Jennifer Lima won't stop working for North Kingstown's students

The North Kingstown School Committee member opposes book bans, stands up for trans kids, helps manage the budget, and finds herself a target for those on the right.

Jennifer Lima is a Democrat on the North Kingstown School Committee facing a challenge from Independent Megan Reilly, who was calling for books to be banned from the school libraries only a few years ago. [See: Megan Reilly is running for North Kingstown School Committee and it's not simply about banning books]

Jennifer is not simply opposed to book bans or in favor of policies to protect trans kids; she’s sharp on policy and budgets. She’s had a fair share of harassment too, and despite all her troubles, she still wants to do the job of looking out for North Kingstown students. I checked in with Jennifer Lima on Sunday morning via Zoom.

Steve Ahlquist: How is your campaign going?

Jen Lima: It depends on the day, honestly. Some days I feel positive and motivated and things are going well. Other days I am discouraged and things are going horribly. That's probably true for any campaign, but overall, I am encouraged. I try to remind myself it doesn't matter what you read or what you hear. All that matters is what happens in the voting booth. People may not want to be out there and vocal, but at the end of the day, people will flip the switch for me.

Steve Ahlquist: Knowing a little bit about your opponent and the area you live in, it's always been contentious, but for the most part, people seem to support your ideas and initiatives.

Jen Lima: I agree. The support is there. I try to remind myself that signs don't vote. There is a lot of visible support for my opponent. There's a lot of anti-me on social media and things like that. I try to remind myself that that is a small representation and at the end of the day, the support has always been there for me. It just popped up in my Facebook memories yesterday. Three years ago the recall failed. That was a good reminder for me that, as you said, the support has always been there, this community supports inclusivity. And that is still true today.

Steve Ahlquist: You've taken some hits on your views about school resource officers (SROs). [School resource officers are police officers stationed within a school to keep an eye on things and watch out for potential school shooters and such.] For clarity, do you want to explain your position on SROs?

Jen Lima: Sure. I have been very vocal since day one that I am a Counselors not Cops person. I don't believe that we should have armed police in schools. The money is better spent filling mental health positions. There's documented evidence that when there are police in schools, there are issues. Everybody says, “Well, not in North Kingstown,” but it is true everywhere. It's not a good idea and it has nothing to do with the individual officer. The SRO in our high school is a good person for that position, but it's about the position, not the person. He's not always going to be there.

If I had been advocating to remove the SRO, I would've been doing it from day one, but I didn't. A couple of years into my position, I said “I get that my position on SROs is radical for this area, so I want to make it so that if we're going to have them, let's make sure that there's some safeguards.” I wanted to make sure that the person who's in that position is trained appropriately. Let's make sure that they receive training in anti-bias and de-escalation and that it's not just the most senior person on the force who gets put in. Massachusetts has a memorandum of understanding for SROs that has a lot of language trying to protect all students. I put forth a proposal for our district to do that, and there was a lot of pushback on it.

We went back and forth with the North Kingstown Police Department for about a year to try to get it implemented. There was a lot of pushback and a lot of back and forth. I tried to get people to see that what I was asking for was not radical. It was best practices from the United States Department of Justice and the National Association of School Resource Officers, designed to protect the SROs and students. Finally, after about a year, we got it put through.

I did make a motion at one point, when the police were pushing back, to pull the SRO out of the school until we got it resolved because my position was why are the police not agreeing to this? What is the concern about signing this? I was concerned that they wouldn't sign on. So I made a motion to pull the SRO out until we got the issue resolved, but we did get it resolved.

Recently we had two issues. One at Davisville Middle School and one at the high school where there were lockdown situations. Now people are saying, “This is why we need an SRO.” But I don't think that's true. We have seen cases all around the country where we have had school shootings. SROs have been there. It's a sad statement of the world that these things happen. But I don't think that police officers in school make it any safer for our students. I get that some students find safety in having a police officer in there, but school safety is about more than an armed police officer. It's about the culture, day in and day out. And there are students in the building who don't feel safer with a police officer there. It should be about creating a culture where every student feels safe.

Steve Ahlquist: Feeling safe versus being safe are often two different things,

Jen Lima: A hundred percent.

Steve Ahlquist: There have been a few high-profile cases here in Rhode Island where SROs have done things that we wouldn't want them to have done and people have been hurt. [See here, here, and here.]

Jen Lima: People tell me that doesn't happen in North Kingstown and maybe it hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean it won't. North Kingstown is not immune from these types of things. I had the person say to me yesterday, “North Kingstown is past these issues.” I disagree. If you spoke to somebody who is not white or not straight or not fully able, you would get a different perspective. It's frustrating because we are not past this.

Steve Ahlquist: I would be suspicious of anyone who says, we don't need more training or more information.

Jen Lima: More training is never a bad thing. I want the person who's in that position to have all the training and not be put in that position because they're the most senior person. To have that training is not a bad thing. We all want our students to be protected.

Steve Ahlquist: What other issues are you dealing with? When you go door to door, what are you hearing?

Jen Lima: People want to know if it is true that people are trying to ban books and what we doing to keep books in the classroom. I answer, “Yes, there are book challenges in North Kingstown.”My position is that schools should not be limiting access to materials. I was on the school board when there was a challenge to Genderqueer and I was firm in my belief that parents have the right to decide what their children should be reading, but we should not be limiting access to materials based on the concerns of some parents. There has been talk about age appropriateness and curating the curriculum, but they are just fancy terms for book banning. People like to say that they're not for banning books, but anything that limits access to materials is book banning, as far as I'm concerned. We've gotten to the point where librarians and teachers are afraid to put materials out there because they don't want to deal with pushback from parents. To me, that is also book banning. We shouldn't have professionals in their field be afraid to do what they think is best because they don't want to deal with the pushback.

Steve Ahlquist: I was disappointed that the Rhode Island General Assembly decided not to pass the librarian protection bill because we should be vocal in saying that we trust the professionalism and training of librarians. I was in a school committee meeting in Newport, where Amy Rodriguez, the chair of the Washington County Chapter of Moms for Liberty, said, “My organization has not banned a single book. You can buy the book, you can find the book, you can read it to your children if you want. There is a difference between curating and banning.” So what you're saying about banning and curating books strikes home they are using the term curating when they mean banning.

The result is the same in both cases. The book will no longer be available. The other thing they like to say is that you can always order it on Amazon - which is such a classist thing to say because we have libraries in part because not everybody can afford to go and buy a book. That's the whole idea of a library! Even assuming that everybody has internet access or access to Amazon is problematic.

Also, I know your opponent, a couple of years ago, was leading the charge on banning books. She's on video! I wrote about that because when these book banners fail to persuade the public, they run for office to get the power they need. That was disturbing to me too because I think she's running for school committee in part because she didn't ban the book she wanted to. And if you want to ban books, I'm willing to bet you're other policies aren't that great either.

Jen Lima: I'm a parent, I get it. Parents have rights, but what gets lost in this is that students have rights too. Children exist independently from their parents whether parents want to acknowledge that or not. As kids get older, they want information about things they're not going to want to talk to their parents about. The school library may be the one place where they can get the information they're looking for. To limit access to books at school libraries is to limit access for those children.

It's between a parent and a child to say, “You can't read that” but it's not up to the school to keep that information from being available for the kid who needs to access it. Nobody wants to think that their kid's not going to be able to talk to them. I would want my kids to be able to talk to me, but if they couldn't, I would want them to be able to get whatever information they needed to make them okay. You cannot keep information from being available to everyone just because you don't want your kid to be able to access it.

Steve Ahlquist: I'll add that I don't appreciate the difference between a school library versus a library library. Most libraries are run by people who have degrees in library studies. A library is a library. They all should follow the same rules.

I talk to young people interested in journalism three or four times a year. When I talk to them, there’s usually a question about what comes down to First Amendment rights. There's a silencing effect on all of us when we talk about any kind of censorship. We need to be clear on the rules in our heads as citizens, and we need to be clear for the students as well.

Jen Lima: I love that you talk to the young journalists. That's awesome. Especially these days when you don't have a lot of real press anymore, it's awesome that there are kids out there who still want to go into that profession.

Steve Ahlquist: I'm always very careful to say there are ways to do this where you can make money, but there are many more ways, including the way I do it, where you won't make much money at all.

What else are you hearing as you go door-to-door?

Jen Lima: I wish more people would have a conversation with me and explain to me what their concerns are. When I knock on the door, I know that my name is out there and has a lot of stuff attached to it. I want to give people the opportunity to have a conversation with me. Not that I'm necessarily looking to change people's minds, but I want them to hear directly from me what my positions are. There is a lot of misinformation that is being deliberately spread.

There's a sign on Annaquatucket Road. Howard Brown is the executive director of the Rhode Island Coalition for Israel. He has two signs in front of his house, one that says “Jen Lima Lies About Genocide” and the other one says, “Jen Lima Harms Jewish Children in North Kingstown.” He also came to a school committee meeting and accused me of supporting terrorists and baby killers. He put out those signs because of my advocacy for a ceasefire and a free Palestine. People see those signs, but only one person asked me about them.

I wish people would allow me to explain why those are out there. I wish people would take the time to find out directly from me when I show up at their door, what the facts are. Then, if they decide not to vote for me, at least they're doing it based on the truth, not what they hear from other people.

Steve Ahlquist: The Rhode Island Coalition for Israel (RICI) are described by Influence Watch as “a right-leaning organization that promotes Western and Judeo-Christian values and America’s alliance with Israel.” David Talan, who is running for a position on the Providence School Committee, is vice president of RICI.

Jen Lima: From the day that we created the DEI subcommittee Howard has been showing up and protesting me because he thinks that diversity, equity, and inclusion is antisemitic. He has hated me from day one.

Steve Ahlquist: The group is made up of right-wing Zionist Jews and Christians who see Israel in terms of eschatological theology - basically Revelations and the Second Coming of Jesus. Last year they held a rally at the Rhode Island State House with Turning Point USA (TPUSA), described by both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as affiliating with activists from the alt-right and the far-right.

That aside, do you want to talk about your views on Palestine?

Jen Lima: I don't agree with what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing. What is happening in Palestine is wrong. I don't support what is happening over there, but that has nothing to do with how I feel about the ability of people to practice their faith. In my mind, it's two different things. I recognize that Howard Brown does not agree with that, but my peace activism is not a statement on religion. It's two different things in my mind if that makes sense.

Steve Ahlquist: I understand that. entirely. And there are many people across the world, good people, who want to see peace in that region and want the war to end.

Jen Lima: When it's something that's out of my circle, for lack of a better term, I try to take my lead from people who have lived experience. I have done a lot of listening and reading, and I have taken my lead from people who are members of Jewish Voice for Peace and who have lived experience in that area. They are the ones that I have learned from. They are the ones who I have listened to. I'm going to listen to people who are leading with compassion and love and not somebody like Howard Brown.

Steve Ahlquist: It is a fraught issue.

Jen Lima: Like you said, the government and the people are two different things. You can recognize that and have compassion for the people who are underneath the government. The whole thing is awful. To call for a ceasefire and to support the people of Palestine is not the same thing as being an antisemite as Howard Brown claims.

Steve Ahlquist: I've been doing a lot of work on right-wing efforts to abolish the Transgender, Gender Diverse, and Transitioning Student Policy that has been in effect and protecting all students for seven years without incident. Your committee worked on this and did great work. Yours is one of two or three districts in Rhode Island that have improved on the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) policy rather than just adopting it. For instance, I learned, listening to your committee meeting, that the term gender diverse is better than the term gender non-conforming because it talks about who you are, not who you aren't. It’s important to come up with language that's more welcoming and inclusive. Do you want to talk about that?

Jen Lima: It was important to me that we improve that policy, not just be in compliance. I reached out to some former North Kingstown students to get their input on the policy, and I reached out to Thundermist to get their input on the policy because of lived experience, right? I don't have that. I wanted to make sure that we were being inclusive and making that policy more than what RIDE required. With that input, we made some of those changes. There are trans and non-binary students in our school and I wanted those students to feel seen. I think that we did do a good job with that policy, but we can still do better.

I'm proud that our committee unanimously passed that. I'm proud because North Kingstown is making strides to be inclusive. That's something that I'm concerned about with the upcoming election because some of the candidates who are running are not supportive of those issues. I'm concerned that these policies will be rolled back depending on what happens with the upcoming election.

Steve Ahlquist: Both nationally and locally, these elections are going to be difficult. Even if the wrong people were to take power, it's not necessarily a fact that they're going to win on all these policy prescriptions, but at the same time, it would be unnerving, at the least, if you were a person subject to this loss of rights. The Trevor Project released a report that shows that states that passed anti-transgender laws aimed at minors have seen as much as a 72% increase in suicide attempts by transgender and gender-nonconforming teenagers. That's fucking terrible.

Jen Lima: When people talk about the increased rates of suicide and depression and things like that, I always stress that it's not because of who they are, it's because of society's reaction to them. People need to recognize that the way that we talk about these kids matters. We need to make sure that they know that they are loved for who they are. And we need to get to the point where we don't even need to have a discussion. It's just an automatic thing.

Steve Ahlquist: One sticking point for many is parental notification. The policy stresses that informing parents or guardians about a student's social gender transition is the result wanted, but that the school should work with the student to do so in a way that is safe for students and on the student's timeline. Opponents want the school to out students to parents at the first sign of social transitioning, which in my mind can lead to all sorts of problems, including teachers misinterpreting the actions of students, who are constantly experimenting with presentation and behavior as they navigate their social lives.

Jen Lima: The thing people bring up to me is that if these kids are so at risk of being harmed, why wouldn't we want to bring it up to their parents? Well, ideally we don't have to. Ideally, everybody's on the same page and everybody's supportive, but that is not always the case. Until that is the case, we need to make sure that we are doing whatever we can to keep these kids safe. And that includes making sure that they feel that they are loved and seen. The school owes a duty to the kid. The school committee's duty, first and foremost, is to the students in the district. That means keeping the students safe. And if the student feels that they are best protected by protecting who they are at school, then that's what we need to do.

Steve Ahlquist: I didn't know if you want to talk about your experience of being harrassed online and even, I believe in person?

Jen Lima: Yeah, it's important. I had, for over a year, been harassed on social media by somebody who was a victim in the Aaron Thomas Case.¹ They were harassing me on my school committee and TANK (Towards an Anti-Racist North Kingstown) social media. It started as occasional innocuous stuff. Then it became daily, repeatedly, and at a high volume.

Some of the messages were like, “I hope you die in a cage like the dog that you are.” Pretty nasty stuff. Then he started to tag my children and try to follow them on social media. I kept the attorney for the district involved the whole time so that the committee knew what was happening because we are being sued by this person. I could not have any contact with him because we were being sued.

At a certain point, the attorney told me to go to the police and let the police know. I went to the police and the police said, “You need to block them. Why don't you block them?” And I said, “I can't block him because you cannot [leaglly] block somebody on a campaign page.” The police asked if I wanted them to go talk to him and I said, “I honestly don't know if that's going to make it worse or not. I defer to your professional judgment.” They opted not to.

The police were less than helpful. They pretty much said that I have to get used to being not liked on social media, but if I was at the police every time somebody was mean to me on social media, I would have an office there.

“This is different,” I said. “This person is troubled and I'm worried. I'm concerned for my safety and he's bothering my children.” But that was that. After about another six months, I had enough, and the attorney said, “Go to the State Police. I went to the State Police and in their defense, I went in on the 4th of July in the middle of a thunderstorm, which probably wasn't the best timing. They said pretty much the same thing.

After about a year, I had had enough and the school committee chair and the attorney reached out again to the police and said, “You need to do something.” And the police said there wasn't much they could do, but that they would reach out and do a wellness check.

I had hundreds and hundreds of messages. So eventually I just said, “You know what? I've had enough. I can't wait for you people to do something.” I posted it all on my social media and said, “Listen, I've been being harassed for the past year. I want this to stop.” I was at my breaking point. Every morning I woke up and there were messages. So I posted every message that he had ever posted about me with a timeline. And I did not hide his name because he was posting with his actual name.

Steve Ahlquist: He was doing this very publicly.

Jen Lima: Whether or not I should have done that is up for debate. But honestly, I couldn't take it anymore. As soon as I did that, his brother messaged me and apologized. I ended up paying for an attorney and getting a restraining order. It stopped as soon as I got that restraining order, which lasted about six months. As soon as the restraining order stopped, he started popping up on social media again. He hasn't contacted me directly, but he comments on other posts and does reactions and things like that.

There's been a lot of negative reaction because people say, “How dare you. He was a victim.” Which he was, but a victim can also victimize. They said, “You knew who he was. You should have reached out to him. You should have reached out to his family.”

Steve Ahlquist: But you weren't able to because of the lawsuit?

Jen Lima: Exactly.

The police turned it over to a special investigator to see whether or not he should be prosecuted because they felt that they couldn't determine whether or not to prosecute on their own. The special investigator was fabulous. She did a thorough job... She said that what he did did not rise to the legal level of harassment. I was disappointed, but I got it. I felt that she investigated it thoroughly, which is really all that I wanted anybody to do.

The local press did a one-sided article on it. They made it sound like what he did was annoying instead of harassment It was horrible coverage on top of horrible harassment. What bothers me more than anything is - I get that he was a victim - but I was victimized too. Every day I had to wake up and wonder what was happening. He followed me once through town shouting things at me. Every day I had to wake up and wonder, “Was today the day that it was going to get worse?” And my family had to deal with it. My son was a victim of the fat testing thing as well. My family seems to be the only family in the Town of North Kingstown that can be a victim and not receive compassion. It's almost like we're not human.

Steve Ahlquist: Because elected officials aren't allowed to block constituents from social media, you didn't have that option, and the lawsuit prevented you from being able to respond. When people go after me on social media I just start blocking. They can talk among themselves about me all they want, but I don't have to hear them.

We've talked about four issues. Some of them are directly related to the delivery of education, but not all of them are fundamentally educational issues. They're hot buttons to push, but do any of them say anything about the quality of the education that your school district is supplying kids day-to-day? What about the bread-and-butter things like allocating a budget, school repairs, building new schools, or any of the many things school committees do? The people who are challenging for this seat are bringing up these hot-button issues and that's what we're talking about, but what about the more mundane aspects of the job? Are you more capable of delivering those than your opponents?

Jen Lima: I am. In my job, my day job, I'm an analyst. As part of that job I look at what one side needs and what the other side wants, and I try to figure out the best way to meld the two. Over the past four years, the school department has had a huge upheaval. We've gone through administrators and superintendents, and we haven't had a director of finance. One thing that I am good at is details. I am a detail-oriented person. I know it drives people crazy, but I can go through something and I see what's missing. I see what's not there, and I see what needs to be there. I ask a lot of questions and I can see what's needed.

I am good at numbers. I've been accused of micromanaging, but I don't like the term micromanaging. The school committee is charged with oversight of the entire district. These things come before us for a reason. It's our job to provide oversight. And so when the budget comes before us, it's on us to ask, "Why are you spending this much money on this? Why aren't we spending any money on that?" I have been effective. Even though it drives people bonkers, our job is to ask questions and make sure that we are spending the right amount of money on this and that we're not spending too much money on that. We're asking questions and we are providing the right amount of resources to the right amount of things within the district.

It's the administration's job to come up with a plan and then bring it to us. I don't see our job as a rubber stamp. It comes before us for a reason. If it didn't have to come before us, it wouldn't. And I'm not just going to sign off on something just because the superintendent thinks it's a good idea. I'm going to see for myself if it's a good idea and if I don't think it's a good idea, I'm going to say it's not a good idea and ask why they think it's a good idea. So yeah, I am capable. I had to learn on the job. I was elected and then, right after I was elected, the shit hit the fan with the Aaron Thomas stuff. People left, people came in. We have had a lot of different administrators, and I'm the only one left standing at this point. I have experience at this point. That's important because I have learned what not to do, and I’ve learned what we need to do. So yeah, I'm capable of doing the bread-and-butter stuff that comes along with the job.

1. Aaron Thomas was a football coach who was, for three decades, performing "naked fat tests" on students. These tests include taking a student alone behind a closed door, instructing the student to strip down to their underwear or completely unclothed, and then performing a series of "fat tests" on various parts of the student's body.