Voices of the Bay: Warren’s Christine Barlow

While growing up in Seekonk, Massachusetts, Christine “Chrissy” Barlow spent summers in Touisset. When COVID shut down the country, including Washington, DC where she and her young family lived, they packed up and headed to her family’s cottage to ride it out. After a brief return to DC, they headed back and now call the peninsula home. Barlow was recently named the Assistant General Counsel for the Division of Elementary, Secondary, Adult and Vocational Education, Office of the General Counsel for the US Department of Education. Her division provides legal advice on the distribution of federal grants that help school districts with everything from math and literacy coaches to after-school programs. The parent of two children at Hugh Cole Elementary School, Barlow is a candidate on the November ballot for two open non-partisan Warren seats for the Bristol Warren Regional School Committee.

Influence: My interest in public service stemmed from my uncle who was a local representative from East Providence, and then in college I was a Senate Page at the RI State House, and did community organizing work. 

Branching Out: I applied to be a law clerk at the US Department of Education for my second year of law school. That summer I did lots of assignments for all different people and really enjoyed it; the people were really great mentors who were passionate about the work. I stayed part-time my last year of law school, and then they had an opening when I graduated. I was never interested in working on “the Hill.”

Funding: In 2009, I transferred to my current division which essentially covers administering federal education grants to the states (which sends it down to the schools) and nonprofits. I was interested in how the federal government helps to promote equity and education, and help states with that. Since moving back, my duty station, as it’s referred to in the federal government, is here, but I go to DC quarterly to be with my team. We have more remote employees than we ever had. We’ve got people from all over the country who worked in school districts or who worked in state departments of education, who are program officers for these grants, and they’re able to provide a greater perspective than when it was just those of us in the DC area.

Insider: It’s funny being in a PTO meeting and hearing what the funding is for or where it’s from. As a parent myself, the biggest way that I can make an impact is help explain to school districts how they can use the federal dollars. On the flipside, I am able to go back to my colleagues about an after-school tutoring program that my daughters were in at Hugh Cole and I am positive that it was education funds that helped support it. Federal dollars help support things like reading and math coaches in schools, those types of things.

Full Plate: So much is on the school district’s plate regarding care for our children. I think one of the biggest challenges for school districts is how to coordinate all of those things with the money that they’re given. One of the biggest things we try is to make things easier at the federal level to coordinate among ourselves because the school lunch program is the Department of Agriculture, and some mental health services are Department of Health and Human Services.