Summary:

Dr. Jim and Dr. Willie Garrison, superintendent of the School District of Beloit, as they chat about the complexities of stabilizing leadership in K-12 education. Learn how Dr. Garrison's background and strategic initiatives have fostered a culture of academic growth, stable student enrollment, and financial stability. Discover the importance of building trust, consistent communication, and engaging the community effectively. This episode is a rich resource for educators and administrators aiming to transform their districts and achieve sustainable success.

Key Takeaways:

• Leadership Stability: Focus on providing consistent leadership by addressing both internal and external factors that affect administrative turnover.
• Community Engagement: Maintain strong ties with the community through initiatives that engage students and families, even during off-school periods.
• Clear Communication: Ensure administrators and teachers communicate expectations and directions clearly to build trust and effectiveness.
• Data-Driven Strategy: Use data to validate that educational methods are working and make informed decisions to maintain academic progress.
• Building Relationships: Develop authentic relationships with all stakeholders to foster a unified and supportive educational environment.

Chapters:

00:00

Turning Around a School District with Dr. Willie Garrison

03:00

The Impact of a Mother's Influence on Educational Leadership

08:36

Promoting Positive Narratives in Beloit's Diverse School District

12:22

Building Trust and Stability in Educational Leadership

20:53

Effective Communication and Listening in Leadership

23:11

Transforming School Districts Through Community Engagement and Systemic Changes

30:44

Key Pillars for Successful School District Turnaround

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

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Dr. Willie Garrison: wgarrison@sdb.k12.wi.us, https://www.sdb.k12.wi.us/

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



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But what do you do if you're looking at an organization where you're constantly churning through leaders, can you really build a stable and high performing team if you can't retain your leaders, those are some of the questions that we're going to tackle in today's conversation, when you're tackling a district that churns through leaders, you need to take a long and deep look at what's going on and really understand the root causes.

Since his arrival, Dr. Garrison has [00:01:00] proven to be a dedicated leader who prioritizes student academic achievement, continuous improvement service at the highest level collaboration and community engagement. One of Dr. Garrison's most notable qualities is his willingness to listen and respond to the needs of all stakeholders.

He's made it a priority to actively seek feedback from families, students, and staff members to ensure that their voices are heard and their concerns are addressed. This inclusive approach has resulted in more cohesive and supportive educational environments in the community. The district under his leadership, the district moved forward with several initiatives.

And for the first time in many years, experience positive academic growth, a stabilized student enrollment and stable financial results. So that's a long list of accomplishments. Willie, glad to have you on the show. Welcome board.

[00:01:52] Dr. Jim: Super excited to have you on Willie. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation, especially because I'm a big fan of turnaround [00:02:00] discussions. And I think Those are really valuable in any space, but particularly the K through 12 space.

I think the first order of business for us, there's only so much about your story that we can include in a three to five sentence bio. So what I'd like you to do is share with the audience a little bit more about some of those foundational experiences in your career that shaped your leadership strategy

And the importance of, that was our way, possibly out of poverty. We had a strong understanding that, you had to go to school, you had to do well in school and although I had a lot of outside factors that prevented me from being the perfect student single parent home and out father, type of thing.

And so that was our way of really pulling some conversations together as a family. From there, naturally, we progress through life and you're just trying to find your way. And one of the things that I found my way in is that I actually was a very intuitive student. When in school, I had a lot of questions, I always wanted to, I always wondered can we do this better?

Is there a better way to do this? I always wondered that, although I was doing well in my classes, a lot of my friends weren't. And I knew that. And so I always try to help them do better in the class. Because outside of the class, we were peers, we were peers in a class, of course, but outside of class was also social peers.

Going to college, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. Actually, I thought I was going to go into juvenile justice. To be honest with you, I was going to be a lawyer. I thought that's what I would want to be. But then of course I started taking educational classes and I knew I was going to be a teacher in the end.

And just having that inquisitive thought process around. Can we do this better? Of course, with my mom putting an importance of education, can we do this better? And then I started running to some very dynamic educators along the way. People who didn't just talk about what they really want to see done that are actually doing what they want to see done.

And there is a, you're the influence of your mom and how that shaped your perspective on education. And then your focus on helping make make education fun for your peers. Those are really interesting. One of the things that I'm curious about is the part of when you mentioned that your mom instilled in you.

[00:05:20] Dr. Willie Garrison: The first connection is, there has to be an opportunity. And so one of the things that I strive on is making sure there's opportunities given to everybody that, walk through the doors of any school building. And so my mom really put that opportunity in front of me to really chase after that was very important.

The second thing that we, that I believe shaped was She allowed me to have that curiosity. And she really wanted that to come out. So she never pushed my curiosity down. So when I got into the classroom as a student, I would let that curiosity go, sometimes I have teachers that didn't want too much of it.

And I had a lot of teachers that I would ask, can we make this Opportunity more fun for everybody. I would just ask that simple question and some of my teachers would take to that. And some of them wouldn't cause this is how they wanted it. But the ones that did our classes were just magnificent.

We had wonderful opportunities in the classroom. And so those things helped me place where I am today. Really. I really want the opportunity to be there. I really want the engagement to be there. I really want our students and staff to actually be love what they're doing.

And so those are some of the things that I think. Help shape my conversation.

Tell us a little bit about how that influenced your teaching [00:07:00] style and some of your philosophies today.

I didn't want to be a teacher that would talk about, I believe all kids can learn at high levels and then it not show up in my data. And so intuitively, I knew that I needed to show that too. And while I was watching those teachers and they would. Be rocking it in the classroom. Naturally, when I go back and I look at their data was showing that, and so I really took to those teachers that were actually not only talking about what they were doing, but also showing it through data that was very important to me because I knew that's what I was going to do anyway, because that's what I was working on when I was a student in the classroom, really being able to show like this could be, this could actually work a week. There's a better way to do it. And those teachers really. Show that and that's what I learned a [00:08:00] lot from them Like you've got to be able to believe that all kids can learn at high levels But then you got to show the data to prove it

[00:08:36] Dr. Willie Garrison: Sure first of all Let me just say this, you know coming in as a new superintendent to any community. It's always gonna be very exciting, right? You're gonna think about all the possibilities and the things that you really want to do And you don't think about all of the great things that are already happening in the school district You want to look back at some of the the practices that has worked for the school district and grow on those opportunities.

And that's very important. The school district has been through a lot of different changes and especially in an area of leadership. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that I really wanted to do was come in and provide some stable leadership to a school district that hasn't necessarily had that stable leadership over time.

Whether it be through many school board members over the many years and or many superintendents over the many years as well. And so I really wanted to provide that stable leadership to the conversation. But what I realized was there was a lot of great purple knights, that's what we call ourselves, purple knights in the school district of Beloit, That love everything that we were doing, we just needed a new voice to keep promoting the great things that we are doing.

You have to promote the great things that are happening in the school district. Cause if you don't, the other stuff gets promoted, the pull you down conversations of what you are, what you once were or what you aren't, those things get promoted. And there's a tug of war that, that, that needed to happen with that conversation.

And then sometimes I still feel like we're working through those conversations, but overall our conversations is changing about the school district of Beloit, because I have to lead that conversation. The leadership has to lead. We are now this. Versus what we once were called. And so that's been some of the things that, I haven't had to focus on in, in our school district.

So we have a very diverse school district, which is actually a strength because you have, you walk into the classroom, you're going to see everybody, you're going to see the diaspora. I like to call it the Asper of America, but you're going to see a nice, you want to see every. Group pretty much being represented in education.

And that's what I love, love, still do love about the school district of Beloit that's one of the things that actually drew me to the conversation.

And that's going to have an impact across the district in terms of how people within the district feel about the work that they're doing. So I think that's an important call out there with that being said. I think one of the, one of the things that you mentioned was that, it was clear to you [00:12:00] pretty early on that we need to stabilize leadership.

Oftentimes that's not really the things that we see in an organization where they have churn. They have churn, primarily at the front lines and then leadership is stable. What were some of the things that really crystallized in your mind that this is the biggest problem that we need to solve right now?

I'm a servant, I don't look at myself as look at me as a district administrator, but it is very important that we have that stable leadership starting from the board of education and then it trickles all the way through the system from there. When those things are not in place. It's hard to follow a strategic plan.

And when new leadership comes in over and over, a lot of times what happens is that new person is bringing something new and new. And then it's hard to follow. Who are we? What are we really about? How are we going to maintain this conversation? We're here to impact student achievement.

That goes without saying. We all know that. But when you don't have that stable leadership in place, it's hard to follow which initiatives you're going to move forward to meet those opportunities in student achievement. And so focusing in on this area was very important to me. And coming to the school district of Boulloye.

[00:14:26] Dr. Jim: that's a great point. And as we were talking, I was thinking about a couple of sports analogies. When you look at some of the best sports programs, let's look at the NFL, the Steelers are one of the best organizations in football. And what do they consistently have? They have stability at all levels of the organization and they're not changing systems or plans or philosophies every other week.

We want to build a stable leadership within our organization and in our boards. How did you actually bring that into fruition?

I started right there. I really leaned in on administration and started to think about, Hey, what is it that We can do differently to make sure that we all stay as a consistent unit. And that was very important to me. And also leading certain professional learnings around leadership, just talking about leadership.

I think it was. Educational Association, my apologies. I think it was very important that I re engage the association on a monthly basis because administration and teachers have to work together. It's like a, a cog on the sprocket, right? You, you have to be moving in the same direction.

And although there was opportunities where we could have gotten off that Same page. I do believe we are still moving in that same direction. A lot of tough decisions have to still be made. And that kind of slows us down at times, but I believe we can still work together and be on that same conversation because I meet with you once a month.

So what we did was we strategize around our strategic plan and said, okay, here are the initiatives that we need to look at. Let's really try to focus on the strategic plan. What is your leadership looks like in that conversation? And we really tried to focus on and we're still are focusing on Superintendent and board relations because if we don't have that relationship amongst each other, then the superintendent leaves and go be a superintendent.

Some worlds and then you bring another person in and board changes and it just goes back and forth. And so we're really focusing on how can we build, how can I build a better relationship with the board and vice versa? How can the board build a better relationship with the superintendent?

Because when all three of those things are working together, right? Board administration, teachers, you have a high achievement school district.

Tell us a little bit more about some of the development activities that you had with your administrative team that Empowered them to better support the teachers underneath them.

And I'm not going to change those things no time soon, because I believe we need to focus there still is trust. And. Not in, but trust and leadership. Okay those are two real tough conversations in the school district of Washington State. Tough conversations in our, I think they're tough conversations everywhere.

And that's just one of the areas I focused on in an area of leadership. I really focused on what is it that stops you from being your best person? Best leader? What is it that is really hindering you from doing that? I don't know. Is it. Your own self confidence. Is it something external from the community?

Is it internal within our own organization? I focus heavily around how do you overcome some of your own conversations? I focused on norms as well. As a district, it's very important that you have norms as how you want to operate when you're having these tough conversations and or meetings, and I'm always been a person that likes to, address the concern right away.

So I did a lot of conversations around those areas.

The clear communication piece is interesting to me because if you're dealing with an organization or a team that might have some gaps from a pure leadership perspective, clear communications and setting expectations and all of that could be a roadblock block or bottleneck. And if you're not skilled at communicating clearly without.

Damaging the relationship. That could be a problem too. So how did you tackle that specific issue?

Whether you're a great communicator and didn't always hit the mark, that's a good space to be in as well, because you're still communicating. I think what happens in education is a lot of times we stop communicating with each other and we stop listening to each other and that actually hurts the conversation.

And so what I've always pride myself on is I tried my best to be a great listener. And that's, that is a part of communication is listening. And so you can't say what you want to say all the time. Sometimes you've got to listen to what you need to say. All the time it goes back to, you got two ears and one mouth conversation.

However, What they can't say is I, I. What I don't want people to say, I should say, is that I wasn't trying to listen because I really am. So that's how I navigate those conversations. I really focusing on listening, but also being clear that, I'm going to communicate with you regardless, through our issues or direction we're going, I'm not going to just all of a sudden go, go silent and, stop the caring within that, in that space.

So I think that's an important call out. This is a long term transformation effort that you're walking into because I think, when we're talking about this before the show. This is a district that's had a lot of instability at the leadership and board level, so it's [00:23:00] not going to get solved overnight.

But you still have short term and mid term considerations that you need to demonstrate delivery on. What was your strategy in tackling both of those things at the same time?

The first week I sent the survey out asking for feedback on something that I believe the district wanted to see changed. And I took that feedback right away and I moved on it. It goes back to, not just talking about what you want to do, but actually doing what you say you think is important or as you have heard from, different constituents.

We were 4 8 middle school back to a 6 8 middle school in the course and then 9 12. In that transition, we also had to listen to, our numbers, our enrollment. And naturally that comes with possibly constricting some buildings. And so not, we didn't just talk about it, but we had to constrict some of our opportunities with our buildings to, to better inform how we move staff around and to better impact.

One could argue having a full staff in every building. And so of course we had to constrict or consolidate two schools in that conversation as well. And so that was a lot in five months, right? Six months, you get there in November and you got to do all these changes over time and be ready for September 1st of last year.

So you have to balance the 2 because you can't go too fast. You can't go too fast, right? You shouldn't do that. However, you can't go too slow to stop as well, right? Or too slow, not moving. And I had to move some things forward to get us moving in the progressive conversation. To get us back to what I knew was going to be the best interest of all kids and students and families in the school district.

And after this year of service in this area, I believe we did a wonderful job with that transition.

I think one of the things and you're getting to in just a second ago, one of the things that I'm curious about is You've only been here a short amount of time. You're [00:26:00] not even hitting year three. What's been the impact so far on this long term initiative in stabilizing leadership? And how has that impacted how the district is doing both at the educator level and at the student level?

That's a very important concept. Another thing that we were experiencing was a high level of decrease in. One could argue our enrollment was declining. Okay. And once we made that shift back to our traditional system, K five, six, eight, nine, 12, we started to maintain our enrollment, which is very important because we didn't have those families leaving us in droves like they were in the previous [00:27:00] system.

Now one could argue that was for various reasons, right? Discipline, whatever people want to say, academics. Not feeling welcome, turnover in the leadership. We took that conversation away. And so what could are we maintain that conversation? So people maintain their commitment to us, right?

That was a very important space as well. So we maintain our enrollment. Another thing that we did was we didn't allow The disconnect to happen. So although we were transitioning our school district, what I did was I did a lot of summer engagement opportunities and those summer engagement opportunities wasn't about us, quote unquote just having engagement stuff to do.

It was a way to keep enrollment conversations happening as well. And so we every school did three summer engagement opportunities. And so you just think there's 30 different opportunities that are happening in the school district that anyone could participate in. Popsicles with the principal, movie night, game night, painting, says stuff that kids can come back to their schools and families, of course, can come back to their schools and stay engaged through the summer.

Okay, just over the course of just these past 2 years. So when you think about consistency, it comes with systems being put in place and letting those systems we put in place to impact student achievement.

[00:28:38] Dr. Willie Garrison: Sure. You don't want people to lose connection with your school district. A lot of people talk about the summer slide or those things that don't happen with education. Yeah. During the summertime and I know that we've heard it. You've heard it. Everyone talks about it. Whether you're a high achieving school district or a historically marginalized conversation, everyone talks about what happens in the summer.

So although you may not go to the school district of Beloit because there's different options that kids can choose from, families can choose from, you hear about these summer engagement opportunities. So now you're still connecting yourself with our community, with our school district. Because everybody got friends everywhere.

I have friends that went to different school districts. It's like you may did when you were in school as well. And so that was a very important part for me. Plus, in our community noise that happens. That was some of the things that I wanted to combat as well. Hey.

You can say what you want to say about us, but we are the ones that are still reaching out to you. We're the ones that are still trying to connect with you. And that's something that we've done now for two summers. And it's been well,

So I think that's a really interesting philosophy or strategy that that you've implemented. In the district. So we've covered a lot of stuff in this conversation. I think one of the things that I'd like from you is if there's another listener who's a superintendent and they're looking at a similar set of circumstances, they need to do a turnaround.

They have leadership instability. What are the key pillars based off of your experience that you would recommend that they focus on to help turn around their districts as well?

And that goes without saying. And so a lot of superintendents will say we know we've got to build relationships, right? But I like to say, take it a step further and build authentic relationships with people. Lean into the things that are both uncomfortable and things are going well, because that will allow you to start to let people really see who you are more so than is people seeing who they are.

That makes sense because you're willing to just lean into those both sides of the conversation. I think that's very important. So being authentic in your relationship building the second pillar, I think that'll be very important is understanding your finances. One could argue it's a lot easier when you do have the finances in place because you can just make things happen that you really want to see happen in your school district.

So really understanding your financial conversation in your school district is super important. And I think the third thing, another pillar that you need to focus on, and I say one, two or three, but you have to really understand, your academic outcomes. You have to really understand the academic outcomes and, or what academic outcomes you're trying to get because one could argue your academic outcomes are Really in the hands of the magnificent teachers and administrators that you have in place.

And so really focusing on your data taking the time to break down, how can I impact something that hasn't been working? And how can I grow something that is working? There's two sides of that. A lot of times, a lot of superintendents come in a little bit overwhelmed because they're looking at all the things I got to go work on.

Those are the three areas that I would say as if I had to put three pillars into the conversation, I would focus on.

[00:33:16] Dr. Willie Garrison: Sure. Just reach out to me through my school email address. I could be found if you looked on our website, my email address is there as well. My office phone number is there as well. I would say I'm not that hard to get in contact with.

Just simply takes a phone call and if I'm able to, engage you with a conversation, I will definitely get you on the calendar to do I'm involved in a lot of other other organizations as well. People that know me and they know how to get in contact with me as well.

So I always say we're, was it six degrees separate? I think we're less than that now, two degrees separated because. Somebody I know that, Jim and and so I'm not that hard to get in contact with. I'm not on that Facebook and Twitter and all that kind of stuff like that. Although my communications specialists believe I should make that change

You have to identify and prioritize quickly. And I think the important piece of that is when you're talking about prioritization, you have to move it into action. Don't waste a lot of time talking about what you're going to do. Get started on doing the thing that you said that you're going to do, because that's the only way that you're going to actually figure out if your idea actually has legs and can impact the things that you, we need to impact.

So I thought that was really important. The other part that I thought was important was really building capability at the leadership tier to communicate well. Because even in, even if communicating well is the destination, even if you're doing a poor job of it as a first attempt, that's better than nothing.

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