Even after nine years sitting on Lexington’s School Committee, incumbent candidate Eileen Jay says she’s not tired of the work. “I love doing the work on the School Committee,” Jay said. “Caring for students is at the heart of what I do.”
Jay, an educational researcher by training, was first elected to School Committee in 2016 and is now running for a third term. She says that the issues Lexington and its schools face today necessitate experience and proven leadership, which she brings to the table as the current chair of the committee.
“Now more than ever, with all of the challenges that we have facing us — that includes budgeting, building projects and enrollment issues, I think now is a time when we especially need people who have the skills and the experience in dealing with these complex issues,” Jay said. “And that’s something I’ve done.”
Jay holds a doctorate in education from Harvard University and remained there to conduct research for several years. Her two children attended Lexington Public Schools, which, despite her academic knowledge of the field of education, she said was “eye opening” for her.
“I was just struck and amazed by how excellent Lexington Public Schools were in teaching children, so I became very involved for about 20 years,” Jay said. When her children graduated, she decided to put her knowledge of the system to use and run for School Committee.
Accomplishments and priorities
In her first two terms as a School Committee member, Jay said she takes pride in helping to center diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in Lexington’s schools. When serving as co-chair of the superintendent search committee that helped appoint Dr. Julie Hackett in 2018, Jay said she prioritized searching for a candidate with a strong commitment to DEI. She also worked to revamp and recast LPS’s curriculum to include “accurate histories and stories and representations and contributions of some underrepresented groups.”
Jay, along with four other current School Committee members and Hackett, signed onto a Feb. 4 letter standing by the district’s diversity, equity and inclusion principles in the face of President Donald Trump’s attacks on DEI in schools.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to be completely protected from that – I think we’ll see more of that,” said Jay, referencing Trump’s executive order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination of K-12 Schools.”
Jay also helped craft LPS’s current core values, which guide and inform the district’s educational mission.
“I believe that education certainly is about teaching and learning and academics, but while we have them in our schools, it’s also about developing the skills and the attitudes and the capabilities to be good citizens,” she said.
With a third term, Jay hopes to continue to prioritize “making sure we have equitable and inclusive education, particularly for our most vulnerable students.”
“That includes special education students, students who are on Individual Education Programs, it includes some of our Black and brown students, where we sometimes see an achievement gap,” she said.
What this looks like, Jay said, is ensuring there are proper mental health supports in place, and looking closely at disparities in how students are treated.
Literacy is also a focus for Jay, one that she calls “one of the fundamental responsibilities of a school system.” She supports incorporating more phonics instruction in early grades, as well as creating “better assessment tools for identifying children who need more support.”
Lexington High School building
Jay has recused herself from deliberation on the new Lexington High School building because she is an abutter, she said.
“When something comes to the School Committee around the school project, I’ve recused myself from that deliberation,” Jay said. “I’m also refraining from expressing my opinions in public, because I don’t really want to be influenced, or have the appearance of influencing people one way or the other on any of these decisions.”
Budgeting
Jay says some of the budget pressures the district is currently confronting are a result of an influx of students moving into the school system.
“One of the challenges we’re facing is how to continue providing those services while at the same time balancing that with budgets and costs and expenses,” she said. Other pressures include increased costs post-pandemic, educator contracts, and an influx of “students with high needs” into the district, Jay said.
Jay and the rest of the school committee recently approved the budget for fiscal year 2026, which required them to “find three and a half million dollars of reductions to offset increased expenses,” in order to balance the budget, Jay said.
“Those are not easy things to do, because you never want to have to cut things back,” Jay said. “I think we are in a time where some of these pressures may very well continue.”
Jay emphasized the value her experience on the board would bring to addressing budget issues if elected to another term.
“I’ve done nine cycles of budgets. I have a pretty solid grasp of school and municipal finances, how school operations work, how facilities are built,” Jay said. “It’s true that for any new member, there’s a learning curve. It really takes a lot of time to come up to speed around these things that are all that are themselves very complicated. That’s one of the reasons I feel like it’s essential to bring back some school committee members who will already be able to work through some of those issues.”
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