Kathleen Lenihan is a familiar face to many in the Lexington school community. A parent of three LHS graduations, Lenihan is also the former Chair and current Clerk of the School Committee, and a Town Meeting member representing Precinct 4.
We often only truly appreciate the value of something when we are without it. This was never more true than when schools closed due to the pandemic. “Probably one of the hardest times to become the chair of a school committee,” says Lenihan, who first ran for School Committee in 2017 and became Chair in June 2020.
“We closed for in-person learning in March, we had two weeks to recalibrate, and there was this feeling of okay, we’ve just got to get to the end of the school year so we can take a breath and figure out what we’re doing!”
That was only the beginning. With a huge amount of community input, Lenihan helped craft policies throughout the pandemic and in the return to in-person learning, and is proud of how Lexington managed that crisis.
Other large-scale initiatives she guided the School Committee through include the re-building of Hastings Elementary and securing Lexington Children’s Place, the district-wide preschool program serving both children who are developing within age expectations and children with special needs.
As the LHS School Building Committee Chair, Lenihan confirms they’re on track in the feasibility stage for the new high school building. Key considerations include building a new or renovated facility, and where students will go during construction. The current LHS building is the only viable option to accommodate 2,300 students.
Like the recent police station project, the new high school will be funded through town debt exclusion, which entails a temporary increase in property taxes to cover the construction costs. The Select Board will call a town-wide debt exclusion meeting, and then the town will vote on it in 2025. Lexington will receive significant state investment from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) via their grant program for school building construction and renovation projects. While the final costs are still not yet fixed, Lenihan offers a rough estimate: “If the high school costs $400 million, then the MSB would pay a hundred million dollars. So it means that the state is paying 25% of the cost, whatever that cost is.”
Lenihan says LPS has long prioritized Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and that the district continues to work on a DEI K-12 curriculum that will “allow all of our students to feel included, to feel represented.”
Shortly before the current superintendent Dr. Hackett arrived, Lenihan says the committee recognized disparities in discipline and began addressing them. “It was unacceptable that African American students and students with IEPs or 504s were suspended at much higher rates than other groups,” she says.
The School Committee is also working to increase participation in honors and AP classes for underrepresented groups, and making those classes more inclusive and representative. “It’s important if you’re in English class, you want to see books and novels and stories and literature that represents your cultures and your communities,” she says. “At the high school, we have two new classes: an Asian-American history class and an African American history class so that students have the ability to see their experiences reflected in the curriculum.”
Addressing the issue of Serious Talks within the curriculum, Lenihan was very clear. “Absolutely I see benefits. I mean, this is about helping our children to learn to have respectful conversations, to understand perspectives that are different from their own, just learning to respect others and people who are different from them, and that is just a fact in the world. So I support it. I know I, and all of the school committee, we’re all on the same page in that.”
Another School Committee initiative Lenihan mentions is monitoring students who didn’t receive the same phonics education as current students. Lenihan points to the Joint School Committee Superintendent Goals for 2023-2025 as a guide to how they will track progress. “We’ll monitor, we will make sure that students are getting the support they need,” she says.
Asked about the rewards of the job, Lenihan says, “I’m very pleased that we have a redesigned homework policy that has limited amounts of daily written homework at the elementary level. I was at a LHS graduation party for my son a couple of years ago, and a pediatrician in town came up to me and said, ‘I just want to thank you. The homework policy has made such a difference in the lives of the children I treat.’ I was like, Wow! It was just really very gratifying to get that feedback from someone who sees lots of kids.”
“Sometimes very small changes can have a big impact on individuals who need that change,” she says.
Learn more at: https://www.lenihanforlexington.org
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