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Lisa Henry is running for a seat on the Mountain View Whisman school board to bring her decade of experience as a parent volunteer to the governing body at a time that she believes represents an inflection point for the school district.
Mountain View Whisman has weathered a stressful period since the pandemic hit in 2020, Henry said. When she saw that no incumbents were running this cycle, Henry felt there was particular urgency to elect candidates “who have level heads and care about the district.”
“This is a time when it’ll be really important to elect board members – and I think I fit this description – who can figure out what the new normal is and move forward,” Henry said.
A corporate and securities lawyer by training, Henry has a daughter in seventh grade at Graham Middle School and has volunteered in various roles over the past decade. She spent six years on the Bubb Elementary PTA board, including two as president, and is currently in her second year on the Los Altos Mountain View PTA Council. Henry has also volunteered since 2018 with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and co-led the group’s California chapter for over two years.
With her background in law, Henry said she would bring a governance and transparency lens to the board, as well as the perspective of an involved parent.
Asked what her top three priorities would be, Henry pointed to fulfilling the board’s citizen oversight role and centering students in all spending decisions; ensuring every student, regardless of background, has access to a high quality education; and promoting student mental health and wellbeing.
One challenge, Henry said, is that the district currently has a number of large-scale initiatives that it is trying to get off the ground, including an early literacy program and hiring its own elementary school counselors. She believes the board will need to provide the district with resources, support and direction to make these programs successful.
If elected, Henry wants to work on closing the achievement gap. She is supportive of the district’s Reimagining Castro plan, which is an effort to increase support for students and improve academic performance at the elementary school. Castro has long had a substantially higher portion of disadvantaged students than the district’s other schools.
Henry also supports the district’s creation of an early literacy team, which provides targeted support to elementary school students struggling to learn to read.
At the middle school level, Henry sees an opportunity to allocate resources to give students who may be struggling the chance to receive one-on-one or small group support. She also wants to look to hire more substitute teachers, so that full-time teachers aren’t losing important prep time while having to fill in for one another.
When it comes to the district’s budget, Henry believes the new board should take a step back and assess its spending priorities going forward, including looking at which areas can be cut back. When asked about the recent controversy the district has experienced over-spending on certain contracts, including to provide executive coaching and meditation services for district leaders, Henry said that she believes staff wellbeing is important and can impact the day-to-day experiences of students. At the same time, she said that there is the potential for cost savings.
“It’s absolutely an area where there’s room to trim, or take a different approach, or move some things in-house,” said Henry, adding that she supports the district’s plan to implement additional processes to review contracts.
In terms of how to split money from the Shoreline special tax district, Henry said that while a long-term solution is needed, she believes the main issue right now is ensuring that funding continues. At the time of Henry’s interview with the Voice in September, the school district had declined to sign a three-year deal that the city had put on the table. The school board subsequently approved the deal at an Oct. 17 meeting. Without a deal, the district could have lost $6.5 million this school year. In the long term, Henry said that she does think it would be appropriate for the school district to receive a larger share of the tax revenue.
When asked to assess the effectiveness of the district’s superintendent and other leaders, Henry said that she has seen positive changes in the district over the past decade, and believes the district has highly skilled staff who are working on important initiatives, including in the areas of equity and mental health. At the same time, she said that the district has had challenges, including with communication.
On a Voice questionnaire, Henry said that she opposed the school board’s June decision to give the superintendent a multi-year contract extension and raises. Henry said that her concern was with the board’s practice of approving multi-year extensions while there was still a year left on the existing contract. If elected, Henry said she would want to review that approach and see how other school districts handle these contract renewals.
