Building for the Future: Creating 21st Century Learning Spaces in Rural Districts

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Today's conversation focuses On how a failed referendum set the stage for building a future ready district designed for the 21st century learner So who's going to be guiding us through this conversation? Today we have jennifer brown who is currently serving in her 10th year as the superintendent of the cadillac area public schools And marking her 27th year in education.

She began her career as a middle school english teacher And has dedicated her entire professional life to supporting students and educators in her community she serves on several non profit boards and Is a rotarian outside of work jennifer is married with three kids and enjoys traveling with her family and exploring the outdoors Jennifer welcome to the show.

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[00:00:57] Dr. Jim: i'm looking forward to this conversation And [00:01:00] I think it's going to be a pretty interesting one, especially Because it combines a couple of interesting topics. One is recovering from a failed referendum, but the other one is how that actual adversity kind of sets you up for success in terms of a different viewpoint on how schools should be structured and how you should move forward.

But before we dive into that conversation, I think you did yourself a little dirty by having just a very short bio. So we need to learn a little bit more about you and get the listeners up to speed on what. makes you tick. So I think it's important for you to share with the audience some of those key moments in your career that helped shape your leadership perspective and philosophy and how you show up.

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Once I landed in Cadillac I wasn't sure [00:02:00] that I would stay here, but it was the first job that was offered to me back in 1998, and I really fell in love with. This rural, big, small town is what I call it. And from there I was compelled to coach, sports, be advising students in clubs. Found myself in administration early on after about 10 years.

A passion for curriculum and really making sure that we're meeting students where they are. And taking them from where they are and growing them so that they really had a lot of options when they graduated high school. So I, I think defining what success looks like for kids is a mistake.

I think we need to prepare kids to define what their success and joy looks like. So that led into more curriculum development work for the district and then eventually into the superintendency.

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[00:03:11] Jennifer Brown: I never saw myself as an administrator. I will say that first and foremost, I think I love a challenge. I love change. I like collaboration. I like working with a team to overcome adversity and meet. challenge with success. So I would say my number one piece of advice for young educators who are looking to maybe leap into leadership is, go for it.

what I brought to the table [: 00:04:00

[00:04:02] Dr. Jim: When I think about the context of Where you quote unquote grew up in a rural district. And I've talked to enough people who are in the big chair in rural districts that, you have to be scrappy, you have to be hands on. And when you think about that transition into administration from the teacher's ranks. How did you find the right balance of being hands on and hands off as you're making that transition?

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But I think one of my leadership styles is to come alongside people. So I never asked anybody to do anything I wasn't willing to do myself. And making sure that, when we took risks, they were calculated [00:05:00] risks and when we failed, we admitted it and we abandoned initiatives or projects or strategies we thought would be successful that may not have resulted in success.

So being able to show that and model that for teachers allowed, hopefully not just teachers, but support staff to take risks in meeting needs of kids because they certainly are diverse needs and they change daily.

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[00:05:39] Jennifer Brown: Sure. A lot of learning. I feel like every year has been a first year as a superintendent taking over. We initially identified a lot of. infrastructure needs, systems needs. I made a lot of assumptions in the role of a teacher, and then in the role of a principal, and then when you're in the role of a superintendent, there's [00:06:00] no room for assumptions.

Did a lot of learning did a lot of asking of our stakeholders, internal and external, about what was working, what wasn't working, and then really putting together a plan to attack what wasn't working. So we have great people in our district. Our biggest strength is our people and our community that really supports our schools.

So we settled up, identified some real critical needs, and we went after solutions.

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[00:06:45] Jennifer Brown: I really made efforts to maintain relationships and connections with Frontline. So I had established a lot of good relationships. I put in place immediately an instructional leadership team which grabbed teacher leaders from every grade level, [00:07:00] from every building, so I could stay connected to what their needs were.

And let them help me frame how we move forward. They certainly are our best asset in knowing what they need, and not trying to assume what they need. Establishing some internal leadership groups was really important for me. But most of my learning really came from the community. And external partnerships, roles and really understanding, not necessarily what our students need.

I felt pretty good about that, or at least could access more information about that. But what our community needs and how a school functioned in that framework really was a lot of my learning.

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[00:07:53] Jennifer Brown: Sure. So we live in a community about 20, 000. We talk about city and outside. We serve about [00:08:00] 3, 200 students. We're rural high poverty. We're about 60 to 65 percent free reduced lunch. And we have very little diversity. We are rural, white. poor northern Michigan manufacturing based, hardworking people vested in education.

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Okay, what do I tackle first in terms of? What my priorities are.

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We were not good at engaging the community in schools to know how to prepare kids to enter into the larger community after graduation. And our infrastructure was failing. We went through every school in Michigan, some tough times in the late two, 2008, nine, 10 and stopped investing in infrastructure and our buildings were literally falling apart around us.

et the needs of students. Our: 1950

[00:09:54] Dr. Jim: That's quite a list of things that that you have in front of you as far as things that are headwinds. And when I [00:10:00] opened the show, I talked about how a failed referendum actually helped set the stage for the direction that you took. tell us a little bit about the story behind that you have all of these different things that need to be addressed.

What did you do? And then what was the outcome of that?

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Paralleling that first year, trying to build a story about where do we go from here in our strategic plan. And what we found, what we listened to and heard from the community is, yes, our buildings are a priority, but more importantly, we want programs that support, continue to support and build upon what our students are needing to be effective in the 21st [00:11:00] century.

So what does that look like? We want more STEM education. We want robust arts education. We want to make sure our kids have flexible programs that are career driven. And our teachers identified we need more natural light. We need more space to make sure we're providing collaborative education opportunities, project based learning opportunities, problem based learning opportunities.

So we packaged that all together. To go out to our community to try to say this is what we need from an investment perspective to upgrade our buildings and provide the programs that were identified in that year of learning.

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[00:11:57] Jennifer Brown: It took a minute to breathe because it was a big [00:12:00] effort. And then we went back to the groups that we knew had were pretty negative on increased taxes. Nobody likes to pay taxes, but nobody who likes to pay taxes. So we asked what part of this proposal really prevented you from supporting our students and our schools, and most of the answers we received were we just didn't want, we don't want any more taxes.

So we also then went to the groups that voted yes, and we identified quite a big group who just assumed it would pass and didn't vote and re engaged the community in a way to say that these are really the important things. We need this. We also heard some negativity around a new gym, gymnasium. We don't need another gymnasium.

That's a want, not a need. So we eliminated the gymnasium. We really resold the story as these are, this is a needs based referendum and not a wants based. And then it did pass overwhelmingly at that time.

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[00:13:09] Jennifer Brown: We emphasized we really emphasized the programming aspect that we were bringing alongside the infrastructure and building buildings. We also included, we better communicated the programming, I will say that. We didn't increase the programming, we better communicated the programming that would enhance what our students are, were experiencing at Cadillac Area Public Schools.

So since that passage of the bond we are doing before and after school care programs, enrichment programs so that we have more opportunities for our kids to engage in some of the things that they really love about school.

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But tell us a little bit more about how those [00:14:00] programs shifted post referendum that really connected with the community and helped get it over the line.

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So we had a gym that was shared for a cafeteria in our elementary building. So that was really limiting what we could do for wellness and health. We didn't have any robotics labs, and now we do. We didn't have dedicated art and music spaces. So we have now dedicated art and music spaces in all buildings, including programming.

n we expanded those programs [: 00:15:00

It can be a performance space. It can be an online for our virtual learners space. It's the cafeteria. It's the commons. It's serving lots of different opportunities. And we really modeled that After what college campuses look like, so they would be excited and engaged to be there and had large spaces, intimate spaces, collaborative spaces and flexible spaces,

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[00:16:00] Jennifer Brown: Yes, so we, we had town hall and community forums. We met with chamber groups, the industrial groups, manufacturing groups, small business owners, all the service organizations. And when we talked to them, they really identified. They'll train our kids, but they want us to focus on soft skills. How do we communicate together?

How do we collaborate together? How do we show up? How do, how do we represent in a professional way? So they did identify many of the aspects of the programs that we have for us to emphasize with our students. So that was really great feedback for us.

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[00:16:54] Jennifer Brown: Yeah, so once we successfully passed that initiative, we reached back out to our [00:17:00] business stakeholders and we created business partnerships within our elementary school. One of our focus areas is to make sure that we are connected to the community and providing career opportunities for kids. We're pretty good about job shadowing, internships, externships.

At the secondary level, but we were really lacking in the elementary. So we re engaged those business partners and we established a business partner program. So each partner has a classroom that they adopt. And we had like health care is fourth grade government agencies, third grade aligned to the academic standards, and then they will push in and talk about what jobs are available within their industry.

They'll bring in props, they send certificates. So they will visit that classroom and the teacher will reach out to coordinate more opportunities for career awareness and that partnership. And in exchange, they get a plaque to put in their business to say they're a business partner with Cadillac Area Public Schools and we send them a student.

photo. So that was a [: 00:18:00

[00:18:11] Dr. Jim: when when you look at where they got started. So you had this at the elementary school level. Yeah. Why did you decide that it was important to start at that level versus let's say middle school or high school?

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So we felt that, one, didn't ask too much, task too much of our businesses and didn't ask too much of our elementary staff, but would have a really

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What was your strategy? To address all of these different infrastructure issues dealing with spacing and any number of things. You had buildings that were falling apart. So walk us through that.

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So we really worked with our architect and our construction management firm to look at how we could sell these upgrades in a way that would really increase our efficiency. So it makes sense for, hardworking middle [00:20:00] class folks. To make it make sense for them that this was going to be need space.

So what we did is we closed an elementary building which was a challenge And we restructured the entire district what we did, so we could shrink our footprint and manage that footprint more efficiently so that we could be responsible with these dollars in the future. So, We wouldn't go back in 30 years and say, hey, we need to do it all over again.

That was essentially what was behind that work. We restructured four K 4 buildings to three K 5 buildings. And we restructured a 7, or 6 7 building to a six, seven, eight building, and then we had an eight, nine building that we closed, and that created space for a nine, twelve.

llion dollars, which is mind [: 00:21:00

And do it well and meet the needs of our kids, our learners and our community because there's a lot of community spaces within our district. We are a community schools philosophy. So we allow the community to come into buildings to use our spaces for lots of different things. And that was very successful.

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Losing a school out of that community is a big deal. So how did you navigate that friction that comes from having to shut that down? Because that's not good either.

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And the 1 part of the building that was in good shape, we kept as an early childhood center. So that was really strategic and when we needed it for our growing preschool programming, and it remained a school asset. With a very large playground for that neighborhood that they could access after hours and create more of a community park.

to kids. So we were able to [: 00:23:00

That was another strategic, easy sell. And then just efficiency. So when we've restructured the 8 9 building, we didn't tear that, we tore some of it down, but it, we were moving 8th grade down, keeping 9th grade with high school in that building. So we talked more about the programmatic benefits of separating middle school students from high school students, both academically, but socially and emotionally.

And that with a lot of research, was another successful strategy.

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We opened the show talking about building a district for the 21st century learner. How did all of this fit into [00:24:00] that broader purpose that we talked about at the beginning of the show?

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So we designed classrooms that we felt would grow with learning. We know learning changes. We know our students needs change. So a lot of our spaces were designed for as multi use. So they will grow with whatever might come. It's impossible to predict the future, especially in education, but we do believe that we're set up.

for at least the next 20 to 25 years to meet the needs of learners that might come our way with the improvements that we made infrastructurally and then our commitment to continue to evolve programmatically to meet the needs of our kids.

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[00:25:09] Jennifer Brown: There's a lot of pride, like I think essentially people are proud to send their kids to our schools. Recruitment and retention of staff. We come and look at our buildings, our beautiful living spaces. That's been a real positive for our internal human resources and recruitment.

And then mostly, It's like the talk of the town. People are really excited to be here and that helps not only our kids and our schools, but our community. And making sure our community is healthy and growing economically with jobs and job creation. That's really exciting.

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If you were to advise [00:26:00] some other district leader who wants to tackle something like this within their district. What are the key principles that they need to keep in mind to be able to successfully pull off what you pulled off?

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Takes a minute to really get your head wrapped around that. So if you're new to a district, that takes well over a year. If you aren't new and you have a pretty good grasp of that, then I do think you need to spend a lot of time in creating systems of communication. What do your internal stakeholders need to hear from you to know and understand the why?

mmunity? Are they your board [: 00:27:00

And I think that takes time and then build some if you're going to do something like we did with a huge capital improvements campaign, you really do need some core groups for each of those demographics to help. a steering committee or a strategic planning committee, something where they can be partners in distributing communication information, but also mostly listening to those stakeholder groups, and then pivoting when necessary to make sure people understand and know the why and the why has to be centered in kids.

So that would be my advice to somebody looking at doing some of this work.

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[00:27:51] Jennifer Brown: Probably best is email

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And I think it's valuable for people to keep in mind. But as I was listening to the story, one of the things that stood out Was something that my wrestling coach in high school said. And when I was just starting out, he said, if you want to get really good at something, don't focus on all the flashy stuff.

You need to make sure that you're standing on a solid foundation of the basics. And the reason why your story reminded me of that. Was that one of the first things that you did when you came in was set up the infrastructure within the organization from a communication systems and processes perspective that would help you springboard into success, and that was, and I think that's an underrated thing that probably had a big influence in how you were able to recover from a failed referendum and move forward.

ith a lot of headwinds, You, [: 00:29:00

And if not, let's fix those things first before we tackle the big shiny object. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. For those of you who've been listening to this conversation, if you like the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so make sure you join our community.

You can find that at a engaging leadership show. com and then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that helped them build a high performing team.