Strategic Visioning & Policy Making are essential roles of the School Committee, usually in partnership with the Superintendent and Leadership Team.  To be the best contributor I could be, I completed an Education Policy Fellowship program at Northeastern in 2011.  This was a helpful year of growth for me, particularly working with peers at the administrative level in public school districts, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE), charter schools, think tanks, and union leaders in both urban and suburban school districts.

School Committees have to develop district budgets.  The Superintendent and the Budget Development Subcommittee shoulder much of this early on in the Fall, but all School Committee members familiarize themselves with current operations, the wants and needs of departments,  state and federal mandates and-- if we are doing our job-- we challenge the status quo for both expansions in services and cuts.  Both in my role as a former corporate finance board member and my current service on Winchester's Audit Advisory Committee, I understand the value of our precious tax dollars and the importance of having a broad view of the Town's finances.  Winchester's school budget is the largest slice of the pie, but understanding the needs of Police, Fire, DPW and others is an essential point of view with which to develop our share of funding with the Finance Committee and Town Meeting each year.

Although the School Committee votes its budget at the end of January, it's not the only budget developed: both the Town Manager and the Finance Committee develop their own town-wide overall budgets and it's FinCom's that comes to Town Meeting for presentation, deliberation and a floor vote.  This reality alone underscores the importance of having the broader town-wide view of needs and finances.  Increased levels of funding for Winchester schools doesn't come from a School Committee vote in January, but a months-long effort of inquiry, statements of need, community feedback and advocacy.

Big ideas take work, usually money, often partnership...and lessons learned. We often have to lobby hard for important investments in our students and teachers.  Some of these initiatives are district-led while others are public-private partnerships.  On the district side, such partnership has led to meaningful change.  I'm proud of our developing and funding a true All Day Kindergarten program and finally expanding World Language down to 6th grade from 7th.  At the same time, we expanded our offerings to include Mandarin at McCall, heeding growing demand for a non-western language.  We had learned from our mistake years before when piloting Mandarin first at WHS.  This was the wrong end of the pipeline for our students and the high school program eventually was cut.  On our second try, we established Mandarin first at the middle school and then further expanded our courses at WHS once these early cohorts moved up to continue their studies.  Like a spark catching fire, it worked.  Today we are teaching Mandarin in grades 6-12 with an Honors program and AP Chinese Language & Culture newly added to the WHS Course of Studies for next school year!  On the partnership front, WFEE's PowerED UP! venture has brought transformative wireless access, software, training and end user devices to support our growing needs in online education and collaboration as well as BYOD initiatives.  The Winchester Sports Foundation and Winchester Basketball Association stepped up this last year to join the School Committee, Select Board and Town Meeting in jointly funding the renovation and reflooring of the WHS gymnasium, the "last" piece of the high school left to finish.