Summary:

Join Dr. Jim and Mike Molnar, Superintendent of Amherst Exempted Village School District, as they explore the balance between emergency response and addressing root causes. Learn how Mike's leadership journey, from a young principal to superintendent, is revolutionizing his district with a focus on servant leadership, structured organization, and strategic planning. Discover the impact of role clarity and shared vision on academic and community success, and how these principles can transform any organization. Tune in for insights on driving organizational excellence through vision and stakeholder involvement.

Key Takeaways:

• Organizational Restructuring: Implementing defined roles within the leadership team can prevent the chaos often seen when roles are undefined or overlapping.
• Strategic Planning: Establishing a clear mission, vision, and strategic plan enhances organizational focus, making room for high-level growth opportunities.
• Servant Leadership Philosophy: A commitment to servant leadership helps gain trust and fosters a supportive environment for students, staff, and the community.
• Innovative Educational Programs: Investing in entrepreneurial and technical programs, such as robotics and automation, meets evolving student and workforce needs.

Chapters:

00:00

Addressing Root Causes of Problems in School Leadership

01:45

Servant Leadership and Building Trust in Education

07:27

Challenges and Changes in School District Leadership

11:44

Implementing Strategic Planning for Organizational Success

15:36

Restructuring Leadership Roles for Improved Educational Outcomes

20:27

Empowering Education Through Strategic Vision and Community Engagement

29:26

Key Principles for Advancing School District Leadership

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Mike Molnar: https://www.amherstk12.org/

Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda



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That's the right thing to do. What also needs to be done is a deep examination of why are these fires happening in the first place. You can do both of these things at the same time. The trick is to make sure you don't get tunnel vision and ignore the root causes that lead to these problems in the first place.

He completed his master's degree in school administration at Cleveland State University. Mike, welcome to the show.

[00:01:17] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to this conversation. I think it should be a pretty interesting one. And one of the big things that we're going to be talking about is building the necessary foundation so that you can be a high performance or a high level execution organization.

And we're going to dig into that. Before we dive in, I think it's going to be important for you to share with the listeners. Some of the key things and moments in your career that helped shape your leadership philosophy and how you showed up.

So that really started to shape my career being young. But knowing the passion and the dedication I had moved on to another elementary position and then actually had an opportunity to come home to work in the district where I lived and my Children were growing up and so had opportunity to become the assistant superintendent here at Amherst and it's been just a wonderful ride.

I've been here like, as you mentioned, for assistant superintendent for about 10 years. And then this is my third year superintendent. So I had the pleasure of living here, working here, shopping here and have my kids actually graduate from this district. that I work in and so passionately strive to be the best we can.

So that puts you in a really difficult scenario in terms of how do I answering the question? How do I lead these folks? So how did you navigate that challenge of potentially? Having imposter syndrome, building credibility, there's all sorts of different issues that come along with leading at such a young age.

So how did you work through all of that and plant your flag within that, within the building?

When I walked in the room, everyone would make those comments and say, Hey you're younger than me. You're younger than [00:04:00] my own child, but just recognizing, hey, I'm not an expert. I'm here to help and assist in every way I can. And, I'm always open to, to, veteran information, input and feedback because again, you've been around a lot longer than I have, so you can really help me be the best leader I can be.

But I think also being young, I think that actually helps shape. My future and my philosophy of how it is to be a leader. I think because of that being so young, it was natural for me to just pull up your bootstraps and dig right in and really. Learn how to serve people and help people. So it really shaped my foundation of what I believe is the best way to be a leader.

And that's servant leadership, to take on any task to do whatever it is that you're asking others to do to be willing to just understand your role as a leader. Really is about making everyone else successful. And so I just, the philosophy of mine and a belief of mine is a classic everyone else is more important than I am.

And it really being young helped shaped who I was going to be as a leader.

What were the things that you did to get over those doubts and internal criticisms so that you're actually building trust across the team?

And so again, you couldn't just speak [00:06:00] about serving leadership. You had acted out like you pointed out. And so I remember actually one of the first things I did a few days into getting the job in August is a new math curriculum was approved. And so a couple of days in All the math curriculum showed up pallets and pallets of boxes and boxes.

And so I talked to the secretary, how do we normally distribute these materials? And it was either everyone comes together and participates and takes the PD days at the beginning of the school year to do that, or the secretary have to do it all. And I thought we need to save time.

These teachers are getting ready for their school year, the new students. There's so many things on our plate. I just came in, we came in after hours. Dress in shorts and a t shirt, unboxed everything, pass it all out, stacked in the rooms perfectly, organized it was supposed to be. And again, just trying to make everyone as successful as possible.

And, but you're right. You have to build a trust and you have to show time after time again, that what you're saying is true and you're going to walk it out.

[00:07:27] Mike Molnar: Yeah being in the district 10 years, assistant with Senate, I knew exactly what it would take to be superintendent. I knew the community. I knew the staff. I've worked with them closely for so many years. I really thought it'd be an easy transition.

What I found out was you don't know what it's like to be in the chair until you're in the chair. And so there were a lot of things that I found out right away. that we learned because of the transition. There were just things that were occurring that there, the trust I thought was there between administration and the staff and then the community district wasn't what I thought it was going to be.

And so we're one of the districts in Ohio that we're in the top 20 percent of academics, but we're in, we're spending in the lower, lowest 20%. So we are able to provide an excellent education, but at a very low cost. Some districts in our state spend two or three times as much as we do per student.

And we're able to provide that. Provide this excellent education. So that's a positive thing. One of the things I realize is one of the reasons is because we've been very lean administratively to keep costs down. And so as assistant superintendent I was involved with curriculum, professional development, federal programs hiring.

And while we all personalities that could get the job done, what I realized is that we were not being as excellent as I think we could be because we were so thin and we were just trying to manage every single. structure position. Part of that too, was there were no defined roles. So one day I'd be focused solely on human resources.

The next day it's curriculum, the next day it's something else. And so just bouncing around, everyone was crisscrossing over, you hire this person, you take care of this process, you manage this federal program, you worry about this new law that came down from the state. So there was a lot of no defined roles, a lot of crisscrossing of of the work in a very small, Leadership circle that while we did amazing things, I don't know if we had enough people around us to have more input, different views of different point of views.

[00:10:01] Dr. Jim: So when you look at that really thin leadership layer you're already a high performance district in terms of academics You're on solid financial footing and you have this thin leadership layer. The temptation could be if it ain't broke, don't fix it and don't mess with anything. So what were the things that you were seeing happening in the district that helped inform your decision to switch gears or change, change directions

Where would you be different from the former superintendent? What would you do differently? And so from the outset in recognizing Some of the issues we had and how if the board has hired me to be the best district in the state of Ohio, like we were gonna have to make some changes and that [00:11:00] included.

restructuring the organization, adding some additional staff and getting true stakeholder input, which was going to cost money. So that was the difficult pieces you mentioned of if we want to make some changes and be even better, we have to accept that's going to cost a little bit more. That's hard to do when you've been so successful financially for so long.

And in Ohio you fund schools. Through community levies. So every time cost rise year after year, if you're not finding ways to keep the budget contained, you're eventually gonna have to ask the community for more money through a levy, and it's their approval or not approval. So there's a lot of things in play in that.

But we, what we had to do was essentially. Create a restructured organizational chart, add staffing personnel, and get true stakeholder involvement from our staff and our community.

How did you make that connection so that People would be like, okay, that's not, that makes sense to add people.

Organizational chart with the right people. You in order to get input and buying, you have to have certain committees or certain groups that you actually get their input from. And also you have to have a structure in place, probably a strategic plan, which we did not have or haven't had in decades to align those things.

It has to make sense. And really, a lot of those things because of research space, because I knew that I'll be quite honest, those things I wanted to put in place thinking those are things I need to do, and that's what's going to work. Without really understanding, is it going to work because you just believe in the research, believe in the process.

That again, the evidence that what's being produced is evidence of it's working. It's working very well.

Why do we need one now? How did you respond? Did you get that question? And if you did, how did you respond to that critique or question and pivot to the need of adding restructuring the organization?

And so I didn't really get too much of a pushback. I think what there was, though, where a lot of people who realized this is going to be work we're going to form a dispute. district leadership team. We're going to align it with our building leadership team. We're going to form a facility advisory committee.

We're going to form a strategic planning committee. We're going to develop a strategic plan and then we're going to develop five action teams to make sure the five major goals are being addressed every few months. That's a lot of people and a lot of work. And so there wasn't, there was belief in that this was going to happen, but I think there was a little bit of being tentative to, to take it on because what if it doesn't work or whatever, putting all this effort in and it's not showing results.

And so we've been together as a team under the superintendent for those 10 years. When I became superintendent, she became assistant superintendent. And so Sarah Walker's just an amazing person. And so that was another piece that I not mention. Our teaming also together was something that, that the staff, the community, and the teachers believed in because of the evidence of over 10 years of us.

Doing the, doing such excellent work as, as much as I think. As much as we can,

So you're dealing with a lot of pop flies that are happening [00:16:00] and you're doing all of that without, Any sort of formalized job description for any of the roles that exist within your leadership tier. So that sounds like a big mess. What were the things that you took into account?

When you and your assistant superintendent are working through the process of restructuring this organization, what were the conversations that you had and the considerations that you made that informed sort of the vision for the future that the district needed to have?

All of our staff who is overseeing all of our people. And so if we knew that if we were developed one additional major person, it would be a human resource director. And that was taking the pressure off of not only the central office, but also principals who were also involved in trying to develop processes [00:17:00] for hiring new staff and maintaining staff.

Think about it when also supporting staff when we had staff issues and there was a personal thing happening, someone's life or a medical issue or all these other things. Who do you go to? Sometimes you don't want to go to the principal or the superintendent or the assistant superintendent.

Who's the person that we have that's solely taking care of our staff and in education, that's very important. And so that was the key major role, key role that we've added. That was very crucial to take. All of these staffing and staffing support issues and problems and solutions and putting them on a specific person.

Now that freed up me as assistant superintendent when I became superintendent for Sarah to move into my role. And as student services director though, she was also overseeing way too much. So we hired a special education coordinator because special education is such a major piece of student services.

And so that was a major piece as well. In addition, To replace our move up. We had one more position to fill, which was a curriculum person. We hired a curriculum director, but unlike when I was handling curriculum and handling all these other components, she's so solely focused on curriculum. And so Mackenzie Hall is able to again.

Do things I wasn't able to do. I could not attend the daily grade level department meetings, things happening on the ground with our excellent teachers who are actually teaching the curriculum. She's now able to do those things. And so we knew what we needed to do. And so that was 1 of the 1st things that occurred and probably a 2nd or 3rd board meeting after we were hired is we actually had the board approve a new board.

And everyone was able to focus more on one specific task to be as excellent as we can be.

[00:19:30] Mike Molnar: So our experience in our district, we have such wonderful people. I've found that over the decade plus that when we add staff or change some things, we don't just spread the work out. What we do is we allow people to now expand what they do, expand their vision, expand. Opportunities.

Parts of the position as a leader when you are trying to help this person who was in had an issue at school or an accident, or you're trying to call a vendor about the curriculum is not working. Really starting with a strategic plan. We started also with developing a new mission and a new vision statement that then helped us.

Develop a strategic plan with the community that kind of was overarching. We started to build overarching vision and mission and core value work in addition to that, I also found that it freed up everyone to go deeper and to think more in that visionary style. So one example real quick is we were able to in facility wise, with our facility advisory committee, we were able to develop and recreate a maker space in our high school.

And then from that now we've allowed people in that space to let them have their own vision. And from that, we had a teacher, John Augustinelli, who just had so much passion for box automation. He applied for a grant from the state of Ohio. And just a few weeks ago, he was awarded a 1. 6 million grant to bring actually.

New equipment of robotics, automation technology into our high school that I think where the only we would be the only public high school in Ohio that has this level of automation and robotics and technology for this coursework. And so again, for those that want to streamline finances and not maybe put enough people in place.

[00:22:01] Dr. Jim: So that's a good breakdown. It it allowed for a degree of focus across the district. And then also it helped you create the space that you needed to do some of this This overarching mission, vision, value stuff. The other side of the coin that I'm looking at or that I'm thinking about is when you look at this particular path that you took, you took over as a superintendent and you landed on this as the direction that you wanted to prioritize.

There's probably a bunch of other things that you could have prioritized too. So why did you pick this versus maybe some of the other competing priorities that existed within the within the organization?

I just know the directions we need to go. I know the community. My Children have grown up in the community. They've been through the school district. I can see where our community and society is changing a little bit. I can see that moved back to more traditional hands on work or in the workforce.

We have graduates who can graduate high school school. school. work in a local Ford plant and make probably 80, 000 off the bat. And with some overtime on weekends, the things make over 100, 000. Not everyone needs to go to college university. Not everyone needs a four year degree. We also recognize that students because of that, students becoming entrepreneurs, you can have a student in high school or graduate from high school, really make a name for themselves on social media platform somewhere.

And really that's been my philosophy the whole time from when I started, what are opportunities that we can give kids at the more opportunities we can give them the more that they can go down and find who they want to be and who they are, what they're successful at. That's how we're going to be successful.

So again, allow me as superintendent to open some doors, and then I'm going to allow. staff members, teachers, curriculum directors to think and do their own thing because I trust them. We built a team that I can trust. I know that one's the best for everyone. And so again, just that ability from the board to allow me to do that.

I'm now passing that on to the rest of the district.

When you look back at the progress that you've been able to make.

Area that I think we're making an impact is again, because of the result is this trust. That was a component that was missing a little between staff administration and the community. We've been through some challenging things over the last couple of years, but they've seen that we've been able to tackle those things, communicate very well, be honest and open and actually ask input and feedback from the community.

And there's just been, there's just been a greater connection with the grant that we received. It's been very supportive and very well received by the community. Another thing we did was through the very financial difficult times that most of the countries going through, we put up a renewal levy.

And so part of discussion was, Hey, right now we don't have a transportation center. Those buses are sitting outside in Ohio weather. We need to invest in a space to protect your investment. So these buses can last multiple years longer with very few, fewer mechanical issues. They supported us and they passed that levy.

And so we're in the, we're in the middle of those projects right now. And just simple things like our cheerleading team, one States and one conference last couple of years. And so I just wanted to show them a little bit of love. I I got them some new pink uniforms for our pink week as we support breast cancer.

But again, there's just this positive vibe. And I think we're building trust and people are believing what we're doing because we're showing results

[00:27:32] Mike Molnar: Actually that academic performance. And what we've seen recently actually is tied into again, the strategic plan and actually the addition of the additional staff members, additional central office staff. Now that we had a curriculum director of support. Focus on curriculum. She was able to work with our instructional coaches, and they apply for a few different grants.

We received those grants. We were able to provide professional development in the science. Of reading, which is a new initiative in Ohio, and so we've been able to see incredible growth in our young students in literacy because we're tackling some things and educating and providing professional development for our teachers to improve their practices.

We also have done a few creative things, for example, teachers in Ohio need to renew their license every five years and that requires coursework every five years. We have excellent people in house. who deliver coursework with a partnership through Ashland University. Our teachers can stay in house, in our buildings with our people, receive the professional development that they need delivered by us and then still get credits and still earn coursework to renew their license.

[00:29:01] Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Mike. And we covered a lot of ground in terms of this conversation and the things that you did to get your district to the next level.

When you look back on the conversation that we've had, and also think about all the things that you've accomplished in your time there, if you're advising another superintendent or district leader, On how to take their district to the next level, what are the key principles that you would say? Hey, start with these things first.

That's what I would recommend. And then build from there.

One, it comes down to people. You have to have the right people in place. And so for me, it has to align with my philosophy of. Servant leadership. People need to be in our district who are leaders, but also lead through assisting others and [00:30:00] helping others be the best they can be. So I think that that's very important.

People are important. Also process is obviously important. Don't skip over. Just, just tackle something. We used to just come up with a great idea, tackle it, and we used to have a great success with it, but there wasn't an aligned decision. vision or process connecting everything we were doing together.

So I think people then process is very important. And finally, I think you have to have the right vision. You have to have a feeling and a gut. And use data and research to know what is needed. And how am I going to get there? And again, the practical things of what you put in place as far as your strategic plan.

Those are practical things. But again, I think people process and vision is important. And then with that real quick, I think. For me, I think it's important to have shared vision. You have to get people's buy in input and feedback, whether it's community, staff, your colleagues.

But really, we've talked a lot about leadership in our district and in shared leadership really means not only getting feedback and working with others, but also holding people accountable. We often talk about with having leadership teams and building leadership teams, it's one thing to help or allow staff members to give input.

But what if the input doesn't go well? What if something, what if the decision made doesn't turn out right? Should the leadership be the only person Only people involved in defending or trying to stand up for what the decision was shared leadership also includes some shared responsibility.

I think those are the key overarching themes. I think for me are important. I think it all is all tied into servant leadership approach.

[00:31:51] Mike Molnar: Best way is reach me through email and I encourage anyone. You're more than welcome to do that. Another way I think is I, again, like I talked before, I'm a promotional guy. Like I [00:32:00] promote our people, our staff, what we do, if you're doing great things, you got to get it out there, you got to share it with people.

And we have a great communications system and approach in Amherst, but one way, if you really want to. Connect with me or contact with me easily. If you have x former twitter my, my handle or my ad is the comet super. So I'm at the comet super and you can follow me and message me through there.

Kids message me, parents message me. You'd be surprised how many people contact me through non traditional means.

And what I find interesting about that is that all of that is. True, and it's correct, but you can't focus on that stuff. If you're constantly hopping from task to task and nobody [00:33:00] really has defined roles or processes in what you're doing. I often describe it as existing in survival mode. If everybody is doing everything, you're never really creating the space for yourself.

To think about those higher level things. That's going to get you to the next level. And I think that's one of the more important lessons that that I walk away with in this conversation. So I appreciate you sharing that with us for those of you who have been listening to this conversation. If you'd like the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player.

If you haven't already done so make sure you join our community. And then tune in next time where we'll have another leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that helped them build a high performing team.