Lisa Walker traces the moment her profession of three decades changed back to 2020.

As the veteran superintendent shepherded the Monadnock Regional School District through a pandemic reopening plan, she received a pair of emails two minutes apart from each other.

“The first one absolutely lambasted me for thinking that it’s OK to require masks and [said] there’s no real virus, and the other one was the complete polar opposite,” Walker recalled. “That’s where it started to really erode.”

Walker, a Peterborough resident and lifelong educator, had dealt with angry families before, but never before had she experienced such an intensity of animosity directed at her. On multiple occasions, she contacted police because she feared for her safety.

As Walker finished out a nine-year tenure in Monadnock and transitioned last year to a part-time superintendent role in the small town of Grantham, she initially felt the level of vitriol directed at school administrators like her subside. But over the last year, as the Trump administration’s goal to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has collided with what some contend are state- and federal-level efforts to dismantle public education, Walker said she has noticed a marked increase in the pandemic-era rhetoric.

“The way in which people started to disagree during COVID never went away and it's getting worse again,” she said.

Walker, 54, signed a multiyear contract in Grantham and believed the position would serve as a fitting coda to a career in education that included being named New Hampshire’s superintendent of the year in 2022. But over the last few months, she decided she can no longer take the politicization that increasingly consumes her work.

“Every time I get another email, or there’s another attack on something related to public education, it just drives my blood pressure up,” Walker said.

As she exits the profession prematurely, Walker is sounding the alarm on what she sees as the dire straits facing public education, offering an inside view not ordinarily shared publicly by superintendents, who typically see it as safer to keep their heads down.

“I'm concerned that a lot of the great things and progress that has happened to public education over the last 40, 50, 60 years is in danger of being undone,” she said.

Walker said in a pair of interviews over the last week that she is at a loss for how to convince parents that schools don’t “indoctrinate” or “groom” students, as some members of the Republican party claim.

“I can’t keep having the same arguments and battles. I don’t want to have those arguments and battles with folks,” she said. “It really takes a toll on you.”

She is frustrated, as well, by the way DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion – has been co-opted.

“That’s what public schools are,” Walker said. “That’s what we represent: we serve all students. Everyone’s welcome. It doesn't matter where you live. It doesn't matter what the color of your skin is – it doesn’t matter. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter if you have a disability – you're welcome with us.”

On Tuesday, the Grantham School Board voted unanimously to direct Walker not to take action on a Trump administration order meted out to every school district in the country to certify that it doesn’t engage in “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Walker said that while Grantham doesn’t violate federal anti-discrimination laws,  the certification document contains no “good definition” of what qualifies under the Trump administration’s interpretations of the law.

The Grantham school board’s decision could put over $100,000 in federal funding at risk, according to Walker.

Walker is not the only school administrator facing the headwinds of political pressure.

Earlier this year, for example, Bow and Dunbarton Superintendent Marcy Kelley faced down an unprecedented House bill calling for her removal in the wake of her decision to remove parents from a sporting event for protesting the participation of a transgender girl. Kelley received an outpouring of support, the legislative effort fizzled and a federal judge ruled earlier this month that Kelley’s handling of the situation was “entirely reasonable.”

Mark MacLean, the director of New Hampshire’s school administrator association and the former superintendent of Merrimack Valley and Andover, said superintendents have increasingly been thrust onto the front lines of responding to the most-contentious political issues facing the country.

“If you put political divisiveness and hyperbolic politics on top of [the responsibilities that superintendents already hold], it complicates things, because you are often looked to, to opine on things, and they don’t teach that in superintendent school,” MacLean said.

As Walker transitions out of education, she is preparing to enter another service profession. Walker, who is married to Peterborough Fire Chief Ed Walker, has served as a per-diem and part-time EMT on the force since 2021 and is in the process of obtaining an advanced license. 

She sees the job as a return to her roots – before serving as a school leader got out of hand.

“I get to talk to people and I get to help people, which is exactly why I got into education, because I liked kids and I liked teaching kids and I liked seeing them learn,” Walker said. “I like helping people and seeing them feel better, even if it's only for the 15 or 20 minutes that I’m with them to get them to the hospital.”

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.