For most urban school districts, a change in superintendent is a common practice.  While we celebrate the achievements of outgoing leadership and express hope and confidence in the future, under the surface, a thousand conversations are happening.  Old stories of former superintendents are retold.  Speculation on the future is rampant.

Personally, I try not to assume too much power, for ill or good, on the part of a superintendent.  Though we might project our hopes and fears on the leader, really the quality and impact of the work is much more wrapped up in how we each show up and carry out our work on a daily basis.  Yes, a superintendent can animate action and build positive momentum, or alternatively fracture coherency and impede progress.  In the end, however, we answer to professional and moral authority more than a hierarchical one.

With that said, we’re in the midst of a leadership transition in Santa Ana.  Our board appointed Dr. Stefanie Phillips as our new superintendent, starting August 1st, this coming Monday.

Anecdotally, the general reaction has been both positive and hopeful.  I was relieved, frankly, that our Board of Education opted for an internal candidate who is committed to building on and accelerating the good work already happening.  I too am rooting for Dr. Phillips.  Her success is very much tied up with our organizational capacity to provide a transformational education for our kids.

Of course no superintendent is flawless.  Each brings a unique set of strengths and areas of weakness.  Anyone expecting a superintendent to solve every problem or improve a district in linear fashion doesn’t understand how leadership works.  We are not waiting for superman (or in our case, superwoman).  My optimism for Dr. Phillips is tempered by the complexity and enormity of the work of such a large organization.  I’m anticipating setbacks just as I am expecting real tangible wins.

The same can be said for our outgoing superintendent.  We’ll have years ahead to pick over the legacy of Dr. Rick Miller, who now transitions out and into his retirement.  His name will come up in countless lunch conversations.  As the privilege and burden of the superintendency now passes to Dr. Phillips, I wanted to share a few reflections on some of Dr. Miller’s strengths that I hope find voice in the transition.

Amplify Connections

I’ve heard many people outside of Santa Ana Unified who have commented on how the district has adopted a more open stance towards partnerships within the community and across organizations during Dr. Miller’s tenure.  Some of these efforts to connect are formalized and highly public – Principal for a Day, LCAP parent input sessions at every district school, Superintendents’ Breakfast, and the appointment of a Director of Community Relations.

Just as important has been the encouragement and celebration of informal coalition-building.  Dr. Miller has pushed for a culture of connection.  I know employees up and down the system are building relationships in the community – whether it be with the City of Santa Ana, non-profit organizations, businesses, or students and families themselves.  Some of my most fruitful work has been the result of exchanging ideas with people who are similarly committed to the success of Santa Ana youth who are not necessarily employed by the district.  These relationships take time, and they don’t always yield an immediate product.  They have to percolate.

Focus on Formative Measures of Student Growth

There’s a lot of talk in the education reform world about using student performance for evaluation purposes.  Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIG) have required the integration of student growth data into their proposal process.  Most districts have nervously waited for the state to tell them what successful student performance should look like.  We’re still waiting.

Dr. Miller didn’t wait to be told what to do.  Rather than rely on one-time annual state assessments of student performance – what Dr. Miller has referred to as the “autopsy” – we’ve pivoted our focus to growth measures that have the benefit of years of statistical vetting.  Unlike SBAC, assessment instruments like DIBELS and MAP create formative data points that can be used by teachers during the year to make adaptations to practice in ways that the SBAC hasn’t and probably never really ever can.  Dr. Miller has shifted the dialogue to one that asks whether students have made a year or more of academic growth.

The impact of this shift cannot be underestimated.  It has the potential to strengthen teachers’ sense of efficacy in the classroom.  It creates opportunities for rich, data-driven conversations amongst teachers who are pursuing insight into why students in different classrooms might be experiencing different levels of academic success.  It creates more accountability for classrooms and schools that serve gifted students or students from higher socio-economic backgrounds – every student needs at least a year’s growth, regardless of where they started.

Foster Enrichment and Personalization

It’s tempting in a large system to focus entirely on collective outcomes.  Certainly the quantitative data is important to indicate the degree of success across the system.  But most numbers are averages, and don’t come close to narrating the lived experience of our students.  Yes, a graduate is a graduate is a graduate.  But you can graduate from high school having had entirely different experiences.  He cares about what that experience looks and feels like to individual students.

Dr. Miller has put a premium on enrichment and personalization.  Summer school has transformed from a primary focus on remediation to one of STEAM projects, personal exploration, and artistic expression.  After school programs give students a taste of a variety of fun, engaging learning opportunities.  He likes to say ‘yes’ when it comes to direct services and experiences for students, and he’s worked in partnership with our certificated and classified associations to find ways to make sure that staff who want to work and earn more have the opportunity to participate. These have been good years for Santa Ana students to be exposed to new technologies and learning opportunities.

At his core, I believe Dr. Miller has wanted and advocated for what each of us want for our own children – a high quality, enriching, and engaging education.  No, perhaps a school district cannot be expected to provide all of the learning experiences and opportunities a child needs to grow and develop, but he’s pushed to make the system more attentive to the interests and needs of individual students and families.

Like parents, I’m not sure educators can ever really say they are finished.  Even on his last day, today, I found Dr. Miller going about the halls of the district office, engaging in conversations about moving the work forward.  I think he did.

I’m a child of the 80’s.  I grew up on a diet of movies like The Goonies, Indiana Jones, The Princess Bride, and The NeverEnding Story.  Spoiler alert – the good guys find the treasure and live to tell about it.

What makes these movies great – and enduring – is not the climax.  The joy is in the quest.  It’s the journey that’s compelling.  It’s the ups and downs, the booby traps, the near-misses and the hard-fought triumphs.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was driving with the Deputy Superintendent back to the District Office from a meeting.  We were discussing the XQ Super School competition that we’ve been engaged in over the past year.  At some point, I declared how intently I wanted to win – to bring the attention and resources to the kids of Santa Ana.  His response was to encourage my pursuit of the goal – but then he cautioned me.  He warned me not to allow my focus on the final goal to cloud my vision around the possibilities that arise while en route.

The vision is always out there.  It keeps us animated and full of purpose.  It draws us in to the struggle where the real learning happens.  If we reach the goal too easily, then it is almost certain that we didn’t set our expectations high enough.  Sometimes we shoot low just to ensure success.

I spent most of my day engaged in a fascinating discussion about how to use principles of gamification to enrich and deepen engagement for professional learning in our district.  It was one of those conversations where just about every five minutes someone on the team had a brilliant “aha” moment.  We needed about four dozen of those to get to where we had something concrete and actionable that we could test.  The ideas were flying, some of them rather silly but most of them rather profound.  Each time we thought we’d settled for a solution, someone else seemed to ratchet up the level of complexity, or discover a hole in our program logic.  We pushed for greater clarity and the outcome kept getting better.

In a true learning organization, there is a healthy recognition that we don’t currently have all of the answers. What we do have is a shared passion for the work and a hunger to learn and make a difference in the lives of students.  While we think it’s the end goal that we’re after, what’s really feeding us is the opportunity to authentically collaborate and learn together.

I finally gave up around 10:30 last night, waiting for the email that might (or might not) come announcing finalists for the XQ super school project .  I went to bed, and of course the email came 20 minutes later.

But before I share what the email said when I opened it early this morning, I should step back and explain.

There are lots of education-focused grants out there.  While they aren’t all billed to the tune of 10 million dollars, some of them are quite big.  Even bigger than 10 million.  We have a full-time grant writer on staff constantly developing and submitting grant proposals.  XQ isn’t the only game in town.

Yet the secret of the XQ is in the ambition of their design process.  From the beginning, we could tell that the XQ was looking to foster a designer-centered movement.  It’s not enough that they’re offering an insane amount of money.  They pay attention to the design of materials, they’re creative about cultivating engagement and community building, they’ve provided tools and resources to enhance the quality of the proposals that are submitted. They don’t just say they are student-centered. They’ve modeled what it can look like, highlighting and celebrating progress along the way. As humans, we are animated by beautiful design and thoughtful interaction, and the XQ gave us a process that acknowledges both.

In short, we’ve been engaged in a year-long, project-based-learning experience that has pushed our skills as designers of learning. The experience has facilitated the building of local coalitions into a common cause, and has immersed us in the puzzle of public schooling in our country.  They’ve deepened our empathy for young learners.

The XQ never took us for granted.  They partnered with us, invested in us, and pushed us – and we responded. For that learning opportunity, I am genuinely grateful.

Let’s hope we can do the same for our kids.

And yes, I’m glad to report that our Círculos school proposal has moved on to the finalist stage.  It was a happy bike ride in to work this morning.

When I first interviewed for my current job, one of the things that immediately struck me were the uniform, white walls in the district office.  Now, to be fair, I was working at the time as the principal of a visual and digital media art school in San Francisco.  We hung art from the rafters, painted murals on every hallway.  We replaced our bathroom mirrors with designer mirrors and hung student portraits around the school.  We wanted a space that reflected and projected our values.  We wanted our students and community to know that our building belonged to them.

Suffice it to say, I decided pretty early on that my new office needed some color.  I wanted to make a statement that I was willing to push boundaries and insist that our organization be more thoughtful about design and aesthetics. When I shared my plan with one of my mentors, Gia Truong, she laughed nervously.

“That’s not going to go over well, Daniel.”

She pointed out that in a large school district, paint and protocol are a big deal.  She shared how she had come under fire for doing some painting when she was a middle school principal.  Of course after giving me a friendly heads-up, she encouraged me to move forward with my plans anyway.

On day one of my new job, I realized how tricky my situation had become.  Instead of inheriting the discrete office space I had been shown when visiting a few weeks earlier, I was directed to one of the few offices that had floor to ceiling interior windows.  My office was exceptionally public and visible.  To welcome me, special arrangements had been made to give my office a fresh coat of Navajo White paint and furnish the space with a new set of large executive furniture.  The organization had given me the royal treatment and highest welcome.

I tried not to panic.  When I told my administrative secretary that I was planning to repaint and refurnish, she was visibly perplexed.  “Mr. Allen, they just painted your office.”  “Why don’t you want your furniture?”  I think she thought I was crazy.  Her reaction was so concerning, in fact, I decided maybe I needed to do a little investigating, or at least priming, before redesigning the space.  I learned quickly that I wasn’t going to get explicit permission.  I also started to sense that there might be some people very upset, both that I was “wasting” resources that had just been invested in preparing my office and that I wasn’t following work order protocol.

So I started to ask questions to map the organizational structure related to building services and maintenance.  Who actually painted my office and how could I express gratitude for their work while simultaneously explaining my rationale for such a quick change?  Who supervised the painters and might complain about my actions at the director or assistant superintendent level?  I made a trip to the building services plant, introducing myself to as many front-line employees and managers as I could.  When I finally tracked down the painting manager, he was genuinely surprised I had taken the time to come out to see him.  I explained my rationale for redesigning my space, and he was supportive.  He even took me into the warehouse to supply me with some rollers and basic supplies to paint my office myself.

A weekend of painting and a few trips to IKEA later, my office was ready.  I funded everything myself, figuring it was a wise investment to make a strong and strategic first impression. Word spread quickly, and I had visitors from around the district office come to see my space.  They started taking pictures.  In a large district, people didn’t necessarily remember my name.  They just identified me as the new guy with the cool office (now I’m the guy who rides a bike, but that’s a different story).

Now, a year later, and things have been moving. Of course I had a lot of learning to do myself – about the complexity of stocking and maintaining paint, of the legal requirements of contractor bids and furniture purchasing.  I also realized that a lot of other people were already pushing for more thoughtful and engaging space design.  I was just one agitating source in a big system that requires agitation from lots of sources in order to change and adapt.  We’re hosting a “curation by design” workshop this summer.  Principals are pushing for maker-spaces, welcome centers, and more student-centered and technology-integrated media centers.  We’re approving six new paint colors to stock and use districtwide.

Some might call this work gimmicky or unnecessary given the financial constraints placed on public schools.  Perhaps.

But perhaps by building our capacity as designers, we can develop greater empathy for our students and families and how they experience our schools and classrooms.  Perhaps we can increase the visual cues that reflect our values and create spaces that better engage and enliven our learners.