 Hello everyone and welcome. I'm James Mulan. I am talking one-on-one with Lynette Martin, who is a candidate for school committee. And we've got lots of ground to cover, so we'll get right into it. Lynette, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Wanted to address, since we last spoke to you at the debate, it's been a busy time for you, I'm sure, in that, among other things, a mailing one out into most people's, or maybe every household in Arlington, that has elicited a certain response because people were concerned about the impression that you gave in that mailing. So I want to give you an opportunity just to talk about that and what you have learned and how you're moving forward. Absolutely. So I sent out a mailing, and my first mailing as a first-time candidate, and I messed up. The return address label said time-sensitive materials, absentee ballot information available, and I neglected to put my name, I just had my home address. It was an oversight, and I really wanted to make sure that everybody knew about the absentee ballot expanded opportunities, which it says on my mailer expanded absentee ballot information, please go to the website for more information. And the timing was unfortunate because it was right before the town had decided to send out postcards, but I did not know that when the mailing was created, it was created before that. So it's particularly upsetting to me because my campaign is really built on a foundation of transparency and communication. I'm definitely all about that, and I think that can be seen in my actions. I have, for years before even this campaign started, been out on social media, listservs, posting school committee meeting notes, advising people of important meetings, and stuff like that. So I put phone calls into the town manager, into some of the select board members and candidates apologizing, and we learn from mistakes, and I'm happy to take the lessons learned about remembering to sort of slow down, to go back to the people I'm collaborating with, and bring those lessons to my tenure on the school committee. Okay, thank you. And just to be 100% clear, what you're saying is really there's, because some folks have expressed concern that this, that you had to know what you were doing in a sense, but what you're saying is really, you really didn't, and it was a result. It was a total oversight. There had been a million eyes on the contents of that mailing, we had all reviewed it. And then I got a last minute call from the mailhouse being like, what do you want to put on the envelope? And, you know, I have a business background, I was like, I want to make sure that people see this absentee voting information, I'm very concerned about the disenfranchisement of voters. So I put that on there, but clearly, you know, it was a mistake. And I think my past actions, people who know the work that I've done, know that all I want is to make sure that everybody has a voice. And so it was absolutely an oversight, not like a premeditated anything. Yeah, so. Okay, and very quickly, one other thing that we want to just clarify before moving on to some other issues. And that is, there's been a small controversy, I would say coming out of the debate, because of numbers that you had cited within the debate, and then Mr. Schlickman in particular's reaction to those in which he has alleged that your numbers that you were using were either patently false, or at least inaccurate. What is your response to that? Yes, I find that whole thing sort of sad name disappointing. All of the numbers that I stated in the debate are direct from the Massachusetts State Department of Education, the desi website, the same website that Mr. Schlickman sends people to. I put a response letter where I link directly to all of the numbers. There was one slight misstatement when I was replying to something that someone said, so not part of my notes or anything, where I stated that our Asian students at the high school were disciplined at a rate five times that of our white students. Actually, that year it was 5% of Asian students, but our Asian students were in fact disciplined at 2.6 times the rate of our white students. And so I've corrected that in that article. But regardless of that, the data that the state has provided us is compelling. And I think that it should not be ignored. And again, I feel it's important that we talk about these inconvenient numbers. We bring these conversations to the foreground. And I feel that arguing over whether or not they're statistically significant just does more damage. The numbers are significant. Our special needs students who make up 16% of the student population make up 47% of our suspensions. Our high need students make up 61% of our suspensions. And regardless of the number of Asian students in the compiling, our students of color make up 30% of our student population, but 42% of our suspensions. So there is an overall pattern here that I think is important to look at and to talk about solutions. So I'm interested in talking about solutions and just bringing the conversation to the table. The school district or any specific teachers or administrators or school committee members, I'm not doing that at all. I'm just saying, hey, this is the data out there. I think we should look at the data. And hey, here are a whole list of ideas for solutions I have that I want to look at during my tenure on the school committee. So that's what that's about. Okay. And you stated quite clearly in the debate that the search for a new superintendent was either the primary or a very important motivation for you to run. So tell us a little bit more about what role you see for yourself. Should you be elected in that search, what is it that you are going to be bringing to that search that other people wouldn't, Thanks. I'm really glad that you brought that up in this discussion. I really believe that the hiring of the superintendent is like the most important thing that we're going to be doing this coming year. The new superintendent is going to set the course for APS, the vision, what we're looking to do for the next decade or more. And I'm committed to a few things. I want to make sure we find a superintendent who is very much about transparency and communication. Just last night, there had been a town forum for APS where we talked to elementary school parents and caregivers about what's been happening with distance learning. And today on social media, there's a lot of parents who are disappointed with the response feel like there's still, you know, the format, there's still not enough communication happening. And I had hosted a listening session for parents several weeks ago because there seemed to be a real need for parents to talk. It was an amazing experience. You know, parents talked about what was working for them and what was not working for them. And I really think we need to tap into these experiences because ultimately the biggest stakeholder in all of this is our children and families really understand that. I also want to make sure that we look for somebody who is ideally has some experience dealing with disparity gaps in their prior school districts and someone who's data driven and also who is proactive and wants to look at solutions sort of like enrollment, you know, what what distance learning is going to do for the future next year, you know, really is proactive at looking at solutions in the future. You know, no matter how difficult that might be sort of having a grasp with that. And I also bring a lot of hiring experience to this. I've hired teachers before. I've worked as an executive, the director of education. I'm sorry, I've worked as a director for an educational nonprofit. And so I've hired executives in educational nonprofit sector. And I also want to bring sort of that diversity lens, make sure that we're hiring without with the minimum amount amount of biases as possible. You know, one of the other thing, well, not one of the biggest thing that we're all dealing with. And that we will be dealing with in the fall and beyond is of course, coming out of to whatever whatever that means. And what the effects of that are likely to be. Obviously, you can't have any answers. I'm wondering what in your mind are both the biggest challenges that we are likely to face. And are there opportunities there? Are there things that we may have learned coming out of the pandemic that we can employ to our benefit? Yeah, that's a great question. So there are obviously so many challenges. And I don't envy the job ahead of our current superintendent of our town leadership. I can see everybody is, you know, doing their best and nobody has the answers. Not only do we need to wait for certain things from the state, but, you know, we need to we don't know where this is going. So one of the biggest challenges is going to be to figure out how to incorporate families that might be able to return to the school system with those that won't be able to return at the same time. Because ultimately, when we do return, there will be families who have immunocompromised family members that can't directly go back. And so how do we incorporate them into the classroom and provide equity for both sets of kids? But the learning piece of this is that, you know, these equity issues have always existed. There are just more of them now, you know, not only do we have to deal with equity issues for our economically disadvantaged families, our non native English speaker families, families that have special needs students with specific needs that we may or may not be able to do remotely, but also there's like a whole new set of people that like have access issues. You have essential workers, you have families dealing with COVID and COVID and their family. So something that, you know, this does is it brings us forward for addressing the needs of people that have not been able to access meetings before like there have been people in our community with disability issues that prevent them from attending a select board meeting. So I hope that some of this we will bring forward to accommodate those folks and be able to bring them into the decision making that's happening in our town, better hear their voices. I want to make sure that we look at every decision we make on the school committee and say, okay, so whose voices are not represented here? Who hasn't been invited to the table? Because it's not enough to say like, oh, anyone is welcome here. You need to make sure that people know that they have access to this and that their voices are wanted and respected and valued. You know, in the three minutes or so less than that, I guess remaining for us. I want to give you an opportunity to talk about things beyond a vision beyond the fall and the immediate issues we have in front of us and specifically what changes that you would like to see happen within the school system to create a an engaging and relevant 21st century education for our students. Absolutely. So I think that all of this ties into making sure that we address the disparity gaps, but it's not just about the student needs that we're not meeting or high needs students. There's all sorts of students who I hear from parents with gifted children. One thing that I think is very exciting is that we were just recently selected among 12 different school districts to be part of a consortium called the Maple Consortium. I always forget what Maple specifically stands for. It's the Massachusetts Personalized Learning EdTech Consortium, and they're working on improving personalized instruction for our special needs students. And so I think personalized instruction instruction is really key. I'd like to see what we can do with that for all of our students to provide more personalized level of instructions meeting our students where they're excited about learning in the best way to reach them and sort of moving forward with individualized motivations. So I think that's one one excellent thing that I'd like to see what we do with that. And is that something that you can see as scalable to, you know, be able to provide that kind of experience across, you know, across the board in a sense for the students in our public schools? I mean I am not an expert in curriculum, so I would like refer to the curriculum leaders on that, but certainly from my teaching experience, I think that there are tools and techniques where we can look at how we can personally engage and excite all of our students. Every child has their own individual needs and the more we can tap into those, the better, the more excited they're going to be about learning and the more successful that they will be in their future and that we will be as a school overall. I suspected this was going to go by quickly and it has. And so we want to thank you for your time. Thank you. I have been speaking with Lynette Martin, who is a candidate for school committee here in 2020 in Arlington. I'm James Melan, this is ACMI. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.