It’s no secret that here in Lexington, we have an excellent public school system. With top-ranked schools, challenging academic programs, internationally hailed world language offerings, cutting-edge technical schools and comprehensive art and music courses in every school, your Fayette County Public Schools provide amazing learning opportunities for roughly 40,000 students annually.
You may be shocked to hear that as Fayette County Public Schools superintendent, I’m dissatisfied to say we have an excellent school system. To provide our students with the education they deserve, I would suggest that instead, we need to become a system of excellence.
Those of you who share my fondness for organizational theorist Peter Senge are already familiar with the model of a learning organization. In the business world, it’s commonplace to find companies where employees actively participate in creating and sustaining a shared vision and culture that supports collaboration, teaming and creative problem solving.
To move the Fayette County Public Schools from an excellent system to a system of excellence, we’re going to take a page from our business partners and implement a model that in education circles we call “professional learning communities.” Generally defined as a collaborative group of teachers, administrators, parents, students and community members who focus on learning and results, the concept is certainly not new, and there are some places in our school district where strong professional learning communities are already in place.
Our work this year will center on establishing a high-functioning districtwide professional learning community. I envision a series of concentric circles that begins at its largest point with community and business partners, draws in families and district leaders as it moves inward, and continues to pull diverse constituencies together into a central focus on the work that’s happening in our schools.
Under the excellent leadership of my predecessor, Stu Silberman, the “It’s About Kids” mantra is firmly established in Fayette County. To ensure that we’re meeting the needs of all of our children and schools, the things that we’re already doing well have to be done systemically and systematically for all kids within an intentional culture of value, respect and relationships.
When I use the term systematic, I mean something that happens regularly and becomes routine. We want to see the best possible classroom instruction as just the way we do business. Our operational procedures have to run smoothly in the background, not causing “events” for schools and families.
To operate systemically means that it happens from within the organization, deeply and at all levels. It can’t be a top-down effort. If we try to mandate things into place, they may happen to a 50 or 60 percent level. But if it’s not something we believe in, it’s not going to change. If we don’t believe all kids can be successful and all kids can learn, I would ask, why are we here? We are responsible for making it happen. If we don’t believe, then they’re not going to be successful. It’s not up to the kids, it’s up to us. If they’re not getting it, we need to change what we’re doing.
Despite high expectations from our community, a stated district commitment and hard work from our employees, we still have unacceptable achievement gaps in our school district. Despite written plans, recruitment efforts and accountability measures, our workforce does not mirror our student population. Despite benchmarks, databases and procedural changes, we have not seen much movement in awarding bids to minority and women-owned businesses. If we truly believe, we have to make it happen. It has to be an intentional focus, not just developing plans or throwing words on the wall. It’s about having a frank conversation about who we are and how we’re going to move forward to make changes in the school district.
One of the first questions a child learns to ask is “why.” Anyone who has spent time with preschoolers can attest to that. In fact, it can be so overwhelming to keep answering a child that we try to squash the curiosity with an exasperated, “because I said so.” As leaders, we have to ask why. Too often we jump to “what” and “how” and don’t solve the problems we were trying to solve because we didn’t adequately define the problem we had before we started working on it.
Our district work will begin with questions. Why do we need to work on these things? Why do we need to build this intentional culture? If it’s about kids, what does that mean? Our school board has established five goal areas for our district: student achievement, family and parent engagement, student engagement, business and community engagement, and staff engagement.
The first step will be to establish professional learning communities for each of the five areas and define succinct and specific goal statements to guide our long-range work. As we define those goals and determine what success in each actually looks like, it will be clear that all five of these goal areas are interrelated. It will take each and every one of us working collaboratively to meet the needs of the community and ensure that our kids receive the education they so richly deserve.
Even before my first official work day last September, I devoted much of my time listening to and learning from employees, leaders, students, families and community members about the strengths and challenges facing our district. What came across strongly was that the district is not broken. We don’t need a turn-around. We don’t have to start from scratch. We need to continue the progress that’s been made over the past seven years. We have to build upon and enhance existing partnerships with our business and community leaders and reach out to those we haven’t connected with before.
I am convinced that culture and leadership are the keys to moving the district forward. Please consider this your invitation to join us. To get involved, please email me at tom.shelton@fayette.kyschools.us.
Tom Shelton is the superintendent of Fayette County Public Schools.