Summary:

Join Dr. Jim as he interviews Tom Burkhalter, Superintendent of the Viroqua Blackhawk School District, about navigating leadership challenges in education. Explore how Tom tackled the disruptions of the pandemic, admin turnover, and building a culture of continuous improvement within a high-performing rural district. Discover insights into distributing leadership, involving community voices, and emphasizing incremental progress to boost performance. This episode is filled with lessons on leveraging collaboration and strategic planning to overcome obstacles and propel educational success.

Key Takeaways:

• Distributed Leadership: Strong leadership is about sharing power and information, making decisions collectively to ensure broad input and efficient problem solving.
• Community Engagement: Engaging the community through initiatives like the "Future Search Process" can align district goals with community expectations and drive meaningful change.
• Continuous Improvement: Transitioning from a good to a great district involves small, incremental changes fueled by a disciplined approach and continuous feedback.
• Strategic Communication: Keeping the community informed, particularly in challenging times, is essential for maintaining trust and achieving strategic objectives.
• Adaptive Leadership: Leadership in challenging environments requires adaptability and a willingness to embrace and manage change, sustaining progress even in uncertain times.

Chapters:

00:00

Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement in Education

02:45

Community Support and Educational Impact in Challenging Times

06:16

Building a Culture of Excellence in Viroqua Schools

11:17

Navigating School Leadership Challenges Amidst Pandemic and Team Turnover

18:28

Community Engagement and Strategic Planning in Rural School Districts

23:15

Transformational Leadership Through Distributed Leadership and Guiding Coalitions

29:56

Leadership Challenges and Achievements in Education

35:40

Leadership Lessons in Distributed Power and Incremental Improvements

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

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Tom Burkhalter: https://www.viroquaareaschools.com/

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



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One of the elements of this journey involves overcoming the resistance to change. If you're laying the foundation for greatness, there's a lot of front end relationship building that needs to be done. Your strategy needs to be clear and it needs to incorporate feedback from the front lines.

This is true in most businesses and is especially critical 12 education, space. This episode focuses on the best practices that help you set the stage for continuous improvement and taking your organization to the next level So who's going to be guiding us through this conversation?

Tom. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:29] Dr. Jim: so super pumped to have you on the show. And the bio just scratches the surface on what you're into. And one of the things that I'll point off, point out right off the bat is with three sons and hashtag relatable I have an idea of the chaos that you're dealing with. So it's good to have you hang out with us. So before we dive into the main part of the conversation and talk about building a continuous improvement and innovation culture and continuing to focus on that.

[00:02:11] Tom Burkhalter: we can talk about the moments of my career, I think probably more important for understanding me and where I've been and how I got to this point. It's really probably needs to go back a little bit further. So I'm I'm the son of a pastor and a and a factory worker.

And and when growing up, I'm the oldest of six kids four of whom are adopted and to have special needs. And so this was a a piece where as growing, as I was growing up in a lot of ways, I was a third parent there was a big age gap and and saw firsthand how that that relationship was so important between a parent and a child.

And And that was family consumer sciences. And so that was a totally different change, very female dominated field. And one that was really incredible for me to begin that journey and teach within that field. It's really a degree that's that's it's up and coming, but it is an outstanding degree for teachers that Maybe don't want to be stuck on one subject.

And the reason why I point this out is I'm curious to understand how your experience. Being that third parent some of your philosophy in terms of the role of the school in the community and how the school acts as a supporting agent for the broader community. Tell us about what influences that played in how you view the school district and schools in general.

There was no like somebody hiding or, going under the radar that was never an option when you have 30 kids in your entire class. That's not an option. And so I, I do think that was really obvious. Growing up that, [00:05:00] that essentially those that needed the most resources got what they needed or at least the best effort from that, that local, school district.

My freshman year, we actually moved to our neighboring school district. And almost immediately we had a situation. And again, I don't want to spend too much time on myself because I think the organization is great. But I think it does give you some understanding. My, my mom and my dad both had pretty catastrophic injuries about a week apart.

My dad broke his femur and it was bedridden for a, for quite a while. And then my mom broke her back. A week later, and so I was the oldest had say, had that five younger siblings and it really, forced me not only to grow up, but also start a partnership with our local school district that I had never experienced before, which was, I was talking to teachers.

And that was a, it was a really cool thing to see all of this community come together for some very community minded people that were my parents. And to have a community rally around based out of the school was something that I think was a model that I can use going forward in my career.

[00:06:43] Tom Burkhalter: Yeah. So actually I Was in Clintonville before this. I didn't, I did not come up through the ranks in Viroqua. I have a history with Viroqua that is super unique in that I was born here and raised in the neighboring area. And definitely understood some context, but I went away and [00:07:00] Viroqua changed in and pretty drastically, in my opinion, for the better.

And when I got here, it was a really unique and almost surreal experience and a very full circle, moment for me during the interview process when we were going through that, I asked a question that I think was super telling of our school board. And if you don't know, the superintendent interview process is incredibly intense.

It's a multi day piece for most districts. And you are talking with, I think there are around 30 people total that were a part of my interview process. So this was a very intense piece, but during my last interview I asked the question of if I'm so fortunate to be offered this position, why should I take it?

So this has become a hub for people from all over the country to move into bring their skillset bring their knowledge and then also bring a different expectation. And so that is really where. In the end, it was, where do I want my boys to grow up? Where do I want them to go to school?

Where do I want them to graduate from? And Viroqua Area Schools was absolutely the top of the list after that conversation. And I knew from about, probably seriously about 10 minutes into that conversation that this is, that I was going to accept the position if they offered it to me. But it was just an absolute joy to watch my board jump over each other and talk about, this is an amazing thing that happens.

And Baroque was one of those schools. could go on for a long time, Jim.

Because generally when you have that kind of process, it it indicates a level of disorganization within a yeah. An organization where they have that many voices involved in it. At least that's been the experience on the private sector. But what was interesting, what I really liked about what you described was how you turn the tables and ask that question.

Should be setting off like massive red flags in your head if nobody's got an answer for that So I really like that and I really like that aspect of the experience And I think that's going to be broadly valuable for a lot of folks So I want to tie all of this together to the broader context of the conversation, you mentioned that every district has an expectation of excellence.

And that even came out in the interview process. Now you're in one of the top 100 districts in Wisconsin. And the question that I opened the show with is how do you build a continuous improvement culture if you're already on a really strong footing? How did you walk through that process?

You would sit and wait and [00:11:00] listen and learn. And that's absolutely where I feel most comfortable during a transition. However with the pandemic and we had to get, we had to get students back in, in school and how are we going to do that? And we had to surround ourselves with the right group of people to try to make decisions.

The same year that I came in over half of our admin team. Turned over. And so this was a piece where we have essentially a new team some pieces that had been here a while, but that we're still trying to learn and grow together. And I think the biggest thing right away was just calling it out and saying, Hey, we're We know that this is going to be a tough process and that we're going to make mistakes.

We had our leadership team. There were probably 25 teachers and staff members on that group that was a little large, but that was the system that they had in place here. And, yeah, We met multiple times over that summer, so I'm hired and then it's boom, go, no, sit back, wait and see or anything along those lines.

And I do think that we started the ball rolling at that point on really setting the groundwork for some shared leadership for some pieces of allowing voice where maybe there wasn't, an opportunity prior to that, but definitely there has been since then.

So those are three major. Obstacles that you have to face. And you're talking about. Shared leadership, tie all of that together. When you're looking at those three major issues and. You're trying to build a leadership muscle that is focused on continuous improvement. How did you split out all of those things and make it consumable?

I do think it was, let's start from the end. And now let's [00:14:00] create actionable steps together on how to get there. And so we did, we built it. It was not the first meeting. I said, all right, here's what we're going to do in meeting one. Here's what we're going to do in meeting two. We're going to meet 17 times before the school starts, school year starts.

And then we'll have, it was absolutely, what do we want to see? What do we want school to look like in the fall? And a lot of it was, we wanted it to be as safe as possible. We wanted to be able to connect with kids on a on an E, more of a, an emotional level, even to be able to build those relationships because the spring in the spring that wasn't.

It's something that our teachers had a skill set for or admin had a skill set for was a zoom call and truly understanding everything that happens and being able to read people online. And so I think then, working backwards from there, it was a piece where we. We wanted to get we threw out different options.

Was it perfect? Absolutely not. But it was built by our staff and our admin together. And I do think that was what enabled Our staff to truly get behind it. And to provide an outstanding education during that timeframe.

And then At the same time, you're tackling some of these higher level things when you're talking about continuous improvement and building a an expectation of excellence. Usually you can't do both at the same time. So tell us about how you tackle the other aspect that's at the top of the [00:16:00] pyramid while still building the bottom of the pyramid.

Not more staff days, but more student days. And the conversation with our staff is, or with our board, and it's almost a non negotiable at this point, which is, no, we provide such a high quality, not only education. But we are our security blanket. We are, we're, we are, we're a school of 42 percent frame reduced lunches.

It's where a lot of our students get their best meal of the day. Two best meals of the day where they get snacks, where they get food and where they get that comfort of being in a safe place. And so I think that from our board, and that was very clear from the beginning for me, but it's.

And so it's a, it's an incredible expectation of excellence for each Even the most basic of needs. And so I think that has coupled with the fact that our staff holds themselves to an incredibly high expectation. It was a piece where if we're going to do this we're not going to do it halfway.

And so what steps and what and what practices do we need to put into place and that included teachers teaching other teachers how to do, some zoom calls or setting up Google classroom in a way that made more sense and really jumping on together. And again, I think it was a total team effort.

And our staff is an outstanding staff. When we look at it across the board I can't complain at all. This is an, A phenomenal staff that's here for the right reasons.

So you're delivering all of this in. Generally in an atypical environment. So that's interesting in and of itself. But the other thing that I'm thinking about is when you look at the demographics of your district, where you have 42 percent of your district at free and reduced, What were the steps that you took to bring the community more aligned with what you were doing as a district?

Because it sounds like the board was already aligned. So how did you overcome some of the community challenges?

And I think that led, to a piece here in the following November after we had some footing after we had our kind of ducks in a row a little bit and we were back full time and really starting, to see some. Some part of normalcy and it [00:20:00] was actually delayed twice and we did a community conversation and it was called a future search process and really was was incredible as a person that has never led a district or a community through something like this it was really key to get somebody on board.

That it wasn't me. And so we did have an hire an outside consultant out of the Madison area and he came in and we spent a year planning this huge event called our community conversation. And then we had to postpone it twice due to COVID. And so we're again, in an interesting spot because you really like to do that right when the superintendent is new, it's allows, The, the community to set the tone of what they expect from their local district and allows myself in that situation to really get to know community members, some leaders throughout the community.

And our, we're asking people to give up 12 hours of their time over this three day period. And I was thinking, man, if we get 10 people, I'm going to be excited. That's a lot of time to give to your local public school. And Jim, we had 80 people show up immediately just by the sheer number, not about the great work that they put out or the priorities that they set us forward with.

But just in the sheer numbers, what that tells a new superintendent is, wow, there are so many people in this community that not only care, but have so much pride in this this this school and the product that they're providing to their community. And one of the first pieces of that process is to do a historical timeline of your community.

And then that process from there goes past, present and future. So we're looking historically, we're looking at where's the snapshot right now, where does the district fall and where do we want to be in the years in, in, in the years after this, we actually had every one student per grade level of our elementary come out in the cap and gown, and we did did the graduation song as they came out and they flipped over their graduation year and it says, what do you want for us?

And it was really just a tone setter of how important this day was for our community and our district to really set the tone of moving forward. And in the end, we ended up with a great list of priorities and things to focus on as we went into our strategic planning process which was the following summer.

When you look at the fundamentals of executing any [00:23:00] transformational change. You need to have alignment across all layers of whatever you consider your ecosystem of your organization, because oftentimes if it doesn't move forward, it's because you got a breakage in the communication chain somewhere in there.

So what was your process to walk through that and make sure that people weren't getting fried?

And it was exactly what most of them are, which is you have You select an individual, and they become a representative for who they represent and their grade levels, and they bring problems to the table, and then it's an hour long every month of, All right, here we go. Admin team.

And this is through no fault of our staff at all. This is how most districts are set up and how most district leadership teams function. And so what we really wanted to do and and we kept hearing it, we have all of these ideas. We just need a place, right? We're not getting a seat at the table when decisions are made about what we do or how we do it.

And that was a frustration and over brought it forward over and over again. And so we went to, the drawing board and looked at, to look through our options and one of them. That we really felt provided what we needed and what our staff needed was called guiding coalitions.

That's just one of the frameworks, that you can use. But part of our local guiding coalition framework that we really felt was necessary was some leadership training on what does this actually mean and what it is and what it isn't. So this is not a representative democracy.

It's not a, it's not, we're above this situation. The board sets the goals for the district, the building and the building level teams now create their goals and how they're going to accomplish them. And this was a two year onboarding process. We're in the, we were in year two and two of our buildings and in year three and in the third building that we piloted it.

The superintendent organization. Why don't you, why don't you go do that and do it this way? And then they ask you, okay, do you want to serve on a team or, or be a part of the change? And so I think that there, that's a big change for our staff. And one that I'm very proud of how they've responded is taking ownership and taking understanding.

And I think that's a common misconception when it comes to leadership, right? Is it that You become a leader because you want the power, right? You want to be the sole decision maker. You want to be able to control other people's actions. And that's so far from the truth, at least with the leaders that I know.

Where it's, I want to use my skillset to help as many people and have as much of a positive impact as I possibly can. And then when we get into these roles, it becomes very isolating. You're the only one with a lot of information. You're the only ones with a lot of of these things. And and then you're the only one that is expected to make these decisions.

And that was really the point. And the whole goal of our we call them coal labs. And and that's why we decided to go down that route. But again, it has not been. It has not been perfect. And I do think that We've had to provide more clarity for the teams and we'll have to continue to do that because I do think that there's some role, not confusion but when you start something out like that and you want the group to select their own goals and work on what they want to work on, it does leave some of this area of, is that our role?

Is it not our role? And so we've been really working the last year and a half on clarity.

A lot of people are under the misconception that in order to be a strong leader, you need to be the one that's pulling all the strings and has all the information. That's actually a hallmark of weak leadership. If if you're hoarding information as your job as a leader, you're pretty weak as a leader.

The strongest leaders are the ones that distribute information to make sure everybody's on the same page. And just like what you said, have a lot of different eyes on the problem, because if you're the single. Source of truth. You're also the single source of failure. Because there's going to be a lot of other viewpoints that are going to get missed because you're so narrow minded in, in, in how you're looking at a problem.

[00:30:10] Tom Burkhalter: There's been a couple of things. One, it has not all been this smooth sailing thing, piece or approach. I, we, education is a tough place to be right now. And I know that's true for a lot of different, different work, places of work and a lot of different categories.

But I absolutely, maybe behind healthcare, we've probably been one of the most scrutinized industries in the country. And so how do we adjust through that? I think is going to be our next great our great challenge. And I do think that it's important to note that this has not been, again a linear process.

And yes this job is hard, no matter what it is in education. And we have great people. We have great students. We have great families. We have great teachers that are gonna gonna be the reason why we succeed. And I think that piece through all of the Craziness of the last four years has been the driving force is that there is a belief that we have not necessarily all of the right people and pieces in the right place, but that as a collective organization We have the talent and the compassion and the skillset to take us wherever we need to go.

And that is a piece that we had a situation. The year after the pandemic, when the first scores came out, where our elementary scored well below what we expect and for sure what the teachers expect. And so what happened was something that was truly amazing and it was not administrator led.

It was not a piece where we said, you need to get your act together or anything like that. We presented the data like we always present the data. We had them come up with, Hey, what are you seeing? What are you noticing? What are you wondering? And they essentially came out both verbally and through their actions said, this is not acceptable and this won't happen again.

And again, I think that culture of excellence was here before I got here. And I'm hoping that we are expanding on it now. And our scores have improved drastically since then throughout the district. We're at the highest that our high school has ever been. We scored the highest on this in this corner of the state in Southwest Wisconsin for our high school.

And that doesn't happen without a ton of hard work and being able to understand when change is needed. And that has been really cool that it has not been always been again district administrator or a principal saying this is the lever we need to pull. And now with giving the teachers a seat at the table with this decision making process, my hope is this becomes even more clear as we go forward that, hey, we may not need to do a total course correction or turn this boat all the way around.

Not so uncomfortable that we have a mass exit and everybody leaves and everything like that. But, just uncomfortable enough where complacency doesn't set in. And I do think that is one of the dangers of being in a district like ours. Is that we can get to that point of good is good enough or better than our other, local peers.

And again, I think our staff has been. Overwhelmingly supportive of our students and making sure that they hold them to those high expectations and the proofs in the pudding. When you go and look at our academic achievement and the way we've been able to improve scores over the last 5 years.

[00:35:21] Tom Burkhalter: Yeah, you can give me a call here. As you can tell, I don't mind talking. And it's always better for me to be able to ask questions and be able to respond verbally for me. Yeah, you find it in the show notes and and you, or you can email me. You can also find all of our strategic planning process and everything online.

So you stepped into the role with a lot of different variables that weren't in your favor. When you took over the role, you had to deal with a pandemic. You had to deal with admin turnover. You had to deal with. A lot of variability in terms of how school was supposed to sort of function and the way you tackled it Is by approaching it two different ways simultaneously one Rather than hoard all the information and quarterback the entire situation you decided to distribute leadership across The district and get a lot of voices Involved in the discussion to have the best informed path forward.

And that's a leadership lesson that a lot of people need to understand is that the strongest leaders are going to be willing to share as much information and distribute their power as possible in service of the best possible outcomes. So that's one step that I think is really important. And then the other piece that I think is important.

And the reason why that's important is that there are no moonshots if you're already doing well. So if there aren't any moonshots that you can take, you need think in terms Little steps in the right direction, because those little steps those little steps taken with pigheaded discipline over time lead to big outcomes.

So that's the shift in mindset that I think is really useful for a lot of organizations and leaders to consider. Distribute your leadership and focus on small incremental improvements over time. I'm

applied to it, and you'll get the results that you're you want to achieve. So I really appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing those thoughts.