Turnaround Triumph: Leadership That Unifies and Empowers

Dr. Jim: [: 00:00:00

We'll be talking about a district that moved from the bottom 25 percent in the state in terms of performance to the top 40 percent in performance while keeping the spending profile in the bottom 17 percent of the state.

The key to this process is involved not only building a unifying vision, but also integrating the voices of all the district's major stakeholders. This is a story about how you build future ready leaders by maximizing resources. Who's going to be joining us and guiding us through that story?

aremont school district since: 2018

She led the passage of the first successful operational levy in 16 years. She also led the development of West Claremont's roadmap for success. The district strategic plan for the future and during the pandemic worked with the community. to develop West Claremont's portrait of a graduate to define the mindset, skill sets and tool sets students need for lifelong success.

ccomplishments, she was named: 2019

Natasha Adams: Thank you so much, Dr. Jim. It's great to be here.

because we're talking about [: 00:02:00

So I think that's an interesting way to pull that off. Interesting discussion to learn how you pull that off. But before we dive into that part of the conversation, I think it's going to be important for you To share with the listeners a little bit more about your back story and also the district landscape.

So what I'd like you to do is share with the listeners some of those key moments in your career that helped shape your leadership philosophy and perspectives as you moved higher and higher up in the field of K through 12 education.

leadership degree. So I was [: 00:03:00

And as I was building my career to understand what it means to create a culture, to create a new identity and to create a high performance. system that makes an impact on kids. I was it was a middle school and my passion really started in education with middle level learners. It's a very unique time in life and being able to come and create something with a community with a school system was very impactful to how I see the world.

It really helped me become more of a possibility thinker and to really understand the value of what a school community can do for students.

Dr. Jim: You mentioned something that caught my attention, and that was the experience that you had that taught you how to be a possibilities thinker. Tell me a little bit more or tell us a little bit more about how that shows up in your day to day and also how you're getting your leaders across the district to think in terms of possibilities.

What's the story there?

e been raised. My, my mom is [: 00:04:00

And it was about a leader bringing people together, creating a vision. And I had really never been a part of that effort before. And we were able to cast ideas into the future and then build. Take teams together that actually made it happen. He empowered us and helped us to see further than we could see ourselves.

And so he was probably with, my mom and Dr Seville were probably the people that helped me imagine a bright future and then to start seeing ways that we could execute to make it happen. And I've taken that skill set into my leadership to try to do that for other people because it was so inspiring to me to have a leader that believed in me.

ur team and was able to cast [: 00:05:00

It's about teams of people coming together. making things possible for students.

Dr. Jim: There's a couple interesting things that you described. And I like the unifying element of together as one community. I think that's important. But you also tied that into sort of your empowerment mindset on what you try to do as a leader in general.

So how does that get embedded in? All of the different schools in your district and the leaders within your district.

lues are we are on the rise, [: 00:06:00

It's probably been the hardest value for us to learn how to live out. We've had to learn to define it, what it isn't. And what we've come to realize is that there are two pieces working together. It's alignment and it's autonomy is really where empowerment comes to be. And you have to be aligned and you have to have autonomy at E.

and be equipped to actually take on these responsibilities. And so we've worked to understand how those two ideas go together. Because sometimes when you hear empowerment, people will say in leadership you just hire good people and you get out of the way. We don't really believe that we believe in investing in people and rolling up our sleeves and working alongside with a strong vision that's aligned throughout the school system and that then people are equipped and empowered to carry out those.

Those tasks at the local level.

im: Got it. So that's really [: 00:07:00

Natasha Adams: In West Claremont, we are the 24th largest school system in the state of Ohio with over 8, 000 students. When I first came here in 2018, just the year before they had taken two high schools and two middle. schools and merged each into one school. So we had one large high school, one large middle school of two rivalry schools.

as a real challenge to come [: 00:08:00

And that's been really exciting work

Dr. Jim: When you look at a diverse District landscape, rural, suburban, urban, and you're looking at a series of consolidations across different different buildings and facilities and all of that. And here you are, you're at the end state where you have together as one community as one of your driving Mottos.

When you look at where you are now, how did you bridge that gap from where you, when you started? What was that process?

ple to really understand the [: 00:09:00

I, I have prided myself throughout my career on being a listener. Who is always open to learning and understanding, empathizing with people and trying to walk in their shoes before coming in and just deciding these are the plans is what we should do. This is what we shouldn't do. And so it was really hard for our community at first to get used to a different style of leadership.

Because it was it was a little bit suspect, I would say of Okay, what are you after? Why are you asking these questions? Why are you showing up in my classroom? Why are you showing up at this meeting or at this event or whatnot? And so it was first just breaking down the barriers and just saying, Hey, I'm here to learn from you.

e that desire to create this [: 00:10:00

And I believe in living that out with our stakeholders, especially our students.

Dr. Jim: So that's a, that's good perspective. And I, and when I think about, one of the key things that we're going to look at today is building, future ready leaders and doing it in a way where you're Taking full advantage of the resources that you have in front of you. One of the things that I'm curious about is as you're coming in as a new leader, you're trying to shift the way leadership is done within the district.

You'll have a certain group of people that are willing to potentially just wait you out because they know that after a period of time, a new superintendent will come in. So maybe I'll just keep my head down and do things the same way I've always done and just be out of Outside of the field of view.

ay to build trust within the [: 00:11:00

Natasha Adams: So building trust is important to me. It's something that I know what our followers need. They need Compassion from their leader. And so I kept showing up with compassion. I know that our followers need stability. They can't have the sense of new leader and whiplash from the old to the new. And so it takes you have to know what's going to stay the same and what's going to stabilize us.

And then there has to be a sense of hope for the future and you have to create like a vision of what's possible. And so when you combine those three things together, and you keep consistently showing up with the same conversations, doing what you say saying what you mean, you can over time build that trusting relationship with your community.

to continue to inspire with [: 00:12:00

Dr. Jim: so one of the one of the things that we talked about before the show was how the district from a performance perspective was in a high performing district when you came in and it was also A district that wasn't spending a lot in terms of in terms of where resources were allocated. When you took over What were the things that you noticed that stood out to you that might have been the root causes for why there was that performance gap?

What did you observe?

Natasha Adams: The district went through a season of some really challenging financial times. And, when you think about a school, I picture, a brick building with an American flag on top and certain things inside of the schools counselors, principals, libraries music, art, physical education, basic things that you just expect to be in the environment that, that West Claremont was void of in, in many cases.

And so it was a matter [: 00:13:00

And I refuse to have that mindset to say to have a poor me attitude or to say we're just Wes Claremont, we can't do this. I always tried to model the possibilities and the opportunities that we could create with creativity and collaboration and coming together with our partners.

And so every when we were spending in the bottom 3 percent of the state of Ohio, it feels pretty bleak. It feels like we, we can't do anything but I just kept coming to the table with, if we can dream it, if we can put ideas on paper, we can make it happen. And we continue to look for, varied sources.

t levy, which stabilized us. [: 00:14:00

Dr. Jim: When I think about, that mindset of thinking about what's possible That makes sense. But, what we talked about earlier is that you're talking about an extremely diverse district with all sorts of different constituencies that are from different environments, rural, suburban, urban.

So each of those stakeholders in those communities have a different lens that they'll view all this stuff through. So when you look at. Where you wanted to go as a district. How did you, what was the process that you went through to build consensus among different initiatives that were in front of you that needed solving?

wanted to capitalize on this [: 00:15:00

So we created a series of events. We call them interactive town halls. We wanted to really understand the community, what they thought, after you experience something like COVID you learn to appreciate schools and families and communities in different ways. And so we really were curious about, how's everyone walking away from this situation?

Is school going to change forever? Are we going to rubber band, just go right back into place, snap back into place and do what we've always done? Or is this really going to shape? How we prepare students for learning and for life. So we started with these interactive town halls, not to have a setting where you're in an auditorium and there's a microphone and people are screaming at you about what you aren't doing right, but to really invite learning together, listening to one another, and then co creating a future.

halls. Just so you can get a [: 00:16:00

And so it's a way of putting everybody on a kind of an equal playing field. They have the same data and information and have open ended questions and opportunities to share their thoughts and ideas about it. What our challenges are and what we might do about them in the future.

Dr. Jim: So when you look at the interactive town hall as a concept, how did you land on that as the idea to build consensus or at least get a finger on the pulse of what these different constituencies are thinking about? Where did the idea come from?

mmunities that we don't want [: 00:17:00

And to know that, every building has their unique culture and identity. And we wanted to really pull from those partners and community members and families. So that was one thing that was important to us is go to the people. The second thing is we can tell, especially during our levy campaign that we had a year before, that there was just a lot of misinformation about the school district, things that people just didn't know.

And I'm a very transparent leader, putting it all out there. But what, there's so much that goes into a school system that can become very overwhelming. So we had to just break it down into pieces and get used to people seeing and looking at the same information that we look at as district leaders.

voices of the few that were [: 00:18:00

We knew that would provoke, promote the most inclusive environment and would provide the most diverse bit of ideas so that we could be innovative in our approach. And really, I would say it's inspired mostly our district treasurer had some experiences leading in this format and his former career and his former roles.

And so we just adopted many of his ideas into a district approach.

y was it important to you to [: 00:19:00

Natasha Adams: It's very important for leaders to model the way. And what I was trying to model for the rest of the district leadership team is a vulnerability, putting yourself out there, putting the good, the bad, the ugly data on the table and owning it, not shying away from it. A lot of times school districts for good reason, put the spin on some of the data that's not so pretty but I wanted to model for them.

Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna call it out. We're gonna look at it and we're gonna own it together. And this is not a blame game. This is not a pointing fingers moment, but it's a time for us to say, let's just deal with, let's deal with the facts. Let's call it what it is. And let's realize and help our community realize that we can't do this alone, that this is only going to be solved with collaboration and this community spirit that we can drive.

hat was hard for our leaders [: 00:20:00

So it's hard to pull back and look under the hood in that way. And so that was the first step is to developing leaders who could be vulnerable, who could be transparent and be open to listening and learning. So that I would say that would be the first part. The second part, it was important for our leaders to recognize that they don't have to be The end all be all.

They don't have to be the answers to everything. Again, being a principal in a building can sometimes feel very isolating and you feel like the burden of the world falls on your shoulders. But when you're sitting at a table and there's a student sitting next to you, a business leader, a community member, as well as, parents, teachers, paraprofessionals.

, it really gives this sense [: 00:21:00

Dr. Jim: So there's a, there's an interesting dynamic that I'm curious about. You mentioned earlier that one of the things that you experienced was that there was a previous levy that failed and you attribute some of that failure to some misinformation that existed within the community. What was when you look at doing these interactive town halls.

How did having your building leaders facilitate those discussions impact the amount of misinformation that might have existed out in the community? What was your, what were your observations there?

ere surprised by some of the [: 00:22:00

It was a new experience. And for our principals to see that and see their role and the influence that they can have, they were tasked with it. Being responsible for it and personally inviting people to the table. So they had to really step outside of their comfort zones, connect with the the families and their community and invite them in.

They were really given the opportunity to to. Be in a vulnerable spot to listen, to learn, and to cultivate those ideas. And I think in the past, this kind of strategy just wasn't used. And I'm not sitting here to downplay any strategy that had been used before. It's just, this was very different from people.

room, cell phones went away. [: 00:23:00

And so the more that people understand and can relate to the information that we're sharing and feel a part of the solution, the more effective I think the problem solving becomes.

Dr. Jim: When you look at this new approach that you put into place and you just reference that you're pushing some of these folks outside of their comfort zones. What did you do to get them comfortable with being uncomfortable and engaging in these new types of interactions that they weren't used to before you got there?

th our leaders going through [: 00:24:00

It was never meant to be cookie cutter. Robotic or uncomfortable, but just to help people pace the conversation, stay focused and to gather the data that we needed. And so we spent time equipping them and just doing some some trial runs and some opportunities to to experience it for themselves.

As a participant so that they would know how our guests would feel when they were participating with us. So those are some of the tactical ways that we prepared them in terms of leadership. We just continue to focus on our district leadership team and empowering principals to really be able to to lead.

A system. And so things like cascading communication, for example, learning to take a message from district office and then being able to personalize it to what mattered to your stakeholders to your teachers. And so that we have not just one way communication, but cascading where it cascades out and then it makes its way back.

of systems work that we did [: 00:25:00

Dr. Jim: You're in this process of getting all of this new information from the community. You're upskilling your existing leadership staff and shifting how things are done within the district. So all of that work, you're gathering information in terms of, hey, what's the direction that the district should go in?

So what were some of the key things that were uncovered in this process that helped? shape the district direction going forward.

nges of the school district, [: 00:26:00

Post covid to say we've done all kinds of things beyond teaching, reading, writing arithmetic in the season. What is the purpose of a modern school? And If we are trying to make kids future ready, what does that really mean we need to have in place? So that was a category Facilities were a topic for us because although we have many modern facilities brand new facilities in our school system We had several that were aging and overcrowded.

we identified those five big [: 00:27:00

One, we developed a group called the Citizens Advisory Commission. That was a research arm of the board that Worked with right alongside our leadership team to tackle different research projects for the board. So I bring up specifically the middle school start time because that was one of the first things that bubbled up as a concern that we had the earliest start time of anybody in the entire state of Ohio, especially a middle school.

And we wanted to research that and see what is best. And so that group of Staff, community members, family and parents came together and made a recommendation to the Board of Education. So that was another big change in our system to have a community group working right alongside the district leadership team to make recommendations to the Board of Education.

y and all kinds of different [: 00:28:00

We looked at communication tools, all the things, and it was this particular citizens advisory commission that was able to analyze and then make recommendations to the board for physical improvements, as well as. Some process improvements. So those are just two examples. I'll stop there that show how we've taken this big sense of town halls.

And now we've developed and bubbled up little smaller groups that have come out of them to dig into a very specific task based on the five overarching themes that we were saying were challenges in our school system.

Dr. Jim: When you look at having these things defined coming out of the town hall process, how did you get the building leaders involved in helping to execute and make real some of these suggestions or initiatives or elements of the initiatives?

th, sometimes twice a month, [: 00:29:00

Some was about really how the classroom is changing, how the role of Teachers are changing. Some are more HR based. As we were developing our portrait of an educator and portrait of a leader to complement our portrait of a graduate. And so all these little groups formed and what they were tasked with is to take the data that we had gathered.

We had done thought exchanges, surveys, focus groups. They were tasked with taking all that information and analyzing it and figuring out what they might Recommend based on their analysis and research of best practices. Some of the groups even went out and toward different schools or different companies to see how they tackled some of these challenges.

th recommendations that they [: 00:30:00

So they came together facilitated by a cabinet member team and really learned that plan. Do study act kind of methodology to say, how can we improve this? What can we learn from best practice? And then how can we implement it? Formulate our ideas into something that we know is attainable, that will be acceptable and encouraged by the Citizens Advisory Commission.

So that's how that worked. And it was really powerful. It's we're so busy with day to day. And if sometimes you set out at the beginning of the year to Yeah. to accomplish all these plans and you just don't get to it because the daily grind gets in the way and you're, you stay in response mode, dedicating one setting.

hours a month to this topic [: 00:31:00

And so I was very impressed with them during this time. And I think they grew, as I said, exponentially through not having the cabinet team or the superintendent's team do all this for them, but they were doing it right alongside with us.

Dr. Jim: That's a lot of foundational work that you've put into place across all of these different things to build that one community concept and bring it to life. When I opened the conversation, I talked about how this was a district that was very low spending, and it also had low performance.

And you did all of this work. How does the work that you did. Connect to the results and outcomes that you've been realized that you've realized in the time that you've been there. What's the connective tissue that brings us together?

ld say is back to the vision [: 00:32:00

Certain results. So that kind of theory of action mindset. If we do this, then this will happen. And that has helped our leaders shift from an activity base where we just do a lot of things. We're always checking a lot of boxes and we're being very compliant to really looking at impact. We go for there's inputs that we do.

There's outputs that come of our work, but it's really about the impact and the impact we wanted to make in our system. So we wanted to be a high performance system. We wanted our academics. to raise. We wanted attendance, engagement of our stakeholders, especially our students to rise. And we want to behavior to improve across the entire board.

And so we needed to [: 00:33:00

Dr. Jim: Great stuff. So if you think back to the conversation that we've had, and you're pulling out the key elements of what you did to Drive this turnaround, what you and your team did to drive this turnaround. What are those key elements that you would encourage other leaders to focus on when they're working on their own turnaround initiatives?

agement. And it has multiple [: 00:34:00

It takes an entire system pulling in the same direction, and the more you can learn to blend your approaches, to blend even where you do your events, the more you're showing that you're a part of the community, you're reaching out, you're extending beyond just the ways we've always done things.

ce, because you really can't [: 00:35:00

They are compelling. They are compassionate and their voice has been as important in this process as anybody else's. And so that inclusive idea and elevating the role of students in the whole process has been crucial. And then finally, I go back to storytelling and impact.

You can't collect a lot of data and do some things but not follow up with your community, with those stories of impact that help to bring it to life, to help them realize that this problem that we had over here, Then these solutions that came to be actually impacted students lives because now we have students who are having internships in our community, they are achieving at higher rates than they were achieving before.

ut of this. And so it's that [: 00:36:00

Dr. Jim: Great stuff. If folks want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Natasha Adams: I would say my email, or you can follow me on Twitter are the best ways. It's Adams underscore in at Westclair. org as well as on X it's at Natasha Adams, N A T A S H A D A M S.

Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing with us your story. When I think about all the stuff that we covered in this discussion, there's a few things that stand out to me as things that other leaders need to think about when they're looking to do. Anything but especially in a turnaround environment.

ur building leaders involved [: 00:37:00

So those two things I think that are important for people to keep in mind, get off the task wheel and then focus on high value activities that get your leadership closest to the front line of making an impact. And then the other element that I think is important to call out is you are deliberate about getting people outside of their comfort zones.

So when you're looking at building leadership depth across a district or across any organization, you need to be able to get line of sight into, okay, what are areas of development that will Make people comfortable with being uncomfortable and give them a growth opportunity. And that was another aspect of what you talked about, I think is a reason behind some of the successes that you've had.

nd sharing with with us your [: 00:38:00