For Select Board Member Danielle Leonard, much of what she does is with her eight- and five-year-old children in mind.

“I’ve tried to really, everything I do, every decision I make, almost every sentence I speak, I try to keep in mind that my kids are watching,” Leonard said. “Our kids in town are watching, and we really want our elected officials to be passionate, and at the same time appropriate and measured…Everything I do is for them.”

Leonard, who grew up in Revere, married her wife, whose family has lived in Swampscott for several generations.

“We decided we wanted to have kids, and we knew that Swampscott was the place that we wanted to raise them in,” Leonard said. “It’s got a nice feel to it to raise kids in.”

The family now enjoys staying locally together for dinners, ice cream, beaches, parks and sports clubs.

Leonard previously worked in the Swampscott School District. She began as the head of payroll and later served as now-Superintendent Jason Calichman’s secretary. In 2022, she took over as the human resources administrator in the Lynnfield public schools, and now she works as the health and welfare consultant at Harvard University.

Altogether, Leonard said the schools play a significant role in her advocacy efforts in town.

“My wife is the middle school phys ed teacher, and having worked there for almost 10 years as the head of payroll, it gave me a good glimpse into how the schools function, what their challenges are, what they go through,” Leonard said.

She was approached by a few people in town to consider running for a board or committee, many thinking she’d taken on the School Committee.

“But eventually I started to see things that were concerning, and I felt like maybe my background could help with some of the challenges in town,” Leonard said. “So I got involved and quickly developed a network of people who felt the same about my background.”

Leonard admitted that juggling a family, a full-time job, and what often feels like a second full-time job as a Select Board member can be challenging.

“But it’s also rewarding, and it’s great to listen to people and understand what their needs are and their concerns are, and that’s really always what drives me, in terms of how I vote, how I see things,” Leonard said. “I’m always looking at it from a resident perspective, so that really makes it pretty easy to guide me as to what to do and what to be concerned about and interested in. The concerns and interests of the residents is what concerns me.”

Most recently, her concerns have been around funding the schools, Leonard said. 

“By working in the schools for 10 years, it gave me an inside view of what they go through year after year in terms of cuts in challenges and understanding the cost of education is not static,” Leonard said. “It’s one that goes up incrementally every single year, and that’s been a challenge for them…That was important to me to make sure that the residents here understood what is at stake when the schools have a budget gap.”

At the Town Meeting in May, members decided to approve budget reallocations to provide the school district with an additional $130,000. The Select Board had pushed for the money distributions to allow for the school’s budget increase. 

“Previously it seemed like an almost adversarial relationship between school and town, and that was very disappointing,” Leonard said. “That was something I hoped to change and hope to change in the future so that they can understand that it’s much more of a collaborative effort. Those two pieces need to work a little bit more cohesively, to the benefit of all of the children in the town.”

Now, Leonard said she’s “laser focused on getting the Hawthorne Project moving” as well as the Hadley boutique hotel “continuing on the road to development” and looking at “other areas that we can explore to increase revenue.”

“That’s a challenge like it is for any small town,” Leonard said. “The only way to really prevent further tax increases and to keep things affordable for people is to explore other sources of revenue, so that’s a big priority for me right now.”

Leonard shared that for the Hawthorne project, she’s just hoping that it “can be a process that we hear from all residents.” She wants the re-use committee to focus on narrowing down the different renderings “to a manageable level and actually engaging the community.”

“We really understand what people in this town want for that property,” Leonard said. “In my mind, I think it would be a wonderful thing to have a combination of green space and revenue producing space, so we can check all those boxes to make everybody have a little piece of what they want.”

She acknowledges that “people really want to know what’s going to happen.”

“It’s been quite some time since we’ve purchased it,” Leonard said. “So let’s get moving, right? By nature, I’m a doer. I don’t have a lot of ‘sit around and wait’ patience for things like that. That’s kind of how I approach things in my regular life, and that’s the same on the Select Board.”

Leonard said it’s important to be involved because she’s able to help make the difference people are asking for. She doesn’t want to be on the sidelines.

“There are a lot of people in town who have a lot of opinions but not necessarily any desire or motivation to jump in and fix the problem,” Leonard said. “That’s what I do. When I identify a problem, I want to fix it and I want to help fix it. I’m not interested in sitting around and complaining about it and finding ways to criticize or critique others that are trying to fix problems.”