Transforming Rural Schools: Strategies for Success and Sustainability

Dr. Jim: Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. When you're in a small rural district, you've by nature been forced to wear a lot of different hats. It's not unusual to bounce from function to function because you don't have a choice.

While that keeps things interesting, it also leads to a massive potential for burnout and turnover. And when you think about applying systemic approaches to small environments, many of those approaches don't work in small environments. So how do you quiet the chaos and create an environment where burnout is mitigated?

How can systems thinking in a K through 12 environment, especially in a rural district, lead to better retention and burnout outcomes? Thank you so much. Those are some of the things that we're going to tackle in today's conversation. And today we have Adam Magliari joining us.

wo years as a superintendent [: 00:01:00

Adam has consistently championed the potential of both students and teachers. He believes that every individual within the educational system is a leader whose growth needs to be nurtured. And under Adam's leadership, his focus has been on creating and sustaining systems that not only boost student achievement.

but also promote the wellness of educators in his current role as the superintendent intended at Mediapolis see a community school district in rural Iowa. He continues to guide and develop educational frameworks that strive for excellence. He remains dedicated to the belief that through supportive and robust educational systems, the potential of every learner and educator can be fully fulfilled.

So Adam, welcome to the show.

[: 00:01:59

[00:02:12] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation. I think it's going to be an interesting one because as a startup guy in the private sector, I'm very anti systems oriented. So we're going to we're going to have some clashes here and there in our conversation. But before we dive into how you've applied systems thinking in rural school environments I think it's important for you to get the listeners up to speed on some of the key things about your background and experience that helped shape some of your philosophies.

So why don't you share with us some of those key moments in your career that really helped make you who you are and got you to where you are today?

[: 00:02:54

So I got bits and pieces of that. My father is a, was a business professor at Quincy university for over 40 years. And so I learned a lot about. Teacher efficacy, empathy for student success. They're both my parents and I tell that those roots because some of that may come out in our show today. But I I'm an educator, as you said, 21 years, but before I got into education, I think one of the scariest moments I had was going into student teaching and deciding whether or not this pathway was for me.

And so I empathize with teachers that are coming out into this profession. And, and a lot of what you said is as far as building and building growth within people, it's so very important that you're focused on the people that are in front of your kids every single day. So I never forget the fact that I was a teacher and where my.

years [: 00:04:00

And my doctorate is around teacher burnout. And so I've done my proposal and I'm getting ready to dive into the research portion of that. And so, yeah, I, I, I believe strongly in people and I believe strongly in this profession. And, and being a school leader is, is very important. And so there's a lot of different things come out.

[: 00:04:33

What were the big things that you noticed when you made that transition that you didn't account for when you moved into [00:05:00] Iowa in an admin role?

[: 00:05:01

I did, but the emphasis wasn't really on people. The leaders that I have was more on managing processes and making sure that obviously things are going well from a managerial perspective. And so, coming into Illinois. One of the things that I that helped me survive was is building relationships with students.

That that that was huge in my teaching career there, but not till I got to Iowa. Did I really start to look better at the research behind education and learn a lot more? And that support started coming in later.

[: 00:05:51

So when you move from Illinois to Iowa, what were some of those big differences that you noticed that you didn't anticipate?

[: 00:06:18

That can be everything from instructional coaches, which do some mentoring for for teachers, but also your teacher leadership frameworks. Those are things that we didn't have in Illinois. In Illinois, it felt a little bit more isolated, maybe in the Chicago areas, not so much, but in the rural districts I was in you were really kind of on your own to figure things out.

[: 00:06:56

[00:07:08] Adam Magliari: Yeah. Some of the influence was just from my own history of being a teacher and understanding again, that what those. Those roadblocks are, you know but one of the biggest influences was, is being, being a frontline leader now, being a principal in a school district and, and talking with your, your teachers about what their struggles are getting in the classrooms and being more visible than what I was used to.

Principals being in my classroom typically it was just one time a year to do the evaluation work, but I tried to be more visible. In classrooms and learn more and get within those leadership teams. So things that we started creating right away was like a building leadership team and looking at an RTI team as well, or RTI is response.

eally allowed people to be a [: 00:08:00

[00:08:02] Dr. Jim: So when you look at building those building leadership teams, and then the teams when you're talking about response to intervention, there is often could be of some level of pushback because you're adding extra work onto the plates of teachers and other staff in the buildings. So when you're putting these things into place.

How did you navigate that potential pushback?

[: 00:08:23

But when I talked to him, I said, Hey, I want to hear from you. I want to know what our goals are as a school. And so it started as a grassroots type of thing. And then obviously now being able to compensate people for their time, it helps obviously because you're right. They, They have a lot of other things to worry about in [00:09:00] their classroom.

They have their own classrooms, their students, their grading, all of that. And I'm asking you to spend an hour with me after school twice a month is a big ask. And so when you do that, you need to make sure that when you're creating those agendas. That we're creating them together, like you're not coming in just saying, Hey, this is the only thing I want to talk about is what I want to talk about.

But those processes should come in collaboration.

[: 00:09:21

As a building or as a leadership team.

[: 00:09:48

We created what we called our playbook for our entire building. So those processes that happen, one of the biggest things I saw right away is people were more involved. And cared more about our goal before when I would show student data, people are just like, Okay, yeah, that's what it is. But when you when you have a goal in mind, people are more apt to be excited about those things and want to be a part of achieving those goals.

And so it's not just enough to put that goal up there. But how are we going to get there? What are those leading indicators that are going to happen to make those to make it happen? And so it was a collaborative approach. And I feel like people were there. More bought in with that approach.

[: 00:10:42

[00:10:56] Adam Magliari: Yeah, it's so our landscape up here is a little different than what I [00:11:00] had in Keokuk Where I was at in Keokuk for eight years as a principal We were close to 70 percent Free reduced lunch. So at risk population was a little heavier there So those were the eight years I served there. So the landscape where I'm at right now is in Mediapolis School district, and we're in Southeast Iowa, where a rural school district of about 950 students.

I have close to 130 employees in this district. And one of the mottos right away when you come in is everyone calls us MEPO. And it stands for Motivated by Excellence, Pride and Opportunity. And I think that just speaks to the landscape of who we are. We're a very community driven school district.

And so there's a lot of culture that was put into place here. And a lot of good happening in our school district. And so when you come in as a superintendent and things are happening, they're really, they're good. How do you change that to, to great? So how do you go from good to great? So that was one of the mottos we talked about right away coming into our school district, but we're commendable on the school report card.

In [: 00:12:00

[00:12:06] Dr. Jim: So when you're stepping into a district that's already performing well the temptation could be that you just work through keeping the lights on. So how did you work against that tendency to just keep the lights on and identify key things that you wanted to work on?

[: 00:12:22

And what's something that you think that you would like to see changed or you would like to see us improve on? So some of those 1 to 1's were great, but also, I got on and figured out what are those bus routes, right? I know that sounds you know, people like, what is he talking about? Well, I got to know I I'm in a rural district.

percent of our [: 00:13:00

So. Everyone comes in with a game plan. Those get that game plan changes when you learn from people. And, and so when you talk about going from good to great, you got to ask them what, what, what does great look like? What is that destination that we're, we're trying to strive for?

[: 00:13:32

There's probably two sets of attitudes that exist within the district. One could be we're fine. We don't need to do anything different. And I'm not really going to share a whole lot because I don't want to. Create havoc in my [00:14:00] day or the other part of it could be. I don't know who this guy is, so I'm not going to tell him anything and just keep my head down so he doesn't mess with me too much.

So if you encountered either one of those two things, how did you overcome that in? pretty fast manner so you can actually uncover what's actually going on and what the opportunities are.

[: 00:14:19

Let me know how good we are. But what, what is the North star? And I think there's a, even when you look at vision and you talk about being a visionary, what is the North star? What are you striving for? And that, and what you're striving for, it should be something where you're at now. It's where you want to be.

are going well, right? So we [: 00:15:00

We're doing really well now. Let's take some evidence based practices. Let's take some next steps and what that looks like. Let's let's develop those processes even deeper so that it's not a change. It's just getting better at what we're doing.

[: 00:15:21

[00:15:43] Adam Magliari: Yeah, you know, and I guess some of the things I didn't talk about and I don't know if this answers what you're asking. So let me know if it doesn't. But Also, you gotta look at your data. I mean, take a good analysis of your data. One of the things that we talked about as a district was, is we have high proficiency of [00:16:00] students, but are we growing?

Are we growing students? You know, when, when they're up and they're high proficient, it takes more to grow. And so, we, we looked at data together. I went in front of staffs and we talked about What is our current reality? And I got things back from them. And some of them are like, man, I noticed that we aren't growing in this area.

Or I noticed if we did a little more on this standard of this domain, we could really, really drive growth even further. And so helping people see. What that data looks like is, is very important. Obviously I looked over finances too, because you want to give the world when you come into a school district, we're a smaller school district, so you have to live within your means.

And I wrote over 350, 000 in grants in my first year. Just getting more tools and more, more things going and I looked at our finances and really tried to say, you know, what are the things that we can provide for our teachers?

engagement. I had an awesome [: 00:17:00

[00:17:15] Dr. Jim: So that's good context. It sounds like you're operating on the revenue side of the house when it comes to the grant writing aspect of it, you dug into the financials, you were having these conversations. So all of that stuff. Painted a picture of some sort. You also got involved in the community to find out some input there.

So when you're doing all of this outreach and you're doing all of this information gathering, what were the key themes that showed up in terms of what your priorities should be going forward, especially when you're considering your rural district, probably with some funding limitations as well, what was the picture that started to develop after doing all that stuff?

[: 00:17:50

Well, actually, three are instructional coaching framework. Our leadership team. So our guiding coalition and our tech integration. And within those, a lot of things happen with our instructional coaching framework We talked about different models of how we can build that framework. So Diane Sweeney is one.

We talked about student led coaching. So how do we how do we go in and look at student data with our teachers? Don't not going and telling them this. These are the processes and then using the Marzano framework to intertwine those practices. Another one was is building a mentoring program. I think that you cannot assume as a as a leader.

d say, okay, let's read this [: 00:19:00

We talk about parent teacher conferences. We talk about the evaluation systems. We talk about the professional development model is another thing that we change. So there's a lot of, a lot of pockets of change that happened. In there, and I can expand on a lot of them, but going back to the leadership framework that that kind of drives everything.

So a building guiding coalition is important. As is a district guiding coalition. So we meet biweekly and we created building goals, which will now be a part of our strategic plan and they're being developed grassroots from within. And we use something called a 40 X model to really talk about those wildly important goals, those leading indicators and how we create a cadence of accountability.

[: 00:19:44

[00:20:00] Adam Magliari: I'll talk from an overhead perspective, actually talking with people and asking them the direction of, of those committees, they weren't sure they just weren't really sure. And then I sat in meetings too, and, and had individual conversations and people felt like I was, I was being more part of a checkbox than actually being a part of those next processes and where we wanted to go.

So I learned a lot talking with people. And then, and then kind of going through some work. So we sent 10 teachers every year to the PLC conference. And one of the things that Luis Cruz talks about is you have to have a strong guiding coalition. He doesn't talk about having 10 of them. He's also having one cohesive comp guiding coalition where we speak together, we learn together and by doing better, we.

By knowing better, we do better. And sitting in, in his sessions and our people sitting in sessions saying, shouldn't we be doing this? Isn't this the best way to, to move forward? So it wasn't just coming from, from me, it was coming from them.

[: 00:20:59

What were the things that you were noticing that indicated to you that, hey, my time is better spent. In the upper layers of the organizations versus the front lines.

[: 00:21:24

So when you talked about leadership and why go down that road, it's because I want to build capacity within our people. So they feel like they have a purpose and they feel like they have, a vision of where they're going. So [00:22:00] building the who is very important. And then the why is really talking about you.

You mentioned changes earlier, and those are important. If you're not talking about why we're making the changes, people are not going to buy into that system whatsoever. And so I talked a little bit about data earlier, but. Building that why is important. Why are we doing what we're doing and that? How?

But also looking at the data and the results behind what we're doing. So in those leadership teams, when you're focused on those areas and you have goals and you're looking at the strategic plan, people feel more a part of the process. In my previous Position. I was just given goals as a principle. I wasn't even a part of building those goals into my own process.

I don't want to be that leader in our district. I want everyone to be a part of what that looks like together. And I think that really eliminates dissension,

[: 00:22:46

So how did you bridge those two things and have it be effective?

[: 00:23:09

So what it looks like for us is, is we have district meetings and we talk about what it is that we want to learn and get better at together. And so it's not a top down approach. And I think that works in any school district you go to is, is that it's a collaborative approach together. And there are leadership structures they may not be as big, but sometimes being concise isn't a bad thing either, because we can have those conversations, people feel more about the process.

ited bigger school districts [: 00:24:00

We, we work on things together. We just had a meeting last night with special ed teachers and we were talking about our processes and our IEPs. I didn't come in and tell them this is the timeline and this is my expectation. We built that timeline together. And they were way more bought into that process.

So, so I think it works in a small school district. And those systems do work and, and they also, also I like systems because they tell you. They give you a process and they also let you know if you're winning or you're losing.

[: 00:24:38

So when you look at all the different things that you could learn and you could work out work on, [00:25:00] how did you determine what was going to have the biggest impact on your district? What did that process look like?

[: 00:25:05

And what are the things that you can do later? Like, what does that five year plan look like for you? And what are those big wins right away? And so what I guess my focus right away was on what are we doing and how do we get better at what we're doing? And so I really wanted to focus in there because I'm not adding new.

ion jargon in here, but it's [: 00:26:00

And so we want to develop really good processes

[: 00:26:02

When you're doing this work of getting the district to the next level

[: 00:26:25

I can't speak [00:27:00] enough to speaking with people and understanding where, where are you stuck in, in what we're doing and how can we assist you? How can we, how can we help develop you further? And building that why with people. So we did everything from being involved in the PLC's, but also. Getting subs for our teachers and sitting down and having conversations and meetings during the school day and, and developing time, I told him, I will invest in you.

And I know time is, is very important and we're going to make sure that we give you the time to be successful. And another strong point is, is, is communication. You cannot communicate enough. And so make sure you're communicating at all times. What those processes look like, where are we in what we say we're doing and where is it that we want to go?

of learning sessions and I, [: 00:28:00

And so everyone's informed on where we're going. And that's important.

[: 00:28:09

[00:28:31] Adam Magliari: Yeah. I, a couple of proud moments I've had already this year is teacher led leadership. So, and when I say that, I'm saying, I'm going into meetings now. that are completely led by our teachers, not by our front line or our principals, but led by our teachers. That's something that I always wanted to get to in my previous district.

their classrooms, technology [: 00:29:00

And that was a big impact that came out of investing in our leadership teams is that our teachers have a floor now where they feel like they can, they can spread all the great things that are happening. We also focused in on our training with our support staff, our bus drivers. We have, we have monthly training with our, our paras that wasn't happening.

And so that was, that was a big thing that came out of it and facilities were big for us because something I didn't mention earlier in our one to one conversations was we were out of space at the elementary building. We've been building walls in areas of our library where we just don't even have a library anymore.

acilities and we're going to [: 00:30:00

99. 3 percent of Iowa has a preschool program and we, we started one here this year and we're going to expand that program because my community does not have a preschool that. You know, all of our kids can go to we have, we have a preschool next door that can service about 15, 4 year olds and we roughly bring in about 60 to 70 students.

So we really want to serve our community better. We want to serve our teachers better. So we're really excited about this expansion that we're getting ready to do. And when I came in, it was just scrolls and blueprints that I was looking at with no vision behind that, yeah. And that really came from what our teachers need.

And, and so we did a lot of surveys. We did a lot of focus groups and those sort of things. And a lot of things have flushed out of there.

[: 00:30:48

[00:31:18] Adam Magliari: Yeah, that's a great question. And I, I can take it a lot of different ways. One thing I would say right away is be humble. I see too many times in leadership where people take the chair and they, they think, Okay, now, now I'm, I'm better than others. You're not. You need to work alongside people. I can't say that enough.

was a survey that came out in: 2022

We, we have to, [00:32:00] education is the most important thing we do. And it's very important to, to instill values in people and to listen to them and to help them grow, respect who they are and invest in who they are and that's just, it's just huge. So I guess my biggest thing is, is make sure you're, you're learning and you're adapting and also you're definitely listening to people don't come in with a plan right away.

And thinking that your plan is just going to work. I was a coach once and I, I know with a playbook, right? Most coaches, like they have this playbook that they have for the rest of their lives and they want to use always don't, don't, don't come in with that playbook. Cause you got different players, you got different systems, you have a different rituals, culture, be willing to adapt.

It's very important.

[: 00:32:41

[00:32:46] Adam Magliari: Yeah, absolutely. So our website obviously is online. Meepo schools. You can look me up there linked in. I do have a Twitter account I'm always willing to collaborate.

intendents. We meet monthly. [: 00:33:00

[00:33:03] Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us adam And I think this is an important conversation to have especially for those folks who are leading smaller districts and are Maybe looking for a different path forward than the constant chaos that might exist within small environments where everybody is forced to do everything.

So in putting systems and identifying some key process improvement areas can probably settle down that chaos. So that you can think about how to get to the next level. So I think that's an important set of considerations that a lot of leaders would be well served and paying attention to. For those of you who have been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out.

If you like the show, 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. And then tune in next time we're. We'll have another leader sharing with us the game changing insights that helped them build a high performing team.