Success hinges on alignment, communication, resources

Back in April 2013, I met with the Executive Board of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents (KASS). Superintendents were concerned about the increasing challenge of balancing budgets with increasing demands for improving performance. Also, during that time a number of issues surfaced surrounding school district audits that were raised by the Office of the State Auditor and in KDE communications. I certainly can understand superintendent concerns about public perceptions and communications. I wrote about this meeting in my April 19 blog.

I have made several commitments to superintendents regarding actions that I would take as commissioner to address the concerns cited above. The purpose of this blog is to highlight a few of the steps the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has taken as follows:

--Hired a chief of staff – Recently, KDE hired Dr. Tommy Floyd, former superintendent in Madison County, as chief of staff. Tommy will be very accessible to superintendents to help resolve issues before these become major concerns. Tommy also will provide a “local superintendent’s” perspective to KDE staff to help them better understand the potential impact of KDE’s decisions and initiatives on local school districts.

--Scheduled a statewide superintendent meeting – KDE has scheduled a meeting of superintendents with senior KDE staff and me on September 5. This meeting, which is only for superintendents, will provide them with ample opportunity to offer feedback on state budget issues and key statewide initiatives.

--Regularly scheduled senior staff and commissioner’s visits to regional cooperatives – KDE has updated its liaison list for regional cooperatives to ensure superintendents have a regional connection to senior staff at KDE. Also, Tommy Floyd and I will each visit a cooperative per month to ensure we hear directly from superintendents.

--Scheduled Superintendents Advisory Council (SAC) and regional superintendent LYNC sessions – Using the Microsoft Office 365 technology, we are scheduling “virtual” meetings with the Superintendents Advisory Council and with each region’s superintendents to provide additional opportunities to hear directly from superintendents.

--Regular meetings with Kentucky Association of School Superintendents (KASS) Executive Board – Wilson Sears has committed to schedule time on the KASS Executive Board’s meetings for me to meet personally with KASS leadership.

--Weekly highlight of districts – Starting in August, KDE will highlight one district superintendent per week in the Fast Five on Friday. We want to take this opportunity to highlight the great work going on in school districts.

These new initiatives should provide numerous opportunities to improve communications between KDE and superintendents. In addition, we will continue the existing practices of sending out the Monday E-mail and Fast Five on Friday along with conducting monthly superintendent webcasts. The connection between KDE and local superintendents is extremely important to educators across Kentucky. It is our goal to ensure that every educator in Kentucky has timely information about the Unbridled Learning strategic plan, and every educator has an opportunity to provide feedback about the components that impact the day-to-day work.

We are making tremendous progress in Kentucky; however, our ability to reach the vision of “every child proficient and prepared for success” hinges on alignment, communication, and having the resources to do the work. My commitment as commissioner is to work on all three.

Reflections on My First Year

As June comes to a close, the first school year on the job is also coming to a close. During May and June of 2009, I was engaged in the interview process for the Commissioner of Education post. During the interview process, I talked to a number of superintendents and other stakeholders in Kentucky. I heard a lot of pride in the accomplishments of schools and school districts. I also heard about the exciting challenges ahead with the implementation of Senate Bill 1 (SB 1).

As I asked questions about priorities for the commissioner, there were two things that surfaced – improve communication and help build district capacity of school districts to implement SB 1 and improve student learning.

Early in my tenure, KDE worked to implement specific customer satisfaction requirements for communication. These requirements include a response time of 24 hours or less, an accurate response and a professional attitude. To monitor these requirements, we implemented an online survey and encouraged all who contacted KDE to complete the survey.

We reported the results of the survey every quarter to all major offices in KDE, and offices compared their results against other offices and addressed areas for improvement. At the end of the first year, we have now established our baseline for our customer requirement performance. The results are as follows:

X Timely response
Yes – 87% No – 10% NR (no response) – 3%
X Response addressed need
Yes – 90% No – 7% NR – 3%
X Any concerns about accuracy
Yes – 12% No – 84% NR – 4%
X Response handled professionally
Yes – 93% No – 4% NR – 3%

As commissioner, I want to recognize our KDE staff for excellent work; however, I do know we can continue to improve in certain areas. Moving forward, we will work to improve the accuracy area and seek to have all requirements exceed 90 percent. We also will benchmark our results against those of comparable organizations. We will provide training and support for each part of KDE on how to improve customer service.

As part of our communication plan, I also met with each regional education cooperative at least twice this year. (KDE liaisons attend every cooperative meeting.) I have visited more than 60 school districts and more than 90 schools to hear firsthand about the challenges facing educators. I average at least three speeches or meetings with stakeholder groups every week to focus on collaboration and improvement. Advisory councils for school boards, parents, superintendents, principals, teachers, closing achievement gaps, special education, gifted and talented, and accountability are meeting on a regular basis to communicate with and inform decisions of KDE and the Kentucky Board of Education. Of course, we have also implemented Monday and Friday consolidated e-mails, this weekly blog, Twitter blasts and Facebook accounts to help improve communication.

The other area for KDE was to implement policies and procedures to build district capacity. In our work with deployment of SB 1 around the Common Core Standards in language arts and mathematics, that is exactly the approach we are using. We are building capacity of higher education institutions, school board members, school superintendents, building administrators, central office instructional leaders and teacher leaders. We also are working closely with the Prichard Committee to create a comprehensive communication plan for parents and the business community. We have had a number of other states and national organizations looking at our deployment model for the Common Core Standards for possible replication. This speaks well to the great KDE team and education partners we have in Kentucky.

If readers have suggestions on how to continue to improve communication and build district capacity please let us know. While these are difficult economic times, we must continue to improve all levels of education through improved communication and collaboration. I am honored to be working with great people all across Kentucky who are focused on helping all children succeed.