David Feliciano, Superintendent of La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, shares invaluable insights about educational leadership. David talks about managing a diverse school district, undertaking initiatives to support student mental health and community engagement, and his unique journey from IT professional to superintendent. This conversation delves into the heart of school district leadership, emphasizing the importance of trust, authentic communication, and strategic thinking.

Key Takeaways:

• Holistic Student Support: La Mesa-Spring Valley School District focuses on mental health and community support through substantial grants, aiming to provide comprehensive care for students and their families.
• Leadership Authenticity: David emphasizes authenticity, vulnerability, and trust as core principles in leadership, aligning with Patrick Lencioni’s framework on organizational health.
• Collaborative Bargaining: A transformative approach to union interactions, featuring interest-based bargaining, has significantly improved relationships and trust between district administration and staff unions.
• Diverse Leadership Paths: David’s journey from IT to superintendent highlights the value of diverse professional experiences and the importance of stepping into leadership roles even when they seem nontraditional.
• Mission-Driven Culture: Emphasizing a collective mission, David’s leadership fosters an environment where every team member is driven by a shared purpose, striving to improve the educational experience for students.

Chapters:

0:00

Diverse Communities and Leadership in La Mesa-Spring Valley School District

4:54

Pandemic-Inspired Grants Transform Mental Health and Community Support in Schools

11:33

Transforming School Districts Through Authentic Leadership and Collaboration

19:25

From IT Technician to Superintendent: David Feliciano's Unlikely Journey

22:50

Transitioning from IT Specialist to School District Tech Leader

28:49

Leadership Lessons in Education: Humility, Hunger, and People Smarts

35:17

Connecting with David Feliciano on Education Leadership

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with David: La Mesa Spring Valley School District Website & IG: @DavidIfeliciano

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



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I'm your host for today, CheeTung or CT, and I'm the co founder of EngageRocket. We're a leadership listening and insights tool to help school district leaders to improve teacher retention, engagement, and ultimately student achievement outcomes. Today in the studio, it's a great privilege for me to be inviting David Feliciano, Superintendent of La Mesa Spring Valley School District, to join us in conversation today.

David, welcome to the show.

We also then go into portions of El Cajon and portions of San Diego. So really wide area. Gray and diverse area that the district serves.

It's about 16 million dollars over five years. We are on the ground floor, just starting up what that's going to look like. And in a lot of ways, it's like we're taking those services that we're providing to our students through the mental health grant. And we're really expanding that out to the wider community, to our students, their families, and people in our community that need the support.

How did you go about getting the necessary buy in, the understanding to be able to get both of these grants through.

I read an article this morning about rates of depression, and anxiety being up nationwide not back down to pre pandemic levels.

So that's just something that we have been very aware of and very in tune to. Going through it together with the community and seeing sort of the impact it has had on the community.

So that's always been something that I think is very much a part of what it is to be in La Mesa Spring Valley. But these grants are really just an outgrowth of that heart that reality for us. Making the case and writing these grants was something that flowed out of who we are already as a school district and thankfully we just have some incredible people, some great writers. Really people that can tell our story and represent us well.

Internally in terms of how the community has accepted it, how the board of trustees and their buy in of providing these services and that sort of thing, there was never anything to convince or sell or anything like that. It, it really is yeah, this is who we are.

This is what we would do. So it's been, I think, very organic, although there have been some really great people that have worked hard to make this a reality here.

I will say for us there was a lot of funding that was provided to all public school districts, really, in the nation coming out of the pandemic, and there has been a lot of flexibility in how those funds are used and prioritized. It, as I said, is very much a part of, who we are as a district that led us to, where we have gone with the funding that we've received.

What role do you see leadership at all levels within your organization playing in addressing two of these challenges?

It's not about that this is the district's why it's about, this is our why. And so we're all working together. I think working together is so important because when you think about the work that a school district does, it is absolutely service oriented.

It's all about helping. It's mission oriented. When you think about how then a school district should be organized or how a group of people that are all employees that are working for an employer come together to provide a service, it really is very different. We are all here because we believe in our why.

How do you approach this?

I think that is something that is a distinctive with all of our leaders in the district. Someone that we've read that's been really influential to our leadership. Patrick Lencioni and his book especially the three dysfunctions of a team and the advantage. We really have focused on the health of the organization.

When you come to see one of our schools, we hope that you get more of a flavor of Mr. Rogers than you do like Harvard. We want it to be a place where people just feel like at home, very down to earth and That's what we try to be because that's who we are.

As a school district we're a union environment. So we have a certificated union, which represents our teachers and all of our credentialed staff and then we have a classified union, which represents our non credentialed staff, our IT workers, our custodians, our maintenance workers, our accountants, payroll staff, that sort of thing.

When I became the superintendent here I began to work really closely with the union presidents on both sides. We came together and really just decided we were going to bargain differently. So we implemented an interest based bargaining agreement. That's the type of bargaining that we do is called IBB or interest based bargaining, which is something that a lot of school districts say they do.

And the first thing she did is brought the teams together and have what she called a relationship summit. Really to just talk about how we're going to treat each other and how we're going to work with each other and what it means that the shared interests that we have in as an organization and what that should mean for us moving forward.

And that was really transformative for us. Like the way that we work with our bargaining groups is very aligned. We are very much doing the same work and we're doing it together. And it's really exciting. So that's a place where the idea of organizational health, a lot of the principles in Lencioni's five dysfunctions have really worked themselves out.

I think that's one of the most meaningful places where those changes have happened.

Were you fearful? Were you excited?

Nevertheless worked really hard to provide services focused on enabling our classrooms to put kids first then I moved into the assistant superintendent of business role, and it was a very similar thing for me. I had a superintendent that reached out to me and said, David, I think you'd be a really good candidate for the CBO position, the chief business official position, and I thought I never saw myself going in that direction. Never thought anyone would think that the IT director would fit into that box. I stepped out really having confidence in the leaders that said they saw something in me and found like, Oh my gosh, the business people are like my people.

It just felt oh my gosh, this is the place that I should be in. This is the role that I should be in. Although looking back, if you asked me eight years ago where I was going to end up or what my trajectory was, I would have never thought it was this.

And now I really couldn't imagine it being anything but this. I feel like this is absolutely the place that I should be in right now.

That really was like my first experience as a school district leader was stepping into that director role.

And then it was also a big piece of translating down to staff, how to use the tools in their classroom. I saw myself as like the tech guru that was accessible and just a really good service providers to my customers who were the teachers primarily in the organization.

What I saw working in IT is that a lot of people didn't take the guru approach. They took like a gatekeeper approach, which was all about I maintain this network. I maintain these devices and I need to protect it from you. And my thing was, no, I saw myself as a champion of the technology.

That informed everything for me. That's why I existed. That's why the technology department was serving the school district. It was to enable her to really focus on our kids. And if I took a gatekeeper approach, technology got in the way for people. But if I took a guru approach, it was something that people could get excited about.

It was something that we were helping enable people to use effectively. So that was my mindset coming in. And I think how I differed quite a bit from some of my colleagues in the field at the time.

And so when I came in and then was able to hire technicians to support the work, was able to bring in different consultants to do things like do some higher level support on the network side. That was just how we operate. I was able to really train my people to think and function that way.

I had a lot of experiences of having staff that I would say were maybe more in the gatekeeper camp. They had a very old school, traditional way of thinking about technology and in a lot of ways, their knowledge as a means of not providing opportunity to people because they knew better how the tech worked and they could say, no, you can't do that without really needing to explain why we're trying to find a way.

But other people I worked with really did see the light and and adjusted their style and their approach based on my vision.

So humble, self descriptive, hungry, like they have a really good work ethic. They want to grow. They want to learn. And then the people smart piece. That was something right away that I connected with and was something that I think I was already naturally making my focus when I was looking for people to join my team.

The other thing that I found that we've placed more of an emphasis on is the people smart side of things. I found that is something that is the hardest to teach and grow into. As we're looking at people, we will be most concerned. If we see that there are deficits in the people smart area versus some of the others, like a lot of the technical and those sorts of pieces can be taught and people will grow.

But when people just have a hard time relationally Working on a team. That really is a hard thing to overcome. Just my approach as we're looking for people to fill positions has evolved over the years.

How would you advise them to think about investing in their own career?

It was really about once I was in that job, whether or not I saw myself as having a seat at the table. For a long time I really allowed myself to feel like an outsider because my background wasn't typical for most of the people around me.

And I have four kids myself, all of whom are starting school either today or next week. I've had people ask me, Ooh, is everyone excited at home? Is there a lot of good energy at home? And I'm like, no, there's just anxiety. My kids are so like me when I was a kid, which I was just stressed because I did not fit necessarily academically in the box.

And what I've learned is that there is all sorts of diversity within really all career paths, but within education there is not the typical route there. All of us have had many different experiences and what I would say is that leadership in the, public school world, the school district world is a very valuable experience.

It really is about leadership. It's about good leadership. And I would say the technical training and experience, or at least the technical training piece is the least important. The most important, I think is just the experience in the organization itself and anyone that's within a school district and is in a leadership role, would say don't limit yourself in any way to the field that you're in.

I think you should realize that just by virtue of your experience for how school districts work and really the world is open to you. You should really discover who you are, what do you value, what do you believe in, and just lean into it, have confidence in it.