I’m heading over to our local high school tonight for a listening session. A student was shot and killed recently at another high school here in Des Moines and the school district is hosting a series of listening sessions to receive feedback from the community on school safety. I’m interested in hearing what the conversation sounds like.
I left the Houston Independent School District (HISD) in 2008 to serve as the executive director of Houston A+ Challenge, an educational non-profit committed to helping schools improve by training principals and improving classroom practice. Before moving to Houston A+ Challenge, I served HISD as one of their region superintendents, so I knew the general superintendent and the Houston school board well.
Soon after arriving at the non-profit, I received a phone call from the HISD superintendent. He felt it was time for the district to get out into the greater HISD community and hear what Houstonians had to say about how schools were performing when it came to student achievement, along with other topics. The general superintendent asked if my non-profit could facilitate a series of listening sessions across the city so HISD could learn about and react to community concerns. My non-profit had done work like this in the past, so I told the superintendent we would be happy to help. Before we ended the call, the superintendent asked me to wait the day as he had to make a few phone calls before we signed the deal.
I knew where those phone calls were going. They were headed to certain school board members to check the pulse of elected district leadership to see if they were comfortable using an outside group to help with the district’s listening sessions. Not surprisingly, later that day, the general superintendent called back and told me he had decided to facilitate the learning sessions internally, using the district’s Parent and Community Engagement Office instead of my non-profit. Later, when HISD hosted their own listening sessions, they experienced low turnout and a skeptical audience. Clearly, there was existing mistrust between the school district and many of the communities they served.
Why didn’t the district partner with a community group like mine to host these community listening sessions? You see the school district felt if they surrendered control of the listening session process, then they would be seen as weak in the eyes of district watchdogs – parents, community leaders, politicians. The school district couldn’t give up that control or power because they were afraid to share that control and power with others within their own community.
Why is it school districts have such a difficult time sharing control and power, and working with their own community? It’s like they feel every decision must be made by them and them alone, or they demonstrate weakness as elected officials and professional educators. And, in the end, the school’s inability to share control and power with their community ends up deflating the confidence that the community has with its own school district.
I take our dogs on walks around the neighborhood, usually twice a day. Occasionally on the dog walks, I see a school bus driving around our neighborhood, dropping kids off after school. On the side of the bus the sign reads “The Des Moines Independent Community School District,” and I stand there and wonder about the message that title sends. How can a school district be independent and yet part of a community? If your part of a community, then it seems to me you are somewhat dependent on that community, for guidance, for critique, for support. You aren’t independent, and you shouldn’t think you are.
This is a big problem with the modern-day school district – their inability to take advice from the community they serve. Some districts are just too big, but I think the real problem here is the inability of school professionals to take advice from people they often times see as inferior to them. I can’t tell you the number of times I watched teachers, assistant principals, principals, and central office staff decide an issue without even thinking one second how that decision was going to impact the student, family, or the community involved. As a young educator, I must admit I practiced some of this behavior myself.
We must look toward a different relationship between learners (students) and their adult learning leaders (teachers, principals, etc.) Some elementary schools seem to understand this type of relationship, where every decision begins with the learner, their family, and their community in mind. Sadly, fewer secondary schools understand, and therefore do not practice this concept. It seems the older the learner, the less input they, their family, or their community have when it comes to decision-making. It seems, to build stronger relationships, smaller might be better.
Yesterday I wrote about a study the Center for Reforming Public Education released earlier this year about small learning cohorts popping up across America. The report, titled “Crisis Breeds Innovation: Pandemic Pods and the Future of Education,” gives us hope that we might be able to create a different learning system to better benefit our young learners, their families, and their community. Maybe it’s time to see if this new system of learning can work on a large scale. It doesn’t seem like the modern school system can sustain those types of relationships any longer, if they ever could.
I’ll let you know how tonight’s listening session turns out.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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