Building the Future: Systems for Growing Leadership in Schools

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We're a leadership listening and insights tool to help school district leaders improve teacher retention, engagement, and student achievement. Our guest today accepted his role in the thick of the COVID 19 pandemic, and has served on the board of organizations like Rotary and the Rocklin Education Excellence Foundation.

He also supports education leadership teams through the Cutler Consulting Group. It's a great privilege today for me to be interviewing Dr. Todd Cutler, superintendent of Lake Tahoe Unified School District. Todd, welcome to the show.

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sire to want to come home. In: 2019

But really, we serve a very diverse population. I would tell you that we are over 55, probably 60%. I say probably because the numbers have been shifting around a lot lately, but 60 percent students in poverty. We have 50 percent of students that Latin X. We serve depending on the year in that 30 percent range of English learners.

We have a transient population, folks that come and go because of the industry. And so there's a lot of great things about our district, but many folks don't realize some of the things that they wouldn't necessarily picture being here in Tahoe.

eat district to be at. In the: 1990

our town voted for a bond in: 2008

virtual school we started in: 2020

evacuate our town. My third [: 00:04:00

It was an incredible snow year. Lots of school canceled because of snow, lots of challenge. Then of course this year we're really focusing on how the budget is challenging.

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Like most school districts across California and most of the The U. S. actually declining enrollments are a thing. Do you think this is seasonal for Tahoe or do you think that this is something that is here to stay?

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Winter up here can be very challenging and costly. You have to have a four wheel drive vehicles. You have to maintain those vehicles. So I think that it's a trend that's going to happen because of folks looking at how can I take care of my family and is this the place to do it?

ing here, but it's also very [: 00:05:00

How do we take care of staff to have good housing. So those are challenges that I think many of the school districts across the state are facing and dealing with and working to find solutions so that they can maintain staff, but also hopefully have the students there to serve.

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Is that something that you've encountered or that you've noticed about your own leadership?

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district and you think about: 2020

appreciate that. calm in me [: 00:07:00

But then you have to realize that, hey, things are going to be coming at you. And they're going to come at you in lots of ways. People are going to look to you to be able to deliver on what they need to do and how we need to move forward. I'm going to do it in a way that's collaborative, open, and engaging, yet very responsible.

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Having to learn how you develop yourself when you work with people. Because by the way, when I say worked with some work, that means I failed oftentimes, it had to really reflect on. Okay, that method, that concept of how I delivered or engaged in that conversation or facilitated this group didn't work. Well, what do I need to do differently?

o my first superintendency in: 2009

And so I just acted on what I knew and how I knew to do it and learned as I went through that. The difference between then and now is just that I have a vast larger experience and knowledge base that included a lot of failure.

of speakers out there write [: 00:09:00

Cause maybe they do reflect and they want to grow, but they hold on to that difficult challenge or maybe some way that somebody didn't treat them right. In leadership, sometimes you're destined to fail just because some folks aren't going to necessarily like the leader. You have to come to grips with those challenges as well.

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You almost wonder, how could that possibly be? They must be hiding something.

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ave to go through failure to [: 00:11:00

You may say the wrong thing this time, but you didn't realize that you said the wrong thing, so you got to learn from that. It's just not to beat yourself up. It's to say, okay. So I don't want to make it sound like you have to have that negative experience to be good at leadership.

I just think that opportunity that's created when something doesn't go exactly the way you would hope that it got. It doesn't have to be something terrible. But is that opportunity then to grow.

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. Through those experiences, [: 00:12:00

Nobody wins all the time. How you treat yourself, how you treat your team, When you lose or when things don't go the way that you want them to. I feel like, and I'm speculating here. That helps a lot in leadership. And I want to see if that applies to you, way back from those days when you were a sportsman.

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What you need to do is really take care of you. And sometimes you're beating yourself up so much. We have to take care of ourselves. That's something I've been working hard over all of my career is to learn balance.

hey are, their family, their [: 00:13:00

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But what I would want to do [: 00:16:00

If you've ever heard of the process of dialogue, discussion, decision making, in that process, dialogue is the idea of I'm throwing ideas on the table. And then discussion is that we shake those ideas apart. Then the decision is make the decision. After the fact, you do have to do it similar.

ecision how we move forward. [: 00:17:00

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When was that? And what was that journey like?

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And I delivered it thinking they were going to be as excited as me. They're like, what? Right there on the spot, they're like, where's this come from. So what I realized was, Oh, I had all these, I thought, man, I'm the principal, we're going to get this going and we're going to do this.

It's going to fix all of our wrongs. The staff was like, no, okay, but let's talk about that. Let's discuss what our real issues are. Let's come up with ideas together. I have to pull back. It was a really big learning lesson for me walking into that principal's chair for the first time in a small setting.

And again, in that small setting really was helpful too because it was, not as big of a organization to have to move and shift a little bit. But what did it teach me? First and foremost, you work with people on, Hey, so what are our challenges? You get an agreement about that and you develop that.

I hope that was a good story [: 00:19:00

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It was a professional development program. I was in charge of schools that were failing AYP and also administrative development. And it got cut because of budget. So I thought, okay it's time. We're going to go be a superintendent. In the state of Nevada, there's not a lot of districts.

So we looked into California and came to California and jumped into my first opportunity, really. That's how it happened. It was just that simple and ready to go and there it was.

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Also you gotta be humble enough to realize you don't know everything. You gotta know that there's still a lot to learn. That comes with that maturation through the work. So, came in with confidence in these roles and felt like really was successful because I was able to take my background experience, take my drive to want to do these things and the opportunities I took along the path. I grabbed every opportunity to practice leadership, to learn about school leadership. And I didn't worry about it, whether it was a pay or not. It was like, Hey, be on this committee. Okay. Hey, can you volunteer to do that? Yeah. Okay. And I did that a lot. Matter of fact, my wife probably when we had a young family, she's like, Oh my gosh, can you just be home? And I reflect on that balance conversation we had a little bit earlier.

another, there's a learning [: 00:22:00

That organization is different. School business is school business, but there's different culture, different expectations, different dynamics. And you have to be a person that was ready to learn. When I came here, so difficult to do that because this is how we talked with people through a computer screen. If we saw people out, we had masks on. So it was really hard to move from one district to another during that timeframe, because it's hard to get to get to know the organization and the people. This being, my third superintendency in several leadership jobs was probably one of the hardest transitions because of it. If I didn't have all those experiences that I brought to it, I'm not sure a newer person into this role could have been successful.

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As we came out of those times, committing to be at events be available. I built some different processes in place. For example, we do a chat with the superintendent that's for staff. And we do that before twice a month where I can just talk to any staff members that are going to be there, about what's going on at the district level, hear from them, answer questions.

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These are things good superintendents and good leaders are doing anyway. But we had to do an additional emphasis on it. And really utilizing social media and different platforms to try to push out to get to know what we're doing and how we're doing it. Because those methods became so more important, because of all of a sudden being in isolation with COVID. It was really good practices and then playing with them to make sure that they met the culture here. They could not just assuming that they were going to work.

at I can make them available.[: 00:25:00

Somebody might go why wouldn't you. If I record them, will anybody even attend them? Cause they could just go watch them. And so it's part of that interaction with each other, because that's what was missing when I got here. So I'm trying to figure out ways to overcome that. Of course, as superintendents, we need to be out on our school sites and being available and interacting with our principal and our other leaders as well as all the different staff. So it's just those types of efforts to break down, go to community events, engage with your city council your mayor, get engaged with the chamber of commerce.

Be on different groups, activities. Because that's how you're going to get to know what this culture is. This climate is in the needs of the community.

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How do I grow the next [: 00:26:00

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essions throughout the year. [: 00:27:00

Leadership doesn't have to be position. It's not matter of fact. By position. We have a certain leadership expectations, but leadership is not that. I encourage anyone that's in our organization that wants to participate. We've had supervisory confidential employees. We've had classified employees. We've had certificated employees go through this. So we have leaders and learners one that Starts from the beginning of what is leadership. And it goes through the different challenges of leadership and the things that you need to know.

t. They then can go into the [: 00:28:00

getting people prepared and [: 00:29:00

And so this is something we have to commit to. We have to think of systems like I just explained to you, but we also have to have a keen eye. And really listen to those and really identify and say, Hey, really think that you'd be good at this. When I think about the work that I do with my company is we are inviting folks to come to our seminars, inviting them to consider coaching and support because you get into these jobs, even if you had a lot of preparation coming, you're going to learn when you're there, but if you don't have somebody there to mentor, to coach, to support, to give guidance, very likely you're going to struggle and possibly fail. So that's the focus of the work. And I do that here as a superintendent in a district, I do that as part of what I do outside of

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We're doing similar activities that I do in leaders and learners is just at a different concept because we utilize their position to help guide that. One of those things that we're working with everybody is to understand that good leaders don't do anything alone. They find others to really be helping carry the ball forward.

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y, if I was good at this job [: 00:33:00

So there's so much complexity to this that as a superintendent or and a leader of an organization, you have to always be looking at those structures around as well.

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For those who are thinking about leadership, whether in education or in any of the professions that they're in what advice would you give to them to prepare themselves for the role?

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ant to wanting to be a soup. [: 00:34:00

ongoing commitment to being [: 00:35:00

We are about learning. We're about education. Be a model of that. And so whether that's the reading but it's also that continual going to classes, going to sessions, having mentoring and coaching.

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