Student achievement is something I live every day. It cannot be something put in a mission / vision statement and revisited once a year. It must be engrained in how we function as a district from the board of education to administrators, to teachers, to staff.
At an administrative level, we developed a professional development plan that was focused on student achievement. This started by adopting the Marzano Instructional Model. When we did this, we dedicated ourselves to a ten year process to implementing the model. We wanted to ensure that it was done thoroughly and with fidelity. We also invested time and resources into getting teams of teachers trained in the model so the professional development was done as a teacher/administrator team.
Next, we agreed that everything we do over the ten-year implementation must fit within the Marzano Model or be mandated by the state. Too often districts get caught up in the next “best” fad and do not stay focused on the task at hand. We made a commitment to our board of education, our teachers, and our staff that we would stick with this model. This helped us get buy in from the staff so they did not just “wait this out” until the administrators moved on to the next fad.
We also put systems in place to collect and analyze data. Without reliable data, you are grasping at straws. We collected data in a strategic matter. If we were going to collect data, it needed to be used for a specific purpose. We did not want people wasting time collecting data only to never use it. At Auburn, some of our key data points were attendance, grades, formative and summative assessments, and discipline referrals. This data is used by grade level teams to determine what teaching strategies worked, what didn’t, what needed to be retaught, and what concepts were we strong in. This process was done at a grade level, class level, and individual level.
Academic success needs to be celebrated as much as athletic success. It has to be genuine, meaningful, and not just for the top students. For example, we recognized students for academic improvement. There may be a student that improved their reading score by 50 points. While that 50 points might only take them from a “needs improvement” classification to “meets standard”, it needs to be celebrated. This student may have worked harder to get that score than the 4.0 student worked to stay in the “exceeds” category. Both are worthy of recognition.
The final part that we implemented was focusing on students and relationships. We know that a student who feels they have one caring adult in their lives will perform better at school. When the electronic picture of the students arrived after school picture day, we put each picture in a google document with the student’s name. At an in-service we asked the teachers and staff to go through the pictures. If the teacher knew the student, they were to list positive attributes of the student. At the end of the exercise we looked at all the students again. Some pictures had several comments, some had one or two. We were quickly able to identify students that we needed to build relationships with because they did not have many comments by their names. We were very purposeful in assigning a mentor or another teacher to check with those students. They checked on their grades, their home, and any needs we might be able to help them with in school. As they learned more about the student, they added to the Google Document. This allowed additional staff members to interact with the students in a meaningful manner.
When I became the Auburn Superintendent, my goal was for Auburn to be the best school district in the State of Nebraska. I also wanted to be able to back that claim up with data. My vision was to:
Going into the process, I felt that it would take seven to ten years to implement this plan. We would speed up the process if funding and staff remained stable. We would slow down the process if we were facing significant reductions in revenue or a large turnover in staff. This timeline was shared with the board, administrators, faculty, staff, and community stakeholders. Our message was that we were committed to this process regardless of changes to our resources. It was essential that all stakeholders understood that this was a critical part of our school improvement plan.
At Auburn, we started by adopting the Marzano Instructional Method. As an administrative team we felt it was critical to our success to have a common language / common instructional model that was based on research. We chose Marzano based on our familiarity with the model and because our Educational Service Unit Professional Developers were trained in the model. Over the next four years, we sent teams of ten staff members to Marzano training. These teachers and administrators became our presenters at staff meetings.
While we were implementing Marzano with our staff, we were examining our curriculum in math, language arts, social studies, and science. The APS Curriculum Director worked with teams of teachers to ensure that our curriculum matched the state standards and that it was aligned from kindergarten through 12th grade. This was a very deliberate process. We wanted to be 100% sure that our curriculum was on solid ground.
The other part of curriculum process was ensuring that it was being taught with fidelity. This is where the building administrators played a significant part. This started with requiring all teachers submit quality lesson plans that outlined the standards being taught. At first, we started with a mix of lesson plan styles and submissions. In the end, the school purchased an online service to streamline lesson plans for all parties. The next step was to get into the classrooms. My building administrators implemented a systematic walk-thru protocol of all teachers. This walk-thru protocol ensured that all teachers were observed on a consistent basis and that the standards were being taught with fidelity.
Our next step in the process was to address the vocational curriculum. We were fortunate to be accepted into the Nebraska Department of Education’s ReVision process. This process brought in business leaders, community stakeholders, parents, and students to take a close look at our vocational offerings. From these meetings, we discovered:
From these meetings, we embarked on revamping our vocational programs. We started by creating an Agriculture program, an FFA chapter, and adding an Ag teacher. Course offerings in Introduction to Ag, Large Animal Livestock Management, Small Animal Management, Ag Business, and Horticulture were created. I applied for and received grant funding to build a $250,000 state of the art greenhouse.
Grant funds and community donations were used to purchase new welders, a metal laser cutting machine, and to replace all the appliances in the family and consumer science areas. Finally, the APS Curriculum Director worked with teams of teachers to ensure that our curriculum matched the vocational state standards and the input provided at the ReVision meetings.
At this point, being opportunistic played a substantial part in our next step. APS was able to apply for early childhood education grant funding. These early childhood programs would be a key component to our overall success. This was an area that I did not anticipate when I implemented the initial plan. The other grant opportunity was provided in the area of our extra-curricular and activities through the Life of an Athlete program. By being flexible, we were able to take advantage of these opportunities.
The early childhood expansion took place in three different areas, all supported by competitive grant funds. The first was in preschool, which had only one section at the time. We had students that were not able to get into our preschool or one of the private preschools due to enrollment caps. We applied for and received a preschool expansion grant to add two more sections of preschool. This expansion ensured that all children are able to receive preschool education.
The second grant was a Sixpence Grant. Sixpence is a program that targets at-risk parents of children from birth to age three. Through parenting classes, monthly socializations, and working with our Sixpence Teacher, parents learn effective parenting strategies. Children are nurtured in a healthy environment.
The final early childhood grant was our Child Care Partnership(CCP) Grant. This grant works with child care centers and homes to implement Step up to Quality. Again, much like Sixpence, the CCP grant works with child care providers to provide training and materials. These increase the quality of the environment for the children and families that attend.
In the area of extra-curriculars and activities, a local drug free agency offered to bring in the Life of an Athlete (LOA) program to Auburn. The LOA founder, John Underwood, was brought to Auburn to discuss what a culture of excellence was and how outside forces could keep you from this pursuing excellence. His presentation spurred the creation of “The Bulldog Way”. The Bulldog Way is a code of excellence that we strive to live up to on a daily basis. This code applies to everything we do at APS not just athletics. It applies to our academic, fine arts, behavior, teaching, working, and living. The Bulldog Way is best illustrated in the creed developed by the student leadership group:
At APS, we are more than just a school.
Through these halls walk not only students, but hopes and dreams waiting to be realized.
We are scholars, artists, athletes, and musicians.
We are focused, determined, and motivated to achieve.
We are a family that holds ourselves not to be perfect, but to be the best version of ourselves.
As a whole, we are the foundation upon which future generations learn to grow and succeed.
We are the Bulldogs, and this is The Bulldog Way.
We are in year seven of this vision. The plan has been a success. The results are shown in our AQUESTT ratings, in our achievements in the classroom, in athletics, in our activities, and how we treat each other. Even with the success already established, it is still a work in progress.
I value a strong working relationship with the board of education. It is my firm belief that a well-informed board is a key to overall school success. Board members that have a clear understand of the vision, goals, procedures, and problems of the district are able to contribute to the district as well as inform patrons when asked questions.
A key component to board – superintendent relations is to provide strategic planning sessions on a regular basis. At Auburn, we are on a three-year rotation for holding board planning sessions. We have employed Maria Herring from NASB to host these sessions. At these meetings, the board and the administrative team discuss our values, goals, wishes, and concerns for the district. These conversations are invaluable to the board and the administrative team. They lay the foundation for mutual understanding of what we are trying to accomplish as a school district. Having administrators hear from the board and vice versa is a powerful tool to overall school success.
We take the information gathered from these sessions and develop Board Guiding Principles. These principles guide the board and administrative team for the next three years. We just completed our planning session from this past year. The APS Guiding Principles for the next three years are:
Community Engagement
To fully engage and empower our staff and our community, APS must sustain an effective Community Engagement process with all stakeholders in a transparent, effective, and timely manner. We must continue to strive to improve and grow our methods of communication to build trust and reach the community at large.
Curriculum, Instruction, and Learning
Student Learning is the heart of our mission at APS, and an appropriate, relevant Curriculum and effective Instruction methods are critical to student Learning. Our district must continue to progress the learning opportunities we impart to ensure we are providing a level of rigor to challenge students, but also Career and College Readiness to ensure the success of all students.
Finance and Infrastructure
We need well maintained, safe, and appropriate facilities to provide an environment in which students can learn and staff can perform effectively. To ensure we meet the responsibility of Finance and Infrastructure planning as good stewards of public education, we must prioritize our many needs through the lens of the finite financial resources available and work to ensure that our investments are designed to have the largest impact on our most pressing student needs.
Supportive Learning Community
To ensure the success of each student, APS is committed to providing a Supportive Learning Community in which students are safe, healthy, and engaged. The board recognizes the need and value of a comprehensive, district-wide program to address the social, emotional, and behavioral challenges occurring at all levels. We must ensure that students and staff have the resources needed to address this growing need.
One additional step in the strategic planning rotation is to get stakeholder input. At Auburn we do so through two main instruments. We collect survey data every year from parents and community members on the key components of the school district This data is provided to the board and considered at these meetings. We hold community stakeholder meetings to gather community input. Again, Marcia Herring from NASB hosted this event. Marcia gathered information from students, business leaders, and parents/community members. These input sessions provided a tremendous amount of information that helped guide the board and administrative team.
Our current plan is to hold these community stakeholder meetings every five to six years or as needed based on the situation.
Open and honest communication is another key to that relationship. My goal is to keep the board fully informed of events impacting the school district.
In order to assist with that communication, I employ several communication strategies:
One of the first steps is to examine the finances of the district and have a clear understanding of fixed and discretionary amounts of the budget. Upwards of 75% of a school’s budget is tied up in fixed costs: personnel, insurance, utilities, and transportation. These costs cannot be easily changed without some advanced foresight into the long-term revenue and expenditures of the district. If the district is in a financial crisis, the superintendent and board of education need to have a clear understanding of those fixed costs and where any of those expenditures can be reduced or delayed and the process for doing so.
Once the discretionary amount is known, I believe in working with the board and school administrators to determine the best use of those funds to impact student learning. This involves understanding your mission and vision, the strengths and weaknesses of the school district, the school improvement goals, and the expectations of the school district. Of course, these discussions are ones that occur throughout the year. The difference in the budget process is that you start to attach funding to those programs.
First and foremost, I build relationships. This includes students, parents, and patrons. This starts by being extremely visible and open to conversation. As a superintendent, I want to live in the district. I attend activities and athletic events at all levels. I visit classrooms and eat lunch with students. I read to kindergarteners and help supervise events. I love working with students. I want all students to know and understand that I care about them, their education, and their future.
Second, I want the community to know and understand that a strong school district is vital to the long-term viability of a community. This means that the school and the community need to work hand in hand. As a school district, I want the school to support the community. This mean anything from hosting events that brings people into the community to creating partnerships to help the community grow.
In Auburn, one area of need was skilled welders. Our local manufacturing plants could not hire enough welders for their open positions. The school and the company created a partnership to help address the problem. We created an advanced welding class. Ariens, a local company that employs welders, donated equipment to the program. We then set up a rotation of companies to come into school to work with our students. A company representative would work with our students for approximately three weeks. During this time, the representative would teach the kids the welds that were required to work at the company. They would test them on the basic skills they would need to have at the job site. Finally, a human relations person would instruct the class on how to apply for a job at the company and expectations they have interviewing. This class created an avenue to students to go right into the world of work if they did not want to attend college. Ariens was taking it to the next level by offering apprenticeships to two students who wanted to work and get a two-year degree. Projects like these are key to the long-term success of the school and community.
Finally, I believe that it is critical to be active in the community. Every community has areas that allow a superintendent to grow as a person. A couple in Auburn that have brought me enjoyment is involvement in my church and Legion Baseball.
My family and I attend church and find it to be a fulfilling part of our lives. This is an avenue to be part of another family working to improve the community and the people in it. Over the years Deb and I have taught CCD classes, sponsored a GodTeens Group, and been part of several volunteer projects for our church.
Another area that my family and I find enjoyment in is running Auburn’s American Legion Baseball Program. A couple of years back, I was offered the opportunity to run the program and it has become a passion for me and my family. My wife runs the concession stand, I oversee the programs, my daughters help with the score clock, and my sons play on the teams. We have been able to “sell” our passion to the community and they have bought in. We have added high school baseball to the sports offered at the school. We have also overseen the renovation of the ballfield which included new dugouts, lights, and scoreboard. All of this done through grants and donations.
Policy is the way the board of education communicates to the administration, teacher, staff, students, and community. A well-reviewed policy manual will lead a school district through tough emotional times when reason is tested.
As a superintendent, going to the policy manual was a typical part of most days, especially during the first couple of years in the position. Policies are the documents that guide the work of the district. They need to be used in that manner. It is one of the first things I ask my administrators when they are seeking advice, “What does the policy say?” It is policy that provides the basic parameters. I have found that if you are basing your decisions on policy you are on solid ground.
When I first took over at Auburn, we had policies in the books that had not been reviewed in over 20 years. This is unacceptable for several reasons: old policies are not relevant, they are not known to the administrators, and they are not known to the individual board members.
I took on the task of getting all the Auburn policies reviewed within 5 years. This also included determining what policies were missing that should have been included in the manual. Over the course of the next five years, I worked with the board policy committee and the school lawyer to bring the APS policy manual up to date. We completed this work in 2016. Once that was done, we put the policy review rotation at three years. This ensures that every board member will review every policy at least once during their four-year term.
In addition to the review of policies within the three-year cycle, it is important to review critical policies on a regular basis. Policies that elicit an emotional response should be carefully reviewed and discussed. For example, at Auburn we would review the policy concerning student memorials on an annual basis. During these discussions, I would take the board and administration through several different scenarios so they could apply the policy. I believe that these exercises are critical to the success of a school. No one wants to create additional grief for a family that wants to memorialize a child. As a school and a board of education, we need to have those discussions when emotions are not impacting your thinking.
Finally, I would leave the agenda for the Policy and Americanism Committee open in July. Typically, new policies related to recent legislation are presented to the board. The July Committee meeting is an opportunity to review the new legislation and policy. Often, we are trying to determine what impact the new legislation will have on our school. If the impact is significant, how can we meet the requirements of the new law. This education does up and down the line, up to the board of education and down to building level administrators. Every person needs to understand and be able to work within the new policy.
Student achievement is something I live every day. It cannot be something put in a mission / vision statement and revisited once a year. It must be engrained in how we function as a district from the board of education to administrators, to teachers, to staff.
At an administrative level, we developed a professional development plan that was focused on student achievement. This started by adopting the Marzano Instructional Model. When we did this, we dedicated ourselves to a ten year process to implementing the model. We wanted to ensure that it was done thoroughly and with fidelity. We also invested time and resources into getting teams of teachers trained in the model so the professional development was done as a teacher/administrator team.
Next, we agreed that everything we do over the ten-year implementation must fit within the Marzano Model or be mandated by the state. Too often districts get caught up in the next “best” fad and do not stay focused on the task at hand. We made a commitment to our board of education, our teachers, and our staff that we would stick with this model. This helped us get buy in from the staff so they did not just “wait this out” until the administrators moved on to the next fad.
We also put systems in place to collect and analyze data. Without reliable data, you are grasping at straws. We collected data in a strategic matter. If we were going to collect data, it needed to be used for a specific purpose. We did not want people wasting time collecting data only to never use it. At Auburn, some of our key data points were attendance, grades, formative and summative assessments, and discipline referrals. This data is used by grade level teams to determine what teaching strategies worked, what didn’t, what needed to be retaught, and what concepts were we strong in. This process was done at a grade level, class level, and individual level.
Academic success needs to be celebrated as much as athletic success. It has to be genuine, meaningful, and not just for the top students. For example, we recognized students for academic improvement. There may be a student that improved their reading score by 50 points. While that 50 points might only take them from a “needs improvement” classification to “meets standard”, it needs to be celebrated. This student may have worked harder to get that score than the 4.0 student worked to stay in the “exceeds” category. Both are worthy of recognition.
The final part that we implemented was focusing on students and relationships. We know that a student who feels they have one caring adult in their lives will perform better at school. When the electronic picture of the students arrived after school picture day, we put each picture in a google document with the student’s name. At an in-service we asked the teachers and staff to go through the pictures. If the teacher knew the student, they were to list positive attributes of the student. At the end of the exercise we looked at all the students again. Some pictures had several comments, some had one or two. We were quickly able to identify students that we needed to build relationships with because they did not have many comments by their names. We were very purposeful in assigning a mentor or another teacher to check with those students. They checked on their grades, their home, and any needs we might be able to help them with in school. As they learned more about the student, they added to the Google Document. This allowed additional staff members to interact with the students in a meaningful manner.
Kevin Reiman
302 E Park Street, Weeping Water, NE 68463, US
Copyright © 2018 Kevin Reiman - All Rights Reserved.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.