Summary:

Join CT co-founder of EngageRocket, as he sits down with Dr. Mary Catherine Reljac, superintendent of Fox Chapel Area School District. Dive into the world of educational leadership and explore Dr. Reljac's approach to fostering collaboration, student voice, and community integration within her district. Discover insights on leadership development, strategic planning, and the district's remarkable post-COVID academic achievements. Emphasizing people-first leadership, Dr. Reljac shares advice for aspiring leaders, the importance of humility, collaboration, and being a 'student of the game' in the educational landscape.

Key Takeaways:

• People-Centric Leadership: Dr. Reljac emphasizes a leadership style that focuses on supporting students, staff, and community, highlighting the success of the Fox Chapel Area School District in achieving academic excellence.
• Student Voice and Participation: The district prioritizes incorporating student input in decisions, fostering a sense of belonging and engagement among students through practical initiatives.
• Regional Collaboration: Collaborating with neighboring school districts as well as higher education institutions creates enriching opportunities for students and teachers alike.
• Strategic Vision and Alignment: The district's strategic vision, guided by four pillars — purpose, passion, care, and community — ensures every initiative aligns with core educational values and student well-being.
• Nurturing Future Leaders: By encouraging collaboration, networking, and meaningful leadership experience, Dr. Reljac supports the growth of future educational leaders from within the district.

Chapters:

00:00

Leadership and Community Values in Fox Chapel Area Schools

03:12

Pittsburgh's Educational and Economic Growth Attracts Young Families

08:03

Empowering Student Voice and Innovation in Education

15:27

People-Centric Leadership and Crisis Management in Education

25:19

Legacy of Education and Servant Leadership

29:37

Empowering Education Through Purpose, Passion, Care, and Community

35:35

Fostering Collaborative Leadership and Regional Educational Partnerships

40:17

Aspiring Leaders: Embrace Opportunities and Learn from Others

44:56

Insights and Stories from Mary Catherine Reljac

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

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Dr. Mary Catherine Reljac: linkedin.com/in/mary-catherine-reljac

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



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We are a leadership listening and insights tool to help school district leaders to improve teacher retention, teacher engagement, and ultimately student achievement outcomes. And today, it's a great pleasure for me to have in our studio Dr. Mary Catherine Railjack. She's the superintendent of schools for the Fox chapel areas, school district.

And it's such a pleasure to have you in the studio with us today. Mary, Catherine, thanks for joining us.

[00:00:42] CT: So tell us a little bit more about the Fox chapel area school district. What makes it unique and special? And you've been a resident in the district for quite some time as well. So I think you, this would be really interesting to hear from you.

This is my fifth year in the district. We are a school district just North of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about 15 miles North of the city. And it's a school district of about 4, 200 students. And we cover six municipalities or townships in the area. So we have six local governments that all work collaboratively with us.

But the, all of the students in those six areas feed into our school district. I've lived in the district for over 20 years, so I've lived here a long time, worked here a short time. But I will say unequivocally that the people are what makes this a special place.

[00:02:04] Mary Catherine Reljac: The people here really, and not only in our school district, but in our larger community, really work collaboratively for the betterment of our communities for the betterment of our schools. In our school district, for example, we have 3 core values, respect, responsibility and integrity, and those have been the core values for many years.

And those core values are what our staff, our students. Our families really have committed to being respectful to each other taking responsibility, not only for yourself, but for others and supporting others and integrity. If we say we're going to do something, we get it done. Even when no one is watching is what we talk about.

There's been some development in the area, not only in housing, but in industry. Pittsburgh itself has, in 20 years, just exploded in technology, in higher education, in healthcare, in Some defense contractors. So we have a lot going on in Pittsburgh and this community benefits from that, and we have a lot of people that work in those industries in downtown Pittsburgh and in the surrounding regions who live here.

So we have a lot of really exciting opportunities. And at the same time, we have small communities, so there are some very small communities that are part of the district that have main streets with small town businesses and fairs and festivals and those kinds of things. So there's a personal feel, even though we're part of a bigger area and an even bigger region.

[00:04:01] CT: Yeah, that's always good to be able to get both the economic energy from the city, but at the same time, have that very personal connection within each community. And, something that you mentioned there that I want to pick up on is. One of the green flags that you'll see is if you see a lot of young families moving into an area that typically means there's something cool going on besides the economic opportunity that the city is providing in Pittsburgh.

Is there anything else that you think is attracting young families to your area?

In Pennsylvania, we have 500 school districts, and each school district is a varying sizes. But because you're there are 500. Many of them are small. So in the Pittsburgh and greater Pittsburgh [00:05:00] region, a group of school districts have really made efforts to work collaboratively to share ideas to share know how and understanding to sometimes share resources.

Programming professional learning. And so it is a vibrant learning community in this region in the K to 12 arena, where we are in and out of each other's school districts and understand programs and support each other's learning. And work collaboratively that also extends to the higher education.

Pittsburgh has major research universities. It also has smaller state universities, smaller presence, private universities, and there is a real collaboration at times between those universities for projects. For community outreach and for programming and so I think that's one thing that is not always known.

That is something that happens regularly, and it shows itself in what we can produce for children, and it also shows itself in the viability of the region for families and for future development.

[00:06:33] Mary Catherine Reljac: We always want our students to feel like they can stay and we do have a large group of students that do stay when we do our annual college acceptance and see where our students are going or workforce or things like that. The highest percentage stay rather regionally in Western Pennsylvania, at least for their.

And so it's a yes. And it's I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. And many of our families grew up in our region. And even if they've worked in major cities around the country, often. Choose to come back and raise their families here as alum. And so that is very special. That's not unique just to the Fox Chapelle school district.

That's really unique to Western Pennsylvania in many ways. And so it the old adage of a smoky city with, steel mills and manufacturing is certainly very accurate for the past, but not for right now. And certainly not for the future. And so we're as a region looking at.

[00:08:03] CT: And we spoke a bit about collaboration at the administrative level, with the community and so on. One of the things that came up in some of our earlier conversations was around having the students take a greater part in how school is run. Can you speak a little bit more about that, like elevating that student voice within the district?

And knowing that we knew that the students had a valuable voice in that experience that could help us to improve and to make things better for them. It's their school. They should have a voice in what happens here. And so over the last few years, we have [00:09:00] prioritized student voice in new ways and really recommitted that we will.

Work with our students, not beside our students, sometimes in front of them, sometimes and behind them sometimes, but we will work with them, not just work for them and that working with is a really important thing. So things that we have done, I have we, we've done a comprehensive plan and a strategic vision for our school district students sat on the committees for that vision gave us wonderful feedback.

But also. After we put together a draft of the vision, they gave us further feedback through some of our student groups. I have a superintendent student cabinet that I meet regularly with. We've talked about everything from artificial intelligence and its role in schools and policy. We've talked about transitions between buildings and how we can support those.

All of our administrative team build off of those same focus areas. So it gives us incredible organizational alignment, and it also really helps to with us leaping forward instead of just taking steps forward. So when I created a superintendent student cabinet, The every building principal worked with their student government or created a new student feedback group, and it's resulted in a new sense of organization at the high school.

Our athletic department has brought students in to work on leadership skills with our captains, and those students have actually given us feedback of what they wanted to see a real tangible thing. They wanted to see an Instagram account for athletics. And that Instagram account this weekend had 10, 000 views.

So obviously it is hitting a mark. It's student created content and it is we're helping them to create that content, but at the same time it's student driven, student created and obviously a success. Our middle school has students that have sat that sit and continue to sit on committees such as the technology committee for the school to talk about what they could do to improve the technology use at the middle school as well as problem solve areas that were pain points.

So it's mirrored across the organization, that student voice, and it has led to meaningful change. But also, the thing that makes me the most proud as a superintendent is when I've talked to students, I talked to actually to the governments. Of students in every school and every single one said in their own way that when they have an idea, the adults in the school listened to their idea and help them to make it better and help it to come into action.

And to me, having that organically come from the students without me asking it just is an indicator of the culture that we've. Really been purposefully trying to build and that we hope to continue to enhance in the future.

And, we just left to figure it out on our own.

And one of the things I really love about this organization and this school district is you rarely hear no, you often hear how could we? And how could we is a great answer. And sometimes after we think about it, We really can't do something, but we often are asking, How could we instead of automatically saying that's not how it's done here.

That's our school board. Everybody is very supportive of listening to us. I think it's really important to be able to listen to others and considering their ideas, and certainly at the end of the day, only some can be implemented, but everyone understands that part being heard and being valued and seeing it reflected in change is really an important thing.

How might we Do this, how might we do X? And rather than saying no, we're not just not gonna do that. And I'm so excited to hear that this is applied e even within the school context, because that's that's a huge step forward for education and for the kids that are living this day in and day out.

You're a little bit of a reluctant leader or almost before taking on the superintendent role. And it was almost in the middle of COVID as well. So walk me through why you said yes. And why did you put yourself through this? Very interesting gauntlet.

During this position was open in 2020 and I actually started interviewing for this position before all of the schools closed [00:16:00] in 2020, but finished interviewing after the schools had closed. So it was right in that very difficult time for everyone in our country and I was reluctant at first, not because I wasn't intrigued by the role.

I certainly wasn't I was very intrigued to become a superintendent, but I was working in another place and had a wonderful place to work. And I was an assistant superintendent and we had been doing many great things and I was seeing the fruition of some of that hard work that we had done as a team.

And so I wasn't in any rush to leave it. I had a great supportive board and community. And I was really happy and this position became open and I considered it. I certainly live here and have lived here for far longer than anywhere else, and so I, I was thinking about it and when I really read the description of what this school district was looking for in a leader it.

And so coming in as a brand new person that no one knew was a challenge and coming in and as a brand new person, no one knew when you can't host any kind of a gathering was even more of a challenge. So we really talked and I spent a lot of time talking to others about how we can manage not only the logistics, but the feelings that people had.

And our, what I asked everybody to do is to take care of people first and foremost, that the rest will take care of itself if we take care of people, but if we don't take care of the people's needs to feel safe and secure, to have a voice, to feel like we care, then we will be. Dealing with the aftermath of that for years to come.

And we were successful. And so I think that's been driving my leadership all my life. It just got to showcase itself. Here is that the people are who you take care of. You have to, of course, have structures and outcomes and goals, but they have to be people centric, not product centric because we are a people business, but they can't just be about touchy feely people ideas.

So I think that it was a real success there, but at the same time, it was an odd time for everybody.

[00:19:37] Mary Catherine Reljac: in COVID and throughout the last few years, we knew that there were gaps in student learning and that there wasn't a playbook for how you would fill those gaps. And we read the evidence that we could from other interrupted schooling opportunities that have happened in the world and did our best to be flexible, to be nimble and to be focused.

The school district actually was named as the, in the Pittsburgh business times, as the number one school district in this region. And in this. State through a metric that deals with standardized test scores state standard standardized test scores. That was never something we've sought out. We've always been pleased to be highly ranked, but that was a wonderful surprise that we had.

But also there was a an education recovery scorecard that Stanford and Harvard put together of all the schools. And they looked at, Growth and achievement post COVID with the premise that they wanted to try and measure what students may have lost in those years. And we looked at that data very carefully for our school district.

It was there's no magic bullet to get those kinds of growth scores. You have to just work hard. And be thorough. And so I think one of the things I've told our staff is that I'm really proud of those rankings. We don't seek rankings. We don't look for ways to get gold stars, but at the same time, you can't be ranked well without doing well.

Our staff is thriving as a result. Our educators are thriving and our communities are growing. So that's an excitement for us.

And what was some of the initial leadership challenges and practices that you had to grapple with when you took on that role?

The important work that we do, and it's less about a scorecard and about, math facts and literacy skills than it is about growth and development and how we move forward. So she did a wonderful job of framing that. And one of the things that I think has shaped my leadership is that I became a leader and, Yeah.

Cultural worries as well as helping people to make sense of really difficult time in the world. And through that, I learned we, we unfortunately had to [00:24:00] evacuate a school for what ended up being not much, but I, that was one of my, I would have been a leader for 10 days when that happened.

There's nothing like evacuating 600 students, 10 days. Into your job to give you a different perspective of what's important. And unfortunately I've had some of those kinds of crises over my educational leadership career and each and every one I have noticed the best way to come through that is to worry about people.

And so that really has shaped. My leadership, not just during crisis, but during good times too, because it's the same principles. I think as human beings, we want to belong. We want to feel like we matter. We want to contribute. We want to be liked. We want to be heard. And we also want to be challenged.

They will talk about their teachers. They will talk about the experiences that they had. They will talk about how they were prepared for their college for their workforce, for their careers, for their lives. That is what. We sit around and reminisce about as adults. And so we think about that for our students.

I am people on my team say that one of the things about me is I ask about a zillion questions when they have an idea and sometimes they, I ask questions they don't necessarily want to answer, but because I ask a lot of questions, we often get to an even better idea or I understand it, or we think of a new way.

And so we've put that challenge toward each other and I've asked them to do the same when I have an idea because everybody's contribution helps make it better. And that's really part of how I like to lead. And it's what drives me every day is what am I going to do each day to do something good that may have a lasting impact for someone, even if I don't know it.

across the organization. And, this is just an interesting fact that I'm curious about. Do you feel at all influenced by other educators in your family that you've that you've experienced and, that has contributed to your leadership as well?

However education is my calling. And I've come to understand that and accept that. But my mother is an educator. My father was an educator and a principal. My grandmother was actually a teacher. She went to college in the twenties. When it wasn't necessarily something that most people did and especially not females.

And and you don't even produce the child. You produce the learning that a child can benefit from. From, and you may or may not see that benefit ever in your lifetime. And so I often think about my place in that and what I'm doing that I hope will help somebody to do a good thing in the future and continue that legacy of helping others.

And when we think about your staff today we spoke a little bit earlier about having that vision that you have and. and the strategic plan that came, emerged from the committees, both of adults and kids. And you talked about the alignment that you were able to drive across all of the staff, share a little bit more about what that looks like and how you achieved this alignment.

And there's always a next. And the beautiful thing about being in an educational leadership role is you can help create what that looks like. I can help to set the conditions in many ways for us to achieve whatever our next is. So I've asked all the time, what's our next. I still ask that question of people, because I believe as soon as you aren't Thinking of your next year behind.

And so when we worked through our comprehensive plan, we looked at what we had in our strategic visioning and our beliefs, our core values, what still resonates and what do we need to change to make our next happen. And so our strategic vision was approved by our school board about a year ago. And it has four pillars.

People in our community to have supports, but also to have self regulation skills and time to be able to do that. Even places that we've created for self regulation in our buildings. We call them Zen dens. We have a lot of care for ourselves, but also care for others. That has spawned some peer to peer mentoring groups for mental health.

Thank you. So being purposeful about our community, being embedded with our community. And so that strategic vision has really helped us to talk in very plain terms about what we do, purpose, passion, care, and community. And those four pillars are actually of equal size and equal importance. And it's very rare that you find any one thing that we do that doesn't.

Maybe live in two or three pillars, because if we're moving forward, you can't move forward with a tutoring program without thinking about the care for students and the time of day and how it might impact the community. You can't move forward with a new Club without understanding how it may be able to support the community or build community.

What does whole child mean? Because it is. seen in educational literature, but it also means different things to different people. And to us, it's that we look at individuals, whether they're children or in my role, also, whether they're staff members or community members in a three, as three dimensional beings, we don't look at them as numbers.

We don't look at them as statistics. We look at them as people. People. And so we think through and as best we can, how we can support all of the needs of a person, not just their academic needs, not just their health needs. How do those work and work together? And so that has given us a nice blueprint to move forward with that came from the community.

It doesn't stay stagnant. So there were new things at it. But our core values have been our core values for many years respect, responsibility and integrity. And there was actually no, no discussion about changing those. So I think when you find that kind of stability, that's great. A good sign for a school district when it's thoughtful about things, and yet it ends in a similar place with some new enhancements.

When you think about growing leaders who are going to be stewards of this, Vision into the future. What are some of the things that, that you've been deliberately investing in or thinking about frameworks and approaches [00:35:00] that you're, you've been applying? Now that you have this clarity of vision,

We may have success that we've experienced as a school district, but so is every other school district. And we can learn from districts that look just like ours and districts that don't look like ours. And I think to go back to what we had talked about, about that regional collaboration, being humble, that We have a lot to learn and looking at every opportunity when we're connecting with others in our region to learn.

And so being open to that and being humble and asking questions so you better understand it, not in a way to be comparative or to say, Oh we're going to do that better, or they're doing it better. It's not about that. If we all are better at what we do, all of the children. Do better. It really shouldn't matter what school colors they wear and what their mascot is.

So it is first of all, encouraging our leaders to connect with other leaders. The other thing I do is encourage them to be collaborative. So I changed the communication structures in our district. I record required every Leader to join me on a meeting cadence for what we call update meetings or operation meetings or educational leadership team meetings or administrative meetings.

So what you regularly see is 2 or 3 administrators working on a project. Somebody has an idea, 2 or 3 will work to make it better. And then they present it to the whole group. And there are that questioning clarifying questions and more questions. And how could we change that? And will this. Work and have you gotten feedback from this group of people?

That is what happens in those meetings. So that collaboration with others outside of our district collaboration internally within our district helps to grow leaders. Another thing is to provide. Meaningful leadership and experiences. And what I mean by that is I don't need to be the one in charge of anything.

To flatten the leadership hierarchy a little bit more and everybody has an area that not only can be, they can become passionate about, but they can learn and grow from and that has really helped people to get new experiences. Additionally, we're connected with higher education, so we accept interns in administration.

I have two interns right now this semester who are studying to be superintendents. We hosted over the summer a group of educators who are brand new getting their education degree through one of the local universities, and they spent two days in our summer program learning from our administrators and our educators as they Begin their journey to become educators and working with our students.

And then some other things we do is around the region. We network quite a bit. I think one of the things that we've worked at as a regional group of superintendents and school districts is knowing where the expertise is. So for example, one of my colleagues called and asked if I could talk to one of his teachers who was seeking out a principal program.

Nothing that, that is to learn from necessarily. It's more about learning who the people in the room are and getting to know them so that, you can count on them. So there are many things that we do to try and help with that leadership. The other thing I often do is I make sure that as best I can is to tell our students and our staff.

If there's something you want to be a leader in. Speak up and we'll see if we can help make that happen. And when we do that sometimes we're surprised that people that you didn't think wanted to take on leadership roles are thrilled to do and that spreads the leadership. So no one person has to be responsible for it.

But the other thing it does is it makes any outcome so much richer when you have that many people's minds working toward it and efforts working toward it.

And the second piece around collaborative and working on projects, I think it's very related because understanding how. Others work and learning from that is another really great way to provide those meaningful leadership experiences. And, speaking up and encouraging others to speak up and ask for leadership.

I think that's another way that you can, I think, as you said, you're really spreading that leadership around and making sure that there's ample opportunities. for those who want them. If you had one piece of advice that you would give to an educator who's aspiring to its leadership or maybe a junior administrator thinking about the next step in their journey, what would you say to them?

It's worth it. And it can be extremely rewarding, but I'd also say, be a student of the game. And I often speak with aspiring leaders that if you want to be a leader, then think of leadership as your game and you need to be a student of the game. So you watch other people who are leaders, not only in your field.

But in other fields, and you can watch examples or exemplars of what you want to be as a leader, and you can also learn from examples or exemplars of what you don't want to be as a leader. And those aren't, don't mean positive or negative that just what. Resonates with who you are as a person, because you have to be your own person as a leader.

And that is accurate in many ways, because I am the only person with this job in the entire school district, but I am not lonely. In this job, because I have colleagues in other school districts and networks that I have fostered friendships that I have built and developed and people are willing to help you at the end of the day, if you are going to want to do something and you don't know how and so I think you have to be purposeful in building that network, but it is a joy when you have it and you can walk into a meeting in another state and, Catch up with old friends instead of wonder if you really belong in that [00:44:00] room.

And there's always that self doubt, but that isn't just an educational self doubt. I think leaders everywhere sometimes doubt themselves and that's normal. And It's something that, that you find other people who can be critical and tell you when you're really messing it up and then also tell you when you're hitting it out of the park and help you to be a little more metacognitive about it.

So I would say in a short, it's worth it and be a student of the game, watch other leaders and learn from them.

I think we've definitely gotten a lot from it today. If anyone was listening and wanted to continue the conversation. What's the best way for them to reach out to you?

[00:45:16] CT: Wonderful. And for all of you listening, I hope you have gotten some useful nuggets or three from this episode. And if you want to download the show notes for this episode, head over to k12. engagerocket. net where you will find the transcripts and show notes and resources that we talked about today for this episode.

as well as for the entire archive of other episodes that have appeared on this show. Once again it's been a great pleasure hosting you Mary Catherine, and thank you all so much for listening. I've been your host CT signing off.