Episode 3: Defining the District

In episode 3 of year 1 we look at the variety in public school districts in the United States. I point out the scarcity of studies on how the district as a whole impacts student learning. 

Distancing mechanisms are constructs that inhibit student learning and lead to what I deem "tribal markings" within districts. Even within, let alone between districts a variety of culture, languages, and customs exist. 

I delve into family systems theory to extract the model of the "family scapegoat" to apply to school districts. I emphasize the importance of learning to respect our differences as we collectively seek to help the students from within our own individual perspectives, beliefs, and values.  I hope you enjoy this third in our podcast series. Let's all keep on dancing! 

Contact us at:
phil@thedistrictmatters.com or
phil@riovistagroup.com

Via our Website:
http://www.riovistagroup.com

Join our Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/dancinginthemindfields/

Dancing in the Mind Fields and Instituto de Estudios de Historia Mexicana are subsidiaries of Rio Vista Group LLC

Enjoy listening to the podcasts and let's all keep on dancing!

Transcript

Episode Three Season One

Dancing in the Mindfields

 Defining the District

 Greetings from sunny Chihuahua, Mexico. This is Phil Stover, your host for Dancing in the Mind Fields. I trust you are having a good day and will learn from this podcast. I appreciate all I have learned, the good and the not-so-good from the leaders in all the districts with which I engaged.  Over the years, I have seen the best-of-the-best as well as some who have struggled. I have also seen those who struggled, who thought they were the best! 

I have seen young aspirational leaders come into public education from the private arena. I have also seen most of them, anywhere from six months to two years later, leave and return to the stability and perceived greater sanity of private enterprise. Public education leadership is challenging and not for the faint of heart.

 Having served as a vice president in a Fortune 500 company (heading up sales and operations in one of their regional educational service groups), a consultant to and an administrator in public education, I can provide personal testimony to the difference. There is no comparison in terms of the difficulty and stress, with public education management, the more difficult by a wide margin. 

Teaching methodologies come and go, reform movements rise and fall, conflicts rage, yet through it all, most public educators are resolutely committed to helping  children learn. If they were not, they would not stay. It is challenging work, taxing the most capable district employees whether senior managers or front-line staff.            

In 2022-2023 there were 13,318 regular school districts in the United States. No two were or are alike. In the fall of 2021, the New York City Department of Education, the largest district in America, described by Ravitch and Viteritti so eloquently above, served 859,514 students. That same year, Klamath River Union Elementary District in Horse Creek, California served six enrolled students. Certainly, it is one of the smallest districts in the United States.

At this point, it is essential to provide some thoughts on an operational definition of "the district." This is both a complicated and straightforward matter. Many research studies whose titles give the reader the idea that they relate to the district end up being about the central office, the school, or its classrooms, each in isolation from the other. Very few studies conceive of and integrate the whole into the concept of a unified and unique system that, in its entirety, impacts student achievement. This lack of dealing with the whole system happens all too often, and is, I believe, counter-productive to the good of the students, stakeholders, and the staff. It is often said there is no "I" in team; the "we" in district may also be missing. 

We have many ways that distancing mechanisms are created in school districts. Distancing mechanisms are means, structures, often words, by which a person or organization creates separateness from other people, groups, or organizations. They include both binding and boundary norms. In this manner, the classroom separates from the school, which separates from the area or region, which separates from the district, and so on. 

The central office may be considered of little or no consequence to the effectiveness of the school by its staff. School board decisions are of no importance to classroom learning, at least as long as it does not close schools, change bell times, centralize food service, increase class sizes, reduce discretionary funds, or any of other many other ways it might "interfere" with school site decision-making. 

"My" is a commonly useful word for this purpose. The teacher has "my classroom," the principal and the head custodian each has "my" school, the cafeteria manager is in charge of "my" lunch (and increasingly, breakfast, snack, and summer meal) program or area. The area superintendents have "my" schools, and of course, the superintendent is concerned about "my district." Hopefully, the listener now has an adequate understanding of what I mean by "distancing mechanisms" in this "my" podcast! 

Distancing mechanisms limit cohesiveness, an essential and practical variable in any organization's effectiveness. I firmly believe the greater the district's identity as a singular organism, the more consistent the outcome (student achievement) it produces. There will always be some outstanding individual schools, but consistency  and replication are the holy grails for which districts often strive in vain. The more fragmented its singular identity, the more the district succumbs to those distancing mechanisms. They are divisive and detrimental by their very nature to the effectiveness of the entire system.

Basically, a school district is a local agency that has been established by the state in which it is located to provide for and oversee the education of the children living within its geographical boundary. There are county-wide districts in some states. A district may also be a branch of, or under the control of a municipality (city, town, etc.). A school board or school committee usually governs it, the membership of which is either elected by a region, area, district (small d), community or appointed by a mayor or other political figure. 

Hawaii has only one district in the entire state. Puerto Rico (a territory) only has one as well. In some states, districts can levy taxes and, via an election, seek special approval from the public to fund a bond or special tax issuance. Districts are typically thought of as a central office where district-wide staff and the school board do their work, school-sites where students learn, and support/administrative areas such as food service prep kitchens, bus yards, construction offices, warehouses (fewer by the year), and physical plant operations facilities. 

The district is overseen by a superintendent who provides its overall instructional, financial, and operational leadership. They work under stringent legal guidelines by which their leadership must be provided. In most situations, the superintendent is hired and appointed by the local school board. In some increasingly rare cases, superintendents are elected by the community. I once worked in a district in New Hampshire, where the superintendent was accountable to various school boards or committees, one for each village or town within the district. Wow!

The superintendent is most often a certificated (both teaching and administrative) educator by background. However, a board may request a waiver from the state to hire a non-educator in the role. It is an important and often neglected task for a board to carefully determine the district's background and specific needs when selecting a new superintendent. A popular principal or assistant superintendent of learning might be the candidate of choice but may not be the best fit if what the district needs is a leader who is a robust financial administrator. More on that in future podcasts.

Some years ago, it was in vogue to hire a business leader or a retired senior military officer to lead large, predominantly urban districts. I worked directly for or with retired senior military leaders in five districts. Most adjusted well and provided excellent leadership. A few could not adjust to the district culture and left within months of being hired. In a tiny one school district, the school principal may also serve as the district superintendent.

States have provisions to legally "take over" the operation of poorly functioning districts. This drastic step might provide better financial or, less often, instructional oversight, or both. In such a takeover, the local school board and the existing superintendent may be set aside until the state believes the district is "well" enough to return to local control. The takeover process is a very volatile and controversial step in a district's oversight, especially at the local level. The state government may make a loan to the district to keep it functioning.  In return for that loan, it (the state) exercises leadership (control) of the district, usually through an appointed state representative (often a retired superintendent).  The district must develop a plan to return to financial or instructional solvency and pay the state back the loan.

 Sometimes, the superintendent is the only one in the district to talk about "my" district. Given the reality of the often volatile nature of the superintendent/board/district relationship, that may be a somewhat tenuous and fleeting connection. As noted, board members are often elected by area, zone, or region. If so, they may then focus on their area with its unique challenges and characteristics. Again, the whole is lost. It is my experience that it is hard to find individual employees, whether staff or board members, who believe in and prioritize an effective district, functioning as a whole (central office, school, and classroom) to maximize optimal student achievement. 

I have long been convinced that the third person plural (they or them) shreds shared accountability. It is, therefore, the enemy of the whole and thus of optimal student achievement. It creates convenient out-groups to blame or accuse for current shortcomings, whatever they may be. Of course, "they" or "them" (often the central office occupants) hear and receive this distancing process in a harmful or hurtful way and are disinclined to put forward their best effort since they are assigned the blame. Discouragement is a deterrent to determined effort.

In family systems theory, quite often in a dysfunctional family, one member is most often blamed for its dysfunction. This person is known to therapists as the family "scapegoat." Placing the "sins" of the family on one member is a convenient mechanism to cast and escape blame. It is rarely accurate or fair. In reality, families are systems in which blame for dysfunction is almost inevitably shared. So, it is with school districts. 

It matters not whether the "scapegoat" in a district is the board, a school, the schools in general, the unions, or the central office. It is just like the family. Blame one parent, child, or Aunt Susie for the family's stress, make them the scapegoat, and watch what happens to that family member. They take on the entire burden for the stress in the family. They will either disassociate from the family or begin a pattern of acting out. 

It is the same with the designated scapegoat (and there almost always is one) in districts. I remember working with a particular Maintenance and Operations department that was the scapegoat as far as the principals were concerned. Relationships and communication were so bad that I recommended the department change its name as part of a new beginning. Maintenance and Operations became Physical Plant Operations. I am not sure that it did much good in and of itself, but it was a start to a new perspective. 

It is not unique to school districts that in-groups and out-groups are often created to demonstrate hierarchical importance to the organization's core mission. Of course, the practical implication of this is that it elevates some and denigrates others. I would suggest that on a baseball team, if the pitching staff, outfielders, infielders, and coaching staff each have a stronger sense of bond and identity between themselves than does the whole team, the result will be fewer wins and greater blaming when the inevitable losing streak comes. So it is with school districts.

From my years in education as a headmaster, professor, consultant, teacher, administrator, and resident philosopher and poet, it appears that education, especially in large urban school districts, has its tribes, complete with their own languages. There are tribal markings (sometimes even scars – attitudes, behaviors, priorities, learnings, and interactions) that identify our differing district tribal affiliations. 

Ready identification of those tribal markings leads to better communication, dialogue, and understanding about how we in public education are so similar, yet as leaders and departments, so very different in how we see and approach what we do. Both staff and students can be marginalized, hurt, or perhaps even lost because of our tribal distinctions and our failure to communicate cross-culturally (note, I am referring to the district components' cultures – schools, departments, programs, etc). Student achievement may then be diminished. We must all work harder (and it is work) to understand, respect, and yes, even celebrate our differences. We divide ourselves into the district, central office, school site, business, instructional, board, classified, certificated, finance, and operational tribes. Yes, I even remember Whole Language and Open Court tribes – boy, were their languages different. On YouTube, under my name,  or on my website (riovistagroup.com) you can check out one talk I gave to a back-to-school gathering of district leaders about tribal markings in school districts. 

As I am defining it, the district system includes all the forces, groups, and entities described over the course of my podcasts. Each one has its role and relationship to student achievement and the effective functioning of the whole. District stakeholders, such as parents and community members may be monoscopic in their concerns, but may, at the same time, provide an important check and balance to the agenda of the district. 

Vendors are essential in the life of a district. When they provide their services or products with integrity, dedication, and commitment, they may dramatically impact learning. Some components of a district may be very public (teachers, for example). In contrast, others labor in obscurity (auditors or procurement, for example), but each is important to the whole's effectiveness. It is the district as a whole that must receive the credit or blame for student achievement and success. 

Thanks for tuning in to this podcast. I hope you have enjoyed and learned from what I have to say. Everyone, please enjoy your day. And please, lets all of us keep on dancing!