This past week, we launched our district Innovation Design Team (IDT), with the goal of bringing together a cross-functional team to infuse the planning process for reopening with a push for designing personalized, student-centered learning environments. We are not satisfied simply with a reopening. We want to ensure that the schools our students come back to are even better equipped to promote student learning and foster the social-emotional health of our learners. The framework shared by the IDT facilitator team focuses on five key domains in the context of redesign:
Elicit Stakeholder Input & Feedback
As a community oriented educational organization, it is essential that our design process be as inclusive as possible to the voices and perspectives of our community. This has been a clear priority of our board of education, and that desire for community input is a key element of our redesign work. As a district, this past week we sent out a comprehensive survey to families to inquire as to their preferences and expectations with regards to different reopening scenarios. At the same time, the superintendent launched his superintendent’s community advisory committee. The role of the IDT is to ensure that survey data and community input drives the design decisions for August reopening and beyond.
Identify Critical Areas of Need
At times during the COVID crisis, the sheer breadth of decision-making and emergency response has felt overwhelming. In many ways, we have already had to redesign entire systems of operations in a matter of days and weeks. In the midst of so many areas that could merit our attention, it is essential that the IDT focus on those areas of most critical need. This was the first order of the day last week when the team facilitated its first group meeting, taking time to sift through competing demands to identify those critical areas that will need our most focused attention and effort over the next few weeks.
Provide Recommendations
The IDT is not the system that carries out the work. We already have a district full of departments and teams who are equipped to carry out the work of educating, feeding, and serving our students. Rather, the role of the IDT as we have envisioned it is to engage in a series of “design sprints” – to systematically review health guidelines, legal frameworks, and best practices around the world, to provide solid recommendations to the departments and decision-making units of the district. In other words, the IDT is design to build knowledge and capacity to carry out the highest-leverage practices that are out there.
Develop Systems (Logistical & Instructional)
If I have learned anything during my time in Santa Ana Unified, it is that in a large system, instructional innovation at the student level – the shifts towards more personalized, project-based and rigorous learning environments – is largely mitigated by the operational and logistical systems that run in the background. From the recruitment and retention of talented staff, to the alignment of resources, to the procurement of key instructional materials and practices, to the systematic professional development of staff, to the student information system and grading software, instructional systems flow from logistical systems. As Improvement Science so strongly suggests, these systems need to be carefully mapped and redesigned if new and better outcomes are to be realized.
Action Planning
Ultimately, the success of the IDT will be measured by the concrete actions that are taken up by the school system to improve and redesign the learning experience of our students. With such an unprecedented opportunity and critical need for departments and teams to come together, the IDT must foster and encourage a collaborative spirit that is fiercely centered on equitable learning for all students in SAUSD. The current crisis has and will continue to demand a lot of our staff, and we are confident that we can collectively rise to the challenge, through a community input and research driven process that results in timely recommendations and action at every level of the organization.