Building System Alignment to Meet Students’ Multiple Needs: Personalized Learning in Lindsay USD
Jason Willis, host:
Back in 2007, following an extensive community engagement process, Lindsay Unified School District in the Central Valley reinvented its approach to education by launching a personalized learning system – or what they call the Performance Based System. It’s an approach that has fundamentally changed the experiences of students, families and educators — and led to impressive outcomes that have been highlighted in multiple studies and reports.
Grant Schimelpfening, Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services, Lindsay USD, guest:
So, I would say big thing was shifting the culture and then just moving forward and being patient and just sticking with it, ‘cause I know in education, a lot of times if something doesn’t work in one or two years, it’s kind of like, let’s do something different. And in Lindsay, we’re just like, Nope, this is what our community wanted, this is what they asked for, this is what we’re going to move towards…
Theme Music Begins
Jason:
Welcome back to Budgeting for Educational Equity. My name is Jason Willis, and I’m your host. I have to say: I am really excited about this episode. We visited with two dynamic leaders at Lindsey USD – Grant Schimelpfening, Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services; and Cheri Doria, Early Childhood Education Director. It was a chance to learn more about how the district has developed its systems and a culture that advances equity through individual, competency-based learning.
We’ll explore how Lindsay has created alignment and coherence in serving their students with multiple needs, including early learners, multi-language learners, and students with disabilities. And we’ll see how they utilize data and weigh resource investment decisions through building their own understanding students’ needs. There’s a lot of great insight and advice to draw from this episode, so – let’s get right into it.
Cheri Doria, Early Childhood Education Director, guest:
Hello, [I’m] Cheri Doria and I am the director of Early Childhood Education here at Lindsay Unified School District.
Jason:
Great. Awesome. Grant, good to see you again. How are things going?
Grant:
We’re good. We’re living the dream here, so it’s going well.
Jason:
Oh, love that.
Grant:
Yeah, we just, it’s interesting, you know, we get lots of attention. We were one of the school districts in California invited to go to Paris at a conference to talk about competency-based education and learner centered education.
Jason:
Oh, that’s so cool. What conference was that?
Grant:
It’s the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD…
Jason:
OECD – oh, wow. They’re like, as I understand, they’re basically the international development agency for public education in countries – like all the measurement stuff for PISA runs out of OECD. That’s so great. Congratulations.
Grant:
Yeah, thanks. That’ll be interesting.
Jason:
So, Grant and Cheri – I’m excited to talk with you more about the work you are doing in Lindsay Unified. And to start with, maybe could you share a bit about the district. Geographically, I know you’re located in Tulare County, maybe about 15 miles east of Highway 99. But tell us about the children, families and communities that you serve?
Grant:
So in Lindsay Unified, we have about 4,200 learners. We call our students learners here. [We’re] a high poverty migrant community, primarily surrounded by citrus fields. It’s a great community. It’s an awesome community with families that trust us and we do a lot of, we have a family resource center that provides all the non-academic supports to the families outside the school day; we have an awesome preschool program, early education program all the way through adult ed. Um, we are known nationwide for our performance-based system, also referred to as mastery based or competency based, where learners progress to this system based on mastery of content, not necessarily age. So for example, you could have a learner who’s in third grade math and fifth grade English because they haven’t finished all their targets for math yet. But in that system, nobody fails because you don’t move on until you’ve mastered the content. So we were, I think our district had the highest UC acceptance rate in the county because you can, if you fail math in high school, you don’t get an F on your transcript, you just take it until you pass it and then you move forward. So it really creates, um, it eliminates that inequity that’s sometimes provided or people get, ‘cause once you get an F in high school, sometimes your GPA, it can never recover, but here it can. So that’s just an example of the system that we have here and we get national attention. We’re part of multiple organizations for learner centered and competency-based education, and it’s going really well. We’re proud of it and we’re making great progress with it.
Jason:
Yeah, I mean that must have a really meaningful impact, I suspect, Grant and Cheri, on the culture within the system. I’m just curious: as you all have shifted to that mastery based and competency based learning opportunity for your learners, what, like, how have you seen the culture change?
Grant:
So, there is some data, I don’t know exactly the data, but there’re just, I mean, I would say 10-15 years ago, [there were] high levels of gang activity, high crime in the community that is almost non-existent at this point. Um, I wish I had the data in front of me, but there was a high percentage of gang member representation at the high school and now there’s, I think it’s less than 1%. So it has done a lot in the community. We have a lot of learners going to college and coming back and bringing their services back. I’ll give you a very specific example. So we had a lot of flooding a few weeks ago, and one of our communities, Tonyville, flooded pretty badly because there was a canal that overflowed and broke and got into the community.
Jason:
Yeah?
Grant:
Tonyville is our poorest of the poor community. It’s our migrant community. Awesome families there, but they have a lot of struggles. Well, we have a learner who graduated from our system and now she works for an engineering firm in Visalia, a local town. She got permission from her boss to do pro bono work in Tonyille to figure out how to improve the canal system there, so they don’t have flooding in the future. It’s just an example of how our learners, they go out into the world, they get these degrees and they come back and bring it back to our community to improve life here in here in Lindsay. And that’s a specific example, but it’s representative of a lot of things that are happening here.
Jason:
Yeah, that’s awesome. Cheri, what else would you add?
Cheri:
Well, on that note about the culture, I think one of the big things that we did along with the performance based system was the change to K-8 learning and communities. We used to have a junior high, and I think the change to K-8 made it more like a family culture, so the older learners are helping to support the younger learners and everybody’s there for a longer period of time, and it’s more like a family.
Jason:
Yeah, that’s great. So, one thing, as you know, with the podcast — we’re really zeroing in on issues of educational equity and systems. And our lens is through thinking about how resources can really influence that — and one of the things we’ve found is that, you know, systems are shaped by the way that they think about equity and how they practice that, and they play that out in their actions. And so, just from both of your perspectives, just curious: how does Lindsay define equity?
Cheri:
Well, I know our belief is that all learners can learn. So, they learn in different ways, they learn in different timeframes — and that goes along with our performance based system and our strategic design. We are very flexible regarding learning styles and learning rates and manner of teaching. We still have those high expectations, but we meet the learners at their developmental learning level. We challenge them. We want them to be successful so that they want to come back to school every day and continue to learn. We want them to have, to leave our system doing whatever they want to do, whether that be college, employment, designing their own future, and to have the tools to do so. We also, um, we want basic knowledge, but we want our graduates to be able to leave us doing what they need to do. We support bilingualism, second and third languages are valued, and we hope someday that that’s where we are — that they leave our system speaking two to three languages. And our learners, they’re allowed to and encouraged to demonstrate their learning in different ways, um, a variety of ways, whatever works best for them. It’s not just written assessments, It’s showing how they know the information.
Jason:
And that seems, Cheri, that has a lot of coherence in particular with the way that you’ve constructed the progression that students make through what Grant was saying around mastery-based education — that in particular, just to lift this up, I really appreciated you saying that your learners have multiple ways in which to express their capability, their kind of command on certain subjects or topics.
Grant:
Another thing that we see in our community that’s on an equity level is our learners are driving their own education. They’re demanding from our teachers — and we call our teachers “learning facilitators,” so we just wanna get the terminology — they’re demanding, um, well, they’ll finish an assessment and they immediately go, Hey, my score’s not showing up. I need to know what my score is. Or, Hey, I wanna move forward with this. So we see the culture [change] and for our learners, they are driving their education and they’re basically pushing the adults as opposed to just being pulled through the system.
And that goes back to giving them opportunities to, they do goal setting. Each learner has a personalized learning plan. So they develop their learning plan with the learning facilitator that has goals in it, how you’re gonna get there. And then they progress monitor that with their learning facilitator over time and, and check in, I think it’s weekly or every other week on how they’re doing with that plan and what supports they need to get through that plan. And that’s every single learner. That’s not just learners on an IEP — everybody has a personalized learning plan all through the system that’s co-developed with the adult that’s in that environment with them — which creates equity because again, it’s meeting them [learners] where they’re at and helping them get to where they need to be to be successful.
Jason:
One of the things that [is] very popular in today’s K-12 education parlance is the term of “whole child.” And really, just want to understand from Lindsay Unified’s perspective, how does that show up for you all? And in particular, I’m really curious to understand how your departments work together in the central office to provide the coordinated responsive services to students in your system — again, thinking about whatever that definition is for you all in terms of whole child.
Cheri:
So, our district strategic leaders’ team, which is like the administrators, we get together and we collaborate internally across the department. We attend data summits, we meet monthly. We’re always coordinating all the different services. For example, with the whole child in the preschool/TK [transitional kindergarten] world, when the learner enrolls, they receive this form and it’s a needs form, and they complete it, and it talks about needs from everything like washer and dryer, to parenting skills, to speech services, to any needs that you can think of. So the minute they enroll, we’re kind of getting to know this family and their needs. And we have [in] Lindsay, one of our internal components is Lindsay Unified School District Healthy Start Family Resource Center, so we are linking our families to that resource center. And even if when they enroll with us they don’t have needs, throughout the year if we see that they they’re expressing needs or we see that there’s a need, we refer them to Healthy Start to get those services, and we work very closely. We have monthly meetings with Healthy Start to see if we are meeting those needs of all the families. We definitely are not solely academic. We’re working on the whole child, the social and emotional and the physical — especially in preschool and TK — we have a huge focus. We’re teaching them just even how to do school so that when they get into the higher grades they are ready for that academic rigor.
Jason:
Cheri, you talked about this form that you have families fill out for their, for their learners when they come into TK, and it sounds to me, I mean, I’d love to get a copy of that if you guys are amenable to sharing it? I think in particular because it raises for me the perspective that it truly is well-rounded, right? You weren’t just asking about some of the developmental elements of how the students did on their DRDP [Desired Results Development Profile] when they were three, right? But you are asking about a lot of conditions that are very linked to what our research says around the social determinants of health – and you then use that and regularly check in on how those needs are being served, both for that learner and their family. I love that example that you, you put on the table.
Cheri:
We also have a preschool, we call it our special education team, but it consists of more than just special education. It’s myself and [the] psychologist, ed specialist, the family Healthy Start Family Resource Center…
Jason:
Yep.
Cheri:
And we meet once a month and we have these learners, we call ’em our COST learners — Coordination of Services Team. So we have a list of these learners and where they are and we sit down and we just talk about them every month. Where are they? Are we meeting their needs? What more could they want? We’re checking in with the learning facilitators. So we have a team of people, and then some of these learners end up going through the assessment process and we assess for, you know, special needs. Some of them may already be on an IEP or an IFSP,
Jason:
Mmm-hmm.
Cheri:
So yeah, we have a good team.
Jason:
Yeah. And on that point, Cheri, particularly in thinking about those students that have special needs, they either have an IFSP or IEP and or they need language support. Can you give us…
Cheri:
Which is everybody right now… (laughs) In preschool — everybody needs language support especially with…
Jason:
Yeah. No, I really appreciate you saying that.
Can you take us inside this a little bit [more]? I think we hear this a lot that, you know, in your system it’s the coordination of service for learners. Others on a common parlance across the state or country is the COST right? And we, we hear similar language, like “We’re talking about the needs of those students. We’re making sure that they’re being addressed.” What would you say is in your experience unique or different or does kind of create the ability for you to feel like that structure is really effective to support the needs of those students that have an IFSP or need language support?
Cheri:
I think we have a really effective system. So, I know my learners that are coming into my program, I have a zero to three list. I know like a learner that was born last month that’s on an IFSP, that’s going to be coming to us in two and a half years. So I run the zero to three list once a month. And so we look at those learners and we invite them into our program. So, when they’re gonna turn, if they’re gonna turn three and start in our program in January, in fall, every Friday they come, we invite them to this, it’s called our transition meeting. And they come, we have a little room set up. They bring a parent or a family member, could be grandma, grandpa. The child and the parent or the adult come and it’s like a little mock preschool learning environment. And they’re there for an hour and a half every Friday. And then those learners enroll in the spring — and then in the spring, so like right now, our learners who are turning three in the fall that will start in August are attending this Friday group. So that way we get to know the learners; we build these trusting relationships with family because these families are sending their two and a half year olds, three year olds to us. And that’s scary for them. So we build these relationships, they, the learners get to do like a little fake preschool day. They go through carpet time, outside time, they have a snack. The parents see it. And we also get to know the learners. We can see, Oh, this learner, we can see that we’re going to probably do an assessment for this learner, or this learner we think probably just enroll in preschool and we’ll see. He’ll be on our Coordination of Services Team [and] we’ll look at them once a month. We encourage every family to enroll in preschool. Our goal is for every single family in Lindsay to have a two-year UPK program. They complete ASQs and enrollment.
Jason:
And an ASQ, just for those who might be unfamiliar with the acronym, stands for Ages & Stages Questionnaires, which is used for developmental and social-emotional screening for children between birth and age 6….
Cheri:
…And we have data chats where we look at every single child’s ASQ no matter what the score is, and we look at it and compare it to what we’re seeing. The learning facilitator looks at it. And so the LF and the education specialists do a data set over the ASQ: Are we seeing the same thing? What are we seeing different? Do we need to have action steps? And then we have this team of people that are constantly checking in.
Jason:
Mmm-hmmm.
Cheri:
So we go into [the] learning environment two days a week; we are out there, we’re getting to know the learners. We are providing support to the LFs so that when we sit at that table, we’re not talking about children that we don’t know about. We see them weekly. We know what’s going on, and we can brainstorm how we can best meet their need.
Jason:
Yeah. So Grant, I want to turn to you. As I’m listening to Cheri, she’s putting on the table a series of structures — and I think as you’ve explained that Cheri, clearly there’s a level of understanding, of intentionality around building relationships with learners and families — a kind of almost like reach-back strategy. Like, you know who these kids are as they are zero to two..
Cheri:
Born…
Jason:
Yeah, before they’re coming into — as they’re born. Yeah. And so, it’s truly, it feels almost like seamless. And Grant, it’s really, from the perspective of being the individual that oversees the kind of operations and budgeting for Lindsay, I’m really curious how you helped to kind of create that coherence to create that environment that Cheri is living in and is operating in, and in particular how you think about your role in staying attentive to multi-language learners, you know, particularly those with, with disabilities?
Grant:
So, you know, I’m the CBO so I oversee a lot of the operations, the business side, but ‘m often in learning environments as well. Because I need to be able to see what’s going on out there. I meet with Cheri at least once a month. She provides feedback and when I receive a request for resources or something like that, um, I’m very open to it and I go out and see what’s going on so I have an understanding of it. And then we look at, we’re very data heavy in Lindsay. So we look at data. Every decision is driven by data. Often I’ll ask, So what’s the data showing? What’s the research based on this? And if it all ties up, then it’s like, Yes, let’s put the resources towards that. And I’ll give you a quick example. We were looking at academic data in our K-3. And one thing we parsed out was like, let’s look at the learners who went through the preschool system versus those that did not. And the data was just so obvious — and we saw this huge increase in those that had gone to preschool versus those who had not…
Jason:
Yep.
Grant:
And Cheri had a limited budget, but we wanted to expand preschool, so we used our LCFF, our Local Control Funding Formula, our LCAP, and [we] wrote in additional full day preschool because we saw the data. And the earlier intervention you have, the better it is to the system. And that’s the same for the ones with special needs. The earlier we can address those needs and identify those needs and address those, it’s actually gonna save us money on the back end because we’re getting to them sooner and building those supports earlier on. So in theory, we could phase out those supports as they go through the system. If you wait too long, then those supports just stay through the whole system. It ends up costing you more in the end. From a fiscal perspective I see that benefit, but it’s also a benefit obviously for the learners and their academic progression. But my biggest advice is get out of the office and go and see it in person.
Jason:
Mmm-hmm.
Grant:
Don’t just sit in the office and take the information in and wait for people to ask. I also go out there and I ask a lot of questions as well – “This is what I saw, Cheri, from my perspective. What does this mean? What’s going on here? Have we thought about this or that?” So, I don’t have an academic background. I mean, I’ve been in the industry almost 20 years on the business side of this; I didn’t come up from the instructional side, but I’m allowed in Lindsay to go out and ask questions about instruction, curriculum, program, things like that. Because it is important to me, and I want to make sure our resources are being used as effectively as possible.
Jason:
Yeah, so Grant, one of the things that I — because we do hear this often, too, you know, we often give the very generic advice of, get out of the central office, especially if you’re a system leader, to understand what’s happening in the system. And the thing that I’m hearing from you that I think is really important to lift up is that you have some real intentionality around that. You’re just not going out to classrooms to go out to classrooms, but you’ve really put that together with when a request comes, whether that’s from Cheri or from another administrator in the system, that you have a chance to really understand what it is that’s coming forward as an opportunity — that the system is saying like, Hey, let’s put some resources behind this. I think the second thing that, and this is where I wanted to ask just a small follow up question is, what I heard you say, Grant, is that because you are investing earlier, you were using the example of UPK [Universal Pre-Kindergarten] and you see these like vast differences in performance, probably on a lot of different metrics of those learners that start preschool early, particularly for multilingual language learners and students with IEPs versus those that did not — that your quote, I think you used the term of like “saving money” or you’re saving it on the back end. And can you expand upon that and or if there’s like any data that you could share with us that helps us to understand that more?
Cheri:
We [early education] are the best investment!
Grant:
(Laughter.)
Jason:
There it is. That’s our headline for the episode! (laughter.)
Grant:
Exactly. It’s all about the early education. I don’t have the data off the top of my head. But you know, and even in theory, if you think about it from a logic perspective, a lot of our learners, they come in with lots of needs. So you’re talking instructional aides, education specialist, assistants, all these things that cost additional money. And they’re all there as scaffold and support to get [to] the learners and provide the support that they need. If we address those early on and those learners no longer need those supports, then you don’t have those expenses on the back end. Again, I know it’s a very generic answer for that, but that’s the fairly simple model. Not that we don’t have support at the higher levels — we still have those — but the level of support is not as high as it otherwise would be.
Jason:
I think your logic makes a lot of sense. And frankly, as former CBO, I am like literally shoulder to shoulder with you on that. And also, like in a bigger macro context, Grant, the research proves this out, right? Like you think about the Perry School experiment, you think about the work of several economists that have looked at issues of…
Cheri:
Heckman — I think it was for every dollar [invested in early education there was a] $7 return — and I think now it’s up to 10.
Jason:
Yep. Yep. And so Heckman’s work just to like parse that out, Heckman’s work really focused on the returns to society, the economic returns that were both long-run outcomes for those learners that started back in preschool, like what they were achieving in post-secondary. And I do think that he actually did have some research that looked [at] the release of pressure of the dollar on the public system, which Grant, is kind of why I’m so intrigued about where you’re headed with that. It would be such a great way to show how systems are thinking about and, and frankly [being] strategic about their investments earlier on, and directing those dollars to students that have some of those early needs that create an exponentially positive effect later on. Not only because Grant, as you were saying, you don’t have to invest in interventions for them, but in particular your design — like they are pushing their learning — I have to imagine that’s like a snowball effect for these learners. like they got a lot of confidence coming out of elementary school; they’re gonna be revving to go through their K-8 into high school.
Musical interlude.
Jason:
I want to bring up funding and funding flexibility – and in particular the knowledge that professionals need to have in the system about the different types of funding sources – the rules, the requirements, and the flexibilities that those sources have. How do you see that — and how does that influence your ability as a system to build a collaborative environment and build an aligned system?
Grant:
That’s a good question. So, I do rely on the director — like Cheri goes out and gets a lot of that information and then meets with me so that I – because there’s no way I can, we’ve got like 50 different funding sources, more than that probably. So I can’t possibly know them all. So I rely on my directors a lot to know that information and come back and share that with me. And then we strategize based on that. And this is a perfect example [with] early childhood education because you have the TK and preschool, which has overlap, and you can leverage both and get both your preschool reimbursement, plus get the ADA, and then that provides additional resources to be able to staff those appropriately. And that’s something Cheri came along with and said, Look, here’s this system that we can do this in; [she] met with me and we designed it and put it into place. Cheri gets a lot of, she gets assessed by outside entities that will provide additional funding if she meets certain criteria and gets five stars or whatever it is. And then we provide that. And so, she’s got multiple funding sources available that we meet with monthly. And we’re going through that and putting in, this is what I’m gonna use for, you know, the new Chromebook outlay or iPads or whatever it is. And we meet regularly to go over, you know, where the needs are and where to fit those funding in. And then I always have on the back end for sustainability purposes, LCAP and LCFF. I always have a little bit earmarked there if we need it. Obviously, we wanna use other funding sources first, but I do have that there for sustainability. ‘Cause I don’t want these peaks and valleys of program where, you know, when we have the money, we’re doing it, [and] when we don’t, we’re cutting back. I want to be able to sustain it, so I have this pot of money on the backend that when times get tough, we can backfill those programs to keep it sustainable — and Cheri’s aware of that, and keeping that moving forward.
Jason:
Yeah. Yeah, and just such good stuff, Grant – and one of the things that I’m hearing, and this goes back to one of the things you all have emphasized early on in the interview, is just around the importance of the relationship. You and Cheri have a relationship that allows you to fairly openly talk about not just, you know, how dollars are flowing into the system. Cheri’s probably very familiar with the dicy-ness at times of early childhood funding and having to stitch together a quilt of funding resources to support that effort. And one of the things that I wan to to lift up that I think is really important as a practice is what you said about the importance of sustainability. I might even add predictability for Cheri — that you really are trying to avoid her and the program experiencing hills and valleys as you described it, of funding, which is, I mean, that can be really jarring for programs and really unsettling at times, I imagine. And for you to offer up and say, you know, I have in the background — and be transparent about it — in the background, I have some LCFF dollars that, you know, if a grant for whatever reason gets pushed out a year or we don’t get that grant that we were looking to do that kind of work, you have an ability to kind of backfill a little bit of that, as an ability to maintain.
Grant:
Yeah, I really look at it from design the program you the learners need, and then let’s figure out how to fund it rather than taking the money we have available and design[ing] the program around the money. Let’s design the program first and then figure out how to provide the resources to get that program. And if it’s too big of a program, we’ll scale back based on what we have. But I’d rather see what the dream program is first — and then see if we can find the resources to fulfill that.
Jason:
Yeah. And I’m just curious, going back Grant to one thing that you had said about your intentionality about understanding what’s happening, like where the money’s actually going, what it’s paying for, what it’s doing for learners, what it’s doing for their families — and I’m just curious, when you are sitting with Cheri, does that come up at all for you? Are you able to get like a better mental picture of what she’s trying to achieve because of the experiences? Or like how else does that come up for you? How is that applied in your work with her?
Grant:
Absolutely. I mean, when I go into a preschool learning environment and I see an adult with, you know, 20 four-year-olds running around, it gives me a lot of perspective on the needs and the environment and how important the adults in that system are and how well they work with the learners. So yes, it does provide me a lot of perspective and understanding. And when we’re talking about staffing levels, which is, it comes up all the time, right, in the TK environment — to go out there and see, you know, if there was one adult in there with 20 four-year-olds, there’s no way that that environment would function. So that’s why we have multiple adults and that kind of stuff. So, I do have those conversations with Cheri and I go out and see it for myself as well.
Cheri:
And even in our monthly meetings – and my office manager and Christina is there also — we have a Google Drive doc and I have a list of my purchases. Like, this is what’s going on right now and they’re all linked to our goals on our strategic design. So he [Grant] knows it’s not like frivolous spending. He knows why, what we’re buying and why we’re buying it and what do we need and why we need it, and that we’re meeting the needs of the learners.
Jason:
Yeah. Love that! All right. So, Grant, now here’s your David Letterman list for the interview. You ready?
Grant:
I’m ready.
Jason:
So, tell us, if you were to give advice to CBOs around how to expand their knowledge, [your] top three list around what we just talked about, what you just put on the table about how to use the mechanisms of funding and funding flexibility to drive collaboration, alignment, coherence in the systems, what’s your top three list? What would you say to CBOs?
Grant:
So, first would be, and I’ve said this before: Get out of the office and go see it. Get some perspective, get out there. Two, I would say trust your leaders and your directors and build relationships with them so that you can trust them. Because as a CBO, I cannot know everything, so I have to rely on others to know stuff. But that comes through trust and other things like that and knowing what’s going on. And then, if I can’t think of a third one, we can call that last one two different ones, I guess (laughter).
Cheri:
Well, and I think you said, I think your third one could also be the idea of let’s put the vision – what would be the best program — start with that and then let’s try and figure out how to fund it. Like let’s do what’s best for the learners. And I think Grant is amazing at that.
Jason:
Yeah.
Grant:
Thank you.
Jason:
I’m struck, too, Grant in something else you said — there’s a vulnerability there that you kind of expressed — because I think a lot of CBOs and superintendents feel like, “I do have to know everything. Ultimately, it’s going to be on my shoulders and I do have to know everything.” So I’m just — I think that’s powerful that you’re saying that’s not possible. You’re sort of making the position more realistic by showing that vulnerability.
Grant:
Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I really see my role as, it’s coaching and developing others to be successful in what they do. And if they’re successful, I don’t need to know it all. I just need to make sure that they’re successful and I need to build relationships and trust them and then go see it for myself.
Cheri:
And I was going to say, I know my budget, my California state preschool budget, and it is so complicated and it changes consistently. And that’s just one of my budgets. And I know he has 50 million budgets. If he had to know all of those rules and regulations, I mean, that would be crazy.
Musical interlude.
Jason:
I want to ask, Grant and Cheri, as you think about this next topic — and maybe it’s a shared experience you all have because, you know, every system struggles — today more so unfortunately than maybe what we’ve experienced in the past. And I think because Lindsay’s a well-recognized, well-regarded system, but there’s also a little bit of like humanity in this, like that you guys are still wrestling with challenges and how you are managing those things. And, we wanted to center this around something where you all struggled around implementation of a program or a funding issue that in particular focused on working across systems or supporting a a certain set of students. And so just curious if there’s an experience you would want to lift up and tell us a little bit about — what was it like to go through that in the room and how did it turn out?
Cheri:
You want me to talk about staffing issues? Or…
Jason:
(Laughter). Well, yeah, I mean, yeah…
Cheri:
It’s, I mean, that’s one of our struggles right now is staffing – and so we have staffing shortages, which I’m sure everybody does. I mean, if you can go to In-N-Out, make more money than working really hard with learners and changing diapers and even get benefits with In-N-Out. Um, we’ve had shortages to the extent where, these part-time positions, I’ve scheduled interviews, eight people, two show up, one isn’t qualified, I hire the other, we offer the position and they decline the offer. Staffing shortages have just been huge and we have eight to one ratio. We have to have highly qualified staff in those positions. It’s a requirement.
Jason:
Yeah.
Cheri:
So that was a struggle. So Grant and I and our team, we put our heads together and we’re trying to figure out, okay, what can we do? One of our ideas was taking these three and a half hour positions and creating full-time positions with benefits so that we don’t have the turnover — we can hire and we can retain them. So that was a process because you have to, we have to look at the budgets and can our budget handle it? And if it can’t, where do we find these funds? And it was a process and then even rolling it out because we have current staff, so we don’t want to lay off good people to hire full-time. So, you’re kind of rolling it out slowly.
But, yeah, just solving all of the staffing issues is one way that we’ve struggled and we’ve worked really hard. And you can jump in and think of other the ways that we’ve done that, Grant, but….
Grant:
Yeah, a lot of times it comes down to what I said before is, [in education] we’ve built programs around funding rather than building a program around need. And so we kind of take, sometimes, we just back off a little bit and say, okay, let’s look at this. Let’s start over. Pretend like we’re starting over. If you were designing this from the scratch, what would it look like? It wouldn’t be two, three and a half hour aides, one in the morning, one in the afternoon with a teacher all day long. It would be two adults in that room all day long. You know, so these are the discussions we have and we say, okay, let’s see what we can do to make that happen. Again, sometimes you have to pull back, get out of the weeds, look at the forest a little bit and say, okay, if we were designing this from scratch, how would this look? And it’s not gonna look like what it looks like now. So then that becomes our transition point. Like, okay, how do we get to that from where we are?
Jason:
I think that Cheri, that you went to staffing shortages, I think that is something that so many systems are – most any system can really empathize with — because we’re struggling. We don’t have the qualified professionals that we need in the volumes that we need to support our learners in the state. And you know, I could imagine there might be some skeptics out there, they would say, that’s really great for Grant and Cheri, but I, as an administrator, as a central office, I don’t have time to do this. I don’t have time to step back and look at the wholeness of this program to reevaluate that. What would you say to that? Like what would you offer as advice to them about how to tackle that? If that’s worth it or if it’s okay to keep doing the best they are in their system.
Grant:
I mean the cost, not just to the learners, but the actual cost of the transition and the turnover and the hiring and the training and then the hiring and the training — sometimes it’s worth it to spend the time to do it [step back]. ‘Cause in the long run, you’re gonna save yourself money. You’re gonna build a better program, higher quality program, and really [it] just comes down to prioritizing your time and making sure you have the people around you to do the stuff that needs to get done. The Breakthrough Coach — there’s another whole podcast, that really helps with that because it allows me to not spend all my day doing technical tasks and I can focus more on strategic initiatives. I can build relationships. I can get out, see what’s going on. So when I’m making decisions, they’re more effective. rather than me sitting in my office all day doing technical work. Because I have other people I can give the technical work to, [that] allows me to get out and do some more, like I said, strategic initiatives — and [put] the time where the impact is gonna be the greatest.
Cheri:
And if you don’t make the time now, you’re gonna pay later. I mean, a lot of programs, they’re closing, they’re short, they don’t have the staff and they’re closing their programs or they’re only able to provide services to a limited number of learners.
Jason:
Yeah,
Cheri:
So, you’ve gotta make the time.
Jason:
And for listeners, because I do think, I agree, Grant, we could probably spend an entire podcast on the Breakthrough Coach — but can you just give us 60 seconds on what a Breakthrough Coach is and how it’s kind of served the coherence and alignment in Lindsay?
Grant:
Yeah. And it’s a whole program. There’s a company that does it for us, that trains us and develops us. Basically, it takes the technical tasks off the plate of the administrator, allowing the administrator to talk to people, to get out, and like I said, focus on strategic initiatives. If you look at my office, there’s not a paper on my desk anywhere. When you look at other CBOs, you see papers all over the place ‘cause they’re doing stuff all day long. It’s not that I don’t do some technical tasks, but my day is managed by my secretary. My calendar is booked from morning till about five o’clock with everything I need to do for that day, whether it’s meeting with people, whether it’s working on a report, but my secretary manages that for me and basically directs me where I need to go to take care of the things I need to take care of. But I also work with my secretary on a daily basis letting her know what my initiatives are, where I need to be. And then she just makes it happen. So, I’m not worrying about my calendar. My emails are managed by her. She takes my emails in, she’ll respond on my behalf if it’s something I don’t need to know about, which is 90% of the stuff, which frees up my time to be able to do the things I need to do that I can have the most impact on for the district — which gives me the time to meet with Cheri and talk about staffing and come up with a plan. It gives me the time to meet with a principal about an issue they might be having on their budget. It gives me the time to meet with my technology director to figure out what’s going on with the community WIFI and how we can get community WIFI to everybody. Because in most places there’s not time to do that stuff, but this frees up my time to do that. Because a lot of managers in my position are doing technical tasks that other people could be doing and should be doing.
Jason:
Yeah. Thanks for that explanation. So, we talked about some other key challenges, and one of the biggest challenges for school district leaders right now around staffing shortages and finding qualified personnel. Is there anything else, Grant or Cheri, that you would add to that list of key challenges that you see the field having to confront when it comes to getting to greater amounts of alignment and coherence?
Grant:
I think one of the challenges, and I think we’ve done pretty well, it’s systematizing, if that’s a word, systematizing it — like my meeting with Cheri is scheduled every month. We know when it’s gonna be. We have an agenda and an accountability log that we follow. It’s being very intentional and very efficient about all the systems. And I don’t know if you wanna add anything else, Cheri, but to me it’s just systematizing it and making it just a thing we do. It’s not a question about, Hey, when the time comes up, let’s meet. No, we meet every month because we need to talk about things and we have an accountability log and we follow up on what did we talk about last time, where are we on this? That kind of thing.
Cheri:
I would agree.
Jason:
Lindsay has made some fundamental changes – everything from changing terminology like what you call learners and educators — to the whole system and having individual plans for all learners. So, I’m curious, you must have hit pockets of resistance, maybe big pockets of resistance? You mentioned parents, but you must have hit resistance from your educators and from administrators about trying to change how they do the work – or maybe from the community? Could you talk a bit about that? Because big change — we know it’s not easy and you’ll hit resistance. How did you navigate some of that resistance if you hit it?
Grant:
Yeah, so I mean, again, another whole podcast probably on this, but, — and we still have some resistance now. It really, you talked about the adults, that’s where we got the resistance. We didn’t get resistance from the kids. It was the adults and honestly, most of the people who were resistant are no longer here because they work, they were successful in a different kind of system and we honor that and we allow them to go somewhere else and be successful in that system. But if you’re not on board here, it’s kind of like I said, the kids are pushing the adults now. And so the adults are very aware when they’re not a fit because they got into education to help kids. And when they feel like they’re not helping those kids because they’re not able to respond to them, they leave and go somewhere else. And that’s administrators, that’s learning facilitators, which are our teachers. So yes, we did have a lot of resistance, but we felt like by having the kids drive it, that’s going to push those who are not part of our system out of the system. And it sounds harsh, but at the same time they’re somewhere else where they’re able to be successful in the system that works for them.
Jason:
And does that include with bargaining units and unions? How does that get navigated?
Grant:
We have really good relationships with our bargaining units. There’s still some pushback and we still have some of the traditional issues that traditional districts have. But I would say for the most part — and we’ve been doing this — 2007 was when we had our strategic design developed by the community that basically outlined all the things we were going to do. So we’ve been working on this since 2007; and I think 2012 or 2011 when we first implemented the PBS model fully districtwide. And so it’s just been a slow process, but we’ve been moving forward. It’s not something we did overnight. And we’re still working towards it, we have our strategic design with all of our vision statements in there and we review those twice a year as a management team and say, where are we on this? Let’s rate ourselves on all these vision statements and where are we going?
And I’ll give you a quick example. Think of back to 2007 and the technology, I think the iPhone just barely came out. We have a vision statement that says all learners will have access to all content 24/7. Think about it: in 2007 that’s what we said. And in 2007 people were like, that’s not even possible. Well, a few years ago, pre-Covid, community WIFI and one-to-one devices were all implemented. 100% of our kids were connected in our community outside of the school campus prior to Covid because it was in our vision and we took care of it. And we go through that vision and it hasn’t changed since 2007, those are the same vision statements we have, and we can share that with you. It’s on our website. But we evaluate that and we move towards that.
So I would say the big thing is, it was shifting the culture and then just moving forward and being patient and just sticking with it. Because I know in education, a lot of times if something doesn’t work in one or two years, it’s kind of like, let’s do something different. And in Lindsay, we’re like, Nope, this is what our community wanted. This is what they asked for, this is what we’re gonna move towards.
Jason:
I’m just like really reflecting on your conversation today about how you as leaders are really kind of pushing the system. And I’m hearing a bit about some of the procedures, Grant — you would use this terminology of systematizing, right? – you have routines that are in place. But I’m also hearing a little bit about mindset from both [of you.]. Like, you have a way of thinking about what you do professionally, how you engage with others. And I’m just curious, and I think that this is a wondering for listeners too: if I want to get on that road, if I want to get on that path of a Grant or a Cheri, like what they’re doing in Lindsay — where do I start? Do I try to change my brain? Do I try to rewire it? Do I start with trying something new? Is it a PDSA cycle, or do I hire that breakthrough coach? If you go back to when maybe you started with Lindsay or when you were just getting into this work, how would you answer that question?
Cheri:
I would think that the mindset should be with the learner first. What is best for the learner? So taking everything else out and just thinking what is best for the learner? What is best for the learners? And that needs to be your mindset. That’s the whole reason we’re here. That’s why we have this position in this business ii [it] is about them. So, making every decision based on what is best for them.
Grant:
Yeah, I mean we, when we make a decision, we always ask this question — well, almost always — is this decision a learner-based decision or is this an adult decision? Is this for the convenience for the adults? Or is this for the benefit of our learners? And that will drive whether we change that decision or not. Because there are decisions we’ve made where we’ve said, you know what, this is actually at the detriment of our learners, but this is for the convenience of adults. So let’s go back and change that decision. And Jason, you said it’s a culture and a mindset and that’s a really hard thing to change, and it takes years to get there because we get that same question from a lot of visitors that come several times a year and visit our system and they see what we’re doing. And that’s the biggest question — well how are you doing this? And we’re like, it’s really changing culture, which takes time. But it’s also really finding a foundation. And our foundation is our strategic design, which was developed by not just our administration, not by the superintendent, it was developed by the community. We had community meetings where the whole community came together — parents, staff, learners — and said, This is what we want for our community. And really, when you have a document like that, it becomes a very objective measure and something you can always fall back on. Because it’s not about me, it’s not about Cheri, it’s about the strategic design and what our community wants. And if we’re not moving towards that, then we’re not going the right direction.
Jason:
Yeah. Brilliant.
Cheri:
Even in my agendas with my staff on their professional learning, every agenda item is linked to the strategic design. Why is this on here? What is the goal? It’s just, it’s our focus.
Grant:
And in my meetings with my staff, we have core values and strategic design. We’ll go, Hey, how are we doing on this core value? When have you guys seen this happening? Our strategic design’s living, it’s not just a document that was developed and put up on the shelf. We bring it up in almost every meeting and are evaluating it, looking at it, measuring ourselves against it and, and with all levels of staff, not just the management team.
Jason:
Great. So I just wanna throw it open: As you guys reflect on the time that we spent together. Anything else you’d add or put out there? Advice, wonderings?
Grant:
The only caveat I always put out there is we’re very obviously very proud of what we do in Lindsay, but we’re not perfect.
Jason:
Mm-hmm.
Grant:
And I just want everybody to [know], we live in the real world, and we have challenges just like everybody else. But it really comes down to having those core pieces that we always, always connect ourselves to — the strategic design, our learner centered model, and the mindsets of our people. But again, we have all the same problems as everybody else. We get the same funding as everybody else. And we have the same struggles as everybody else. So, we’re proud of what we do, but you know, it’s still challenging.
Jason:
Yep.
Cheri:
I would agree. I learn from others. We’re doing amazing things, but we’re not perfect. And I learn from others. When I have people come and visit our program. I have people from all over to come and visit our preschool and TK program and then in turn, I am like, let me come visit you ‘cause I know there are things that we can improve on. So I want to see the great things that you’re doing that we can possibly implement here. My position is kind, I have a great district and strategic leaders team, but my position is kind of a lone position in the sense that early childhood — nobody necessarily knows that realm and all the rules and the regulations — and so I also go outside of our district with colleagues from all different programs to try and bring their excellence into our program.
Grant:
Yeah. And that, that brings up a good point. Something I want to mention is our early ed program, our preschool, is not a separate program. I know in a lot of districts you have the preschool, [and] they feed into your K-12 program. Our preschool is embedded in our K-12 program, which, so our, our principals know who’s coming before they come. So again, it’s somewhat unique. I don’t think a lot of districts do that. Maybe they do? But it’s [early education] not a separate entity from the school district. Just because they have a separate funding source and they even have a separate fund does not mean they’re not part of the district, and we incorporate Cheri into our data chats and all kinds of stuff.
Cheri:
And along with that, I know a lot of preschool and special education preschools are completely separate, too, in other districts. And we are not. We are, um, special education, preschool – it is preschool — we are all, we’re fully 100% inclusive and it’s one program and it is a district program.
Jason:
Mm-hmm. I really appreciate you guys. I get, my bucket gets filled when I do these interviews; it’s so awesome to hear the work you are doing in Lindsay. I just deeply appreciate and have a lot of gratitude for you guys taking the time. W we know how busy you all are, so thank you.
Grant:
Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity.
Cheri:
Thank you!
Theme music plays.
Jason:
Thank you again for joining me and a special thanks to our guests Grant and Cheri. We’ll include links to Lindsay USD’s strategic plan and other resources that they mentioned in the Show Notes, so be sure to check those out. We’ll also have an accompanying brief with more info…
Budgeting for Educational Equity is a partnership between WestEd and the California Association of School Business Officials, CASBO. Paul Richman writes and produces the episodes along with me; John Diaz and Alyssa Perez at WestEd provide research, help develop episode content and prepare our companion briefs; Tommy Dunbar handles our music, sound and editing. This series is also made possible by the generous support of the Sobrato Family Foundation.
I’m Jason Willis – we’ll see you out there.