Interview with a Superintendent

I sat down recently with a superintendent from a neighboring school district who I have developed a professional relationship over the past several years.  Being in a small school district, I felt I had a pretty good grasp on what my superintendent does on a monthly basis.  I thought it might be more helpful for my growth to speak with a different superintendent with different ideas and perspectives.

I will preface this with saying that the superintendent I interviewed also serves as his district's elementary principal -- a common arrangement in our small, rural school districts across Wisconsin.  I note this as many times during the course of our conversation, I wondered if he was speaking with his superintendent hat on, or his principal hat.  Regardless, I found his insights and perspectives on the job of superintendent to be refreshing, enlightening, and realistic.

Reflecting on our conversation, there seemed to be three general categories that I would classify his monthly checklist items into:  managerial, instructional, and community.

I will begin with the managerial items, as it appears that the majority of the monthly tasks would fall into the management of the school district.  Some of these items include monthly meetings at CESA, monthly Ridge and Valley Conference meetings, development of the School Board meeting agenda, School Board meetings, and monthly departmental leadership meetings within the district.  For example, he meets monthly with the other building Principal, the Director of Maintenance, Director of Food Service, Transportation Director, and Business Manager.  I don't believe that any of these meetings or monthly tasks are necessarily aligned with the district vision or goals, but are necessary tasks to ensure effective management of the district.

There are several tasks that this superintendent performs on a monthly basis that I would categorize as community liaison tasks.  Examples of these tasks include attendance at a variety of community organizational meetings, including the Lions Club, American Legion, and Village Board Meetings.  He views occasional attendance at these meetings as an opportunity to tell the story of his school district.  He is also very active in building collaborative partnerships with local businesses to provide opportunities for students.  He meets with local businesses at least monthly to discuss collaborative opportunities with his district.

Finally are the monthly tasks I would consider instructional in nature.  First, he consistently reviews student data for growth, particularly in classes or grade levels that have historically scored low on assessments.  He meets regularly with teachers to look at the data, discuss instructional and assessment practices, and to identify better instructional and assessment methods.  For example, he met regularly with teachers this past year to discuss benchmark assessments, and ultimately decided to move away from MAP testing and will begin using STAR assessments this coming year.  He has also worked hand in hand with the staff aligning curriculum with the Common Core.  As I stated earlier in the blog, I questioned whether these were tasks he's involved in as the elementary principal, or as the superintendent?  I wonder if he would have that same level of involvement if he were strictly the superintendent.  My guess would be no, rather he would grant that autonomy to the staff and principal.  

I believe from these tasks it would be very easy to create a monthly checklist, but as he stated during our conversation, it's very easy to react to the day to day tasks that arise, and to have to push some of the routine tasks aside.

Applying what I learned to Blake and Mouton's Managerial Grid Model, I believe this superintendent to be in the Team Management quartile of the grid.  He often meets with staff concerning student achievement and growth, and often challenges staff, young and veteran, to continually improve their instruction to promote student growth.  This also applies to his departmental leadership, including food service, maintenance, and transportation.  He has built mutual trust and respect with the leadership team, and expects the highest levels of performance in their roles of department leaders.  I would classify the organization under his leadership as productive, continually looking for areas of growth as individuals, teams, and a district.

Continuous School Improvement: A Must For School Boards

Continuous improvement is an attitude that must be adopted and consistently reinforced within a school district.  This is no more apparent than at the School Board level.  A district's School Board must recognize and adopt the attitude of continuous improvement.  More so than ever, a district's Board of Education is faced with the challenge of creating a culture of continuous improvement, promoting experimentation, innovation, and risk-taking.  However, as with most initiatives and changes, continuous improvement needs to be implemented at the Board level under the direction and leadership of the District Administrator.

After attending many School Board meetings over the last seven years, it has become apparent that our district administration and School Board are very far from adopting a culture of continuous improvement at the School Board level.  That's not to say that there aren't continuous improvement aspects going on at the building levels.  We often use data to make instructional decisions at the building level, such as RtI, PBIS, and curricular decisions.  Many of our district curricular and instructional changes are first proposed at the Board committee level, and then the committee makes a recommendation to the whole Board.  Very few times can I remember the Board committee or the Board as a whole relying on data to make those decisions.

At our most recent School Board meeting, the majority of the items presented were simple action items that were discussed by the School Board, but not in line with the continuous improvement ideology.  One recurring agenda item that I feel had the opportunity to be in line with the continuous improvement model is a $1.2 million building referendum that goes to vote in August.  In short, we are proposing to build a $1.2 million wellness center utilizing our PEP Grant to supply the equipment.  There were several opportunities for the School Board to engage in the continuous improvement model over the last several months.  One area in particular that I feel has been under-utilized is the use of data in presenting the need for the fitness center.  I don't believe the superintendent has effectively presented the proposal using the continuous improvement methodology.  As I mentioned earlier, there have been other opportunities over the past few years where our district has come up short in using the continuous improvement model.  Examples include curricular alignment and adoption, the formation of our district RtI model, the adoption of PLCs and PBIS, and most recently, our pilot for Educator Effectiveness.

As superintendent, I plan on fully committing to the continuous improvement model, and using this model with our School Board.  First, I would ensure that our district staff understands and is committed to using the continuous improvement model.  I would then sit down with the School Board and provide them with the background and reasoning for aligning to the continuous improvement model as a School Board.  I would provide them with as much literature as possible to support the model, including doing a book study with the Board using The Key Work of School Boards.  After the initial steps, in collaboration with the School Board, we would look at bringing a continuous improvement expert to the School Board to work with them through the initial planning stages of adoption.  Finally, as superintendent, I would need to ensure that School Board meetings stay focused on continuous improvement, and continually looking to improve the way the Board does business.  One of the most important changes we would make is requiring that the Board utilizes data in the majority of decisions they make.

Continuous school improvement has to be a model that all district administrators and School Boards seriously consider.  Do we want to be a district that still does not allow our students to use calculators in math class?

Takeaways from "Community: The Structure of Belonging" by Peter Block

Peter Block's book, Community:  The Structure of Belonging, is a transformational book that examines the current state of many communities, and provides many insights and explorations into how we can transform into a powerful community.

One of Block's points that spoke loudest to me is the concept of "the small group being the unit of transformation."  Individuals feel more empowered in small groups, and in turn feel more connected to the large group.  One facet of building a strong community is overcoming isolation.  Allowing individuals to form a sense of security and intimacy working in small groups discourages individuals from working in isolation.  In a large group setting, the leader is generally the person in power.  Organizing individuals in small groups shifts power and accountability from the leader to the individuals.  There will always be occurrences where the large group is necessary, but it is critical as a leader to allow individuals time to meet in small groups, and the ability to report out to the large group.

There are several aspects of my current position as Principal that this concept directly applies to.  On one hand, many of our largest district initiatives are undertaken utilizing small groups.  For example, this past school year, we had monthly professional development sessions with staff members on Educator Effectiveness.  During these hour long sessions, staff were grouped in small groups, viewed teaching videos from Teachscape, and discussed these videos as they pertained to Danielson's Framework in their small groups.  They were then given the opportunity to share out with the large group.  We have also used this similar method with many other district initiatives.  On the other hand, I also recognize areas of my position that I should be utilizing the small group concept more effectively.  This is apparent with regular staff meetings that we conduct.  These meetings generally take the structure of Robert's Rules of Order, focusing on explanation and problem solving, rather than engagement.  Going forward, I will ensure that staff members are given more opportunities to engage in small group discussion during regular staff meetings.

A second point in Block's book that I was able to relate to also involved increasing individual engagement in the community.  In Chapter 10, Block describes the concept of transformation occurring through the way we speak and listen to each other, specifically our questioning techniques.  Good questions encourage engagement, are memorable, and have a transformative power.  Answers have a tendency to shut down the discussion, to oppress individual engagement.  There are three qualities to all great questions.  First, great questions are ambiguous, requiring each individual to bring their own meaning to the conversation.  Second, these questions are personal for each individual.  Third, great questions have an edge, evoking a sense of anxiety among individuals.  Finally, great questions require a level of trust and respect among the community, which is built gradually.

Once again, I am brought back to the scenario of running a monthly staff meeting.  Many times, these meetings have a low level of engagement, and have more answers than they do questions.  At this point, I don't feel properly equipped to engage in the questioning techniques described by Block, but I am interested in doing additional research on this method of individual engagement and utilizing this concept with our staff.

There are several other points in the book that I found very pertinent to my position as a building leader.  Without getting into additional details, these include:

• transforming isolation within communities into connectedness and caring
• engaging citizens is key to community transformation
• we need to focus our efforts on shifting from a Stuck Community to a Restorative Community
• encourage ownership of individuals within the community  

If you're in a leadership position, or a person looking to improve your community, Community by Peter Block is a must read book on making the necessary and fundamental changes to improve your community.

A Vision and Mission We Can All Be Proud Of

One of the most critical roles of today’s district leader is fostering a collaborative environment to create a common mission and vision toward continuous school improvement. The creation of a district mission and vision is important to define your purpose, assess the current situation of your district, and to determine where you would like your district to be in the future. Before creating a vision, the district needs to create a mission statement, or a statement clarifying our purpose. After creating the mission statement, creating the common vision begins by asking two simple questions: Where are we right now? What do we hope to become? The dialogue around these two questions needs to take place in a collaborative environment created by the district leader, including but not limited to, School Board Members, district leadership, teachers, support staff, parents, and community members

The continuous school improvement process in the North Crawford School District will begin by defining our mission and vision. Prior to beginning the school year, we will work with a small leadership group, consisting of selected members from the above named groups, to define mission and vision, and to analyze pertinent student data.  It is imperative that this leadership team understand what a vision and mission statement are, and are able to teach this to the rest of the staff.  As important is the ability of the leadership team to select and interpret the district data necessary to formulate the vision and mission.  We need to look past the "standard" data, such as WKCE scores, MAP results, and ACT scores, and recognize that there is a wealth of other student data that exist in our district which will assist us in our goal.  Often overlooked student data includes attendance rates, behavioral referrals, student and parent surveys, and others. 

During our fall inservice days, under the direction of the leadership team, the staff will collaborate to define what a mission and vision statement are, and what is the purpose of creating a mission and vision statement. The leadership team will share student data with the staff, looking for trends in the data. Working from the data, we will then have staff work in small groups to create a mission statement. The small groups will consist of individuals from different representative groups, under the direction of one of the leadership team members.  The individual mission statements will be discussed with the whole group, and used to develop an overall mission of the district. After defining our purpose, we will begin the exploration of our vision. Again, this will occur by having small groups explore the two questions stated above. Common themes will be examined within the large group setting, until a common vision can be constructed.

Once the mission and vision are completed, the whole group will examine the following questions as it pertains to the mission and vision statements:

• Is the mission and vision focused on student engagement and student achievement?
• Does the mission and vision attempt to move the district forward?
• Is the mission and vision in line with School Board and District goals?
• Will the district vision and mission be useful to our Professional Learning Communities in their daily collaborative efforts?
• Did we ensure that our vision and mission meets the needs of all the stakeholders involved?
• Is there a process in place to continually revisit and examine the effectiveness of our district mission and vision?

Creating an effective district vision and mission are the most important initial steps in a district's overall school improvement plan.  The process requires a collaborative effort with all district stakeholders, and most importantly, strong leadership at the top to facilitate and coordinate this important endeavor.  The leader must recognize the importance of establishing an effective vision, and inviting others to share in its development.

Sources:

How To Help Your School Thrive, Gabriel and Farmer, 2009

District Leadership That Works, Marzano and Waters, 2009