From Broken to Thriving - Leadership Strategies for Community-Driven Change

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In some situations, focusing on the low hanging fruit doesn't solve the foundational issues necessary for success. When you are rebuilding a district, you need to orchestrate the short, mid, and long term plans in parallel. So what should your plan of action be to set yourself on the right path? That's the focus of today's conversation where we'll talk about how to build a framework for success in a broken district and set yourself on the right path for a turnaround. So who's going to be guiding us through that story? We have Michael Lubelfeld joining us today, and he's served as a public school superintendent in Illinois since 2010.

, schools in Highland [: 00:01:00

He has spoken around the U. S. and the world on leadership, student voice, and global service. He co authored the 2017 book, The Unlearning Leader. Leading for tomorrow schools, the 2018 book, the student is student voice from invisible to invaluable and the 2021 book, the unfinished leader, a school leadership framework for growth and development, his latest book, unfinished teacher, becoming the next version of yourself.

Was released in December of: 2023

Welcome to the show.

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[00:02:05] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to this conversation because of the circumstances surrounding your story in the Highland park district, and we're going to get into a lot of that in the bulk of the conversation, but I think before we dive into the meat of the conversation, it's going to be helpful for you to set the stage a little bit.

In terms of your overall career and then give us a flavor for what the district looked like when you first got there.

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I was the assistant superintendent for personnel services. And after serving here for 13 years, I left and I became a [00:03:00] superintendent. I went to Norwich. I went to Deerfield. I got the opportunity to come back here seven years ago as the superintendent of schools. However, the district I came to, came back to, was very different than the district I had left in 2010.

So essentially, from: 1992

They had really fractured community views about the future of the district and the financial forecast was uncertain. And I came here as a new superintendent to, new to the district, but [00:04:00] returning to the district, a veteran superintendent and the administration was a little bit shaken up. The board was different and we had to roll our sleeves up and get to work.

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And one of the things that I'm curious about is that is when you look at your first superintendent gig. I'm sure going into that role, you had all sorts of thoughts about, Oh, what is this going to look like? I'm going to do all this sort of stuff. And then you got in the seat. What was the biggest lesson that you learned in that first superintendency gig that served you well throughout your entire career as a district leader?

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[00:05:16] Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you mentioned that usually lessons like that are forged out of giant messes that you created for yourself. So is there a story behind how you learn the lesson that it's important to ask for help that you feel is worth worth talking about?

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And quite frankly came to light after I had reached out to a financial consultant from the state board, just to come in and talk me through it. Let me know where we've been. And they said about your structural [00:06:00] deficit. And I said, funny, I don't. There began a nice relationship and a way for me to help the board fix that structural deficit, which was not so easy to fix.

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And that leads to some difficult conversations. So going through that process, how did that shape how you built out your teams in the future? So those sorts of things don't happen again, where you have line of sight in the appropriate areas that are necessary, that drives the board communication as well.

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I [00:07:00] was a member, and still am, of the School Business Officials Professional Association, for example. for having me. I was a member and still am of the principals association. So I'm still getting that information and input from the various lenses of the folks who report to me and who I oversee. But at the end of the day, the buck stops with me.

And I need to make sure that I not only am informed more importantly, as I've learned over the years, I know what questions to ask.

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What are the things that those principals should be doing so that they have a broader understanding of the operational things that they need to be aware of before they get in the seat? What are the recommendations that you [00:08:00] have so that people can level up their business understanding about how a district functions?

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What got you here won't get you there. And look at a book like blind spots to really understand. We all need side view mirrors and a rear view mirror, but the windshield's larger. So it's that sense of visualizing your next steps of being outside of your current domain, but understanding that you will find out.

You just have to be humble enough to know you don't know it and smart enough to listen.

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So tell us a little bit more about the gravity of what you were facing. And more importantly What you decided to act on first.

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The interns had run out of days and they left. The two acting supes were existing administrators in the cabinet and it was, okay, we're now a 10 school district, probably 70 percent of the staff had been shuffled around. There was a lot of emotion, a lot of angst, and they still didn't have a facilities plan, which was the failed referendum in 2016, where they knew they needed to do something.

And I called for a community [: 00:10:00

So I said, what are the most important perspectives that we must take into account while planning for potential changes in our facilities and school boundaries? So I telegraphed your challenges. Now our challenges are facilities and potential changes to boundaries.

th,: 2018

And right there, we [00:11:00] had our community marching orders.

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[00:11:16] Mike Lubelfeld: What was surprising is they were so ready to get back on the playing field and try to work together. And you have to understand these were very local politically opposed people who knew though, that they did want to come to some consensus somehow. So what surprised me is that they showed up in July and they engaged in July and ultimately we had a plan approved by the board that November.

They were ready to go, Jim. That was a surprise.

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[00:12:07] Mike Lubelfeld: No. No. And let me also add a little piece of information. The February before the June, I hadn't been installed but I was hired. I was hired in December 2017. February 2018, the board hired a new architect. That was another really big issue because the old architect went out, with the whole other crew.

I was part of those selection processes. And even though I wasn't working here and I wasn't appointed, I was able to learn from the architect what their perspectives were with respect to design. And I was also able to communicate. Unofficially and informally that we were looking to move fast, although we did not have a financial plan and we weren't going to go to referendum.

st, what's on your mind? The [: 00:13:00

And then distill out what the agreements were. That was, I think, secret sauce or kind of a magic tool that we had to help us.

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[00:13:44] Mike Lubelfeld: So one of the challenges of the district since its inception in the nineties was long-term deferred maintenance. And briefly, in 1997, they needed a hundred million dollars. At that time, they generated 40. So they were 60 [00:14:00] million short. So from 97 to literally 20 currently, they were still short in that money compounded, but in 97, they got a referendum passed.

buildings got older. Back in: 2014

I'm not suggesting there were bad ideas. I'm not disparaging anybody or any process. What I'm saying, though, is then there was no alignment between administration, board, and community. My approach. Our approach, the board's approach here was what's common ground and then administration architect, can you formulate something?

aid, we don't have the money [: 00:15:00

I can impact instruction and curriculum through non facility ways and means. Facilities, it's going to have to be multiple phases of construction and financing. And our teachers and staff need to know that not only are we building new schools for the students, but we're also trying to improve working conditions for them.

So we basically laid out what at that point was a phase one that was approved in November.

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[00:16:00] Mike Lubelfeld: So I had mentioned that the district went from 12 schools to 10 schools. Enrollment had been declining steadily for a decade. The costs of running century old buildings with outdated HVAC, no air conditioning, century old facilities with boilers that basically to give you an example, we're operating three huge inefficient gas boilers where nowadays modern standards are you get one electric boiler and one backup gas.

That's far more efficient. So we were basically hemorrhaging money. And by doing all of this. We were shielding the focus and obscuring the focus from students and teachers and learning and teaching because we became paralyzed by the financial challenges and by the facilities challenges and by the inability of the administration to do what we To forward a plan that the community would accept.

's a, you call it a backdoor [: 00:17:00

But even if we don't, I will save so much money. By upgrading the two middle schools, the physically largest schools in two in very bad shape that we'll be able to hobble along better, soon we'll be able to walk along. And quite frankly, Jim, the community responded very favorably to that. Such

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[00:18:00] That's a lot of money and it's not going to impact. This the students or the teachers from an outcomes perspective, how did you bridge that gap?

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So part of it was physical plant can and will impact learning. It also became. If we don't fix these problems, we're going to not have enough money and we're going to have to start impacting, like reducing people, and that would negatively impact learning. So it's like learning's our top priority, and all these other distractions are in our way that are not allowing us to embrace it.

a three phase plan for long [: 00:19:00

We're going to handle equity audits and things because we're still going to keep leading though the facilities was the albatross strangling the district until we were able to resolve that.

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You have leaders in your buildings. Oh, here comes the hatchet. How did you navigate that fear and uncertainty that existed amongst employees of the district that you're [00:20:00] not coming in to just, become more efficient by cutting a whole bunch of people.

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But I need your help to help us fix our district and our community. And it was really members of the community. This is your money and your schools and your children. Teachers, this is your school community. I'm an administrator. We have a leadership team and usually the tenure is teacher stay forever.

How do we govern everybody? [: 00:21:00

That's part of our regular playbook gym. And then we plan actions around them to make sure that we're addressing climate and culture of our employees, of our students and of our families as part of the work that we do.

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From the people underneath you because they're going to have the most influence in being able to retain The educators that are also nervous. So walk me through what that process looked like.

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One is our selection of staff process is going to be based on research and evidence from organizational industrial. Psychology and these are the steps we're going to take and I'm going to get you trained. You're going to have support I'm going to help you by the way we're going to measure culture and this is precisely how we're going to measure it when and where we administer the survey and how you Take the results and share it with folks and how you plan actions and I got them consultative support I had a consultant that came and actually taught them how to do it Did it with them with their teams and after six consecutive years Our principals are pretty darn good at this now, but I brought in here's the framework Here's the playbook and here's the support and here's how it's going to be done.

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[00:23:16] Mike Lubelfeld: The 2018 2019 school year was remarkably and Unbelievably successful. And I credit our board of education, our community, the entire leadership team, and the faculty, everybody here, because we just came on really strong. We had the long range planning committee. We started culture. We started doing this.

We started asking people questions. We were all over. And then we developed a portrait of a graduate. And it was really exciting because it was not what we set out to do. And we did it. So that's another interesting story for another time. So people were really feeling good. Wait, this is good.

re getting back. And then the: 1920

And We said help. We worked with our teacher's union and our support staff union, and we were able to muster through figuring out how to deal with staying positive, staying optimistic. But Jim, we had four priorities when COVID started. One was feed our children. We have 22 percent of the children qualify for free and reduced lunch.

The next one was mental health and wellbeing for our staff and for the adults and for our families. The third was communication. Our fourth priority during this unprecedented crisis was education, either in person or remote or both. I guess the short answer to you is we simply pivoted and maintained two way communication through every single iteration of our time together.

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[00:25:09] Mike Lubelfeld: So I really credit our teachers, union leaders, our support staff and union leaders, our board and the parent community, even those who disagreed policy wise or even from a political standpoint with how we were operating, what we're doing to a person. They said, thank you for clarifying the what and why you're doing, whether I agree with you or not, we know what we're doing.

I think we did, I think 45 informational videos in a seven month period. It was some very hyper aggressive communication plan. And at the very least, no one was surprised about the what, and I think that is a credit to the whole organization banding together to say, this is what we're doing, how we're going to do it, why we're going to do it.

ned this way, then we opened [: 00:26:00

[00:26:07] Dr. Jim: the stuff that you've shared with us is really solid. I think one of the things that I'm curious about is you had all of these competing initiatives in place and you picked the highest priority items to drive forward. One was on the infrastructure and capital side. The other one was on the people and development side and particularly communication.

It's always an ongoing process, but because you focused on those things, what did you see in terms of the overall district's financial health? It's what was the impact of all of this work that you've done and where do you see it going in the future?

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The fact that we [00:27:00] do it so frequently and the fact that we've had our regular auditor plus internal audits keep us on check and to make sure we're good, the good news is we're on solid financial footing for the next five years and for the preceding six years we've been on solid financial footing.

And part of it is our laser like focus on everything that we're doing. We take a very serious look at the costs at the estimated costs at the real costs at supply chain. We're not looking to build the fanciest schools in the world. We're simply looking to build the schools that are going to function.

Best for the next half century. And I say, let's do the stuff. No, one's going to see and get it right. HVAC windows, floors, envelope, water filtration. And we'll do the best we can on the things that you can see. But the key here is long lasting priorities and long lasting sustainability.

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[00:28:26] Mike Lubelfeld: in our leadership work and especially in public education, one of the best pieces of advice is this is their community, meaning it's the community of the people and families that we're serving. We are here, whether it's one year, whether it's 30 years, we are here to serve the community.

, Nick Poliak and I wrote we [: 00:29:00

So getting the relationship, understanding who people are, what are they thinking? Really spending time on that feeling. Then you go to adaptive or transformative leadership as being the goal, and you help develop yourself and others. So it's adapt and develop. And then communicate as a frame or a lens, a strategy and a tactic, all of the above.

It's got to be clear, coherent, and it must be two way, which again goes back to listening. And then when we talk about the concept of being unfinished, we talk about stop fearing change. Change is inevitable, right? The butterfly changed from a caterpillar. That's the way of life. Stop letting others hold your organization back.

he future. And by all means, [: 00:30:00

[00:30:06] Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Mike. If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

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[00:30:34] Dr. Jim: Awesome stuff. So I appreciate you hanging out with us and and telling us your story. When I think about the conversation that we had here's what stood out to me. So when I look at the situation that you walked into, the situation is a real example of an organization or community that's in survival mode.

r. With getting any group of [: 00:31:00

But out of those four things, the two that you leaned into was community and communication. What's important to the community. And then based on what's important to the community, how are we going to communicate what we're going to do and why that particular track is the most important track to take. So when you're looking at impacting change and getting out of survival mode, What the situation on the ground looks like from the community is critical.

And then [: 00:32:00

For those of you who've been listening to this conversation. If you liked the discussion that we had, 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 where we'll have another great leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.