School Board Interview

Key area - Continuous Improvement

Transcript from interview with Black River Falls School Board President, Mary Jo Rozmenoski.

1. How is the board asking or directing the superintendent and staff to identify comparable schools systems that are performing better and using that information to set reasonable progress goals for our own system by drawing on the experiences of others?

I believe that this has been our standard procedure for some time now. We have always looked at comparable districts to help gauge how we are doing in terms of student achievement and development. We look at similar size and demographics, but I believe it is important to look at districts that have similar demographics such as Native American and poverty percentages, such as Tomah and Hayward. We are always looking at districts that excel and how we can adopt the strategies that they are using.

We also are constantly reviewing our results and are not afraid to adjust goals accordingly.

2. How does the board approach creating an organizational culture that values continuous improvement and encourages experimentation and innovation, or does it even want to promote this?

Well, you've heard me say many times, “Change is an opportunity” I truly believe in that and try to live my life and perform my board duties with that attitude. I understand that our board members come from different backgrounds and experiences and I need to look at that with the board.

I try to understand them and help all of them understand each other and come together. During our board retreats and development sessions, I share what to expect from each other and the other members. For example, I share that I don’t respond to questions immediately. I need time to process things and gather my thoughts. So people should not be concerned that I don’t respond to questions or request immediately. We try to share our personalities with each other so we get to understand how we operate, how each of us deal with change. I like to have our development meetings and all of our meetings planned and strategic. Yet at the same time, I am willing to change direction if something is not working.

3. What is you and the board’s philosophy on gathering feedback on performance and adopting a “customer focus” with the community?

The establishment of the public relations committee is a clear sign that this is important to me and to the board; for marketing the district. As you know, one of the biggest concerns is our open enrollment out numbers. This is one of the most active board committees and it will be key to getting information on the upcoming referendum. We are pleased that through this group, we are responding to the community and using many experts beyond school, from the community to address the public relation needs of the district.

4. How does the board clearly communicate that it is committed to continuous improvement?

First, I believe that our presence makes a difference. I try to attend as many events as possible and to encourage other board members to be visible at events. I have also pushed to include all staff, from teachers, bus drivers and aide to cooks and custodians in the opening of the year in-service messages from the superintendent and the board. Everyone in the district needs to hear those messages. I also make a point to talk about the school events in the community. Information dissemination

5. How is continuous improvement built into boarding planning process

It has been difficult with the turn over in superintendents in our district. As I mentioned, I'm comfortable with change, but I've had to be since getting on the board eight years ago, we've had six different superintendents. When I look back at the year we had the issues with our previous superintendent, we did not make any progress on our improvement plans. I’m not proud of either fact and as much as I am open to embracing change, I’m looking forward to some consistency, particularly with the superintendent's position.

As far as board planning, today we are having a board development meeting and will be talking about the improvement process in terms of the upcoming referendum. Every board member will be out talking about it. We are going to get those member who have been sitting back engaged and they will be out there talking about the referendum and how important it is. All of us will be talking about it and writing letters to the papers.

6. Is there community participation in continuous improvement discussions and plan reviews?

Well, you have been a part of the Welding Skills Institute and that has be a great community collaboration. At the same time, with the Ho-Chunk nation turning down the change in 18-money law, we need to work together with the nation to help address the financial literacy needs of our Ho-Chunk students.  

Unfortunately, I've been hearing in the community that Ho-chunk girls who are approaching 18 and high school graduation are being looked at as “prey”. We really need to get community input from the nation to assist them in addressing these issues. One other concern I have is the poverty level of our community. Last year, I spoke with the school board members from Chippewa Falls and they told me about their free breakfast for all students. I came right back asked why we couldn't do that. I’m pleased that we were eligible and able to institute it here, too.



As I reflect on our conversation and relate Ms. Rozmenoski's answers back to the frameworks of continuous improvement that we studied, as well as the information from chapter 12 in the "Key Works of School Boards" book, it becomes clear that while our board and our district has made attempts at improvement and has tried various programs to address student achievement needs, we do not live the "culture" of school improvement that is discussed in the book.

With the turnover that we have had in our administration (and also our staff), it has been nearly impossible to build and sustain a universal culture of continuous improvement. We are currently beginning the second year of our new superintendent, who has sought to bring some structure to the improvement cycle and time will tell how that works. I asked Ms. Rozmenoski whether she or the board had discussed or explored the possibility of hosting large community event to gather feedback and distill themes/needs for the district from a broad cross-section of the community. She stated that that probably was not something they would be doing, but she is interested in talking with the board members from Chippewa Falls about their process. She is supportive of our superintendent's research and possible adoption of the Studer Education model.

All in all, my analysis of our board and district meets the goal of a continuous improvement district lands on the opinion that we are currently rebuilding from a long stretch of instability and putting structures into place. To us the terminology from the book, we are presently talking the talk and starting to "walk the talk" time will tell how and when we are able to "walk the walk"- truly creating that culture of continuous improvement.

If I were superintendent, I would focus all my current efforts on communicating the facts to the community about the referendum and getting all board members, staff and anyone else I could convince on board talking about the need and the relative ? deal this referendum is for our community. Soon after the referendum, I would begin planning a community forum to gather input, develop themes and craft a continuous improvement plan similar to DeForest's "Framework for our Future". I would use this event to craft our steps forward in addressing the details of the facilities upgrades (assuming a positive outcome on the referendum) and for addressing our student performance improvement efforts.

School Board Governance interfacing with Student Performance and District Vision/Purpose

As we learned in our class, there are a number of models for school board governance. They all approach the problem of bringing board members together to best dispense with the role with which they are charged. Those roles are:

1. Determine a vision/mission for the district that reflects the needs and wishes of the community while focusing on properly preparing students to achieve at high levels and leave school prepared for their next phase of their lives.
2. Oversee the work of the superintendent to assure that he or she is leading the staff appropriately to fulfill the mission and vision that had previously been set.
3. Communicate out to the parents and community the degree to which the goals were met and what measures will be taken to improve and/or adjust the goals.

Our instructor, presented a number of models of board governance and school improvement models. The one that spoke most to me was the Studer Education Group.

On their website, the Studer Education Group states, "The mission of Studer Education's EBL K12 is to provide students with a great place to learn, teachers with a great place to teach and staff with a great place to work, and parents with confidence that their children are getting a great education."

I don't think that anyone could argue with a system that would live up to this mission. The challenge with this, and any system, is translating the actions of a board into improved academic and social student achievement. In other words, how can the actions of a group of seven adults, who often are not trained in any formal branch of education make a difference to six - eighteen year olds in the classrooms?

We learned that as unlikely as it may seem, well run boards, who practice proper governance procedures and who implement structured improvement plans, can and do improve the development and the achievement of the students in their district.

In the Studer model, It starts off with a strategic plan, district scorecard, leader evaluation, maximize performance which leads into the k12 accountability system and continuous improvement.

A well functioning board, one which focuses on governance and avoids micro-management, interfaces with student performance and district vision in a number of important ways. First the board collects themes which outline the needs, wants and expectations of the community through community conversations. It then helps to set the desired outcomes in the district through the development of results and operational expectations that are communicated to the superintendent and the district staff. The superintendent then leads that staff, possibly through a framework such as the Studer model to the development of strategic planning and quality processes and deployment of improvement plans.

Finally, the analysis of the results data verifies the success of the process and serves to guide necessary revisions or adjustments to the plan and implementation of the strategies.

Brad Saron, our instructor, discussed with us a number of ways that boards can influence the improvement process of a district. There are two key themes that I will take away from our class instruction and discussion. The first is the concept of alignment. With all of the models, the idea that a well functioning district with high student achievement is most often the result of a district that has alignment from top to bottom (and bottom to top). For example, Brad mentioned districts like Pewaukee and Janesville. These two districts have boards that practice good governance, set clear policy and direction for the district and have put systems in place that address student achievement from the board room to the classroom. 

The second concept I am taking away is that of the "line of implementation". This is the line in the operational chart at which the Board turns over the responsibility to the superintendent and the staff. It is the demarcation line between a board practicing good policy governance (operating exclusively above the line) and a micro-managing board (one getting involved with duties that are clearly administrative).

District Administrator "Checklist" and Leadership Style

I choose to interview Cindy Zahrte, Superintendent in Tomah, a district that I previously taught in and was Assistant Principal at the high school for two years. We discussed the checklist month by month, which turned out to be mutually beneficial. She had not inherited a list from her predecessor and although she had started developing one some time ago, she had never found the time to complete it. In the course of our conversation, I wrote done the things we discussed and then shared it with her. She was thrilled to have had help completing the task.

She, right away, stated that the constants were the board meetings and the budget, which accompany a superintendent throughout the year. The board meeting preparations and the committee meetings are ever present. In fact, Cindy does not prepare a weekly update for her board, because she feels that between the monthly full meeting, the committee meetings and the board development and other communication she has with her board members, it is not necessary. She does provide a monthly update at each full board meeting.

We started with the summer and worked our way around the fiscal year. She explained that the summer time, unlike for teachers and some administrators, is quite busy for the superintendent. They make every effort to have the hiring completed by the end of June, July at the latest. She then personally meets with every new staff member to welcome them into the district. Summer also is the time for data reviews, program reviews and reporting on projects, programs and all the extra duties. Besides closing out the fiscal year, the audit, preparing for the annual meeting and planning for new teacher in-service and the full teacher back to school in-service and first day, there are continual media and political duties through the summer.

Once school starts, there is the state superintendent's convention, which is a must to attend for networking and getting up-to-date on trends. In Tomah they also take a measure of how the school year started using surveys and perception data to judge and make any adjustments necessary.

Later in the fall, there is testing, National School Bus Safety week and Cindy mentioned how important it is for all of those special weeks and months, to make it a point to thank and congratulate those groups. In that same vein, she mentioned the need to be seen and to see the events of the students, whether it is sports, music or other groups. Parents, students and community members notice this.

She mentioned that for her, October to December seems to the slowest months, yet she mentioned quite a list of tasks from setting the calendar to developing potential board members and reviewing all administrator performance with the board.

Moving into the new year, Cindy emphasized the important to attend the state school board convention with the board members so as not to be surprised with a ton of new ideas and tasks that they would pick up if not "guided" through the process. She outlined other things in the winter such as preparing for a referendum if that is on the docket for April, reviewing all the graduation plans such as honors breakfast, scholarships, awards and the ceremony itself. Finally, this time of year is very busy with staffing decisions, preparation for any non-renewals or terminations and something new, the mid-year SLO reviews with administrators.

Late winter/early spring this past year was a very busy time for Cindy as she dealt with a failed referendum, budget woes and calls locally and statewide for the scrapping of the Common Core. By April, she would like to get all open positions posted and start the hiring process, plan any summer PD and work through the board elections and any reorganization necessary.

In May, she cuts down the admin duties, by having only one admin team meeting, because she realizes the hectic nature of that month in the buildings. This points to her leadership style. She espouses herself to be a servant leader and I would wholeheartedly agree.

June is the month to wrap everything up, graduation, honoring retirees, finishing the hiring and nailing down preparations for the following school year.

In discussing her duties and her approach, as well as having known her for many years, first as a teacher in the middle school building where she was assistant and then principal, I recognize her as being solidly in the "Team Leader" quadrant of Blake and Mouton's managerial grid. I would say that earlier in her career, she may have tended to be closer to and at times in the "Country Club" region due to her true need to please as many people as she could. However, in our conversation she talked about her view of servant leadership being providing for and setting people up to be as successful as they possibly can, yet not being afraid to make the hard decisions about what is best for the organization, even when it may not please or may even upset a person.

As always, it was educational and enjoyable to spend some time talking professionally with Cindy.

School Board Meeting Analysis

On June 23, 2014, I attended the regular monthly school board meeting for Black River Falls School District. There were a few items on the agenda, which point towards continuous improvement. First, Stephanie Brueggen put together a report analyzing the State Testing Assessment. This is the data as achieved based on our WKCE assessments given last fall. She recognized that our achievement is not currently at an acceptable level. She also outlined that at the same time, we are making strides in the right direction and although we hope to be moving by leaps and bounds. She discussed that this is the last year that we will have this data for comparison, next year the Smarter Balanced Assessment kicks in and we will have all new baseline data. We will still be able to compare ourselves to our neighbors and the state, but we will not be able to measure growth from this school year to the next.

As evidence that our district does exhibit traits of continuous improvement, Ms. Brueggen explained that annually, we report out on our WKCE Scores. She explained that historically, it has been hard to draw concrete conclusions from this data or take a lot of stock in it because of when it was administered. We know from many internal assessments that our district annually suffers a great amount of summer loss. It is hard to put a lot of stock in an assessment given just 6 weeks after school has started, as we are still measuring much of that loss instead of student achievement made possible by our system.

She also explained that beginning last year, with the 2012-13 school year, Wisconsin established performance standards (cut scores) comparable to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) cut scores for the WKCE reading and mathematics content areas.These WKCE performance levels were revised to more closely align with national and international expectations of what is required to be college and career ready. This change did not happen for Language Arts, Science and Social Studies. Unfortunately, this paints our performance in Reading and Math in a less desirable light.

Stephanie then explained then showed charts and further explained the results, which were, unfortunately, somewhat disappointing. She went on to discuss the continue steps we are taking as a district and individual schools to address the achievement issues. 

She explained that for Reading and Math the Smarter Balanced Assessment will be replacing this assessment. We are pleased that this assessment is being given in the spring of next school year, as we hope it will be more indicative of our educational system’s impact on student achievement. She talked about how we have been working hard to increase student achievement in Reading and Language Arts through our work with the Literacy Collaborative Model. We know that we have not yet reached our goal in terms of student achievement and will continue to work with teachers on fidelity of implementation as they now have more training under their belt at the elementary level. Middle School will be beginning down this path of training next school year as well. In Math, we know that we have slightly higher data, but still continue to strive toward higher student achievement. At the secondary level, we adopted new math materials 2 years ago to provide more rigorous learning. Additionally, at the High School level, teachers in the areas of Reading and Language Arts and all areas have and will be engaging in professional development in effective strategies in Reading and Math. 

Finally, she referred back to our mission statement saying, "As a district committed to “Inspiring Excellence”, we continue to set goals around student achievement and regularly monitor our progress towards these goals. This year, individual teachers monitored their data across the system more than we have in the past because of educator effectiveness. As you have heard/will hear in the update on the strategic plan, we continue to make gains in the area of Student Growth and are beginning to close our gap toward desired student achievement. We still have more work to do, but we have a lot of great things in place that with time, will help us have a true and positive impact on student achievement." This is just one example of how our district is making the continuous improvement cycle "a habit of the mind" as described in "The Key Work of School Boards".

Another item on the agenda was a report from our community facilities task force. This is a group of mostly community members across a broad spectrum who were assembled earlier this year to look at our current facilities and address any needs that they found. The group has been working with the administration, a construction management team and a team of school architects. They progressed through a series of tours, meetings and discussions about needs, costs, options and a community survey in order to put together a proposal that was presented at this board meeting.

As the book states, "continuous improvement thrives on good information." This process was filled with good information from the tax impact of a potential referendum to the first-hand information that group got from touring and meeting at a different district site for each of their meetings. Using that information allowed for an efficient and effective timeline to move this along. The recommendation that was presented to the board calls for the demolition of a very old and outdated elementary building, the building of a new building and some other upgrades across the district. It does not address all the needs identified, because they surveys showed that the community is not ready to take on that much tax burden and the committee really wanted to let the data lead them. 

These two examples show that our district is in that mind-set of always looking for ways to better serve our children by constantly improving the educational experience that they are receiving. It's all about "Inspiring Excellences!"

The three steps that I would take as a superintendent to improve the board focus on continuous improvement would be the following:

1. Hold an annual board retreat each summer to review data and set priorities for the coming year
2. Adopt a board document management system that would allow for efficient and secure sharing of documents and communication between the board and me, the superintendent.
3. Seek out targeted professional development for the board president and me to solidify our working relationship and best serve the full board and the district.

Community and Belonging

I have to admit that the Community book by Peter Block, was not my most favorite read. I found that he belaboured his points and was quite repetitive. It is actually unfortunate, because his premise is absolutely solid. If we "build the social fabric and transform the isolation" in our communities we can create more supportive, positive and effective outcomes for all members of the community.

My take-aways would be that as a leader of a large community (school district) within a larger community (town or towns) I would need to make the building and strengthening of that "social fabric" a priority. Block uses quite flowery language and more "touchy-feely" speak than I am comfortable with, but the idea of focusing on the gifts and talents that each member of a group brings to the table is important. It is also key to frame meetings ("gatherings" in Blockese) in terms of defining the positive change that we wish to create.


Block's assertions about the "inversion of cause and accountability" do fit well with educational institutions. If we are functioning properly as a professional community of educators, then students would be at the center of our operations, much the way Block states that communities need to shift their focus from leaders to its citizens. Many of the steps that Block outlines for making this shift are similar to what we, in education, have been doing for a number of years now through Defour's PLC (Professional Learning Communities). I plan to integrate things such as using the power of small groups and framing powerful questions to move forward with our PLCs in the building and in the district. This coming year, I have carved out time to set up regular small group conversations using powerful questions, using "dissent conversation" and hopefully leading to "commitment conversations" in solving some of the sticky issues of improving student achievement and improving classroom instruction.

Updating a school district vision and mission

Having a clear goal to strive towards is important; whether you are a large corporation, an individual or a school district. I am certainly not one who enjoys or sees much value in holding many meetings and long discussions trying to wordsmith a "perfect" vision or mission statement. At the same time, I have learned that for most people they become much more invested in continuous improvement, if they are included in the process of developing that clear goal or vision and mission that embodies why they come to work and do what they do each day.

If I were a superintendent leading the updating of our district vision and mission, I would embed that discussion in a conversation about kids. I would use the concepts from the NASSP's Breaking Ranks II book. Even though this is designed for high schools, the concepts fit K-12. The focus is on developing children for their future and shaping the purpose and the actions of all staff around creating what they describe as a school [district] that "will be a learning community that reflects a culture born of respect and trust, where the spirit of teaching and learning is driven by student inquiry, reflection, and passion."

Several years ago, our then superintendent was new and went through this process. He brought in an author who led a small group of district staff and community members in a book study as a means to revising the vision and mission statement. By the end of the several month process, most of the community members and many of the district staff had stopped coming to the meetings and in the end the vision and mission statement were developed and written by a very small group of administrators and a few teachers. Surprisingly, the mission statement is good, "Inspiring Excellence". It is simple, straightforward and although it was argued by some, I believe that it is indisputably what every school district should be doing. If you are not trying to be great, why exist and you are doing not only the children, but all future generations a disservice.

The process that I would use would be to gather as many people from staff, community, parents and students as possible. Have a few listening sessions and a short survey to gather information, then hold a work sessions with representatives and hammer out the statements. That would be only the tip of the iceberg, though. Once these were set, then the real work would begin to implement them. That is what we have been doing for the past several years. and in the end, even though the mission statement is pretty generic, "We are committed to creating a learner-responsive environment that ensures educational excellence and lifelong learning." our steps to create that environment and to foster excellence are on-going and require continual professional development, training and re-focusing on the vision. We do that through branding; simple things like using our new logo on all correspondence and meeting agendas, minutes, etc. and through public relations in many forms from social media to feeding press releases and stories to local print and visual media.

Finally, I really like the summary of the process from the Breaking Ranks II book. They emphasize that the "questions of success will not be based on averages, abstractions or models, but rather on individuals and each student's personal-interest story." This means that the implementation of the mission and the vision must not focus on what is the current hot program or process or on the graduation and test statistics, or the current negative school story in the newspaper, but instead it needs to be about how are we helping James, Melissa, Suzie and Mackenzie to build a desire to learn, graduate and continue learning through a healthy sense of belonging to a a safe and nurturing community.