| The process for choosing an interim and/or permanent highly effective superintendent and meeting to discuss our 2013-2014 board-district goals moving forward are still not in place in district 227 To improve student achievement performance levels and to productively engage the full board and district community is what effective school boards do best. Continuous school improvement and accountability drives everything else in the school district. In school improvement, everything is a process, a collaborative team effort of people working together. The process for choosing an interim and/or permanent highly effective superintendent are not in place today. Without a school improvement process in place with full stakeholder participation, we will make the same mistakes ten times over. Whether we are looking for an interim or permanent superintendent or a continuous improvement process, we must employ full board and community participation's weigh in on this process. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. As the recent past has taught us, we cannot afford to make a decision of choosing a superintendent, whether interim or permanent, without the full board and community participation in a process, the absence of which will plague us for decades to come when the wrong person is chosen. We will either rise or fall based upon our leadership. Today, we do not have the proper framework in place for choosing either an interim or permanent superintendent. In fact, we do not have a process in place at all. As a school board member who has fought for four long and stressful years for excellence in district 227 public education representing the children and people of this community, before choosing anyone else, whether an interim or permanent superintendent, we must first employ the process required for choosing a highly effective, visionary, proactive superintendent with a history of school district-turn-around as a superintendent and a record of high student performance levels. As a school board, we've not met to plan for the 2013-2014 school year and to engage in our annual two-day board self evaluation training at the Holiday Inn in Matteson to discuss next steps in moving forward and engage our full board and community in choosing an interim and permanent superintendent. With two months of the school year already gone, this annual school improvement two day conference that takes place during summer should have taken place during the summer months prior to the beginning of the school year. Our annual meeting doesn't need a particular individual from IASB. We only needed the process without being hung up on who the particular individual would be to facilitate the process. We can never abandon a significant process in moving our district forward and become hung up on who the particular individual will be who may or may not will facilitate the process. We still need to meet and discuss moving forward as a school board employing IASB or someone and the significant continuous improvement processes and supports and understandings required for moving forward. Otherwise, we will not move forward. Leaving our responsibility and leadership role, in discussion of our path moving forward up to others to do the moving forward with little or no board leadership input or participation effort from the full board has already gotten us the academic achievement debacle of what we see today in the school district. We need community weigh-in and feedback with a one-page brochure describing what we need in a highly effective visionary superintendent with a record of accomplishment, then share it with the school board, the district employees, community and all its stakeholders. How soon do we forget our past? We cannot repeat the past by beginning another dangerous and destructive course of operating in secrecy, failing to engage in the process of continuous improvement, non-participation, non-collaboration, and shutting out our full board and our community again in this most significant and transformative process. As a school board member who has fought for four long and stressful years for excellence in district 227 public education representing the children and people of this community, before choosing anyone else, whether an interim or permanent superintendent, we must first employ the full board community-stakeholder-participation-process required for choosing a highly effective, visionary, proactive superintendent with a history of school district-turn-around as a superintendent and a record of high student performance levels. Today, we cannot afford to allow one, two, or three people to determine the fate of a whole community of almost one hundred thousand people without full board add community participation. This is what the community asked for in the past. Today, we must continue to be vigilant and respectful of the essential democratic participation process of the full board and community in moving our district forward. Winning an election doesn't bring about the change we seek. It simply gives us the chance to make the change. Today, to move forward, we still need information and community participation at our board meetings more than ever before. Today, as we embrace this opportunity to move forward, all children and district 227 citizens and tax payers will be better off for it. David E. Morgan, Ph.D., Educational Leadership School Board Member & Continuous Evaluation/Planning Chair Rich Township High School District 227 Olympia Fields, Illinois 60461 |
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