Anne Staffieri has been chosen as the next superintendent of the San Dieguito Union High School District in California after leading the Escondido Union High School District for the past four years. Staffieri was also superintendent of Ramona USD from 2016-19. A former high school biology and Spanish teacher, Staffieri was named superintendent of the year by the California Continuation Education Association in 2021.

In North Carolina, Dale Cole has been unanimously approved as superintendent of Brunswick County Schools. A 30-year education veteran, Cole is now superintendent of Clay County Schools and has also worked for districts in Hyde and Beaufort counties. He also was voted North Carolina’s principal of the year 2013. In Ohio, Jeff Harrison will take over as superintendent of Brecksville-Broadview Heights City Schools on Aug. 1. Harrison, who has more than 20 years of experience in education, is currently the superintendent of Buckeye Local Schools.

Finally, in the Northwest, Superintendent Kim Spacek is moving from the 200-student Inchelium School District No. 70 in Washington to Mountain View School District 244 in Idaho, the Idaho County Free Press reports.

First-time superintendents take charge

Among the notable first-timers is Suzanne Johnson, who has been selected as the next superintendent of School District U-46, the second-largest in Illinois. Johnson had served five years as the suburban Chicago district’s deputy superintendent of instruction before being named interim superintendent in February.

In North Carolina, Major Warner will replace 10-year veteran David Jeck as superintendent of Fauquier County Public Schools in Virginia. Warner, who is now deputy superintendent, helped increase graduation rates and mentor principals and staff as Fauquier County’s chief academic officer. Warner began his career as a school counselor.

In the same state, Nakia Hardy, a deputy superintendent in Durham Public Schools, has been chosen to lead Lexington City Schools. Hardy has previously served as chief academic officer for Guilford County Schools, the executive director for teaching and learning for Baltimore City Public Schools and the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for Rockingham County Schools.

In California, Julienne Lee was chosen to lead the Buena Park School District near Los Angeles after having served as associate superintendent of educational services at Fullerton School District, where she oversaw dual-language immersion programs in Spanish and Korean and an award-winning intervention program. Lee has also been a dual-language immersion teacher, a Response to Intervention coach, an assistant principal and a principal.

Also in California, Gilroy USD has chosen as its next superintendent Anisha Munshi, an associate superintendent of professional learning and educational progress at the Santa Clara County Office of Education. Munshi began her career as an elementary school teacher and assistant principal at Gilroy USD.

More from DA: This low-profile staff position can save districts millions each year 

And in Texas, Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD has made interim superintendent Alejandro Elias its permanent leader. Elias has been the principal of an early college high school and a middle school in the district.

Other recently hired first-time superintendents include:

• Nathan Black, School District of Nekoosa (Wisconsin)
• Tamara Champa, Hastings Public Schools (Minnesota)
• Lisa Fletcher, Transylvania County Schools (North Carolina)
• Consuela Girty, Cherokee Central Schools (North Carolina)
• Elizabeth Kaufman, Mill Valley School District (California)
• Rebecca Kidwell, Seekonk Public Schools (Massachusetts)
• Matthew Neighbors, Galveston ISD (Texas)
• Robert Pappalardo, Apache Junction Unified School District (Arizona)
• Dana Kriznar (interim), Duval County Public Schools (Florida)

The post Several superintendents switch as first-timers join the ranks of K12 leadership appeared first on District Administration.

The food truck will, of course, be a big part of Lincoln Public Schools’ culinary CTE program. But getting the truck going will require the skills and participation of students studying graphic design, automotive repair, business and law, among other subjects. “This food truck is a mobile classroom that is cross-curricular,” says Filippelli, Rhode Island’s 2023 Superintendent of the Year.

Lincoln Public Schools bought the five-year-old food truck from a restaurant with $125,000 worth of help from the Rhode Island Department of Education. Three graphic design students, including one who is special needs, have designed the wrap to cover the exterior of the truck, now dubbed the “Lion’s Mane” after the district’s mascot. Business and law students will review state regulations to ensure the truck has all the appropriate licenses.

The CTE focus jibes with the “vision of a graduate” framework Filippelli and his team are now finalizing after three years of work. “That’s the curriculum driver for everything we want our little Lions to be when they come to preschool and what we want our seniors to exit as when they graduate,” he says.

That vision, however, goes nowhere without the facilities to support i. Lincoln Public Schools, a suburban district of about 3,200 students, recently completed a $60 million renovation of its high school and is now building a $9 million physical education center. In the fall, voters will be asked to approve a $25 million bond to fund new gymnasiums, makerspaces, STEM spaces and reimagined cafeterias at the district’s elementary schools, where the media centers are also being renovated and updated.

“We’ve got a lot of infrastructure to support the curriculum,” Filippelli explains. “By the time we’re done, we’re probably going to spend close to $100M in renovations. That is really exciting.”

Why you need a second therapy dog

Meeting the social-emotional needs of students and adults presents one of the biggest issues that Filippelli says he and his team are facing as the school year winds down. “Last school year, we were coming out of COVID and we came out pretty strong but this year, getting back into those routines and putting COVID in the rear-view mirror, that really has been a challenge,” he says. “There have been some behaviors that we’ve had to address that just leave you scratching your head.”

The district has used ESSER funds to hire extra social workers and psychologists and ramped up professional development on trauma-informed practices. The district is also now home to a therapy dog, a Labradoodle named Willow. “She has made an incredible difference when it comes time for state testing and finals exams,” Filippelli says. “We’re considering getting a second one because it has made a huge impact to have a therapy dog here.”

Lincoln has not struggled to hire teachers as much as it has in filling administrative vacancies. The district has received about half the applications that it normally gets for an open position.

More from DA: This low-profile staff position can save districts millions each year 

Filippelli is seeing both lower enrollments in college administrative training programs and fewer teachers excited about moving to central office. The pay for a beginning administrator—such as an assistant principal—is not that much higher than for an experienced teacher who also earns a stipend for additional instructional duties. Some educators may not consider the pay increase worth the tilt in work-life balance for an administrator who is obligated to attend school events multiple nights a week, among other duties.

Can schools provide everything?

Filippelli is deeply involved in state and regional school safety efforts, including with SENTRY, a Northeastern University-based think tank that is backed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and is looking into the role artificial intelligence can play in K12 security, among other research. The organization has also analyzed Lincoln’s lockdown drills.

He is also an adjuct instructor in the principal development program at Providence College and often works with state legislators on laws that will impact education, both positively and negatively. He is concerned about a bill that, at a cost of $15 million, would provide universal free meals to all students and the financial strain that could place on the state’s education system.

“Ever since we became mobile hospitals during COVID, parents have this expectation that schools just need to provide everything,” he concludes. “As you provide more, responsibility gets pulled away from parents, and when people have responsibilities pulled away from them, you get used to that really quickly.”

The post How this superintendent is fueling multidisciplinary learning with a food truck appeared first on District Administration.

Authorities did not provide any details about the criminal allegation made against Constant or the investigation, according to The Owensboro Times. Constant became Owensboro’s superintendent in 2020 and has worked for the district since 2011, having also served as assistant superintendent and chief academic officer. He has also worked for the Daviess County School District, the newspaper reported.

In West Virginia, Nicholas County Schools Superintendent Donna Burge-Tetrick resigned along with a school board member in the midst of what the Charleston Gazette-Mail described as seven years of “construction woes” that dogged efforts to recover from disastrous flooding in 2016. Coincidentally, that was the same year Burge-Tetrick was hired as superintendent.

Earlier in May, Nicholas County Schools had opened the second phase of reconstruction with a bid of $148 million, an amount that is $51 million over the funds remaining for the project, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported. The previous rebuilding phase was bogged down by disruptions that included a lawsuit between the district and state board of education in 2018, the newspaper added. Burge-Tetrick will remain on the job until June 30.

And Jason Reynolds, the superintendent of one of Arizona’s largest districts, announced that he will also step down in June, a year before his contract would have expired. Reynolds, who became Peoria Unified School District’s superintendent in 2020, was one of the first leaders to reopen classrooms to in-person learning during the COVID pandemic, according to the Arizona Republic.

The district has endured some controversy this year, notably when the school board voted 3-2 against restricting transgender students from accessing bathrooms consistent with their gender identity, the Arizona Republic reported. Reynold was previously the assistant superintendent of leadership and secondary instruction at Paradise Valley School District, also in Arizona.

More superintendents stepping down

In one of the most high-profile retirements of the last week, Superintendent Mark Henry will retire from Cypress-Fairbanks ISD in Texas in December 2023, after more than 40 years in education and 32 years as a superintendent. Henry also served as superintendent of four other districts: Milford, Collinsville, Sulphur Springs and Galena Park ISD.

More from DA: Do school districts stand a chance suing social media giants?

Leaders in a handful of other school districts have announced resignations and retirements in recent days:

• Superintendent Karling Aguilera-Fort is leaving the Oxnard School District (California) for a leadership position at San Francisco USD.
• Superintendent Kelli Bush is resigning from Elizabethtown Independent Schools (Kentucky) on July 1, The News-Enterprise reported.
• Boyd K. English, hired in 2018, is retiring from the Albertville City School System (Alabama).
• Superintendent Tim Johnson will leave the School District of Glenwood City (Wisconsin) on June 30.
• Roger Reed resigned from S&S Consolidated ISD (Texas) on May 27.

The post Kentucky superintendent suspended as two other leaders call it quits appeared first on District Administration.

“I want our two principals to understand they have the freedom to try something new and just because one attempt didn’t work, that doesn’t in any way hamper my support for them trying something else that’s different,” Perry explains. “We’re going to try something new again.”

The 450-student Arlee Joint School District, which is part of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes is 65% Native American and operates on a four-day school week. The schedule has helped the district attract and retain teachers who are willing to travel to the district from Missoula, which is about 20 miles away and home to the University of Montana.

Trying new things also means replacing outdated facilities with modernized schools. Arlee is now building a new space for grades 3-6 to replace a facility that is nearly more than 90 years old. The $14 million project, which is an extension of the K-2 building, is being financed with ESSER funds and bonds approved by local voters.

More from DA: How this superintendent is amping up the power of his small N.J. district

To get those bonds passed, Perry invited community members on some eye-opening tours of the old building. “A lot of community members went to school here,” he notes. “Their memories of what the school looked like 30 or 40 years ago is not what the school looks like now. In their mind, it’s the same school they went to and it was fine.”

The project will feature a larger media center with a maker space and room for Salish language and Indian studies programs. There will also be formal—and creative—outdoor learning spaces right outside elementary classrooms. “We have mountains all around and it’s absolutely gorgeous,” Perry says. “We want our kids outside.”

‘The good that can come from school’

A Montana native, Perry says there is a misconception that education is not highly valued on Indian reservations. Still, a challenge the superintendent and his team face is a side effect of the large number of Arlee students who are being raised by their grandparents.

“Our guardians have a tendency to skip a generation,” Perry says. “Some of the guardians of our current students don’t understand what the landscape of education looks like, that it’s no longer a teacher standing in front of the room and just lecturing and trying to get kids to understand the instruction.”

Staff also sometimes have trouble connecting with guardians who had bad experiences in school. “We get a good amount of pushback from some grandparents when we contact them about issues we may be having with a student,” he says. “Some of those grandparents attended boarding schools and were unbelievably mistreated so they don’t have in their minds the good that can come from school.”

Arlee is also dealing with a severe shortage of classified staff. Recruiting bus drivers, custodians and paraprofessionals has been “10 times harder” than hiring teachers. He has received zero applications this year for vacant bus driver and custodian positions. “With the change in what people can make in other professions, to get someone to be a special education paraprofessional for what we can afford to pay them is almost impossible,” he points out. “We can’t afford to increase pay like a private business can.”

‘We care about them everywhere’

Arlee’s educators are now devoting much of their focus to literacy, particularly reading comprehension, across the K12 curriculum. “We will do all we can to bring in parents, guardians to get them involved, to show how important reading is,” he says. “If we make a concerted effort in that area, I think we’re going to see growth everywhere else.”

Perry also prioritizes staying involved in the day-to-day life of his schools, a task he says is easier in a smaller district. He helps coach high school volleyball, is licensed to cover bus routes, fills in as a substitute teacher and often drives several hours to Arlee’s away games, among other activities. He believes he’s also the first superintendent in decades who has lived in the Arlee community.

“I make sure students know that I’m interested in them 24/7—it’s not just when they’re on their campus. We care about how they’re doing everywhere,” he concludes.

The post How this superintendent is giving his educators the freedom to change K12 education appeared first on District Administration.

“We try to offer a very wide breadth of programming—extracurricular and academic—that outmatches our size,” says Smith, who after seven years leading the Point Pleasant Beach School District was named New Jersey’s 2023 Superintendent of the Year.

What Smith is most excited about right now is the expansion of what his district calls “Gull Flight School”—which is not an aeronautics program. Rather, it gives students a chance to soar academically with more than 40 dual-enrollment courses in conjunction with nearby Ocean County College, Smith explains.

“We’re seeing more and more students get so many credits in high school, they’re entering college with a full year under their belts,” he continues. “And our parents and community members are now understanding how much of a tuition savings that is.”

More from DA: Teacher morale has not totally tanked. And here are 5 ways to rebuild it. 

The expansion of Gull Flight School is a natural outgrowth of one of the district’s most distinctive achievements. Point Pleasant Beach schools often have among the highest percentage of students taking AP classes in New Jersey. “Sometimes it’s hard for little schools to stand out because we can’t do as much,” Smith explains. “Our conversations are about access, and equity through access and how do you get all students to work at the level they’re capable of—and we believe in that work and we’ve made great strides.”

The other big initiative that has Smith fired up is Point Pleasant Beach schools’ “gamified” staff wellness program. The district offers free yoga and gym workouts and dozens of other events and activities in which teachers and other staff can win rewards. “Our tagline is ‘A healthy staff room is a healthy classroom,'” Smith says. “We believe that by attending to the social-emotional needs of our staff members, we get better performance out of everybody.”

How Point Pleasant Beach schools tackle challenges

Keeping Smith up at night is enrollment in his district. The community sustained heavy damage in Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and many older houses have been demolished and replaced by more expensive homes. This has made it harder for young families to settle in Point Pleasant Beach. The district has about 100 tuition-paying students, and its wide range of projects is a key selling point.

For instance, Smith and the school board found a way to maintain AP language programs even though only a handful of students were enrolled in the courses. Computer science and engineering classes were added when the district converted the high school media center into an “innovation collaboratory.” And when students asked for business classes for two years, the district launched a business program.

“We build what needs to be built,” Smith says. “We try to be responsive to what the needs are and we try to read the tea leaves for what’s going to position our students best for their post-secondary outcomes and dreams.”

One key to all these efforts is maintaining a strong working relationship with the school board and its president, in particular. That means Smith and his team try to be transparent when explaining the rationale behind their decisions to board members. It’s also important to remain flexible in adapting to the styles of communication and leadership of each school board member. Finally, establishing boundaries between the roles of district staff and elected officials also fosters productive working relationships.

“It’s not always rainbows and unicorns, but it’s an open line of communication,” Smith concludes. “If you continually remind everyone we have to be doing what’s in the best interest of kids—that’s what’s going to drive our programming, that’s where our budget’s going to go, that’s what every move is about—it helps you keep some of the ancillary challenges at bay.”

The post How this superintendent is amping up the power of his small N.J. district appeared first on District Administration.

Pre-pandemic (2018-19), Guilford County Schools in North Carolina made gains in all tested subject areas among all student groups for the first time ever. Superintendent Whitney Oakley attributes this success to elevating leaders and supporting them in their efforts to guide their students.

“At the time, we were well-positioned for principals to truly serve as instructional leaders,” she says. “Our board of education had made it a priority to focus on investing in high-quality instructional resources that were aligned to state standards and kind of eliminated the wild west of Googling what you were going to teach the next day. That was kind of early! Other districts are just now starting to think about the implementation of those high-quality instructional resources.”

These solutions didn’t happen by chance, either. Their message as a district is, “We know how to do this,” she says. “We know how to make gains.”

Their preparation helped them to establish momentum, one that would carry on to this day.

“As the third-largest district in the state and the 50th-largest in our country, we’ve got to stay the course,” she explains. “We can’t do this ‘chase the shiny intervention program,’ of which there are thousands now.”

Using this framework, the district set its sights on three areas crucial for the success of her students post-pandemic: expanding learning, high-intensity tutoring and acceleration—not remediation—by teaching kids grade-level content.”

“We focused a great deal on those three things,” she says. However, she notes that the district’s implementation of effective, high-dosage tutoring has found the most success among all of its learning recovery strategies.

“I want to keep going until every student who needs a tutor has a tutor,” she explains. But there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to personalized instruction. Every student has a different set of needs, which only exacerbates the effectiveness of individual, high-dosage tutoring.

“We can’t just blanket hope,” she says. “We have to be specific, targeted and focused and use data.”

From a leadership perspective, she says there’s power in giving your team a voice, especially when it comes to meeting specific goals. When it came time to assess initiatives in her district, it was up to school leaders to be “vulnerable” in their expression of what is and isn’t working for their students.

“Sometimes we don’t do that until it’s too late,” she says. “When you think about change management and process improvement, I think we have to model that. We have 126 schools, and just the 68 elementary principals alone have a whole lot to say about how early literacy tutoring is going in their building. We should listen to them.”

As their efforts to strengthen personalized tutoring continued, they eventually established an entire tutoring department to keep up with the initiative’s growing traction.

“We had to centralize a whole department to be able to make sure that we are training tutors appropriately, we’re hiring them effectively, we’re placing them at the schools correctly and they’re tracking data to make sure that we know if the help is helping, not just in a formal program evaluation way, but really in a systems-level way,” she explains.

What sets this initiative apart is that it’s been designed from the ground up within the district itself. There are no third-party tutoring interventions, which ensures that students receive instruction specific to what’s being taught in their classrooms.

“We don’t want a tutoring program where they’re going to use their curriculum,” she says. “We want our tutors to be trained on our instructional resources before they meet with the student for the very first time.”

They also require robust training for their new tutors, including a two- to three-hour introductory training session for math tutors and an additional four hours for literacy tutors.

“They learn how to use our instructional resources,” she says. “They get access to them, and even receive legal and ethics training.”

She also describes how they select students for tutoring based on their specific needs.

“At the beginning, we used an algorithm to determine which students we would prioritize,” she says. “Those were students who had two or more risk factors for not graduating, including those who are English learners, students with a history of chronic absenteeism and students who were not proficient on one or more end-of-grade or end-of-course tests.”

By expanding their leadership within the tutoring department and using data to target specific needs, they’ve been able to double their tutoring hours compared to 2021-22. Those efforts included adding four additional positions to the department to reduce workloads, hiring their own high school students looking to fulfill service hours and contracting with local universities to pay for graduate student tutors. This year, they’ve been able to tutor nearly 8,000 students totaling more than 137,000 hours.

“We do have the largest HBCU in the country here, so we have Black and Brown engineering majors tutoring high school kids that look like them, and that’s huge,” she says. “It’s also a pipeline strategy because some of them say, ‘I like this! I think I want to get an education degree,’ and we’re like, ‘Yes!'”

More from DA: Charlotte-Mecklenburg is latest big district to fill top slot with leader of color

As a district, she says they’ve also learned just how impactful the teacher-tutor relationship is. It’s incredibly easy to default to homework help, “which is not tutoring,” she notes. To strengthen this bond, the district compensates its tutors for attending a weekly 30-minute meeting with classroom teachers.

“You identify the misconceptions and you think about what the skill gap was from the exit ticket the week before,” she explains. “There is meaningful, targeted skill-based conversation.”

As a result of these innovations, students not only benefit academically, but teachers lives become easier. Even the tutors regularly speak of the profound impact the department has had on their development, according to Oakley.

“They now have requested their own PLCs,” she says. “Our tutors log on twice a month and have a topic that they discuss. They want to grow professionally too. They say, ‘I need tips on making this engaging or I’ve seen this bubble up three or four times and I need a new strategy.’ It happened organically.”

All in all, successful, high-dosage tutoring relies on numerous engagement and strategies from a variety of stakeholders. But at its core, as evident in Guilford County Schools, it’s about listening, individualizing instruction, and allowing your leaders to do what they do best: lead.

The post How this superintendent incorporated high-dosage tutoring that produces results appeared first on District Administration.

Hill, who previously served as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ chief of staff, replaces former superintendent Earnest Winston, who was fired in April 2022. In that role, Hill oversaw the Office of Strategy Management and Title IX and managed the superintendent’s cabinet in North Carolina’s second-largest district.

The school board was not unanimous in its decision, voting 6-3 to make Hill the permanent superintendent. “It opens up an opportunity for me to serve in ways that I’ve not been able to serve before,” Hill told The Charlotte Observer. “I’m just grateful to those who have gone before me who have been the first and charted the path. I just hope that I can reflect and be a good role model for our students so they can look at me and say wow, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’”

More from DA: How Superintendent Reuben Duncan is upending the old K12 hierarchy

Hill will earn a base salary of $300,000 annually in a contract that runs until June 30, 2027, The Charlotte Observer noted.

Hill was the chief academic officer for Cabarrus County Schools, another North Carolina district, before joining Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. She started her career as a teacher in Guilford County Schools, also in North Carolina, and has also been a principal, assistant principal, personnel director and executive director of elementary education.

We are pleased to reintroduce Crystal L. Hill, Ed.D. as superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

“Dr. Hill is an experienced school administrator and servant leader with a proven track record of success related to student academic achievement.” pic.twitter.com/3FNCNlFjQ9

— CMS (@CharMeckSchools) May 19, 2023

Like many superintendents both new and experienced, the three big challenges Hill faces are raising academic performance, recruiting quality teachers and improving school safety, according to The Charlotte Observer.

New faces in other high-profile posts

Three more leaders of color are stepping into the top role in three other big districts. Those new hires include Myriam Yarbrough in Baltimore County Public Schools, Angela Chapman in Columbus City Schools and Ian Roberts in Des Moines Public Schools. Like Hill in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Yarborough and Chapam are both first-time superintendents who were hired from within.

The post Charlotte-Mecklenburg is latest big district to fill top slot with leader of color appeared first on District Administration.

Escambia County Public Schools Superintendent Tim Smith, described by a local newspaper as “embattled,” will leave his post at the end of May after an unexpected vote by the district’s school board last week. The board member who led the charge in Smith’s dismissal criticized the superintendent’s leadership of principals and other administrators, which the board member said has caused high turnover, the Pensacola News Journal reported.

Smith’s most recent evaluation from the board was overwhelmingly positive, the News Journal added. Earlier this year, however, the area’s representative in the Florida state legislature called on Smith to resign, calling him ineffective and criticizing his decision to deny a school board member’s request to ban a group of LGBTQ-themed books from district libraries. The board eventually removed those books anyway and was sued last week by parents, authors and the nation’s largest publishing company.

Leadership shuffle suspensions

Districts in South Carolina and Michigan have suspended their superintendents within the last several days. The Colleton County School District’s board placed Superintendent Vallerie Cave on administrative leave by a 4-3 vote as it “investigates information,” Live 5 News reported. The board of the South Carolina school system has had Cave’s employment on its agenda since last summer, the station added.

In Michigan, Dearborn Heights School District #7 has suspended Superintendent Tyrone Weeks, another leader who has been described as “embattled” by local media. The board has not explained the decision but Weeks has faced protests recently over the suspension of a popular high school principal and the creation of a virtual learning program without teacher input, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Veterans find new districts

Several superintendents are switching places, including Joseph Hochreiter, who has been named the next superintendent of The City School District of Albany in New York after leading two other districts in the state, the Elmira City School District and the Hendrick Hudson Central School District since 2009. Outside New York City, Raymond Sanchez has been named superintendent of Public Schools of the Tarrytowns after having served the Ossining Union Free School District since 2013.

More from DA: Teacher morale has not totally tanked. And here are 5 ways to rebuild it.

In Mississippi, Superintendent Josh Perkins is moving to Neshoba County School District from the Enterprise School District. And in North Carolina, Marc Whichard will take the reins at Wayne County Public Schools after having led Whiteville City Schools since 2019.

More comings and goings

Hires

• Milton Batiste, III, St. Landry Parish School District (Louisiana)
• Rick Cruz, Asheville City Schools (North Carolina)
• Ashlie Adams Flowers, Clarke County Schools (Alabama)
• Jeffrey Hartmann, Galion City Schools (Ohio)
• Brad Hatch, Altoona Area School District (Pennsylvania)
• Joshua W. Lynch, Macon County Schools (North Carolina)
• Todd R. Meyer, Olentangy Schools (Ohio)
• Jennifer O’Neill, Norton Public Schools (Massachusetts)
• Robert Sanders, Hinds County School District (Mississippi)
• Stan Winborne, Granville County Public Schools (North Carolina)
• Jason Wysong, School District of Manatee County (Florida)

Departures

• Greg Ross has resigned as superintendent of Danville Independent Schools (Kentucky) after one school year.

The post A surprise firing and 2 suspensions mark ongoing shuffle of K12 leadership appeared first on District Administration.

Communication, collaboration and community are the guiding principles in how educators in New Hampshire’s SAU 47—also known as the Jaffrey-Rindge Cooperative School District—solve problems, such as financial constraints, and create conditions that should help its region thrive, says Duncan, the state’s 2023 Superintendent of the Year.

In the traditional hierarchy under which most schools still operate, the superintendent sits at the top with “everything else underneath.” “The success—or the lack thereof—is based upon how well things get delegated,” explains Duncan, who has been leading the district for eight years. “It promotes a very individualistic decision-making approach and change process, which I don’t think is healthy and that doesn’t create an agile organization.”

More from DA: 3 big districts make big hires to fill superintendents’ posts

Duncan and his team have been working to flatten that hierarchical pyramid (see video below) so the superintendent acts as a resource—and a provider of resources. The edtech, facilities, special education and other central office functions serve as a hub for smaller teams at each school, in each classroom and out in the wider community.

As a result, Duncan spends a lot of time in classrooms having conversations with teachers and ensuring all of his educators, including building leaders and administrators, are getting professional development and support.

“Rather than relying on individuals all over the place, we’re working on building collaborative teams everywhere,” says Duncan, who began his career as a high school math teacher and tennis coach at SAU 16, another New Hampshire district. “If we’re in a healthy system, this model will replicate over and over again.”

Powerful partnerships

A shining example of how SAU 47’s collaborative problem-solving approach benefits students occurred two years ago when a $600,000 budget shortfall had leaders considering cutting personnel in the district’s elementary schools, despite the social-emotional needs of students trying to recover from the upheavals of the pandemic, Duncan says.

Leaders at the district middle and high schools stepped in and accelerated the often time-intensive and contentious process of revamping their bell schedule from periods to a block system. It took them two weeks to complete a shift that usually takes much longer and saved jobs at the elementary school by eliminating several middle and high school positions through attrition, Duncan explains.

[Video: Superintendent Reuben Duncan describes his district’s collaborative problem-solving process in an interview with District Administration.]

“They decided we’re going to improve education through this process even though it’s coming out of negative,” Duncan points out. “I just walked through the middle school and the high school and the energy is good, the kids are on task and learning, and it’s a wonderful thing.”

This collaboration extends outside the district in the district’s teacher preparation partnership with nearby Keene State College, which sends professors into SAU 47’s schools to run a leadership academy for teachers. In turn, the district’s teachers serve as mentors for education students at Franklin Pierce University, an initiative that involves holding college courses on SAU 47’s campuses and bringing pre-service teachers in to work in classrooms.

Among the district’s next big projects is creating a career and technical education center on 100 acres of land it owns. Plans to build a school there failed at the ballot box, so Duncan and his team are now having plans drawn up that would create new CTE opportunities for the district’s students and members of the Jaffrey and Rindge communities.

“Community, communication and collaboration—those three items are always challenges, yet they’re also the solution to our challenges,” Duncan concludes. “Let’s make sure we are in continuous communication in a way that’s meaningful to the community.”

The post How Superintendent Reuben Duncan is upending the old K12 hierarchy appeared first on District Administration.

In this article, we will delve into the importance of these relationships, the ways they can go wrong, and what stakeholders can do to build and maintain them. Remember, the only difference between the words “unit” and “unity” is the “y.” The unit is me thinking, and unity is we thinking. To that end, the “y” (why) matters. It is important for us to remember the “why” of strong board-superintendent relationships before even mentioning the “how.”

One of the most significant benefits of strong relationships between boards and superintendents is that they can lead to improved student achievement. Collaboration can foster the development of policies and strategies that prioritize student success. When boards and superintendents work together, they can set clear goals and expectations for student achievement and ensure that all students have the support and resources they need to succeed.

On the other hand, when boards and superintendents do not work well together, student achievement suffers. When these two groups are not aligned on goals and priorities, it can lead to confusion and inefficiency. For example, if a board prioritizes reducing class sizes while the superintendent focuses on teacher professional development, resources may be misdirected, and student achievement may stagnate. The savvy superintendent knows the value of constant dialogue with board members around common goals and plans.

Another critical benefit of strong relationships between boards and superintendents is they can lead to more efficient use of resources. With limited funding and resources available, it is essential that they work together to ensure resources are being used effectively and efficiently. When they collaborate on budget planning and resource allocation, they can ensure resources are being directed towards areas that will have the greatest impact on student achievement.

On the flip side, when boards and superintendents do not collaborate on budget planning and resource allocation, it can lead to wasteful spending and inefficient use of resources. Superintendents who keep their boards in the dark about budget decisions are not just harming the board-superintendent relationship, they are robbing themselves of tremendous thought partners.

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Another key benefit of positive relationships between boards and superintendents is they can help to foster trust and transparency within the broader educational community. When they work together openly and honestly, they can build trust with their stakeholders and demonstrate their commitment to improving the educational system. This can help to build a sense of community and shared responsibility for student success. For example, when a board and superintendent are transparent about their decision-making processes and communicate clearly with teachers and parents, it can create a sense of trust and ownership in the community.

Perhaps the biggest area of conflict arises when boards and superintendents do not prioritize transparency and trust-building, as it can lead to a lack of confidence in the educational system. For example, if a board and superintendent make decisions behind closed doors without consulting with teachers or parents, it can create a perception they are not responsive to the needs of the community. This can lead to disengagement, decreased morale, and a lack of support for the educational system.

Building positive relationships between boards and superintendents can provide a model for collaboration and compromise in the face of polarization on a grand scale. By finding common ground and working towards shared goals, they can set an example for other stakeholders in the educational system. This can help to create a more cohesive and effective educational system that prioritizes the needs of all students.

However, when boards and superintendents are unable to find common ground or prioritize collaboration, it can exacerbate the already-existing polarization in public education. When these two groups are not aligned, it can create a perception that the educational system is not working towards a common goal. This can lead to increased political and ideological divisions that make it even harder to achieve consensus on important issues.

To build and maintain positive relationships, boards and superintendents should prioritize communication and collaboration. Communication is key to ensuring that both groups understand each other’s priorities and goals. Collaboration enables boards and superintendents to work together towards common goals and develop policies and strategies prioritizing student success. To this day, I regularly ask other superintendents about ways they communicate with their boards and in what ways they build collaborative experiences. I regularly hear new ideas, share some of my own, and firmly believe we all get better as a result.

Finally, the board superintendent team should prioritize building a culture of respect and trust within the educational community by valuing different perspectives and acknowledging the expertise of others. When boards and superintendents demonstrate a willingness to listen to different viewpoints and work together towards common goals, it can create a sense of unity and shared responsibility for student success. It is always a good reminder that we are coming together to “do right” and not “be right.”

In building a case for good board-superintendent relations, we must remember strong relationships between boards and superintendents are crucial to improving student achievement, ensuring efficient use of resources, fostering trust and transparency, and creating a model for collaboration and compromise. When these relationships are not prioritized, it can lead to confusion, inefficiency, lack of trust, and exacerbation of existing polarization. By prioritizing communication, collaboration, and respect, we can work together to build positive relationships that benefit all students and improve the educational system. Remember, the people beside you are more important than the task in front of you; with this understanding, we can accomplish great things together.

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