HOS Highlights
April 13, 2016
“We succeed only when students succeed. That is our goal. That is our passion. That is our work.” Nate Davis
School Services Announcements
Leadership Academy #4 begins this Friday, April 15th at noon EST.
- Your session leader should have sent you information about this week's session. Please reach out to them directly if you didn't receive this information.
- You can plan on a 90 minute session with a break in the middle
- Please let your RVP know if you are unable to make it
Leadership Academy Options
- Strategic Leadership: Facilitated by Kris Stewart and Perry Daniel
- Instructional Leadership- Faith Shanholtzer
- Communication and Community- Pam Jonidis
- Organizational Management with Sheila Shiebler
Newsletter Point of Contact
- Mike Kazek will be handling the newsletter through April 20th, 2016. If you have any cheers or announcements please email those to Mike.
Operational Guidelines and Procedures April Focus
The year-long review and professional development surrounding a new table of contents for each school’s operations manual continues. As you may recall, schools have been asked to move their old operations manuals gradually over to a more dynamic, school-specific operational guidelines and procedures sub-site built within each school’s SharePoint site. Below you can find a recap of the sections worked on since the start of the project in October of 2015.
October: Testing
November: Student Records
December: Student Data and Systems Management
January: School Reports and Submissions; Student Withdrawals
February: School Calendar, Resolution Matrix, Admission and Enrollment, Registration and Returning Students
March: Special Populations
April’s focus is attendance and truancy. Attendance will be reviewed during the Ops Meeting on April 5th and truancy will be reviewed during the Ops Meeting on April 21st. The regions will divide into their breakout rooms after the Ops Meeting to discuss key questions related to the topics as well as share best practices. The following questions will be posed as they relate both attendance and truancy for school operations teams to review as they update their guidelines and procedures.
· What are the attendance requirements at your school? Is attendance measured based on parent recorded attendance, synchronous activity, Class Connect participation, communications between the students and teachers, or a combination of all of the above?
· How does your school monitor attendance?
· How does First Day of School affect funding?
· How are attendance modifications identified at your school?
· Once a modification need has been identified, what steps are followed? And, does your school keep track of modifications as well the reasons for modifications?
· How do you handle excused absences at your school?
· What is the definition for “truant” in your state?
· How does your school deal with students who are considered truant? Does your school have a specific person who follows up with students who are considered truant? Do you have to take truant students to truancy court?
· How do you ensure that a student isn’t withdrawn for being truant because of his/her disability?
· Are you able to withdraw truant/excessively absent students from your school? If so, are they classified as drop-outs at the high school level? How do you follow-up on next placement to ensure your dropout rates have minimal impact?
As always examples are provided to schools to review and consider while working on the guidelines and procedures. Please encourage your operations manager to incorporate all vital stakeholders in this process.
Teacher Pulse Check #4 Detailed Analyses and Open Ended Themes Revealed
With the final Teacher Pulse Check (TPC) completed, appreciation goes to the Students First team as the lead in pulse check processes and specifically to Michael Frost who ran the operational and analytic side of the TPC.
Overall teacher participation remained high in the last of four surveys. Initial results share that 1880 teachers (48%) participated in the survey. Satisfaction among teachers remained generally constant over the surveys with Survey 4 garnering 50% of the top-tier rating of very satisfied/satisfied. Of the various teacher groups, new teachers rated nearly every category/question more favorable than returning teachers and high school teachers rated statements slightly higher than k-8 teachers. Finally, the Southern Region was the most satisfied, had higher morale and rated questions more positively as compared to other regions. Regarding the open ended questions, 76% of the teachers responded to a new open ended question requesting them to identify next year’s priority and 33% of the teachers offered additional open ended comments that has been part of the survey since its inception.
This survey revealed very strong correlational relationships between Leadership Improving Experience and Confidence in Leadership. Teachers seem to have a greater confidence in leaders who are perceived to be improving experiences at the school.
Other very strong relationships include: Moral & Confidence in Leadership, Pride & Satisfaction, Satisfaction & Recommendation (net promoter – likelihood to recommend teaching position to colleague or friend) and Pride & Recommendation (net promoter). Additionally there appears to be broad strong relationships between positive culture measures such as pride, moral, satisfaction, likelihood to recommend teaching at the school, and confidence in leadership. Finally, while still strong or moderate in strength, Retention has the weakest relationships to all areas including K12 Improving Experience.
Recommendations for consideration include: Focus on improving relationships with and confidence in leadership as a lever to drive improvement in areas such as morale, satisfaction, and pride and on other drivers to improve retention because retention scores have less of a relationship to areas such as morale, confidence in leadership, or K12 improving experiences.
The broad themes expressed in the open-ended responses may be the key drivers to improving teacher retention. There were strong relationships between areas such as satisfaction, morale, pride, and leaderships, but all of those relationships weakened when correlated to likelihood to continue in current position next year (“retention”).
Broad themes that may most impact teacher retention include perceived salary, workload, and how time is used throughout the day.
Head of School in the Spotlight
Teri Cady
School: Insight School of Colorado
Began with K12: 2007
Superpower: Coordinating people together toward a common goal
Fun Fact: When I was much younger, I was the Collegiate National Champion for Triathlon
Advice to Leaders: Hire great people and then trust each staff member’s expertise – your job is to inspire all the unique experts on your team together to focus on common goals.
Leadership Video Reflection- Break Big Goals into Small Steps
Check out this video on breaking big goals into small steps.
Please reflect on the following questions:
- Which goal is the most important to you right now?
- How can you break it into smaller steps?
Please share your goal with a colleague and help them discover their own.
Around The "BOARD TABLE"
2016 National Board/Partner Summit
K12 is pleased to host our first national board and partner summit. Recently HOS received guidance from your RVP on disseminating to your boards and partners. Please find the official welcome letter from K12 CEO- Stuart Udell, the agenda for the summit, and RSVP attendance survey which includes hotel booking information that board and partners will fill out.
Invitation from K12 CEO, Stuart Udell
Cheers to You!
Take an opportunity to celebrate a colleague(s) via our weekly "Cheers" and shout outs. Here are this week's cheers:
We would like to highlight your Cheers in the next HOS Highlights newsletter. Feel free to cheer for regional teams as well as your fellow HOS's. Please submit your cheers on the form below.
Leadership Academies and HOS meetings Dates
Leadership Academy #4 (All Times are EST)
· April 15th Noon-2pm
~April 29th ** Noon-1pm- HOS call begins at 1:15pm
· May 13th Noon-2pm
~May 27th *HOS Call Only begins at 1:15pm
Leadership Academy #5 (All Times are EST)
· June 10th- Noon-2pm
~ June 24th ** Noon-1pm- HOS call begins at 1:15pm
· July 8th- Noon-2pm
~July 29th- *HOS Call Only begins at 1:15pm
Past issues of the HOS Highlights
Reoccurring Information Below
Leadership Academy Titan Pads
Amanda Conley,
Cassie Barton,
Josh Williams,
Katrina Abston,
Lynn Barr,
Mark Christiano,
Matt Arkin
Faith Shanholtzer,
Kelly Van Sande,
Kendall Schroeder,
Josh Williams,
Marcus Moore,
Nicholaus Sutherland,
Nicole Tiley,
Lynn Barr,
Sara Baker
Pam Jonidis,
Beth Lorigan,
Caroline McIntosh,
David Crook,
Ryan Clepper,
Stacey Hutchings,
Steven Hoff
Laurie Erdman,
Brandy Osborn,
Byron Ernest,
Elizabeth Roth,
JD McMahan
Joel Medley,
Theresa Gallagher
Scott Sides,
Sheryl Tatum
Sheila Sheibler,Cherry Daniel,
Jeffrey Bush,
Jessie Thoman,
John Huber,
Kelly Edginton,
Monti Pittman,
Theresa Gallagher
Suzanne Sloane,
Theresa Gallagher,
Veronica Clemons
The Leadership Academy Basics
- Weekly Leadership Academies begin at Noon EST every Friday afternoon and run for 90 minutes
- Here is the participant link.
- It is highly recommended that you participate in the weekly academies via BBC because the classes are going to be interactive. Your experience will not be as rich if you join via phone only
- Pertinent school services information that was typically presented during Friday HOS calls will be shared via regional calls, the weekly HOS newsletter, or monthly national HOS calls
- This newsletter will have all of the information you need for the upcoming training and will arrive in your inbox every Wednesday morning
School Leadership Development & Support Team
2015/16 Leadership Academy Content and Focus
2015-2016 Leadership Standards and Practices
Leadership Academy #1- "Explore U": YOU are the focus of Leadership Academy #1 entitled, Explore "U". Throughout the first seven weeks we will focus on your strengths as indicated in the Myers-Briggs assessment most of you took in January, 2015. Throughout the cycle you will build upon your strengths and learn to leverage those strengths to minimize weaknesses.
Leadership Academy #2- "Build It and They Will Come": Your knowledge and expertise will be leveraged to build out content for one of the leadership strands. Each School leader chooses one standard to work with over the course of the 7 week cycle. The goal will be to codify your expertise within the leadership strand to build a complete leadership Academy cycle in your area chosen area.
Leadership Academies #3-5-: Once the content is built, you will choose one strand to focus on for the remaining cycles. Choice is built into the process and we would like you to choose two standards. We suggest you work with your RVP/DRVP to choose one leadership strand that you would like additional support in. The strands include: Strategic Leadership, Instructional Leadership, Community, Human Resources, and Organizational Management.
School Leadership Development Team
The School Leadership Development Team leads the design, development, execution, and evaluation of national programs that build exceptional school leadership across K12’s network of managed schools. The team coordinates school, regional and national efforts to improve leadership practice and school outcomes.