Last summer, I was part of a team that put on a professional learning workshop for school leaders who were interested in rethinking the way they use space to reinforce their vision for instruction and learning.  We called it Curation by Design.  By the end of the 2-day institute, participants had mapped out their plans for improving and re-designing their learning environments.  We brought in members of different departments at the district level – budget, construction, educational services – all with the hope that our school leaders would have the information and determination to see their projects through to completion.  These projects ranged from designing more welcoming front office spaces and procedures, to large re-design projects for entire school layouts.

I distinctly remember one of the principals raising his hand towards the end of our time together.  When I called on him, he responded firmly and honestly.  “We appreciate this learning opportunity.  It’s been inspiring and informative.  But why would you get us excited about leading these types of projects when the district always makes it so hard to actually do them?”  The principal spoke from a place of genuine frustration – why can’t you make this easy?

I’m the first to decry the rigid nature of bureaucracy.  We’re not as flexible and nimble as we could and should be.  I know from firsthand experience how challenging it can be for a principal who is simultaneously trying to run an effective school while mapping out a vision for the future with a robust strategic plan to make it a reality.  We often do make things harder for ourselves than they need to be.

But that’s not the entire story.

Perhaps we can blame some of the feet dragging to the realities of representational democracy – speed in decision-making is compromised when you make it a matter of public record and public voting.  That’s the beauty and burden of democracy.  Compromise takes time.  As a public school district, we navigate a complex web of legal codes that often deliberately slow down timelines for decision-making.  So yes, sometimes we make it very hard.  We have to get state approval to ensure our facilities meet higher standards for safety.  We have to go through public bids for services.  We have to honor due process.  We have to navigate the bureaucracy.

That’s why leadership and vision are so critical.  That’s why it is so satisfying to see teachers, administrators, and school teams who break through the roadblocks to deliver new possibilities and increased outcomes.

I had one of those moments this afternoon as I stood in the recently unveiled makerspace at Jefferson Elementary.  What was once a uniformly drab space is now alive with color and learning possibilities.  The entire design, from the selection of furniture to the games and learning tools available in the space, has had an explicit focus on building student agency and ownership of their learning.  It’s a place where students can gather, play, and learn together.

The principal, Dr. Fernando Duran, took an inclusive approach to his design process.  He brought parents and staff to visit other school sites that had recently reimagined some of their learning spaces.  He made detailed observations of student routines and habits to better understand their preferences and needs and how they might better utilize space to accommodate those needs.  Perhaps most importantly, Dr. Duran was persistent. At times, it may have seemed that the district actually didn’t want him to transform the space – continually bombarding Dr. Duran with questions about funding accounts, vendor contracts, and delivery timelines.  Even at the very last minute, with volunteers in the queue to paint and arrange the space, there was a very real threat that the project would be delayed or worse.

Your takeaway from this story might be that districts are inefficient.  You won’t get much of an argument from me.  Yet please keep in mind, as stewards of public funds, we have a different level of responsibility to ensure that purchasing guidelines, contracts, and procurement rules are observed – and many of the hard questions stem from these public accountabilities.  My wife worked for a luxury hotel design firm and enjoyed regular meals at the swankiest nearby restaurants.  I get called on the carpet if I eat a Subway sandwich on the district dime.

As I walked through the newly designed space at Jefferson, I noticed some student writing scrawled on masking tape, clearly identifying ownership of the board games in the room.  “Student lounge.”  The irony and beauty of elementary school students declaring ownership of their student lounge did not escape me.  My takeaway is to celebrate the triumph of leadership.  In this case, a determined principal and a team of dedicated staff and community members who came together to bring a vision to reality and deliver newfound possibilities for students.

This is the last week of school in Santa Ana.  Along with graduation and the end of a school year come transitions.  We experience the end of something old and the beginning of something new.  Often, impending transitions bring a certain sense of uncertainty – and yet at the same time we experience the rush of new possibilities and adventures.

That’s how I’m feeling about the departure of Dr. David Haglund, who is leaving his post as the Deputy Superintendent here in Santa Ana to take on a new challenge as Superintendent of Pleasanton Unified up in the Bay Area.  Beyond some Bay Area jealousy, I’m feeling sadness to be losing a friend and mentor.  David will always be the one who took a chance on me – hiring me straight from a charter school system and empowering me to bring a fresh perspective to our shared work.  On paper, he called my position “school renewal.”  In practice, my hiring was a call to challenge the status quo and agitate for a system that could more authentically and effectively prepare students for the very uncertain world in which we all find ourselves.

While I learned a lot from Dr. Haglund – “Hagdog” as some like to call him – there are a few lessons that he seems uniquely qualified to share.  They are concepts that have deeply shaped my own leadership perspective and practice.

The Skunkworks

David is one of the most gifted strategic thinkers I’ve ever worked with.  His mind kneads situations in different ways and directions until possibilities arise.  And he’s patient.  He knows the danger of unnecessarily pressing an issue when it isn’t “ripe.”  He waits for that moment – the opening – when things come together like pulling a common thread all the way from beginning to end.  It seems effortless when it finally comes together.

All the while David worked the backchannels.  Sometimes, the backchannel was a concrete feature, like during a leadership meeting when he encouraged people in the room to text their “in the moment” thoughts and responses to what they were hearing up on a big projector screen.  Sometimes the backchannel took the form of informal conversations – in parking lots, on the sidelines of football games, and during impromptu encounters in the hallway.  He was constantly priming stakeholders.  He was always planting seeds, with the faith that the moment for germination and growth would come – even if it took a little time.

My approach is often the opposite – to burst through the front door with new and well-funded initiatives and programs in hand.  Sometimes I would get frustrated when David would kindly but firmly redirect my thinking.  He constantly talked about the need to encourage distributed ownership.  He was always afraid that if we didn’t allow people to figure things out for themselves – to grind a little – that initiatives and programs would disappear when the money dried up (which, in public schools, it often does).  He wanted to get the work into the marrow of the organization, and not settle for pretty adornments.  He always took the long view.

Access & Pathways

David’s path to educational leadership hasn’t always been strait forward.  He likes to tell students about his own circuitous path in life, including dropping out of high school for a time.  Honestly, it makes me cringe a bit each time I hear it.  But it is genuine.  It is the story he tells because it is the story of his life.  David’s story  fuels his passion for opening doors and pathways for students – even when it comes in unconventional ways.

David has been a champion of our educational options schools – alternative schools filled with students whose own pathways simply don’t conform to the traditional educational experience.  Under his direction, our district has added a night program for students who would rather work during the day.  He revamped our community day school, recruiting talented site leadership who brought a new vision to the learning opportunities for our most troubled and challenged students.  Two years later, what was once a school only spoken about in hushed tones is now rebranded as REACH Academy, and will be moving into a new campus as possibly the first and only WASC accredited community day school in the state of California.  There is no doubt in my mind that Santa Ana’s success raising graduation rates well-above state and county averages has come, in part, due to David’s focus on the pathways for students who just a few years ago would have opted to drop out.

One of David’s largest achievements has been giving the students of Santa Ana access to the digital world that defines our economy and modern society.  Prior to his arrival, the district had about 8,000 electronic devices serving a student population of over 50,000.  David quickly set to reverse this trend, introducing an Access for All campaign that has put “learning devices” and digital access in the hands of every student.  Now the district has more devices than students, along with a robust wireless backbone that permeates the district.  This system-wide commitment was not borne out of a belief that a Chromebook and internet connection would magically transform the learning experience in classrooms.  Rather, it stemmed from a belief that we cannot even predict all of the ways that young people will access learning when they have the right tools.  Yes, there was a pedagogical purpose behind integrating technology into instruction, but the real motivation was much more about the simple belief that our students should have access to the same tools and opportunities as others.

Connecting with Kids

Ask anyone what is unique about David’s leadership and they will likely answer that it is the way he connects directly with students.  It’s not something he does as a leadership strategy.  For David, it comes from a much more personaI desire to interact with and offer individual mentorship to students.  It’s something that David feels he must do.

And that makes sense.  While the rest of us are running around talking about student-centered schools and personalization, David embodies both in his day to day practice.  He doesn’t make the assumption, as many education leaders do, that improving the systemic outcomes is sufficient.  Yes, David is committed to the improvement of quantitative outcomes in a broad sense.  He has pushed for higher graduation rates and levels of English Learner reclassification.  He brought us MAP testing and growth percentiles.  But incremental gains aren’t enough for David.  He recognizes that he has been blessed with a tremendous amount of privilege and power, and that it is incumbent on him to share his social capital with the students and community around him.

That means picking up the phone and calling a university that isn’t sure about admitting a student.  That means buying an instrument for a student who can’t afford a replacement.  That means hosting dinners with alumni in any city he finds himself just to check-in and make sure students know they have support.  He’s the fan base for many individual students who are engaged in the heroic and exhausting struggle of overcoming intergenerational poverty.  He knows he alone can’t get to everyone.  But he tries to model what it can look like and set an example for the other leaders and adults in the system.  He envisions a school district where every employee takes a personal interest and makes a personal investment in individual students outside of what they are “paid” to do.

“Love ya, Skip” – those were President Obama’s words for referring to Headmaster Mary Skipper when he came to visit Tech Boston Academy (TBA) during the 2010-11 school year, the same year that I was working there as a resident principal.  TechBoston was an experiment, part of a network of pilot schools within Boston Public Schools, whose purpose and goal was to dramatically improve learning outcomes for students.  The school’s secret weapon was a team of dedicated, talented teachers who were passionate – no, obsessed – about creating a school environment where the unique strengths and gifts of each student could be recognized, developed, and celebrated.  That collective commitment, combined with Mary’s leadership, resulted in some truly astonishing outcomes for kids. The school had some of the highest growth scores in Math and Science in the country, and was certainly one of the first to go one-to-one with laptops – long before chrome books or iPads made it a thing.

I was recently looking through my school leadership process journal – my illuminated manuscript for leadership lessons during my year of master’s study in Boston – and was reminded about the formative influence of Skip on my development as a school and systems leader.  While the list of lessons learned while part of the TechBoston team is extensive, there were a few key takeaways that continue to influence me in my work leading schools.

Build A Farm System

Talent and commitment are the foundation of any outstanding school, and Mary was an absolute master in both cultivating and developing her team.  She was unrelenting in her pursuit of interns and student teachers.  TechBoston was crawling with volunteer staff.  I was one of three resident principals the year I was at TBA.  Mary had recruited multiple intern psychologists, and over a half-dozen student teachers.  She packed the school with caring adults who were eager to learn and prove their worth to the team.  When it came time to fill openings at the school, Skip already had a spread of potential hires.  She didn’t need to use demo lessons or intricate interview protocols – she had already seen potential hires in action for months.

Of course talent development wasn’t just about new staff.  Mary carefully planned to ensure that she could hold on to her most talented staff.  Virtually all of her staff held dual credentials in general and special education, which not only supported the inclusive instructional model at the school, but ensured that Mary could hold on to her staff when seniority rules kicked in during staffing displacements or transfers.  Of course this required the careful development of official job descriptions that outlined the need for dual-credentialed teachers.

Mary was genuinely interested in the long-term development of her staff. I distinctly remember the email she sent out inviting every staff member to meet with her to share their individual 5-year plans. She openly counseled staff about professional and academic opportunities, and actively sought out promotional opportunities for her staff, even if it meant she might lose someone to other schools or departments in the district. She seemed to trust that talented and committed staff would flock to a school where it was well-known that the principal was pushing her people to ever-increasing opportunities for growth and development.

Strength in a Diverse Leadership Team

Skip’s genius was her ability to build a leadership team – including teacher leaders – that she trusted to unite behind a common vision.  Often, my opportunities to lead and learn were facilitated by other members of Mary’s leadership team..  Part of this was just a physical necessity.  At the time, TBA spanned across two different school sites just over a mile apart from one another, and Mary simply couldn’t be in two places at once.  I spent the bulk of my time at the Lower School, a traditional 6-8 middle school that had been turned over to the management of TBA, where the day to day leadership of the school often fell to two exceptionally capable assistant principals, Mr. Love and Ms. Vernazza.

In some respects, Mr. Love and Ms. Vernazza could not have been more different.  Perhaps that was the secret of their success.  Mr. Love was a towering African American man, whose rapport with students and parents and whose insistence for a respectful and professional learning environment were unparalleled.  He always called me by a nickname – “Number 6” (in honor of his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers defeating my home team Arizona Cardinals to win their sixth Super Bowl ring), yet always made a point to ask my opinion and perspective on important decisions.  Despite my “intern” status, Mr. Love made me feel like a real member of the team, and wasn’t afraid to give me meaningful, significant tasks that would stretch the limits of my capacity.  Ms. Vernazza, though a small-framed white Bostonian, was no less imposing.  A true instructional genius, Ms. Vernazza wore her urgency for student learning on her sleeve. My assigned office was a desk and chair in the corner of Ms. Vernazza’s office.  She was constantly in think-aloud mode, verbally talking through her tasks at the same time that she rifled through paperwork or shot off emails to staff.  If Mr. Love was the heart of the school, Ms. Vernazza was its brain.

Mr. Love and Ms. Vernazza were both strong, opinionated leaders.  They often disagreed, sometimes vehemently.  They weren’t afraid to express their concerns and perspectives with one another and with Mary.  Yet once a decision was made, they were loyal to one another.  This loyalty, I think, flowed from a shared recognition that their strengths and weaknesses were complementary.  They carried a deep respect for the work of the other, and often acknowledged their interdependence.  Skip, for her part, encouraged these honest deliberations, drawing on the shared expertise of her team members to successfully move the school towards improvement.  Skip recognized that strong schools are led by teams, whose members contribute unique and diverse gifts and talents.

Authentic Student-Centeredness

The Skip knew her kids.  Usually by name.  She knew their stories, their families, their struggles, and their triumphs.  Her authentic connection to her students not only gave her credibility with staff and students, but informed her decisions in powerful ways.  Perhaps to the dismay of staff at times, Mary always had time to talk to kids.  It was impossible for her not to light up with a smile when interacting with her students.

Skip lived in Dorchester, the urban core of Boston where TBA was located.  She didn’t just work at the service of the community, but was part of the community.  Her student-centered leadership brought her a tremendous sense of credibility and authenticity for students, parents, and staff alike.  It wasn’t just her voice that carried a thick Bostonian accent.

At the end of the day, I believe the secret of TBA’s success was a collective insistence that every student mattered, that the future of every student was worthy of discussion and deliberation.  Even when the leadership team came to the conclusion that the needs of a student outstripped the ability of the school to provide support, the process for making outside referrals was thoughtful and self-skeptical.  The team continually asked itself what it had missed or which supports it had potentially failed to provide.  This deeply student-centered spirit was embodied by the Skip, and flowed throughout the entire staff.

You might have seen the editorial in the LA Times calling out the Gates Foundation for their history of involvement in setting the policy agenda for education in the United States.  It’s worth a read.  While I agree that no single interest group or foundation should be attempting to monopolize the discussion around priorities for public education, I don’t take issue with their attempts to spark improvement or encourage a reform-oriented research and policy agenda.

What is interesting about the article is just how difficult it is to pinpoint what works in education when it comes to reform.  Improving our education systems, at scale, is one of the most pressing and complex challenges we face as a country.  Everybody thinks they have the answer.  The Gates Foundation certainly did – and they learned the hard way how difficult it is to get systemic changes.  Zuckerberg certainly did in Newark – and he learned how inadequate 100 million can be in reforming a school system.

Some reformers use these failures as evidence that the education system simply needs to be dismantled.  That’s the message behind efforts to privatize schools using vouchers or dramatically increase charter school enrollments across the country.  I have to admit that I’m not opposed to thoughtful, controlled experiments in school governance and structure in hopes of identifying new ways to develop and sustain high performing schools for our kids.  And while I believe we have important lessons to learn from both charter schools and vouchers systems, in many cases, charter and voucher laws simply reflect an ideological hope that is not grounded in any real evidence.

But there is a more fundamental question at play, can you scale school reform?  Today, I found myself in an argument with a close colleague, Wes Kriesel, who leads the 21st Century Learning department in our district.  The conversation was sparked by Wes’ declaration that nothing is scalable in education – that it is such a relationship-driven endeavor that it can only improve classroom by classroom and school by school.  There are countless examples of reform initiatives that are carefully developed and piloted on a small scale by founders and designers that experience tremendous success, only to lose their potency when the initiative goes to scale. In essence, Wes and I agree.

Yet I can’t entirely agree that quality education can’t be scaled.  To admit as much seriously questions my decision to leave the classroom to become an administrator (my teacher readers are screaming – “yes!!!”) But perhaps my theory about what needs to be scaled is different.  We need to find ways to scale caring relationships that are filled with love and high expectations for what our students are capable of accomplishing.  We need to scale a diverse teaching force whose life experiences and values reflect the students and communities they serve. I think that is core to my work as a systems leader.

There’s no silver bullet.  We aren’t going to happen upon the Uber of education any more than we can reduce parenting to an app on a phone.  Technology can enhance the tools we have to work with and the horizon of what is possible – but relationships are still at the center of the work we do.  We are still social animals, and relationships are notoriously hard to scale.