The last time I wrote, it was about how AI will change education (and in fact, when I powered up my computer today, at the top of my inbox was this Education Week article: “AI could save school districts time and money—if they use it correctly").

AI uses algorithms to make decisions, and those algorithms operate by prioritizing certain factors over others. For example, internet advertising companies use an algorithm that prioritizes ads that are topically-related to your most recent browser searches (remember how spooky it felt when this first started happening?). It could just as easily prioritize ads for purple products, or ads related to food if you happen to log on at lunchtime.

Humans use algorithms when we make decisions, too, and that’s what I want to write about today.

Let’s say you’re the owner of a toy store and you want to open a second location. But where? There are lots of factors you’ll weigh, including your budget; how much space you think you’ll need; where your competitors are located; proximity to other businesses that would attract toy-buyers; your employees’ transportation needs; and more. Depending on which of these factors you prioritize in your own algorithm, you’ll likely arrive at different conclusions.

Then there’s the question of how you decide what factors to prioritize. If I’m the sole owner of the business, I could safely argue that I get to create the algorithm all by myself. Proximity to other businesses that would attract toy-buyers is top of mind for me, followed by the cost; if it’s a little smaller than I would like, or it’s a few minutes’ walk from the nearest bus stop, I can live with that.

​Now let’s say I am a public school district and I want to open some magnet schools in order to create more diverse school communities. (Set aside for the moment the question of whether there’s robust evidence that magnet schools are an effective way to desegregate.) Now I have to figure out what type(s) of magnet programs to offer. Some of the factors I could prioritize include:

Any one of these factors would be a perfectly reasonable thing to prioritize in my algorithm—but they’ll yield different results.

In my magnet school example, who gets to decide what factors to prioritize in the algorithm? It’s not as simple as in the toy store example. Who is the “owner” of the business? Who is the “owner” of the decision about how to build the algorithm? Because it’s a public system, what special obligations does that create, if any, for community input?

District leadership, educators, school board members, parents, students, and community members all likely have ideas about what factors should be prioritized, and those ideas may not line up.

We talk a lot about “data-driven decision making” but I’m realizing that this may miss the mark. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me over time that our quarrel in decision making may not be with the data but rather with the algorithms the data are fed into.

​Sometimes if we have inaccurate or missing information we may have a data problem, but more often I think the friction is around:

This has been on my mind a lot this summer as APS staff, the community, the school board and its advisory councils weigh important, upcoming decisions about our facilities. It’s central to other aspects of our school system, too—for example, the school board’s annual budget direction is basically an instrument designed to prioritize factors.

​Maybe these insights have been obvious to everyone else and I’m late to the party (it wouldn’t be the first time). But it feels like this will be useful for me in my job moving forward—and perhaps it will be useful to you, too, particularly as we work to engage each other in constructive and trust-building ways.

It’s Friday morning, about nine hours after I wrapped a five hour School Board meeting and the tail end of week-long business trip (currently on Amtrak coming home).

If you asked me this week, “How’s work?” I would reply, “Hard.” I have no doubt you’ve felt the same at one point or another in your adult life.

But what do we mean when we say our work is “hard”?  And why did I get so nerdy-excited in my Uber an hour ago when I thought, “OMG! That is so connected to last night’s School Board meeting!”?

What we mean by “hard work”

First off, let me say that what I am about to write has some privilege attached to it. For many people, “hard work” involves hazardous conditions, needing to work multiple jobs because their labor is undervalued, or not being able to find work at all.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a safe, stable job that pays a living wage, “hard work” usually means some combination of three things:

1. The knowledge and skills needed to do the job. Sometimes our work is hard because we feel ill-equipped to do it. For example, in the job I took last year at TED I create online courses for adult learners. I know a lot about instructional design and educational media, but I have never had to film anyone in a studio. Words cannot convey how little A-Game I brought to this task. Fortunately, I found freelancers who are helping and schooling me. What once seemed overwhelming is now really exciting.

For managers and leaders, this means making sure your employees have the professional learning they need to do their job well and feel like they are learning and growing. For employees, it means speaking up to ask for the training and resources you need.

2. The time we need to do our jobs well (and live the rest of our lives). Work can be hard because there’s simply too much of it at any given time. Sometimes we are tasked with too much, and other times it’s because we overcommit ourselves. (My husband and I talk about my overscheduling All. The. Time.)

​This can be painfully obvious, as in “You are now expected to create eight reports a week instead of five.” But often it’s more subtle and accumulates over time—we find ourselves logging in an hour earlier, dining al desko, taking on more work to be a “team player” during a hiring freeze.

3. The emotional labor that work requires. Researchers define “emotional labor” as the work of managing one’s own emotions that is required by certain professions. Think about flight attendants, who are expected to be friendly and respectful to passengers even in stressful situations. I include in “emotional labor” the significant emotional freight that’s inherent in certain kinds of work: for example, ICU nursing, human rights law, the ministry.

If we care about our colleagues and the people we serve in our jobs, then a certain amount of emotional labor comes with the territory. We run into trouble, however, when we pile on additional, unnecessary emotional labor for others. Office politics. Dysfunctional communication. A hostile work environment.

I once joined a nonprofit as its executive director and discovered that its financial health had been wildly overstated during the hiring process. Because my predecessor hadn’t been able to bring herself to conduct the necessary layoffs I had to do it, two months in and a week after my father died. It was one of the hardest times in my life. There was no question the layoffs had to be done, but it mattered a lot to me how it was done. I had to combine a dispassionate acceptance of our finances with a lot of compassionate, honest and vulnerable communication with my team.


When I talk to people about how their work is “hard,” most often they tell me about the emotional labor they’re performing. It’s been my experience that we’ll go the extra mile to upskill or take on an extra task, but it’s harder for us to accept feeling undervalued, patronized or taken for granted.

I’ve been a perpetrator and a victim of this. [Note to self: need to watch a little less Law & Order.]  For example, last December I wrote about my initial impressions as a School Board Member-Elect.

I had only good intentions when I wrote this piece: were were coming out of a tense time when the relationship between the community and the School Board had been badly damaged. I felt (and still do) that there was room for improvement on both sides to communicate more effectively.

But in writing about the School Board as an institution, I unintentionally harmed the individual humans who serve in this role and who were still grappling with (and I think it’s fair to say “recovering from”) the tremendous emotional labor of the previous year and a half. (Whether you agree with the decisions they made during that time—I think we can all agree that the emotional labor involved was significant.) In short, I ended up creating extra, unnecessary emotional labor for them.

For that, I am sorry. The job is hard enough as it is.


Why I’m thinking about last night’s School Board meeting

I see application of what I’ve written above in so many parts of my School Board work—last night’s meeting is a fine example. For instance:

Staff retention and engagement.  Last night several APS employees spoke during public comment. I am reflecting on the question: How can we make their work “less hard”?

• Are we doing all we can to provide them with the knowledge, skills, resources and time to do their jobs well?
• Are we equipping them to perform the emotional labor that’s inherent in their work and not creating extra, unnecessary emotional labor for them?
• How can we navigate the advent of collective bargaining—new territory for all of us—in a way that allows us to communicate institutionally/collectively and human-to-human?

Consequential votes. Last night APS Facilities staff presented the proposed schematic design for the Career Center. This is a significant and costly project, and one that’s understandably emotional for the school community involved.

• How do School Board members acquire and analyze the necessary information? How do we respect the expertise of APS staff and use a “critical friend” lens to achieve the best possible governance?
• How do we make decisions dispassionately (looking as objectively as possible at the data, weighing the needs across the system now and in the future) and compassionately?

My first consequential vote as a School Board member was to pause the VLP program last February. I’d been assigned to be the VLP School Board liaison and had gotten to know several of these families pretty well during my first six weeks. For me, this vote was as emotional as the layoffs I’d had to make in a previous work life.

Restorative practices. Gradis White talked last night about restorative work with students in our schools. I think we can apply this in other areas, too.

Are we taking the time to understand the root causes of other people’s statements and actions?

When tough calls need to be made—whether it’s a mandatory student suspension, a grievance  or a consequential School Board vote—are we taking steps to follow up with those affected and repair relationships that may have been damaged so that we can interact productively in the future?


As a public servant, I can’t make everyone happy. But I can aim to avoid missteps that create unnecessary “hard work” for myself and others.

This newsletter is usually my space to share what I’m learning and thinking about in my role as a school board member.

But this time, now six months into the job, I want to share to share what I’m hearing from all of you: essentially, what’s on your mind.

I’ll be real—it’s a lot. The list below is a snapshot of all the issues and questions that you’ve sent my way that are above and beyond the items that were already queued up for discussion and voting during regular School Board meetings (like the budget or the bell time study).

These are the ones you’re emailing about, raising during office hours, or asking to discuss in a phone call or meeting.

Each of these issues is important to somebody, and so they all deserve some kind of acknowledgement and response.

However, you can see (I hope) how easy it would be to go “an inch deep and a mile wide” on everything, or to get distracted to such a degree that no issue gets completely worked through.

So what to do? For me, I try to make sure I’m focusing the majority of my time and attention in these areas:

1. Basic needs. If students are hungry, or sick, or in crisis in some way, it will be really hard for them to learn.

2. A healthy school (and school district) culture. Students may arrive at school ready to learn (basic needs met!) but if they’re put in a toxic environment, they likely won’t be able or willing to do their best work. The same is true for school staff. (Readers, can you think of a workplace you were glad to escape at some point in your adult life?) Everyone in the school community needs to be safe, seen and valued.

3. Teaching and learning that is relevant, rigorous and research-based. To me, "relevant” means that students understand how what they are learning relates to the world outside of school and to their own experiences, interests and aspirations. “Rigorous” means there is just the right level of challenge, and “research-based” means it’s grounded in what we know about the science of learning.

But enough from me. Let’s hear from all of you.

From January through June, here’s what you’ve asked about.

What am I learning?
Much more than I can convey here. But here are some highlights:

1. There is a tension, as is true in most organizations, between the need to be responsive to the various issues and concerns that come up and also preserve some focus on a core set of priorities. It is sometimes difficult to apportion time between meeting immediate needs and exploring longer-term, systemic changes that could broadly benefit staff, students and families. I think about this a lot and talk about it with my colleagues and APS leadership.

2. This job takes a lot of time. I knew this going in, and the work is rewarding so I am not saying this to complain. I raise it here because I worry that by its very nature it’s a part-time job that isn’t feasible for many people whose full-time jobs don’t afford a lot of flexibility. I am privileged to be able to work some odd hours on certain days in my “regular job” in order to be a board member. That’s not possible for many people in our community.

3. School Board members can’t just grab a beer and talk it out. I am new to the team and getting to know my colleagues. We each do this job a little differently, and ultimately I think that’s a good thing (I, for instance, am not particularly attuned to compliance with all the regulations that govern our gatherings–but I’m glad that there’s someone else who is.) I struggle a little bit with the legal barriers that prevent all five of us from simply sitting down together and brainstorming opportunities or hashing out a problem as a group. Instead, I need to call my colleagues individually to talk through an issue (four times, see the “time” note above) and we lose the benefit of the full-group exchange. If I email my colleagues and one of them wants to reply to the group, they have to wait at least four hours or else our email exchanges count as a virtual meeting.

The laws governing our interactions exist to ensure transparency and public accountability, and that’s a good thing. I’m finding that this group of people deeply respects and abides by those rules. It does, however, come at some cost.

4. There’s so much value in listening. I suspected before I joined the School Board, and it’s proving true, that active listening and genuine acknowledgement go a long way. As a result of being willing to listen and genuinely curious, I’m having some surprising conversations. I’m seeing things differently. I’m making better decisions. And hopefully the person I’m talking with feels the same, and we’re trusting each other just a little bit more.


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I hope this report-out gives you some sense of my work as a School Board member (and by extension, the work that other board members generally do). It’s my aim to do this job well and increase public confidence in the work of school boards generally; I hope information like this contributes to that effort.

Last week I had my School Board orientation, and I felt a little bit like a visitor to a foreign country or an anthropologist.

I don’t mean that in a mean-spirited way: I’m simply noting that every group has its own customs and ways of communicating, and I don’t yet fully understand the dynamics of the group I’m joining.

I believe that how we communicate is every bit as important as what we communicate, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to communicate with parents, students, community members, APS staff and School Board colleagues when I join the board next month.

This will likely be my last chance to write as someone who’s simply a parent and community member, from the outside looking in, so I want to share the things that I’m thinking and wondering about when it comes to communication.

First, I’m wondering whether we need to be so formal with one another. Personally, I value communication that feels comfortable and genuine, and so I usually show up in jeans, call you by your first name, and realize halfway through our conversation that I have a splash of spaghetti sauce on my shirt.

I recognize, though, that some people might be offended by this—as if I view elected office entirely too casually, or am showing disrespect by speaking to them too informally. So I will likely ask you and others how I should refer to you—but for my part, please call me Mary.

I also value approachability and accessibility. I don’t think I can represent you on the School Board unless I hear from you regularly and really try to take in what you’re telling me, with curiosity and a willingness to change my thinking. From the outside looking in, public comment periods at School Board meetings and the current approach to open office hours feel somewhat strange to me, and I’m not sure how much empathizing and genuine learning from one another is happening in those forums.

It has felt to me at times like the School Board has its guard up and it’s difficult to get anything past the shields. As a parent and PTA leader, I’ve sometimes found this aggravating. I’ve been that angry person firing off emails to School Board members and APS leaders because I felt community engagement was performative, answers to my questions were too generic and formulaic, and good ideas that originated outside the Syphax Center were dismissed too quickly.

I don’t want to have that kind of relationship with you. I want you to feel like I really hear you and am open to your ideas, even if we ultimately disagree on something. And I hope that if I communicate in ways that don’t live up to this, you will gently let me know.

In return, I’d like to ask you for two things: trust and respect. When I say “trust,” I mean that you trust I’m taking my commitment to this job seriously and that my intentions are good. Over time, I hope that definition of “trust” will expand to include the idea that you trust I will level with you and am working hard with my colleagues to get important things done.

And to me, “respect” means we treat each other honorably and give each other the benefit of the doubt. Sadly, I think this is an increasingly scarce commodity. For example, during the campaign I got called “batshit crazy,” “everything that’s wrong with APS” and “some dumb bitch,” to name a few, on social media and in email.

We’re living in a really strange time. I believe we're feeling a high degree of uncertainty, stress, and loss of control entering Year 3 of COVID that is fundamentally at odds with the "everything-on-demand" lifestyle we’ve built for ourselves over the past two decades. Then we’re trying to understand and talk about this via media and social media that offer us a never-ending scroll of curated viewpoints which too often simply reinforce our own, and reward us for well-crafted dunks performed in front of an online audience. I’ll be asking, and I hope you will too: Whose voices are missing from these exchanges? How can I seek them out and learn from them?

Respect doesn’t naturally flourish in times and in environments like this—I think it has to be intentionally practiced. Maybe as we head into the new year it can be our collective resolution to do so, in the comments we make and in the meetings and forums we organize, whether those are digital or face-to-face.

Maybe to you, aiming for respectful exchanges is less important than the thing you’re fighting for. I think the world definitely benefits from righteous anger, but I believe that activism doesn’t have to be shrill or vitriolic to be powerful—in fact, I think the opposite is more often the case.

Nobody likes being attacked, patronized or ignored. I believe we all want to be heard and valued, and that’s the mindset I am bringing to my work as a School Board member. I know that some of what I've written here will seem awfully naive as I learn more about the realities of the job. But it’s important to me that you know my intentions going in, so that you can help me stay connected to the community I am meant to serve.