Q&A With Kelly Lessens — School Board Candidate Seat B
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Kelly Lessens is running for Seat B on the Anchorage School Board. One of her opponents in the race is Judy Eledge.
Lessens says that her vision "is for every student to enter adulthood with strong academic foundations, a belief in their own capacity for lifelong learning, and the ability to collaborate, to innovate, to empathize, and to overcome failure."
Two years ago, Lessens began working with school board members, administrators, teachers, parents, and a network of community stakeholders to create and implement ASD’s nationally-respected Wellness Pilot program.
Her goal has been to give all students evidence-based time for nutrition and recess, so as to provide equitable baselines for learning. During the past year, NEA-Alaska recognized the group she co-founded, ASD60, as their 2020 “Champions of Children,” while the State of Alaska featured their work as a “School Health Success Story.”
Kelly proudly supports trans and LGBTQ students, families, and community members, and equity is a major pillar of her platform and Alaska AFL-CIO endorsed her candidacy last week.
Mrs. Lessens was kind enough to answer some questions from parents, teachers and one from myself. To learn more about Kelly's vision and values - visit both her website and Facebook page.
Does Kelly believe that sex education in public schools has led to fewer teenage pregnancies and STDs?
What are Kelly's views on returning to school when children can’t (currently) get vaccinated against COVID-19? Dr. Fauci said yesterday that child vaccinations won't happen until late spring or summer.
Right now, there is no vaccine approved for children under the age of 16. I am not an epidemiologist, but would heed the guidance of public health officials for developing a district-level policy about mandating vaccines if and when they become available to children.
In the meantime, I support the continuance of the ASD virtual & homeschool options for families who would prefer to not send their student(s) to school in AY 21-22 (which is when I imagine that children’s vaccines might become available).
The Anchorage School District has administrative guidelines for working with transgender and gender nonconforming students and employees. The guidelines are intended to "foster inclusive and welcoming learning and working environments that are free from discrimination, harassment, and bullying regardless of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression." Does Mrs. Lessens' support those administrative guidelines and diversity in general?
Yes, wholeheartedly. My focus on wellness, equity, and learning is shorthand for my recognition of the ongoing work that it will take to foster inclusive and welcoming environments, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
You wrote on your website that you would like to increase the number of teachers of color across ASD. Can you expand a little on how you might look to achieve that goal?
All students will benefit from being taught by additional numbers of teachers of color, but when students of color are taught by teachers of color, outcomes include improved academic performance and graduation rates, as well as likelihood to attend college. Given ASD’s demographics, it would do well to focus on recruitment, training, and retention of teachers of color. And while it helps to have a “long” game plan – ie let’s turn today’s promising high school students into tomorrow’s teachers – in the near term, we need to ask what other districts with majority-minority populations are doing, and to figure out what education policies we need to strive for, ie paying “(a)ttention to improved resources, teacher autonomy, and improved administrative leadership” so as to stop “the high rate of attrition for teachers of color.”
So, ASD’s options in the near term should include persuading and supporting some of ASD’s existing paraprofessionals of color, professionally & financially, through the pathways to becoming teachers. And although I am not a teacher nor a person of color, I believe that ASD could probably do more – structurally speaking -- to listen to and support existing teachers of color through increased mentorship, scholarship, and fellowship opportunities. And of course any ASD goal like this needs to have financial support AND community backing / buy-in behind it.
What does Kelly see as the number one challenge facing the Anchorage School District today?
The most pressing challenge facing ASD right now is the task of helping students—each of whom has experienced these disruptions differently—overcome a year’s worth of COVID-related learning & social-emotional losses WHILE restoring trust in ASD’s leadership within the organization and across the municipality, AND dealing with ongoing financial fallout from unexpected changes to student enrollment changes. (And while the Legislature refuses or is unable/unwilling to adjust the Base Student Allocation to reflect rates of inflation.)
How does Kelly plan to deal with the unintended negative consequences of well-intentioned policy? For example: When the 60-minute lunch/recess block was implemented, teachers’ lunch periods were reduced due to the increase in supervisory duties. My lunch period during my last year as an elementary teacher was scheduled for 15 minutes because of the added lunch duties.
Great question! I learned so much about how ASD operates over the past couple of years, and recognize that the process of getting my feet wet—understanding that there can be unintended consequences to well-intentioned policies—has made me more prepared to serve as a Board member. Most importantly, I have learned the utmost importance of clear, open, and ongoing communication among all stakeholders. And of trying really, really hard.
But I’d like to elaborate about the situation to which the affected teacher was speaking. Scheduling adequate and equitable recesses and lunchtimes for all students requires a major commitment from participating Wellness Pilot school principals. (Notably, most volunteered, but a few were “voluntold,” and I suspect that the some principals’ lack of desire to see this succeed may have tainted certain schools’ successes.)
That said, even without the Wellness Pilot, the complexities of scheduling are already one of the most difficult aspects of a principal’s job. Figuring out which classrooms or specialists go where, when, and for how long is an intricate dance that has to heed spatial constraints, contract language, and district-outlined best practices for, say, the delivery of Math or English Language Arts.
Although principals at many Wellness Pilot schools were able to meet the needs of all students and teachers (they were permitted to shave 5 minutes from certain blocks of academic time, for instance), our ASD60 advocacy group did receive reports that teachers at some pilot schools lost time for lunch. This was never, ever our group’s intention (so, yes, this was an unintended negative consequence) and it deserves to be addressed whenever the Board re-evaluates its Wellness Policy. (Background: the Wellness Policy, BP 5040, is a document that the Federal government requires on a triennial basis, for which ASD is now eight months overdue. So addressing it sometime, somehow, is somewhere on the Board’s horizon.)
What were the causes of this unintended consequence? I learned that ASD elementary schools face chronic noon-duty staffing shortages. The pay is low, the hours are random (they require being at school for a few hours during the middle of the day), and the weather can be very cold. Second, certain schools had physical challenges to providing optimal recess and lunch periods, because not every facility has a cafeteria and a gymnasium. A third cause for the teacher-lunch trouble, however, seemed to be the principal’s dedication to scheduling. ASD60 did what it could to provide model (attached here) lunch/recess schedules to show how even the most densely populated elementary school could make the longer lunch and recess options work alongside optimal teacher breaks. But to our knowledge, ASD never actively circulated these materials to its pilot schools, and so individual principals were left to make it work—or not. Which may have lead to this teacher’s unfortunate experience.
My biggest takeaway, then, is that although ASD is designed for children, it needs to sustain and balance the needs of the adults who make it function. To that end, I understand that with the rollout of any policy, ASD needs to be clear about its goals and actively provide the very best practices and adequate budgetary support for full implementation, while allowing individual schools to figure out how to make it work at their through genuine, grassroots/ground-level collaboration and buy-in.
Roughly how many times per week do people spell your last name LessOns by mistake?
Before I ran for office? Hardly ever. My friends and family all learned their lessons. But over recent weeks? That success ratio lessened. But I believe all people can learn from the past, and if they want to lessen the chance that they’ll make such a mistake in the future, they can follow my campaign’s Facebook page @Kelly4AnchorageKids and eventually vote for Kelly Lessens for Seat B.
Of the current school board members, which one does she feel her viewpoints align closest to?
Short answer: Margo Bellamy.
Long answer: I think it’s important for the Public to know that I’ve received encouragement from right and left leaning members of the Board to run for this position, and have collaborated with and frequently emailed many of them. Board leadership should not be about partisanship. It needs to be about leadership.
Serving the community requires a strong moral compass, a commitment to open communication, ethics, empathy, a focus on evidence, and a desire to do right by all of our children. To that end, I’ve recently been thinking more about my alignment with the work of Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman than with the stance of any single Board member. Although Gorman speaks about the future of our nation, I think her work is just as applicable to the Board’s very local, future work when it comes to ensuring equitable access to the opportunities every child needs for success in life and to healing the public’s trust in ASD.