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Jody Lee - Mercer Island School Board Candidate Position 5
201 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of the Mercer Matters podcast Ben interviews Mercer Island School District School Board Candidate Jody Lee who is running for Position 5 in the November 2023 election.
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Mercer Matters podcast. My name is Ben Sharp, and my goal is to have a discussion with each of the candidates who are running for Mercer Island School Board in the fall of 2023. I have reached out to each candidate and offered to have a discussion with them, but if for some reason you don't see a candidate listed as an episode in the podcast, it is because they have declined to be interviewed. So without further ado, let's jump right into this episode.
Meet Jody Lee: School Board Candidate
00:00:39
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Today, I'm joined by Jody Lee, who's running for position five of the Mercer Island School Board. Jody, thanks for joining the Mercer Matters podcast here. I'd like to just start by thanking you for taking the time to run for the school board. I know it's just a ton of work and I'm sure you have a day job.
00:01:03
Speaker
Thanks for all you're doing on behalf of the community. It's really appreciated. I want to just start by having you introduce yourself, your background, and then what made you decide to run for the school board? Hey. Well, thanks for having me on, Ben. It's a pleasure. So my background is I'm Jody Lee, and I'm running for position five of the school board.
00:01:28
Speaker
My background is that we moved here from Washington, DC, where I had a career as the dispute resolution specialist at the Department of State, which meant that I ran the mediation program there that resolved interagency disputes and complicated internal disputes at the State Department. So it was more informal dispute resolution rather than formal filing a complaint or an EEO complaint or something.
00:01:57
Speaker
And as such, I traveled extensively. Most of my work was done overseas at our embassies. I know at our embassies, it's not just the State Department, it's Foreign Service, Civil Service, aid agencies, military intelligence agencies, locally hired staff, family members who are employed. So there's a lot of places where conflict can happen and more different priorities can come into play. And that's something that
00:02:24
Speaker
I did basically as my job was to provide conflict resolution services to places.
Jody's Motivation and Community Involvement
00:02:29
Speaker
And then I taught at the Foreign Service Institute teaching our diplomats mediation and facilitation for 20 years. So I had that career. And I think that those are basically like the skills that any effective person on a committee or commission needs to be able to work with other people.
00:02:47
Speaker
and bring people with widely disparate goals to the same achievement. And then when we moved here in 2016, I really just started as a sort of a community and schools volunteer. And I've been a huge volunteer in our schools in almost every capacity possible from second grade room parent to serving as the parent representative for all parents on the district-wide learning forward committee during COVID. So I've done a lot of different things where I've represented parents and students
00:03:20
Speaker
putting out our point of view and making sure that the parent and student priorities were also considered when decisions were made. And I just wanted to continue that work. And then about last year, three different groups of people approached me with the idea of running for school board and they, three different people with groups with different sort of goals in mind, which made me feel like it's not just one agenda pushing me forward, but sort of just like the general consensus that people who have worked with me
00:03:42
Speaker
and families to the administration.
00:03:48
Speaker
in the community and worked with me on the schools and know what's important to me, think that I could be a helpful voice on the school board. And that's pretty much what brought me here today.
00:04:00
Speaker
Awesome. Well, it sounds like you're a doer. So that's great.
Emphasizing Student Mental Health
00:04:04
Speaker
So you mentioned kind of your concerns and sort of what you're focused on. One of the first questions I want to ask you is, in your view, what are the top two or three most pressing issues facing our school district in your mind? Well, one of the things that a cause that's particularly dear to my heart is the idea of student mental health. Because really, without that whole student
00:04:30
Speaker
feeling confident and strong, then there really can be no sort of academic achievement or schools going forward to doing their best work or any of the other things that are important to us. I'm on the board of the Mercer Island Youth and Family Services Foundation. I joined that two or three years ago. That's the foundation that provides money for the school counselors. So I'm the kind of person that when I want to commit to an issue, I really put my time and money where my mouth is.
00:05:00
Speaker
So it's enough to be like, yeah, student mental health is important, but let me spend my time and my organizational ability to try to help matters. And since I've joined the board, we've been able to fund an additional counselor for the middle schools, for example. So we have two full-time counselors now for middle school instead of just one. And that's the kind of thing
00:05:20
Speaker
That's really important. Mercer Island, during COVID, of course, everywhere we saw this sharp rise of mental health issues with our students. But something that I find interesting is that we have had a quicker rebound in mental health and social emotional learning post COVID than other neighboring school districts or similar school districts. And I think a lot of that is because we are the only school district in the United States that has a mental health counselor in every school.
00:05:51
Speaker
I mean, granted, we have six schools, but still. We're the only district that can say that. And we've taken the time and energy to really focus as a district on how important this is to our students. And I think we're seeing that reflected in how the students came back after COVID and are going forth from COVID. In no way am I diminishing the very real mental health challenges that a lot of students have still having post-COVID
00:06:21
Speaker
especially the ones that were in that formative years of building relationships and learning how to be people when they were zooming. But I think that we've done good work in the district, and that's something I really want to continue to focus on, which doesn't mean that the rest of what schools are for isn't important. But when I see people say, you can either have student mental health or academic achievement,
00:06:45
Speaker
I think that's a completely false dichotomy. It's not either or, it's a both and. What is the point of having a student who gets super high grades or takes the hardest classes or gets
Role of Technology in Mental Health
00:06:59
Speaker
into even the most prestigious college if that student is miserable or has suicidal ideation or
00:07:06
Speaker
You know, it's just not living a complete life where they feel that they are themselves. And that's something that's equally important, I would say. Yeah, it seems like strong mental health is sort of a baseline. Which to operate from, right? Like, yeah. Like, it's, you know, I was not happy when I was a student, but I got into Harvard.
00:07:27
Speaker
And it's like, well, that's terrible. That's terrible. It's great to go to Harvard. My husband went to Harvard. And I see him reaping the benefits now at the network and everything. There's no discounting going to an Ivy League school. But also, you need to be happy as a person. And there are adults when they come out of our school district. They're 18.
00:07:47
Speaker
How are we bringing them to it? Like our job is to shepherd children to an adulthood where they feel like they've been seen and recognized and are confident and feel like adults around them believe in their ability to become adults themselves. And that's something that I think is very important for our school district to keep in mind.
00:08:04
Speaker
So I'm kind of curious, my wife and I are big believers in sort of the mental health component that you mentioned. What do you view as like where we are today and where we need to be? What are the gaps that we need to fill? And what do we do about it? Yeah, with mental health specifically. I think that the world is becoming like really complicated in a way that it wasn't even 10 years ago, but certainly not even 20 years ago when we didn't have smartphones, for example.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I think that that's something that we need to look at more and more. Like what is the effect of this sort of constant interaction happening on our children? Like I know even for me personally, you know, I'll watch a video or a movie or something that was made 10 years ago and I'm like, get to the point. You know, it's like, like, like it's my, my own attention span is a lot shorter than it was.
00:08:56
Speaker
you know, before I was watching TikTok videos, for example. And so, you know, you have to feel like, what is that doing for our kids? And how do we shepherd our kids? Like, you know, when I'm 56, so like when I was a child, we read the, you know, you read the paper in the morning, and that's how you got your news, right? Or you listen to NPR in the car when your parents were driving or whatever, but you weren't constantly barraged with photos and information and
00:09:23
Speaker
things to care about. I didn't devote nearly as much energy into caring about
00:09:29
Speaker
celebrities as people do now like constantly wondering like, you know, how's Taylor Swift doing with her boyfriend? Like, you know, it's just like it's a constant sort of yeah, because people magazine only came out like once a month. So that's the best you came out and you leaf through it. And then you were like, OK, well, I guess I'll wait a week for the next one. And it's and it's not I mean, I feel like there's a constant thrum of background information that's running on our kids now. It's kind of like when your phone has all these apps refreshing in the background, you know,
00:09:56
Speaker
And you just need to, we were able to just focus on one thing at a time when we were formulating our teenage years. So I'm not sure how you could ever go back. I think that, you know, it's definitely a Pandora's box, all the technology and all the information, but I think it's important.
00:10:14
Speaker
for people to provide context and structure and a scaffolding of support for kids in a way that I'm not sure we're doing now. And I'm not sure exactly how to get there. Yeah, and what role does the district have in that versus family and parenting decisions?
Collaboration for Student Support
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, that is a question, right? I think there's a lot of, there's a weird dichotomy of people wanting the school to provide every possible service and
00:10:43
Speaker
comfort to their child, but then also not get in their family business and do things like and not interfere with how the family wants to make decisions. And you see that with any flashpoint in our education system, you know, you see that with mental health, you see that with like course selection, you know, if the school is suggesting a class and the parent thinks they should be taking a different level class. You certainly see that in areas like, you know, whenever there's any kind of like sexual health education or anything like that.
00:11:13
Speaker
And it's, so that's the question, but there, I mean, I think most of that stuff is the family's role. Ideally, right? Like a family is the one providing support. The family is one providing scaffolding, but the schools also have to be there when needed, not even just for like, Oh, this person's in crisis at school, or this person might be, you know, posing a risk or whatever. But just like, if there's a student who's not getting the support that they need and they come to an adult at school,
00:11:38
Speaker
then that adult should have the resources to address that. And you know, and then they're all mandated reporters, right? Like if a kid comes to result and he's like, I think I'm, you know, I'm really miserable and I don't see why I'm here.
00:11:50
Speaker
then the teacher needs to act on that. That's right. Because if they think that a student is going to self-harm. So do you think the district, as a director, if you're elected, is that something where the district helps create a set of tools for parents to understand some of the risks that are facing our kids and run workshops? How would you envision addressing this issue from the board level? Or is this an issue that would get addressed there?
00:12:20
Speaker
I'm not sure that, I mean, if you think about what's available right now, I think that the district is doing a good job with all the various resources there are. It's not just the district, but there's, you know, like the parent edge programming, which is fantastic, but it addresses a lot of these issues. You know, they always have like these, you know, like suicide workshops, or just, you know, they have that excellent program.
00:12:43
Speaker
that was last week and that they have the record, they just sent out the recording today of like, you know, that enough, that book that was just written about like, why are we pushing our students so hard for excellence? You know, like, that was a really great programming and that kind of thing. So Parent Edge is a great resource. Family Services is a great resource and they do, you know, a community work, not just in the, they don't just provide school counselors, but they also provide mental health counseling to the community.
00:13:10
Speaker
and emergency services to the community. I think the city and the school have a good partnership that could only be strengthened, you know, like with the services they're providing. It's a city that actually runs youth and family services and provides the counselors. It's the foundation that funds them and they're in the school. So it's all three together, you know, making that program strong. And I think that what we can do is sort of keep our eye on the idea that it's a priority and
00:13:39
Speaker
not given to the sort of false idea that if we are supporting student mental health, then we do not care about academic achievement, or we do not care about other things. Because I think that the theme of the school year this year is, for example, is belonging. Do our students feel like they belong in our schools, and do they feel supported in our schools? And I think that's something important for all the adults who are around students to keep their eyes on. They say that if a student sees
00:14:09
Speaker
you know, has just like one adult have a positive interaction with them in a day that can make a huge difference to their mental health. So it's just, it's a big burden that we're putting on our teachers and administrators to be that person to the student. And ideally, you know, they're getting that from their family and friends, but sometimes some kids aren't. So that's something that we all have to sort of be in support of.
00:14:30
Speaker
Great.
Managing School Facilities and Enrollment
00:14:31
Speaker
So we spent quite a bit of time talking through mental health. No, no, no, it's great. I mean, I agree with you. Based on our family's observations, that's really, really important. So thanks for spending time on that. What are one or two others that you're seeing that are kind of front of mind?
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think that one issue that I think will be the big project for the next board will really be like sort of taking a good look at this, the long range facility management plan, you know, that that's in front of the committee community right now. It's obviously stuck a chord in the community, the idea of possible school consolidation, I think now that the formal community feedback and frankly, the informal community feedback that that's been going around
00:15:19
Speaker
Um, I think it's apparent to the school board, this, the school district that, um, you know, our community is a community that prefers to have smaller for small neighborhood schools instead of three larger, um, schools. And, you know, and that's, that's valid. I mean, I'm an Island park or an Island park family. And that's, you know, it's, it's just up the street from our house. Like that's something that I didn't want to see Island Park closed at all.
00:15:47
Speaker
And don't really support the school consolidation but I think then in that case, because the Planning Commission did their work with an idea toward sort of the numbers and the economy of it all, then
00:16:00
Speaker
If we support four smaller schools, then we need to figure out how to put our money where our mouth is as a community and as a district, because there are repairs that need to be made on our schools to even bring them up to like Washington state code, right? Like because of the new environmental laws that have been passed. But there's also just, you know, we've put off some repairs to the schools because we were sort of waiting to see like, what's going to happen? Are we going to tear this down or whatever?
00:16:26
Speaker
And that whole mess a couple of weeks ago on West Mercer where that sewer pipe broke, that's the same age as the sewer pipes that are running in our schools.
00:16:37
Speaker
you know, are like, the schools are like 70 years old, like I live in a house that was built in 1972. And I gotta tell you, Ben, I hear a mysterious drip right now. And like, it's very disconcerting, like some things are falling apart. And you're like, this can be either like, I can either fix this now, or I can have a super expensive problem to fix, you know, in six months when something bad happens. So I think that we have to approach that as sort of like,
00:17:06
Speaker
You know, do we want to be proactive and thinking how much is it going to cost to repair this school and bring it to code or do like the minimum that will keep it.
00:17:15
Speaker
safe and functional for another 30 years? Or, you know, do we disrupt our students for like one year and then have a brand new school for the same amount of money? Like, I don't know those, you know, they haven't looked at it from that point of view. So the numbers aren't precise, but I think that it's something that it's worth looking at. Where do we go? Like if we say we want to have four small neighborhood schools, then how do we achieve that and still have four schools that are worthy of our students?
00:17:43
Speaker
Anyway, I think that's going to be the big work of the board in the next several months, because that's something that's sort of coming to a point just as the new board gets sworn in.
Curriculum and Political Influences
00:17:54
Speaker
And then another issue that was important to me in running was just the idea of the curriculum challenges and book banding that we're seeing elsewhere in the United States, just to make sure that that isn't something that takes hold of on Mercer Island and that we
00:18:12
Speaker
support the schools and the school libraries and whatever, if there are curriculum challenges and book challenges. I think that our selection committee, the way that we select work, the academic materials to go in our schools, it's a good process and it works well for the most part. And of course, things should be age appropriate. Of course, things should be like
00:18:37
Speaker
appropriate for the grade that people are reading them in, but I think it's very important that we give our children who, you know, literally live on an island and one that, you know, we have 30% of our students are Asian, 30% of our students are Jewish. It's a, we have that diversity, but we, and other aspects of diversity, we really just don't have it.
00:18:58
Speaker
And for economic diversity, we don't have it very much. You know, like we have 5% of our students getting free lunch and the free lunch eligible, but like that's really different from neighboring school districts.
00:19:13
Speaker
in the nation as a whole. So I want to make sure that our children have exposure to the sort of rich tapestry of life that exists off the island so that they have the cultural competency and the tools to sort of recognize what's going on when they do leave our island and go on to further education or work or whatever, wherever life takes them.
00:19:38
Speaker
And I'm really struck by the sort of the news that comes out where it's like 60% of all book challenges are done by like 16 people, like literally 16 people are responsible for 60% of all the book challenges in the United States that are banning books in school districts all over. And it's just these people who are just really taking their values and their politics
00:20:05
Speaker
and saying, this is what's appropriate for everyone in my state. And I don't think that's something that you can do in a public school education program. So Jodi, I wanted to jump back to some of the things you brought up with respect to the long range facility plan, because there was quite a lot of ground covered there. And I'm kind of curious maybe to start for those who aren't super in tune with what's going on, can you just kind of give your perspective of
00:20:34
Speaker
the challenges that are facing the district from, you know, an enrollment and sort of, you know, help us frame the challenges. And then, you know, from with the knowledge that you have now, granted, you're not on the board and, you know, you're getting up to speed, of course. What do you see as sort of the path forward that that you'd support? So the every year the district has to sort of submit a facilities plan, right? Like where they're like, this is what needs to be done. And sometimes it's as easy as
00:21:01
Speaker
we gotta replace some seats in the, whatever, you know, like in the arena or whatever, like, you know, or something like that, it's minor. And then every once in a while they have to, they go through and they're like, okay, let's see what has to be done. Let's make a, you know, honeydew list for the district essentially. And this year is sort of one of those big overhaul years. And they've been working since 2019 to take a look at the schools and say, really, like,
00:21:29
Speaker
How are our schools doing? What are the big projects that you need to be done? What's the big overhaul? Washington State has passed these environmental regulations that we have some stuff to do to schools. What else is there to do? And then that
00:21:43
Speaker
project kind of stopped during COVID. And then post COVID, they came back and we were like, okay, let's look at this again. Meanwhile, the district, like every other school district in America, Washington State, Western Washington, King County, every school district has had the same population drop post COVID. And so our population projections that we had, our enrollment projections that we had,
00:22:13
Speaker
in 2019 were no longer valid. So we had a declining enrollment coming anyway that was projected, and then that was just exacerbated by COVID. Everything sort of sped up 10 years. I think that the enrollment decline is...
00:22:32
Speaker
There's a lot of ways of looking at it. I think that some of it is, some of the numbers are just, it's demographics for sure. The idea that there's missing children who have been pulled out of our school district is more like there's missing children who have never been born. The population, there's a huge population drop from 2016 on.
00:22:58
Speaker
either weren't having kids or, I mean, that's basically how the population drops, right? Like people weren't having as many babies. And so the babies not born in 2016 or not born in like 2020 are the ones that would be entering pre-K and kindergarten and first grade right now. So naturally there's fewer children there. And if you look at the preschools on the island and you talk to MIPA, the Mercy Island Preschool Association,
00:23:28
Speaker
you know, they'll say like, yeah, the enrollment in preschools is down. Like there's just not as many young kids around. And then there's other issues that affected enrollment. You know, when people took their jobs completely online, if you had a small kid, and even if you didn't, you may have moved to being your family to provide that family support during the pandemic.
00:23:54
Speaker
Or maybe, I know in Western Washington, particularly, a lot of people are in Seattle area, a lot of people moved to be somewhere where there's a lower cost of living. Like if you look at North Bend, they had a population boom during COVID because people moved out there where the cost of living was lower, they could still do their jobs. And if you look at our tech companies and our downtown companies in Seattle, the problem that they're having now is getting people back to the office. Like maybe these people moved where it was cheaper and easier for them to live and they don't want to come back.
00:24:23
Speaker
So that's something else that sort of added to the thing. And the district pulls families when they leave the district and a lot of them are moving out of state. So those families aren't gonna come back if they don't live in Washington anymore. And then there's a lot of families that had children that were young during COVID.
00:24:44
Speaker
who took advantage of the opportunity and were financially able to, like many of our Mercer Island families are, just demographically speaking, were able to enroll their children in private schools so that they could have their five and six-year-old not trying to zoom kindergarten, which is probably a choice that I would have made if I'd had young children during the pandemic. I can't imagine asking a very young child to zoom their education when they could be
00:25:12
Speaker
you know, in person or running around and getting their yayas out. And especially if you're a working parent who doesn't have the time to supervise that Zoom learning, I think that was, you know, a choice that a lot of people made. And now you're seeing people, what we're seeing is that a lot of those families are coming back. Like a lot of those families are at a natural inflection point.
00:25:34
Speaker
where like maybe if you put your kid out of school and they were young, you let them finish that school with their cohort so that you're not being disruptive, but then you bring them back for sixth grade, you bring them back for ninth grade, or what we're seeing actually is an enrollment bump also in 11th and 12th grade. So what we're seeing is that people want the name of a Mercer Island High School on their diploma
00:25:57
Speaker
they're bringing their kids back from wherever they were and dropping them back into the public school to finish up, which is something unusual. Interesting. We're seeing a bump in enrollment at the middle school and high school level. Yeah. At the natural transition points. Interesting. Thank God every day, I'm like, thank God I had a middle school and a high school during COVID. But if I had a
00:26:20
Speaker
someone in kindergarten, I would have done anything it took to get them into a school that was able to be in person. And that was in a public school because the office, the state office of education was like, no, you can't be in person. So say I put my first grader in there or my magical kindergartner in there and then
00:26:39
Speaker
It's three years later, so that kid's in fourth grade. I'm not going to take them out of their private school now and away from their friends and everything that they've- Yeah, you can actually do that at the middle school level. Right, but when it comes time for sixth grade, I'm like, let me get them back in this excellent Islander middle school where they can go for free and they'll be with their neighborhood cohort.
00:26:59
Speaker
Because one of the reasons I think that people move to Mercer Island is that our school district is one of the most excellent ones in the state, but also it's very neighborhood focused. If you go to one of our schools, then you're living near the kids that you go to school with, and you're on the same soccer team as those kids, you're on the same chess team as those kids, you're playing band with those kids. It's really such a neighborhoody feel that can't be replicated when you go to an independent school, I think.
Financial Strategies for Schools
00:27:29
Speaker
unless you go to one of the small, independent schools on the island, I think. But when we lived in D.C., our children went to Sidwell Friends School, which was an outstanding school. You know, they were there at the same time the Obama girls were. But it was not neighborhoody at all because it pulled from all over the city, right?
00:27:50
Speaker
I've had that experience as well, where maybe you send your kids to the most prestigious private school you can get them into, but then they're not living near their classmates. And for my children, who have known both worlds, they much prefer going to the public schools on Mercer Island, where they are neighbors and friends with everyone that they're going to schools with. So I think that the enrollment problem, I take it seriously.
00:28:18
Speaker
I know that these things come in cycles, so I don't want to shape our future thinking that we're going to have low enrollment and then have an enrollment boom and then be like, oh no, what do we do now? We have so many kids. Which is another reason, I think, to be against the consolidation of the schools and the three schools. As a parent and interested voter, that, in my opinion, would be that that's one of the reasons we don't consolidate. We have seen population go down and we've seen population go up.
00:28:45
Speaker
I think that some people are really overstating the role of sort of like family preference in politics and the reason that people are withdrawing from the schools. And I just think that that is a much smaller issue than it actually is. I think that we need to take seriously the people who aren't enrolling their kids or who have withdrawn their children from schools. But ultimately we are a public school system that is providing education for every child who lives in our district.
00:29:15
Speaker
So that's something that we should also take seriously. We need to provide the best education possible for every child that lives in our district and not one that makes every family necessarily feel super comfortable. The example that I use is that we're a Quaker family and I'm Quaker.
00:29:41
Speaker
And seniors, our kids who are 18, I forget why, but the touch point is, but they get called, you know, the Mercer Island School District gives their names, like every school district does in the country, shares information with graduating seniors with the armed services and so that they can, recruiters can contact the families. And that's an arrangement, I think, that is, like I said, at the federal level or the state level or something. So, you know, it's not a local decision. It's a state or federal decision.
00:30:08
Speaker
And you can opt out. And so the first time I was contacted, I was like, listen, we're a quicker family. My children are not serving in the armed services. We do our public service elsewhere. So please don't contact us. And I was taken off the list, but I would never say to the school district, I mean, A, I couldn't because it's a state or federal requirement, you know, like, but I would never say the school should not allow recruiters to contact any student because I am a quick, you know, I'm not going to impose like my shirt.
00:30:35
Speaker
religious understanding of what I think the world should look like on the district. I mean, in that case, I couldn't because it was a whatever, but I just think that we can't cater to every family's particular family values, right? Because we represent every family on the district, not just certain families. I got a little waylaid, sorry.
00:31:01
Speaker
No, no problem. So I think clearly there's a decline in enrollment. The numbers are pretty black and white. It sounds like you are getting back to sort of, OK, what do we do about it?
00:31:20
Speaker
So you've said that you are against consolidating the schools. So operating for elementary schools, smaller class sizes, what impact does that decision have on our financial situation? Because Fred said the last couple of years, we've been essentially borrowing from ourselves.
00:31:43
Speaker
My understanding is we've been operating at a budget deficit, and so we've been borrowing out of our piggy bank, if you will. Yeah. My understanding of that, I mean, totally cabrioted that this is me harkening myself back to a budget briefing that I had with the district a couple of weeks ago, and I was trying to educate myself on this. But my understanding is that that was a decision made by the previous superintendent's finance director
00:32:13
Speaker
that we have been recovering from since. And I think our current finance director, who we're extremely lucky to poach from Basham Island School District, has been doing a great job of sort of writing the financial ship on that. Paying back the money that this district borrowed from itself
00:32:35
Speaker
and getting our reserves back up to the point where our credit rating is as good as it's ever been. It's not like we've gone from an A plus to a C. It's like we've gone from an A plus to an A. And as we pay more money and build up our reserves, we'll go back up to our A plus rating. So it's not like we have a bad credit rating now. It's just like we did take a ding because we did this unusual tactic before
00:33:04
Speaker
the current superintendent was superintendent. But I think that, you know, it's, I mean, fewer students is, is less money. That's for sure. And, um, and the state and the federal government do not reimburse us adequately, even for the students that we have, in my opinion, like, I think that, and you know, we see that from our community where we're lucky enough to have the schools foundation and the youth and family services foundation and the booster clubs making up a lot of the slack that, that we have.
00:33:34
Speaker
with our budget. I think that the district and the city have a pretty good partnership going where they're reaching out to families. The school reaches out to families when they leave to assess why they're leaving. Also, they're doing a partnership thing with the city where they're just reaching out to realtors and making sure that they have the latest stats on the schools and the school rankings and stuff.
Promoting Mercer Island Schools
00:34:00
Speaker
or they do, and I don't really quite understand the tech part. So, you know, I might be making this part up, but like say you search Mercer Island schools and then you search Bellevue schools, you're going to get fed a targeted ad that talks about how great Mercer Island schools are. I mean, the specifics of that might not be right, but you know, that's the doing like that kind of sort of intelligent reach out again to people to just sort of say, say like, Hey, you know, you're,
00:34:28
Speaker
You're looking into Rhode Island school. Let's talk about how great they are. To let people know that you can move here and you can bring your kids into school first thing and then move them along for 12 years. And people do move here for the schools. Our school district still is one of the top in the state and up there in the nation. And the education that the students are getting is outstanding. I talked yesterday with a woman who, they moved here for the schools. They live in an apartment in the North End
00:34:57
Speaker
and they can't find a house to buy here that they can afford. They're not a, you know, it's not a, it's a successful professional family. And when their youngest kid graduates next year, they're planning to move off Island again. And it's a shame because she's, you know, there are such a value asset to the community. These people I volunteer with all the time. And that's another thing that, you know, that's, that's something that's sort of out of the district's hands, but like our housing costs are quite high on Mercer Island.
00:35:26
Speaker
There's this imaginary young family wanting to look for a starter house that they're like, oh, that family can't buy on Mercer Island. But there's also the not so imaginary way that people are doing it now where it's two 30-year-olds and jobs in tech who are making plenty of money but still can't find a house to buy on Mercer Island because all the three-bedroom houses have been torn down and replaced with six-bedroom houses. So I think the housing issue is something that the district can't do anything about, but it's something that's definitely affecting
00:35:56
Speaker
enrollment, particularly in the younger grades. But I think as big a factor was national and statewide, sort of like just demographic trends of children just, you know, like the drop in population. And, you know, the pandemic, you know, speeding everything along by people being able to move anywhere they wanted and still send their kids to school and take themselves to work because they were online.
Future Educational Planning
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah, and so I think we're kind of winding down here time-wise. We spent quite a bit of time sort of talking through a number of issues that are facing our kids in our district. And I appreciate you spending time elaborating on that. I think that's really helpful. I want to sort of end on a high note here. What do you think is the biggest opportunity that we have as a community for our kids that we're not adequately taken advantage of right now?
00:36:52
Speaker
I think this is a really good question. I haven't really come across this one, and I've come across a lot of questions in the last six months, I gotta tell you, Ben. Good. Good job. I think that a great opportunity that we have for the kids right now is to really show some nimbleness and some flexibility and plan well for the future 5, 10, 15 years out.
00:37:22
Speaker
you know, one would ever hate to say blessings of COVID, but like one of the silver linings of COVID was that how fast the district was able to pivot. I mean, if you think about it, like,
00:37:35
Speaker
We had just been going to school in schoolhouses for decades, right? That's how school was. And then all of a sudden, in six weeks, we had technology out to every student who needed it. We had people going to school online. Now, there was a lot of things to not love about having your kid go to school online, right? And there was a lot of things to complain about, about how the way it worked initially. But I remember driving around the island helping deliver Wi-Fi hot spots.
00:38:05
Speaker
and iPads to students who didn't have that technology at home. Like even on Mercer Island, we had kids who needed to be outfitted so that they could learn at an equal pace with their kids, you know, who live like in my house where everyone has their own laptop and their own, you know, we have super fast wifi so kids can game, right? Like you want to make sure that every kid had the same opportunity when online school started. And we were lucky in that case that we could, we had the funds to provide technology and wifi hotspots to every kid.
00:38:32
Speaker
So that was like sort of an example of like, we showed a lot of flexibility and creativity in that. And what I would really like us to do is to show some flexibility and creativity in looking to the future and taking a hard look and saying like, you know, here's a class that we love and seems like a benchmark of
00:38:52
Speaker
you know, what a successful high school looks like, you know, class looks like. But is anybody taking it willingly? And is it anything that's going to be useful? You know, what is going to be useful five, 10, 15 years now, from now for students? You know, I'm hearing from, you know, Ananta, who I think is brilliant with all things tech, you know, and he's talking about how like data analysis and data collection is a skill that students have to have now.
00:39:18
Speaker
And I'm thinking, do we have a class on that? Are we teaching that skill? Because what I do see is that students are still required to take three years of a foreign language. And I was a French major in college. I am the last person to say that that has not had an extremely valuable aspect of my life. I taught in France for a year. I lived in France for a year. But I'm not sure that that's a measurable skill that is super important compared to
00:39:48
Speaker
fluency with data in today's world. And so are we taking a look at, are we just holding on to what was important 30 or 40 years ago when we were in high school? Or are we looking forward and imagining what's going to be important 10, 15, 20 years into the future?
00:40:10
Speaker
And of course it's impossible. I mean, things are changing so much, but it's, it's impossible to say, okay, in 20 years, what's going to be like, but we can easily say, okay, in 10 years, what's going to be like, what's important for these kids to, you know, if you're in eighth grade, let's lay out a path and think, okay, what's going to be in 10 years when you graduate from college? What would you have wished that you had more background in? So I think that it, I think that moving from a necessarily reactive and
00:40:39
Speaker
path that we've had for the last four years of getting, you know, we had a particular crisis and getting through it and emerging from it strong. Like, let's say that we've done that where we're on the path to do that. Let's focus our energies now on having some curiosity about the future and what that looks like for our students and really trying to focus our energies on bringing about the best possible future for our Mercer Island students and our Mercer Island families.
00:41:08
Speaker
through maybe dreaming big and also through taking an analytical eye to how the schools are doing now and how they could possibly be doing. Well, awesome. I love that. Way to end on a
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:41:20
Speaker
high note. Jody, I want to thank you again for joining and having a discussion here with me. If people want to learn more about you and your candidacy, where can they go to get more information?
00:41:30
Speaker
Yeah, so my website is JodieLee4miSchools. It's the number 4.com. And my email's on there. And I haven't been as active on it as I should probably be, but my Instagram is the same JodieLee4miSchools. And you can look at things there. Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining. And I wish you the best of luck. And everybody listening, get out and vote. Yeah, thank you very much, Ben. Yeah, get out and vote. Get this ballot back. Thanks, Jodie.