| Our next Continuous Improvement Planning Committee Meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 28, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. Our next Continuous Improvement Planning Committee Meeting will be held on August 28, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. at the District Administrative Center located at 20550 S. Cicero Avenue in Matteson Illinois 60443. Thanks to the many high performing community participants and educational leaders in this endeavor and for your continuing input, leadership, and support. Continuous improvement is about having a vision, working with superintendent, principals, teachers, staff, parents, and state in supporting school improvement. Thanks for the great work that you have done in our effort at input and feedback in moving forward. In this regards, you have been inspiring and courageous. One of our main steps in reaching our goals has been to stop making excuses about what can't be done, or for not being involved. Rather, leadership is about being informed, being truly involved, understanding what can be done, and then doing it. In this regard, as great leaders, you have been magnificent. Continuous improvement, like many other things begins at home. As a school board, through studying the KEYWORK OF SCHOOL BOARDS GUIDEBOOK, we will understand our role, and what we can do to make our schools and communities better places in which to live. In this way, we will have a better chance to probe more deeply into the issues raised in our effort toward school improvement. We can learn what strategies and processes boards can use to promote continuous improvement throughout their school systems. Without continuous improvement supports from board 227 leadership, superintendent, and principals, nothing else will take place in district 227 that will lead to progress in high student performance levels beyond what we have already seen for over a decade. Our biggest challenge is still ahead of us, the challenge inherent in improving student performance achievement levels that has not been our practice in district 227 for many years now. This challenge will require a paradigm shift beginning with our school board. To have a paradigm shift, we need training in continuous improvement practices. As a school board, we cannot continue to sit silently and idly by as the inevitable seeds are sown for a second harvest of disaster for our children and community's future, and then argue that nothing can be done to improve academically. In our role as school board members, we need to meet with the superintendent on a bi-monthly basis (either as a school board or Continuous Improvement Planning Committee) to discuss and understand what policy strategies we can and must employ in our role as school board members, now and in the future, to employ continuous improvement guidelines in district policy, and ultimately in practice. By meeting with the school administration, we can monitor, follow a regular process to review student achievement data to ensure continuous improvement at every level in District 227. As a school board, we need to know and understand that this is the work that boards have done in all effective school districts to make these districts effective, where it has been done well, and what has been the amazing results. Where there is no involvement by the full board, school administration, principals, teachers, and staff in the continuous improvement process, there will be no commitment to the continuous improvement process. During our continuous improvement planning meetings, there were more times when principals, the ones we are depending upon to implement continuous improvement processes in each school, were absent then present. When looking at the Institute Day agendas, there were little to no emphasis by most principals on Continuous Improvement. This process must begin with the school board and then passed on to those who are expected to implement it, the superintendent, principals, teachers, staff, and ultimately the wider community. Plainly put, the problem is this. Some school boards are failing to create the supportive and funding conditions that make it possible for superintendent, principals, and teachers to lead school improvement effectively. With effective school boards who understand their role in accountability, school improvement, and our priorities, board leadership matters. Those effective school boards know what ineffective school boards don't, or who don't understand their role says and therefore focus on " what can't be done..," Rather, effective boards focus on what can be done. As a school board, instead of wasting more time talking about what can't be done, we must spend more time learning what our true roles are as board members so that we will then understand what can be done to effect change and progress and what all effective school boards do to be effective. In all the talk about the building principal's key role in producing "turnaround" high schools, one critical factor is the board's understanding of their own role in this most significant process. As a school board, we can never stand before a great human problem, fail to understand our role or to fund staff leadership development in school improvement in the school district where we have seen students under performing at every grade level, with lack of staff training, and then argue that nothing can be done or even worse, that we have no leadership role to play in producing "turnaround" in our schools. That is why ineffective school board members who haven't learned their role in the process and, therefore, believe in these myths and nonsense in disempowerment only prove that we must be either part of the problem or part of the solution. This situation also demonstrates, we have still not studied or understood our leadership role or yet learned what our significant and important leadership role should be in this most important continuous improvement process. The vision and actions of effective school boards in getting in place the proper keystones (continuous improvement consultants, etc. working with the board, superintendents, principals, and staff) for students to learn and achieve at the highest possible levels is paramount. When we study and fully understand significant our roles as school board members, then we will no longer consider anyone, beginning with the school leadership team, as untouchable or off the charts for accountability in regards to the need for continuous training on principles of continuous improvement, staff development, and leadership training and need for support in improvement, including understanding the use of data. The board's role is to learn their roles, duties, and obligations in this most important and significant process through being informed, training on the importance of their significant role, to support continuous improvement through funding, and learn principles of continuous improvement including use of data, hiring consultants to train the leadership and staff on principles of continuous improvement, participating in work sessions to better understand needed changes in curriculum and instruction, and supporting publicly the values of continuous improvement to the community. Nothing works unless we work it. We all have a role in play in continuous improvement beginning with the school board leadership. Nothing is more significant than improving student performance levels. The board's role is not to make excuses for not funding continuous improvement or providing training for the board, superintendent, principals, and staff in this most important process. Today, we cannot afford to go from wasting millions of dollars in gag rules in efforts to prevent exercise of our First Amendment Rights as citizens, to block parents our community-school improvement participation efforts in court to not spending a single dime toward in-service training and data programs for superintendent, principals, teachers, and staff in school improvement restoration efforts to restore a culture and climate of excellence in public education and what was lost in our effort in school district turn-around today. To do so, means that we are not progressing and improving academically at all. School boards should matter and must be of value in school district turn-around and system leaders must determine whether principals can be effective in leading school improvement. Districts cannot necessarily make weak principals succeed, but we have seen too many school boards and districts create conditions in which even great principals are likely to fail in the absence of continuous improvement training, and staff development that should target their in-service needs. Providing and funding in-service needs is also our role as board members. These understandings about school improvement essentials have emerged from close observations of the inner workings of effective schools. As a school board 227, in our goals toward school improvement, we can never stand before a great human problem and then pretend that the most important but most difficult part, improving student achievement levels, cannot be done or naively pretend we have no part to play in this most important process. Contrary to this myth, as school board members, we must lead this process. As leaders, we must lead this process by providing the funding and support mechanisms to make it happen. Our school improvement initiatives begin and end with great leadership. We must continue to do something. That is why we are on this earth. Effective school boards who understand their roles in working with district leadership matter. Learner-centered leadership programs have sought to answer these essential questions addressing conditions school boards can create that make it possible for principals to be more effective in leading school improvement. The research on school improvement is part of a comprehensive effort to pinpoint the key leadership factors that improve student achievement and increase the number of high school graduates who are ready for college and careers. In one study, SREB (Southern Regional Education Board) examined the role of the district office in providing principals with the working conditions they need to improve principal and teacher effectiveness and student performance in the middle grades and high school. David E. Morgan, Ph.D., Educational Leadership Board Member and Chair person Continuous Improvement Planning Committee Rich Township High School District 227 Olympia Fields, Illinois 60461 |
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