This past week senior leadership and staff of the Hartford Public Schools – and key community partners – accepted the Superintendent’s invitation to discuss how to more efficiently and effectively implement Hartford’s Strategic Operating Plan, set forth in the fall of 2015.  We learned a lot at this meeting.

The session looked back to document and celebrate progress, but also identify priority work and create a roadmap for the next three years.

The recurring theme we heard?  Strong (and Lean) Management Needed Now.

That’s human capital management, financial management, project management and consistent implementation.  And it means providing support where needed, but also getting out of the way and allowing school leaders to do what they do best.

We sensed a notion among education leaders in the room – both those in central office and those leading schools – that, even despite drastic improvements over the past three years, the operational side of the school district is in desperate need of attention.  There is still no comprehensive answer to the question: What is the District plan  for reaching organizational and operational excellence for all students?

The truth is that almost all school district strategic operating plans around the nation stop far short of actually changing the way the district operates.  They more so set goals and define strategies to achieve them.  See the past one, two, and three strategic plans for HPS.  Note all the unmet goals.  How can focus less on setting goals, and more on making the changes necessary to reach them.

Having desired results set down on paper means nothing if they cannot be implemented with fidelity, with consistency, with an ability to discern what works from what does not, and with the right resources and talent in place.  That’s been Hartford’s problem.  As the session pointed out, we don’t yet know “how to operationalize equity.”

The Bottom Line

Last week’s dialogue on the HPS strategic operating plan was a refreshing reminder that those who work in central office and on the ground in schools share the same view as those in the community.  They don’t want to pretend they have the resources to accomplish everything they need to.   And they want change – transformative change. Both residents and educators in Hartford are tired of pretending that just because we proclaim things like, “every single student in Hartford will get what they need,” that it’s actually going to happen.  The fact is: Our system continues to be designed to get the results it gets.

Year in and year out, despite innovations and some powerful new strategies, we are still essentially driving the same car we drove five years ago.

Sure we can add a slightly better set of drivers, slightly better tires, and be working with a much better GPS (in the form of the strategic plan), but we are essentially driving the same car – one that could not get us to our destination before, yet we expect it to somehow get us there now.

With the cascading State, City, and District financial constraints becoming a permanent reality, a restructured school district and central office must be like a new car that can take half as much fuel and go ten times as far towards closing the achievement gap.

The time is near for a potentially transformative decision to select and appoint the next educator to lead the District’s schools.  The dimensions of this decision concern all Hartford families today and will impact, for better or worse, the long-term economic viability of the Greater Hartford region.  If the challenge seems familiar, it may be because we have a revolving-door history.  Here are our thoughts on attributes of the next superintendent.

Education matters in Hartford.  School District dollars comprise more than half of the City budget – and the superintendent is the city’s highest-paid public employee.  This position matters – especially when we think of the relatively minimal role the Board and City Hall have been able to play in recent years to impact student outcomes.

As such, it is time to rethink the skillset needed in the next superintendent:

• Last time around, the search committee prioritized knowledge of instruction – education blocking and tackling, if you will – over all other attributes, looking to the Mayor and Board to provide political leadership.
• This time around, we should be prioritizing the ability to restructure central office to support our neediest schools and fully leverage partnerships across all sectors.  Bold change – and a real change-maker to lead these changes through – is what is required, particularly to support the most neglected schools and communities in Hartford.
• This also means cutting central office budgets to put more money in our chronically under-supported schools, consolidating schools with deeper implementation of student centered learning, and building a coalition that can cultivate increased resources where needed.  (See our article on how to operationalize equity.)
• More specific leadership attributes for the next superintendent (so we can avoid the Groundhog Day scenario!), include:
  • Agreeing (with the mayor and others) that local knowledge is what matters right now, not national perspective;
  • Re-emphasizing that the ability to make hard decisions and navigate city politics – whether it regards school consolidation, Sheff negotiations, central office and teacher layoffs, union contract negotiating, etc. – is paramount;
  • Partnership disposition must be even more open than before.  HPS central office staff should not be seen as a gate keepers, but as recruiters for city and community partnerships and as drivers of more alignment between universities, philanthropy, nonprofits, and policymakers with the goal of quadrupling the supports our students receive from the resources around them – including those for families;
  • A new vision for school choice is crucial if we are ever to effectively address poverty and give all students a chance – starting with redistributing the concentration of student need (as evidenced by Free and Reduced Lunch, Special Education and English Language Learning rates) among all schools and then redefining school pathways from elementary to middle and high school, families, and educators;
  • Innovating at an entirely new level around Student Centered Learning, to allow all students in Hartford the chance to progress at their own pace, is key;
  • The importance of disseminating data to track progress on individual, school, and system-wide progress cannot be overstated.  Optimally, the analyses would not only drive accountability for results, but, more importantly, shift the focus away from year-over-year gains and focus on individual student growth; and
  • Last, but certainly not least, sound financial management will be integral to success in our worsening fiscal climate.

The Bottom Line.

The next superintendent must be aligned with the Mayor’s view on the need to address structural deficiencies in our city.  They don’t only exist in our city’s revenue system; they exist throughout the Hartford Public Schools.  Now is the time to restructure the schools (if not three years ago), and the District’s next leader must have the track record and skillset necessary to do it.

As families turn their attention to the choice lottery application, the SMARTERHartford website once again is providing updated school profiles and a mapping tool to help in the process of choosing the right school.  School demographics, academic performance, and even principal attrition can be found in each school profile.
The latest Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) State test score reports and informative profiles of each school are two useful indicators for parents who want to find the right schools for their children.  The SMARTERHartford website provides one-stop shopping for this important choice.

For example, seeking information for a Third Grade student, based on the sample address of 500 Main Street, SMARTERHartford advises that:

• You live in Zone 4 (there are four quadrant zones in the city);
• Without specifying a particular zone or magnet, charter, or technical school (which can narrow your search), 36 schools are available;
• One neighborhood magnet school (Ramon Betances Early Reading Lab Magnet) is just .2 miles away, while several neighborhood schools are nearby and a number of Hartford and suburban magnet schools some 5 miles away are listed;
• Transportation information is available for each school;
• Whether the grades the school serves are K-8, Pre-K3 to 5, etc., is highlighted; and
• Reports on each school are available.  For example, take a look at the major data takeaways for Betances Early Reading Lab Magnet, the school closest to the address searched.

SMARTERHartford compares the demographic data of each school with that of the city and state at large, details the minority, special education and English learner student proportions, cites the principal turnover since 2008, and highlights chronic absenteeism rates and State SBAC achievement results.

“The State has released new cohort growth data from the SBAC assessments, which SMARTERHartford is working to synthesize and present,” Achieve Hartford! Executive Director Paul Holzer said today.  “Especially during Choice lottery season, which ends February 28, we are very grateful to The Hartford and the Vance Foundation for opening this digital doorway; parents can get an enormous amount of information efficiently on this website – and it’s only going to be enriched further.”