Superintendent Interview - Monthly Checklists

After having sat in on a few school board meetings and Administrative Team meetings with my new Superintendent, I started to get a feel for the type of leadership style she utilized in her day to day practice.  I was glad to see that she utilized this style consistently and did not play to one group and then differently to another (I have seen that before and it does not create cohesion).  I was getting ready to ask her for a monthly checklist that she might utilize to help guide her through the year, and then at my first School Board meeting she handed out the checklist to the board members and the attending administrators.  It looked like this:

Board Meeting Date:      Board Agenda Items:
         July:                   Fund 10 Revenue Budget 
                                  Fund 10 Expenditure Budget
                                  Athletic/Activities Handbook
                                  Rebid Waste Contract for 11/2014

       August:                Building Handbooks: Student & Teacher
                                  Bread Contract
                                  Milk Contract
                                  End of Year Fund Balances
                                  Annual Meeting

     September:            Spring Sports Contracts

       October 
    1st Meeting:            Review of Summer School Offerings/Expenditures
                                 Early Graduation Requests
                                 Enrollment Reports
                                 Budget Adjustments

      October
    2nd Meeting:           Set Tax Levy
                                 Set Revenue Budget
                                 Set Expenditure Budget
                                 Short-Term Loan
                                 Strategic Plan Update

     November:             Youth Options Approval for Spring Semester
                                 Short-Term Loan Approval
                                 
     December:             Financial Audit Report
                                 Non-represented Staff Evaluations
                                Administrator Evaluations
                                Fall Coach Contracts

      January:              HS Course Curriculum Guide
                                Administrative Contract Renewals
                               Evaluation of Probationary Staff
                               Summer Recreation Coordinator Contract

      February:            Valedictorian/Salutatorian 
                               Preliminary Staffing Levels
                               Summer School Coordinator

        March:              School Calendar
                               Youth Options Approval for Fall Semester
                               Non-represented Staff Contracts
                               Transportation Contract
                               Bus Contractor Lease Agreement

        April
    1st Meeting:          School Calendar
                               Staffing Levels 
                               66:030 Agreements
                               Preliminary Non-renewal notices
                               Teacher Contracts

        April
   2nd Meeting:          New Board Member Orientation (TBD)
                               Board Reorganization
                               Designation of Depositories
                               Committee Assignments
                               Board of Education Calendar
                               CESA #3 Contract

        May:                Extended Summer Contracts
                               Extra Curricular Assignments for next year
                               Final Non-renewal notices
                               Lay-off notices
                               Set All Fees
                               Set School Lunch Prices
                               Set following year graduation date
                               SWEEP Agreement
                               Open Enrollment Requests

       June
   1st Meeting:          Winter Coach and Advisor Contracts
                              Professional and Support Staff Compensation
                              Administrator Compensation
                              Non-represented Staff Compensation

       June
  2nd Meeting:          Amendments of Current Year Budget
                              Set Aside Cash Balance/PO's in Fund Balance
                              Insurance Renewals

While my new Superintendent doesn't exactly employ a servant style leadership, I am pleased that she greatly utilizes a collaborative leadership style and has a solid grasp of educational best practices, rather than being a accounting expert.  She invites staff input and values their knowledge.  She asks for admin team input and listens to team members while also providing valuable feedback.  She is heavily invested in professional development and believes that we need adequate resources to support that need.

While all of those practices and beliefs are good, I do see areas that concern me.  There has been a lack of professional development for the board members.  There is little discussion of student performance data, performance targets, and checks on progress toward district goals.  The vision for the district has not been referred to once, and the board truly seems only interested in the finances.  I am hoping through time, discussions and professional development, the administrative team will come around to see the importance of developing the board in this way so that student learning can benefit from it.

The Key Work of School Boards

I have to admit, when this book first arrived, I was a little disappointed.  It was thin, and it looked like a workbook that my children bring home.  You know, the ones filled with mindless repetitive math facts, that you figure out the concept of after the first 4 problems and then look down and see have to do 46 more.  But, as I read it, I found it to be filled with practical information as well as with an innovative edge that said, "let's stop doing things the same way we always have."  Because it was a fairly quick and easy read I may be the only "geek" in class that read more than the required chapters, but found them to be quite informative.  Still, I will try to stay focused here on chapter 12 and the discussion of Continuous Improvement. 


Continuous Improvement is something that I brought to my last school, Ridgeway Elementary School, when we began our journey of developing a Professional Learning Community model that we set as a vision after reading , "Whatever it Takes," by DuFour, Eaker, DuFour & Karhanek.  We (the RES staff and I) had determined that we would begin to look at all of our practices to see what we could do to improve learning at our school.  Nothing was sacred.  We were forced to use the "Board Approved" curriculum, but we began to view it as more of a resource than the holy bible that must be quoted word for word.  We read books on best practice from various well respected education researchers and authors.  We went on site visits to schools that were seen as successful and that had test scores to back up these claims of success.  I was very enthused to see my staff take hold of the continuous improvement strategy and really embrace it.  

We caught some grief from staff and leadership at the other buildings because we were bucking some long established practices, but our test scores and parent feedback was hard to argue.  As we began to implement an RTI program into our daily practice we began to see even better results.  The two elementary staffs came together to put in some fantastic intervention programs and practices that included a tool for data warehousing and progress monitoring.  We decided we were ready to be one of the first schools in the state to qualify a student under the RTI model for a Specific Learning Disability (SLD).  We weren't sure if this was something to be proud of or if we were ready to do it, but the fact was we had tried several different interventions with this student, and checked the fidelity ( I often refer to that word as the "F" word that we should not utter, but for different reasons) of those interventions, and found that we had done all we could without altering the program so much that the student would need modifications in line with special education if we provided interventions any more intense than we already were providing.  We went for it.  The student has found more success in the Special Education program and more importantly is enjoying school much more and will be less likely to drop out of school in the future.  Again we found success.  Not in the same old practices that we had utilized for years, but in the question everything approach we had taken.  Even after trying 4 different interventions with the same child, the team would ask, "are we sure we are meeting with him as often as we agreed? Do we need to meet more? Are we sure this intervention is the best one for him?"  This attention to detail and repeated review of data meant that this student would not fall between the cracks and created a path that meant success for the future students entering the RTI program.  Our successes were adding up.  

My frustration that I feel with larger scale Continuous Improvement efforts has been that they have thus far been all talk and no action.  I have worked with 3 districts now that talked about CI efforts and how strategic planning will make a difference, and that this process will guide us as we move forward in this ever changing milieu of education.  I am now starting with my fourth district and I am once again hopeful that we will utilize a continuous improvement model, but do more than just talk about it, create a pretty plan, and then continue to practice strategies and procedures that have been in place for years, because they are familiar, easy and not upsetting to anyone.  This is the "Rut"   that I see most public schools stuck in.  The rut that many administrators do not want to climb out of for fear that things will change back to the old way, that staff will be upset with the needed changes, or that the tremendous effort that  will be needed to learn and follow through with the needed changes.  The Key Work of School Boards (TKWSB) shares how we may need to ask ourselves if the comfort of our routine is driving out your responsibility to think and plan.  "Routines unchecked become ruts" (p.77).  The idea that truly rung home with me was the note that stated, "In fact, our tendency to cling to what has worked is often what blinds us to the present and the future, and leaves us bewildered about what to do in the face of new realities," (p77).  This is the reality that I have seen in far too many districts, and even in my own.  I have hopes that the Common Core State Standards & the Next Generation Assessments can help change this, but I also think it is a shame that an accountability mandate is the only way to get some districts to move forward, and what is worse is that they attach ignorant practices such as value added and high stakes testing to these otherwise well intentioned initiatives.  






As I have stated above, I have sat in on many School Board meetings, in up to 4 different districts now and have seen little progress on talk and plans of continuous improvements.  Each has required a strategic plan (usually about a 5 year plan) and each has required yearly goals of each administrator and school building.  What I haven't yet witnessed is serious discussion about practices, curriculum, buildings, technology, or the various other factors and resources that affect the educational environment within a school district.  I have seen these discussions take place in my school (although truly only in my most recent building) and I have seen progress made there, but even the changes we would like to have made, we slowed or halted when goals or practices reached a level of change that needed district support to progress.  I guess I would like to see education begin to take more of a science approach to things.  Everything is an experiment.  We try new things.  We experiment with the idea.  We test the hypothesis.  If it fails......then it fails, and we figure out what we need to change to make it work the next time.  No punishment.  No threat of job loss.  Just the time and support needed to go back to the drawing board, create a new plan, and experiment again.  Then when you find success.......start to question what you are doing.  Did it work well for everyone?  If not, why not?  And we start again.  


I am now working in a small rural district.  It is made up of 6 different towns that were too small to support their own districts, and most of the community members are fairly conservative and do not have a great deal of access or familiarity with technology.  While I have been impressed with the technology purchases they have made within their schools (SMARTBoards, Doc Cameras, iPads), I do have some concerns over limited budgets that have forced them to use inferior servers (Novell systems- argh!).  Well, speed isn't everything.  Again, is this a district that talks the talk, but when it comes time to walk the talk.....well, do we stumble and trip.  Or worse, do we step back in fear of tripping.  I am awaiting my first School Board meeting in my new district and I hope to have a better sense of things then.  Wish me luck.


hopeful................!

Developing a Community's Vision for Education

I am very glad I decided to wait before posting on this subject.  While I gleaned a great deal from our interview with the Superintendent from the Hudson School District (Mary Bowen-Eggebraaten) as well as looking through the documents from De Forest & Cashton School District's, the concept of vision development matching a community's vision didn't sink in until reading Block's book, Community, The Structure of Belonging.  While his book didn't directly deal with vision building for a school district his insights on the importance of building a sense of  community truly hit home and struck me as the integral part of having a school district's vision to become a successful process and document that will help guide an entire community in how to move forward and guide decisions that the majority of people will stand behind.


This understanding was a major growth process for me and helped define a couple of truths that I have come to realize.  Part of what I have struggled with in education is the lack of vision I have seen in various districts, or at least a lack of commitment to following the vision which was also confirmed by Scott Sand in his recent blog post.  Even though his situation is slightly different (He is the president of DeVry University in Los Angeles) he still finds many of the same challenges we face in the K-12 education setting.  By lack of vision I mean to say a vision that is either so bland or outdated that I am not sure if the educators working under the vision are even aware of it, or have any idea what it takes to follow it.  I have also witnessed district and building leaders that were not inspired to make sure that the vision was a tool to reference as we made decisions that affected daily instructional practices and ultimately affected the education of students.  My frustration has been that I have been an avid reader and searcher for information on best practices in education and how we can meet the needs of all students to help them achieve success.  My belief that embracing and utilizing technology in schools may be the only thing that saves us from going to a completely privatized system is a belief that is not shared by everyone.  My beliefs have been that I needed to become a Superintendent so that I had the power to force that vision.  While I tried to convince myself that educating stakeholders and selling them on these best practices would be the way to achieve this, I am not so convinced any longer.  












After reading Block's book and having some great discussions with other Superintendents and the future district administrators in this program, I have decided that my previous thought out method would have proved to be successful only for a short time (the length of my tenure in the district at best) and would have taken a great deal of effort on my part (after all, it was my vision).  However, if I were to follow Block's advice and take the same steps that leadership in Cashton, De Forest and Hudson have taken, then I believe that I could build a sustainable vision and one that would not just hang on the wall.  It would be one that was created and supported by stakeholders from all over the community.  The same stakeholders whose support is needed when attempting to pass the referendums needed to support large scale school improvements (whether they be buildings or technology purchases).  A vision that is actually practiced everyday by teachers, administrators, support staff, board members, parents and community members.  


I think creating a vision that is focused on a systems approach to continuous improvement is the key to implementing a vision that never goes out of date.  To be continually questioning our practices seems like the best approach to ensuring that you are maintaining best practices.   This is what Stephen M. R. Covey (The Speed of Trust) speaks of when referencing Toyota's practices for developing some of the most reliable vehicles on the road today.  They had to refocus their efforts early in their efforts  to become a world wide car producer.  they developed a strategy based on continuous improvement called Kaizen.  That is not to say, that things need to constantly be changing, but rather that if you are in the constant practice of questioning if there is a better way, and are not a victim of the fear of change, which ends up rendering your vision useless, then you can stay focused on meeting the ever changing needs of students.

One of the things I have definitely learned from class, our readings and my personal learning network (Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, etc.) is that when it comes time to interview for a position, that I need to remember that I am interviewing the district & community as well.  I need to keep in mind that I am wanting to find a district/community that aligns well with my personal vision as well.  Do they value the same things I do?  Do they have a continuous improvement mindset?  If so, then I would look forward to working with various community members, staff and even students in developing a vision that would guide us into the future, a resource that we would be able to reference everyday, that is never needing to be dusted off to recall what it is we are suppose to be doing as a community.