationships. There’s real demonizing, fracturing of relationships between families, educators, and city officials – with COVID, with the strike. You have to repair that. Part of that is educators and public officials going out into the community more. That shut down during COVID, but there’s no reason why that can’t start again. The School Committee and Dr. Nolin had many meetings during this last budget crunch, and that was great, but it was always inviting people to come to them. I think it’s really important to go out into the community. And it’s important to bring the community back into the schools. When I was growing up in Brookline, some of my greatest memories were when we had people from the local senior centers coming in to do activities and lessons. We partnered with college kids, we had community groups that came in, and my assumption is that Newton used to do that as well. That also broke down. We have a tremendous wealth of resources, not just financially, but, incredibly talented and engaged citizens here. We have colleges, community groups, senior housing, and the arts. We should be partnering together to make sure that we use the schools to be the center of the city.
What have you observed that the current or prior School Committees do or not do – where you said to yourself, “I would have done that differently”?
I think a lot of it is in the communication, and in the approach to bargaining, and in some of the policies, and in some of the allocation of funds.
What policies will you advocate to change?
One example is a new cell phone policy. We have had the Yondr pouches in middle school and put phones away in high school. I know, as a parent of two middle schoolers, what that was like. But there was no thought given to elementary school. I don’t know that there was consideration of kids having devices in elementary school already, and the “phones away in high school” was really about making it very enforceable and easier and not thinking so much about the impact. I would have advocated for, first of all, a K-12 policy.
On your campaign platform, one of your priorities is equity and excellence, which is the old NPS motto that the current superintendent, of whom you’ve been publicly supportive, changed to “Where all students thrive.” Was your campaign platform intentional in using the old language, and if so, why?
I use that language because I saw in Newton, just like nationally, equity and excellence being pitted against each other. And I wanted to italicize the “and” as a way to show that they are not mutually exclusive, and in fact dependent on each other. You cannot be truly excellent if you are not equitable, and if you are equitable, you see excellence in all measures. I think many people are looking just at measurements like test scores, college admissions, number of AP classes, but those are all measurements for excellence. One of the greatest determinants of student achievement is student engagement, and that measurement is not really evaluated or highlighted.
How do you measure student engagement?
Through surveys. Students need to feel a sense of belonging, of purpose, and feel like they have a place at school. That’s why I love school so much. I knew that my teachers cared about me. I felt safe and supported. That sense of belonging and engagement is what propels students to do well. It’s all about culture and climate. I think that equity, when you are including all groups and giving each student what they need to thrive, is what leads to true excellence.
Is there anything we didn’t cover you’d like to convey to our readers?
We talk about what is needed for the schools, however we need to acknowledge that we have excellent schools. We have tremendous teachers, talented administrators, engaged parents, and that’s wonderful. It’s more than a lot of places have. I think what we have is room to grow, and that there’s so much opportunity to be a leader in education. For too long we’ve been following trends, and we can be the ones to set them, to do what is the best in education. And to do that, we need funding, and need people with experience and expertise in education to lead the way. My perspective as a parent-educator and mental health counselor gives me a really unique and needed perspective to sit on the School Committee to help do that.
