Fluency with numbers and with scientific concepts: these are skills that Kelley Kennedy, the new Old Saybrook Board of Education chairman, says she owes to her mother’s passion and interests.

It was very important to her mother that Kelley and her sister learn mental math skills. One way she did this was to devise a math game they could all play while grocery shopping.

“I remember my mother asking me and my sister as she put things into our cart to make a running tally in our heads, including discounts, so we would know what she should be charged at check-out,” says Kelley. “My mother was a nurse who loved numbers and could do math in her head so she thought we should know how to do that, too.”

In her new role as Board of Education chair, Kelley wants to make sure that Old Saybrook schools’ students have consistent and sufficient opportunities to build skills in math and science. In an economy whose tools are computers and software rather than pencils and paper, employers expect employees to arrive equipped with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) skills.

Her aspirations led her to earn a bachelors’ degree with a dual major in biology and art history. As part of her program, she did research in medical laboratories in New York City. She currently is nearly finished a program that will lead to her earning a masters’ degree in public health.

Her current full-time post is working for Medtronic as director of clinical research for the firm’s minimally invasive surgery product line.

Since joining the Board of Education in 2010, Kelley has served on the budget and fiscal committee and chaired the Facilities Committee that oversaw the summer 2015 school projects including the replacement of the middle school roof and the Goodwin School windows. She also was the board liaison for labor negotiations for the custodians and the school administrators’ contracts.

“The board is pretty highly functioning right now and there is a good spirit of collaboration. There will be some level of change going forward, but what it will be, we’ll just have to evaluate as we go along,” says Kelley.

The Board of Education is about to embark on a new strategic planning process, which the board does every five years. The board recently hired the non-profit New England Schools Development Council to facilitate the planning process.

The issues facing the board in this year’s planning process include national education reform initiatives, changes to the national education authorizing legislation, and navigating and translating Common Core standards into the district’s curriculum and teaching.

“We need to support our teachers, students, and parents in this transition to Common Core. This is a different way of teaching and we have to face it from a holistic perspective,” says Kelley.

In Connecticut, years ago the state Board of Education adopted the national Common Core standards as the state’s guidance for language arts and math. Recently the state Board of Education also adopted the Common Core Standards for science. These standards—a list of what knowledge, skills, and concepts should be acquired at each grade level in each subject—and the state Department of Education guidance on how to implement the standards guide local districts’ approaches to curriculum, teaching, learning, and assessment.

The school year of 2014-’15 was the first in which the new multi-state Smarter Balanced Assessment tests (based on Common Core standards) became the state’s main standardized tests.

“Implementation went fairly well. Now it’s about interpreting the results and seeing how the results fit into the broader picture. We always look at the results and develop an action plan,” says Kelley.

Kelley’s interest in education and youth development started early. While in high school and college, she tutored struggling students; for four years in New York City, she was a counselor for visually impaired teens, helping them to learn life skills and become independent. She also served for three years as the swim coach for students ages 5 to 18 at New York City’s 92nd Street Y.

Today, she works as an adult advisor to the teen youth group at First Church of Christ (Congregational) in Old Saybrook.

“I think I like working with teens because I feel that teenagers need an adult outside of their parents to talk to. I always hope to serve in this role the way that adults served that role for me,” says Kelley.

“My two biggest adult models growing up were the advisor for my church youth group (I still see him to this day) and my high school swim coach. My coach was such a positive and supportive person. She always took the time to talk through any personal or school issues while also helping to model [good] behavior and teaching us healthy habits,” she continues.

With two pre-school children, a fulltime job, and volunteer roles as Board of Education chair and youth group advisor, Kelley admits she’s busy—but not too busy to marvel in watching her children grow.

“Now I spend a lot of my free time playing with my kids,” Kelley says. “It’s great to see how they see the world.”