Design Thinking in Education: Innovating from Crisis to Success

[: 00:00:00

And then if you did take it on. How would you triage and solve the things so that you can actually back away from the brink? This is an elephant that no one would want to eat. And even if you decided to take the shot at eating it, small bites at a time likely wouldn't get the job done. This is a turnaround story that you'll need to hear to believe because that's what we're going to be talking about today.

Backing a district away from the brink of insolvency. So who's going to guide us through that conversation? Today we have Dr. Ryan Crone. Who is currently the superintendent at Palmyra Eagle Area School District joining us, and he's a transformational leader dedicated to driving efficiency and effectiveness in every aspect of education.

With a [: 00:01:00

Welcome to the show.

[: 00:01:21

[00:01:22] Dr. Jim: So I'm I'm looking forward to this conversation. We've had turnaround conversations before, but this is pretty unique where you took on. A district that is on the brink of being dissolved, and we're going to tackle and dig into how you actually turned around and was able to turn things around in the district.

experiences and lessons that [: 00:02:00

[00:02:05] Dr. Ryan Krohn: quite a story in terms of where we are today, but a little bit of my background. I've been in education just about 30 years in different leadership roles, whether that was teacher, principal, assistant superintendent. Things like that. One particular role that I had, I became the director at the Institute for Personalized Learning, which was a transformational work and role in and of itself, doing a lot of design work for schools where we had to question a lot of the design models of schools and sort of these background experiences that I had kept me open to.

Not only when things need to change, but when things need a true transformation and in the case of really facing a giant challenge, like potential disillusion we really looked at a chance to look at school design and see where there's some opportunities to transform things that needed to truly change.

ourselves what else could we [: 00:03:00

[00:03:09] Dr. Jim: So digging in a little bit more about that, it sounds like what you're describing is applying design thinking for school. If I'm on the right track there, tell us about some of the things that you consider. In broad terms that apply design thinking principles to the K through 12 space.

[: 00:03:28

For the results to effectively ensure learning and that level of performance. So finding that design thinking of what is, what's our primary function while it's learning. So what is the optimal design in that experience? And that's some of the background that I had, but in this case, [00:04:00] we had to really figure out one main goal, which is how are we going to be efficient at being effective?

And in this case, we need to be really efficient across the board. So it became a design challenge of looking at every operation, every capital investment that we had and every. Teaching and learning opportunity for students so that we could hit the efficiencies we needed to stay open and strive, but the same time to deliver that effectiveness promise that we have for our community.

[: 00:04:22

So how did you stitch those two concepts together given the reality of what the district was facing as you were interviewing for the job?

[: 00:04:53

Todd Gray, who was in to help get it started back when the vote was to stay open, but really when coming in, you got to, we got a chance to hear really a number of people that had lost. The trust that we want schools to provide, which is we're going to provide a quality education. We're going to be here and the doors are open and this is worth sending your Children.

So we had to start to change that narrative, which is where the effectiveness conversation came in and what we were going to offer. And we start to talk about performance excellence and fulfilling that promise to students in our community at the same time. At the other side of the coin, there was a lot of skepticism as where was a financial status at and where, how are we going to be around for the longterm?

So that efficiency had to be in place so we could show the sustainability, but I couldn't have a conversation on being efficient without having a conversation about how we're going to be highly effective for students and learning.

[: 00:05:58

Do you want to do you want the job? What was the things that you were thinking about that pointed to this being a good decision?

[: 00:06:34

And that was lights out a clear message about what they wanted to provide. And that relationship between a superintendent and the school board is instrumental, [00:07:00] but to know that. The people are striving in that direction in terms of where they were going was one piece. The other piece was just the other subtle conversations that were taking place.

While there were people that were concerned about the challenges and maybe had made decisions to open a roll to different districts those that had stayed. We're committed and it's committed that I've ever seen and still see to this day of people that wanted to fight for their community that wanted to have great experiences for their kids and wanted this school to be around.

So those two narratives were real. They were genuine and they stood out. Maybe at a level that I'd never seen before because they had come through that challenge. But now they had a time to know that part of this lift was theirs. And there was a sense of ownership in that piece. The other piece is just flat out.

I like the challenge. We mentioned design thinking earlier. I like the challenge of this work. And in this case about 15 years ago, I had a chance to open a school from scratch. It was a charter school. And that experience to be a new starting line was another storyline here where it's a comeback story.

It's a story of some [: 00:08:00

Valuable conversation taking place at the level of commitment that as you come in from an outsider, you see it and feel it. And to be a part of a starting line story and refreshing our new storyline is really exciting.

[: 00:08:23

What does it mean to that community?

[: 00:08:49

Where they're already in with their footprint of having four or five or six years in a school district already with relationships and connections or those that are thinking about joining the district. And so that just becomes a potential remap drawing, potentially going to other areas and other districts and doing some consolidation.

So that had to go through people's heads. And that was real conversations that some people had to plan for as they were having children starting school or moving schools and. And looking at their jobs and careers and transportation. And what was that? It was a really influx moment for a few years there for people.

Yeah, a pretty big deal in terms of doing that, as well as if that were to have changed what would happen locally to our communities in terms of schools are really a central part of the community. And that's an area we'll get into a little bit later. We talk about we're part of the community and we can serve the community, not just through school, but in many other ways.

And so we had to, with an avoid of that, there would have to be some real restructuring and just how communities could run.

[: 00:09:56

So there is like critical services that that these districts and schools perform that oftentimes people don't think about because they only look at it at school districts and school buildings as. Just centers of learning and that's it. But there's a wider range of services that are provided. So with that being said, I want to circle back to what I opened the show with, which was, this is a district that's on the brink and you're brought in to write the ship and turn things around.

And when you're looking at [: 00:11:00

[00:11:13] Dr. Ryan Krohn: It started by listening and I mentioned the stories earlier about how people had commitment stories about how much they cared about the place. We had to go deeper with that. And we knew early that there was going to be some conversations around financial sustainability. There was going to be conversations about programming and excellence.

And there was going to be big conversations about rebuilding community trust, but in terms of approaching those pieces, it really became a series of questions of really looking at how did we define what was our commitment to the community? And how do we define that in terms of key operations in terms of our facilities themselves?

ust taking a look at, again, [: 00:12:00

And in some of those conversations, what it did is it started to provide me with greater context that allowed us to build what I would call a hundred day entry plan that we knew that we were going to be targeting, particularly financial sustainability. Talking about what we call performance excellence for our school district and what does performance excellence look like and then again, rebuilding that community trust through actually community engagement and starting to redefine the relationship that we had there.

But a lot of those came in conversations, pulling people together, asking people about what they had hoped to have seen. Why did they stay? And what did they love about the place? And for even for those that had left or on the brink of leaving, why did they leave and what were they looking for? What were they worried about?

And that's formed what I would call our strategic plan for starting to move into our next steps or strategy to build our back, our school and build back our sustainability.

[: 00:12:50

[00:13:16] Dr. Ryan Krohn: Yeah. For a great example. So we had. When we look at every school district's trying to address capital needs, and we had to look at what our capital needs were, we want full transparency around a lot of our needs. One of them early on, a couple years before I was here, was that we had two buildings, two elementary school buildings that were not each at capacity.

One of the decisions early on made to close one of the elementary schools and combine them in two to one was really looking at our facilities in terms of, How we were using those capital pieces and where we could have some maximize some efficiency and operations. And that alone save some positions, save some dollars, but actually allowed us at the same time to offer more programs and to enrich the experience itself.

the same time, we also have [: 00:14:00

And at the same time, Being do everything we can to maintain things so that we keep things lasting as long as they can and stretching our dollars. So that's a capital example of just what were we at with facilities? How could we grow some of those pieces to consolidate at the same time? How could we go public and transparent with being efficient as possible?

And effective and growing out a capital plan. And then, and one of those buildings that was empty became part of our strategy for regrowth, which we just reopened last year. As a part of our next step, and that goes back at writing for grants. Part of our academic sustainability plan and financial plan was we looked for grants and just this year we received a 600, 000 grant to open a Montessori school which actually also includes an early learning center or a daycare.

cant building. So instead of [: 00:15:00

And the only other piece I would push on that is defining our trust with the community and our relationship with the community. Again, instead of just serving maybe kindergarten through 12th grade. Our now early learning center or daycare serves students as young as six weeks old. And part of that building and our growth now is also looking at programming for seniors in the community and other programming that we've just launched some of our new things in the last couple of weeks around, again, looking at our facilities, but also looking at our offerings.

[: 00:15:41

And how can the [00:16:00] district serve members of the community across that entire actual life cycle of a person? Where did that idea come from? When you're thinking about how can I repurpose some of these services that we offer to incorporate? People as young as six weeks old to seniors who are on the other end of the spectrum.

How did you integrate that into part of the district service offerings that you're bringing forward as part of your turnaround plane?

[: 00:16:24

And your community profile, your district profile with sessions that you could have or offer offerings you can provide. In this case, we looked at some community ed programming that we hadn't used. And we were looking at maximizing the use of our facilities, everything from the sports fields to our classrooms, and then looking at what we might be able to offer.

nd was these were these rich [: 00:17:00

to use our fitness center. And we've been expanding on that now having arts, crafts recreation activities and learning activities. Really going moving full throttle into this. And it's been an exciting piece to use the facility. Our buildings are used generally from a school day, from seven to four.

You'll see events in the evenings for sports that communities typically see, but we're really pushing to have our buildings used 365 days a year mornings afternoons, and evenings for as many groups as we can. We have great. Facilities. We have a great campus area, but when you think about having metals and woodworking shops, kitchens and art rooms, gymnasiums and theaters as well as just classrooms, those can become spaces for the community to gather for meetings to occur and for additional classes to offer.

like this that can not only [: 00:18:00

[00:18:12] Dr. Jim: One of the things that's interesting about this turnaround effort is your emphasis and integrating the community into that effort to the point where your service offerings are designed to meet the community at all different stages that they happen to be in. The thing that I'm wondering is when you take that a step further.

What role have local industries and businesses played in this turnaround effort? And how has that been reflected in offerings that you're providing to take advantage of that 365 day operating rhythm within the buildings.

[: 00:18:44

[00:19:00] And that meeting has, those meetings, that team has since snowballed into solutions and people just having different perspectives. And it formed some initial partnerships. With libraries village park and rec departments and other organizations that had rented the facilities in the past or have been a part of it or business coming forward.

So we started with a conversation of creating a vision. The other piece that came with this is every year we work and partner alongside so many businesses in our community that support us through not only donating some funds, but also just time, energy, and expertise. Just last month at our school board meeting, we recognized five award winners and just companies in the area that had.

Ben's continue to support our CTE classes or our classrooms as well. And so keeping those conversations and helping them understand our next vision, which is to have robust classes and programs for our school, but that what else can we do as a part of the community has turned these conversations forward.

ies come in for cooking that [: 00:20:00

[00:20:12] Dr. Jim: You mentioned that certain community or certain industries and companies have donated and also have been involved in teaching some classes. You mentioned earlier that there was a grant component that you took advantage of to build in some additional programming for that, that would make the district more attractive for. Students to come back. So tell us a little bit more about what that grant process look like and how that factors into the long term planning for the district, especially from a sustainability perspective, because once that grant runs out. You have to reapply and win. How are you funding that into the future?

If you don't have access to that grant going forward.

[: 00:20:57

And one of the things that those are there, they're more for a startup for materials training and some initial pieces to get that off the ground. And then you hope that you have continue to grow the enrollment and the connections. And one of the pieces beyond that grant that we started with the child care level and that early learning center is to start to have sort of a feeder system for families being a part of that, that will have an experience.

And that's been our case so far. And it's it's been. A real rich kind of connection. And we get a chance to hear from those families at a young age about their interest, and they've been a part of even the governance board and the leadership team for that school's growth and performance goals.

, in our infrastructure grid [: 00:22:00

And those costs are some, have some savings for us over every year for fuel savings as we go forward in some of those relationships. So we are searching out grants that can help build programs, but we do need to be accountable to the sustainability afterwards. So in each of those cases, we've been careful to look for the savings, but look for the sustainability costs, whether that's around.

Energy and solar and our HVAC units as well as if it's in a classroom and that's right now we've launched something just a couple weeks ago called our program enhancement initiative, looking at each of our programs in our schools and which ones do we have that we want to take to the next level, as well as what programs may be you.

Don't we have that? We want to get create a partnership, whether that's with WCTC and some of their programming that they have that we can't offer. Just last week, we went to a career fair with j. P. Cullen and looking at some apprenticeships and what courses we could have so that even if students can begin work now.

fer something, we can form a [: 00:23:00

Whether we're a small rural district, we still want to have big experiences for kids and families.

[: 00:23:19

And also you mentioned some stuff on the green energy side of it. Those seem like odd initiatives when you're in survival mode, because it seems like it's something that you should consider as a second order of business. So how did you what was the business case that you made? To the board and also the community that this is where we should spend our resources.

And here's what the payoff is. What was that conversation like?

[: 00:23:51

And enrollment the bus piece as well the way that the relationship worked it really did have a plus for us because we were in a great relationship with Dell Smith transport company that it provides some of those relationships, but we saw and calculated immediate annual savings on our part, which had a sort of a long term sustainability goal.

And even many of the companies that again, are looking at other initiatives, have been looking at where some costs are in many schools have. Put added solar and found some ways to have relationships to reduce utility costs. So anytimes those dollars from diesel fuel utility or other operational costs can be saved and we can put those towards the classroom has been one of our goals.

ome classes that we couldn't [: 00:25:00

[00:25:05] Dr. Jim: So there's a lot that you've accomplished in a short amount of time. One of the things that I'm curious about, because A lot of what you've thrown out doesn't seem like it it had existed in any formal sense in the district prior to you getting there and you can't do this all yourself. So how did you mobilize other leaders within the district to help share the load and push the message out?

[: 00:25:31

agency to advocate for themselves and learning and responsibilities to do their work and learn and be responsible in class. But when you think about our community, I mentioned [00:26:00] the first conversations I had were with our school board and others that were so infested. There was a clear sense of ownership, agency, and responsibility on the part of our school board.

Still is, and it's a fantastic people to work alongside, but it was the same for the teachers that I met. The administrators that I met and the families that I met. And when you get a chance to do the work that we're doing on writing a new story, I'm being on a new starting line and coming back from the brink in some way.

You need a team and a team to be empowered a team to have that sense of ownership. An art teacher that sees themselves being able to build the best art program they can for kids is going to have a sense of owning that experience having the agency to make the right decisions and having the responsibility to be accountable.

We want that high autonomy. We also want that high accountability. And we're seeing that right now when we really do this. So empowering our staff, empowering our students has been core to this mission. It takes a village to do this work. Our parents have been a part of this journey.

fun to watch people in each [: 00:27:00

And we owe it. To those we serve to hit a home run with these types of experiences and relationships.

[: 00:27:41

How did you overcome those gaps and get them skilled up so that they're effective in operating in this in this ownership mindset that you're talking about?

[: 00:28:12

And then we try to really network. And so just as week alone, we went and did some district training for the state in terms of our operations, facilities and security operations, and just that networking beyond ourselves. And I do encourage our team to look beyond our walls. So there are so many great things happening across other districts and states.

So we just put ourselves on a learning journey. In here to address the brutal facts, but also to be on the front end of building and owning that next step.

[: 00:28:55

[00:29:07] Dr. Ryan Krohn: They always say that student learning is a lagging indicator and the leading indicators are So much more and so first of all, i'm so excited We adopted a really aggressive and really effective new literacy program across our district And what i'm most excited about in terms of the impact is the commitment we had from our staff They volunteered their time this summer to join us for the training So they could hit the ground running for students and they set the tone and the message that performance mattered in the classroom.

It's one of our top pieces that we're going to do for literacy. So some of those results of a level of commitment for staff has been seen day in and day out. And that learning and that foundation of a culture of learning is going to put us in a position for the results we want to see in the classroom.

ore and more people reaching [: 00:30:00

And we did ransom community safety events this past couple of years. We just had one again last month and we're having more partners in our community from health and her service industries coming to our school and offering their services and making connections. So from a. But from an early standpoint, the level of engagement and commitment is up.

I think people are realizing the vision. We've, we focused our direction. We've created a real collaborative culture right now with a lot of these conversations. What we want to do next is really deepen our learning and move to that next level of accountability and results. And I think we're there.

We've got some exciting news with. Some results coming out for achievement and it'll be out shortly publicly. And then we have some really new things. Again, our program expansion initiative. We've got a lot of interest in what's about to unfold there. So those are some early results. We did have a new Moody's rating for our credit rating.

to do much of the same, what [: 00:31:00

[00:31:07] Dr. Jim: When you look at all of the stuff that you've done from the time that you got into now, and you're speaking to maybe another Potential district leader who's looking to do similar things in a struggling district. What are the key things that they need to keep in mind to pull this off successfully?

[: 00:31:23

The more that you get a chance to talk to what other districts are doing and more of the chance you get to see podcasts like this as well as other research, you'll find solutions that people are looking at. things differently. So the first one is just just stay engaged in asking what if, and is it possible?

spending issue? Do you need [: 00:32:00

But it does probably require a real change. And again, last but not least is sometimes it is time for just really relooking at when transformation is needed versus just incremental improvement. And that's where looking at maybe changing your relationship, like what we had with our community and how the buildings are used, or looking at different funding solutions that might alter some things.

The formula is the formula for funding, but the solutions and the strategies I think can open up the door for increased engagement and a different relationship with your community and staff.

[: 00:32:35

[00:32:40] Dr. Ryan Krohn: Best way is going to be via email. As much as I don't like email, it's not very efficient but it is effective at getting a hold of me, and I'll make sure they do our best, and looking always to network in terms of the work that we're doing.

g of our new school or early [: 00:33:00

[00:33:00] Dr. Jim: Awesome stuff. So I appreciate you hanging out with us. And I think when I think about this conversation, you mentioned a lot of things that's important from a practitioner level on how you execute these turnarounds. But I think when I consider it from a general principle perspective, there's three things that stood out to me that is important for other people to take inventory of.

I think when you're looking at a turnaround like this you certainly know what you're getting into and you can't have the mindset of what if this fails, you're taking on these kind of opportunities because of the opportunity for a big win, because if you're able to execute it well, this is a massive sort of feather in your cap.

his turnaround a reality. So [: 00:34:00

It's not just a district wide solution. It involves families, students, businesses, the entire community to make this successful. So if you can leverage all of that thought horsepower within the community, that's going to set you on the right track. Then the other aspect of this conversation that I thought was interesting was you already had a level of commitment from the community and then you took that and you were able to. Apply district operations in a way where you're serving the entire community from young families to retirees. You looked at more than just an education facility. You looked at the district as a broader set of service offerings that you're bringing to the table. And I'm sure that had an impact in getting commitment from the community to continue supporting the efforts in the turnaround.

g fruit. And instead, what I [: 00:35:00

So when you look at sustainable practices, sustainable energy practices and financial practices, those have long term payoffs, especially when you're looking at the future. Controlling expenses side of a balance sheet. And I think that had that, that was pretty impactful in the conversation. So I appreciate you sharing all of that with us.

For those of you who've been listening to this conversation, if you like that, what we talked about, make sure you leave us a review. If you haven't already done so make sure you join our community. 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