[00:00:00] Dr. Jim: Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. Everybody talks about the future of education. What should it look like? What should districts focus on? How should learning be delivered? These are all questions that help to roadmap how to build a future ready district.
Today's conversation focuses On how a failed referendum set the stage for building a future ready district designed for the 21st century learner So who's going to be guiding us through this conversation? Today we have jennifer brown who is currently serving in her 10th year as the superintendent of the cadillac area public schools And marking her 27th year in education.
She began her career as a middle school english teacher And has dedicated her entire professional life to supporting students and educators in her community she serves on several non profit boards and Is a rotarian outside of work jennifer is married with three kids and enjoys traveling with her family and exploring the outdoors Jennifer welcome to the show.
[00:00:55] Jennifer Brown: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:57] Dr. Jim: i'm looking forward to this conversation And [00:01:00] I think it's going to be a pretty interesting one, especially Because it combines a couple of interesting topics. One is recovering from a failed referendum, but the other one is how that actual adversity kind of sets you up for success in terms of a different viewpoint on how schools should be structured and how you should move forward.
But before we dive into that conversation, I think you did yourself a little dirty by having just a very short bio. So we need to learn a little bit more about you and get the listeners up to speed on what. makes you tick. So I think it's important for you to share with the audience some of those key moments in your career that helped shape your leadership perspective and philosophy and how you show up.
[00:01:41] Jennifer Brown: My entire career has been here in rural Northern Michigan. So I grew up in a small town. Come from a long line of educators in the family, both my parents and grandparents were teachers. I knew from early on that I really wanted to work with kids and in public school.
Once I landed in Cadillac I wasn't sure [00:02:00] that I would stay here, but it was the first job that was offered to me back in 1998, and I really fell in love with. This rural, big, small town is what I call it. And from there I was compelled to coach, sports, be advising students in clubs. Found myself in administration early on after about 10 years.
A passion for curriculum and really making sure that we're meeting students where they are. And taking them from where they are and growing them so that they really had a lot of options when they graduated high school. So I, I think defining what success looks like for kids is a mistake.
I think we need to prepare kids to define what their success and joy looks like. So that led into more curriculum development work for the district and then eventually into the superintendency.
[00:02:48] Dr. Jim: So one of the things that I'm curious about, and thanks for sharing that about your background when you talk about, transitions in your career. You spent roughly 10 years as a frontline educator and then moved into administration. What was [00:03:00] the biggest challenge that you encountered when you're making that transition and how would you advise others who are making those similar transitions to navigate that particular shift in responsibility and scope?
[00:03:11] Jennifer Brown: I never saw myself as an administrator. I will say that first and foremost, I think I love a challenge. I love change. I like collaboration. I like working with a team to overcome adversity and meet. challenge with success. So I would say my number one piece of advice for young educators who are looking to maybe leap into leadership is, go for it.
There's no right or wrong time. There's no right or wrong job. I think if opportunities present themselves, put your name in. You'll learn if you don't receive that opportunity. You'll learn about Yourself your district or that job and that will make you better in meeting the needs of kids. But I think my biggest challenge was taking the risk being confident enough about what I knew and what I brought to the table [00:04:00] versus what I didn't know and possible failure.
[00:04:02] Dr. Jim: When I think about the context of Where you quote unquote grew up in a rural district. And I've talked to enough people who are in the big chair in rural districts that, you have to be scrappy, you have to be hands on. And when you think about that transition into administration from the teacher's ranks. How did you find the right balance of being hands on and hands off as you're making that transition?
[00:04:24] Jennifer Brown: Sure. So I have I had established really good relationships with had my peers at that time and with administration. I think that is a luxury in a smaller district is you get to work with a lot of people. So I think that allowed me a lot of latitude to move into leadership take risks alongside what were peers and colleagues to now ask them to do some things that might be uncomfortable.
But I think one of my leadership styles is to come alongside people. So I never asked anybody to do anything I wasn't willing to do myself. And making sure that, when we took risks, they were calculated [00:05:00] risks and when we failed, we admitted it and we abandoned initiatives or projects or strategies we thought would be successful that may not have resulted in success.
So being able to show that and model that for teachers allowed, hopefully not just teachers, but support staff to take risks in meeting needs of kids because they certainly are diverse needs and they change daily.
[00:05:21] Dr. Jim: So switching gears a little bit so you spent time on the admin side and then you eventually got into the big chair. So when you landed that role in the big chair, how did you need to reinvent yourself again? To make yourself effective in that seat from that position with that different scope of role.
[00:05:39] Jennifer Brown: Sure. A lot of learning. I feel like every year has been a first year as a superintendent taking over. We initially identified a lot of. infrastructure needs, systems needs. I made a lot of assumptions in the role of a teacher, and then in the role of a principal, and then when you're in the role of a superintendent, there's [00:06:00] no room for assumptions.
Did a lot of learning did a lot of asking of our stakeholders, internal and external, about what was working, what wasn't working, and then really putting together a plan to attack what wasn't working. So we have great people in our district. Our biggest strength is our people and our community that really supports our schools.
So we settled up, identified some real critical needs, and we went after solutions.
[00:06:24] Dr. Jim: So one of the interesting things about what you just said was that as a superintendent you don't have room for assumptions. So walk us through some of the things that you did that helped you get as big a, as big and as accurate a picture as possible as far as what was the situation on the ground at the educator level, at the community level, and at the business level.
[00:06:45] Jennifer Brown: I really made efforts to maintain relationships and connections with Frontline. So I had established a lot of good relationships. I put in place immediately an instructional leadership team which grabbed teacher leaders from every grade level, [00:07:00] from every building, so I could stay connected to what their needs were.
And let them help me frame how we move forward. They certainly are our best asset in knowing what they need, and not trying to assume what they need. Establishing some internal leadership groups was really important for me. But most of my learning really came from the community. And external partnerships, roles and really understanding, not necessarily what our students need.
I felt pretty good about that, or at least could access more information about that. But what our community needs and how a school functioned in that framework really was a lot of my learning.
[00:07:37] Dr. Jim: Switching gears a little bit you've been in the district for a little while. Share with us a little bit about some of those observations that you made. When you first joined the district, what's the landscape look like? You just said it was rural. What are some of the other details that are important for the listeners to know?
[00:07:53] Jennifer Brown: Sure. So we live in a community about 20, 000. We talk about city and outside. We serve about [00:08:00] 3, 200 students. We're rural high poverty. We're about 60 to 65 percent free reduced lunch. And we have very little diversity. We are rural, white. poor northern Michigan manufacturing based, hardworking people vested in education.
[00:08:18] Dr. Jim: So when you look at taking over a district with that sort of landscape, now you had mentioned you'd grown up in the district So this isn't necessarily new but when you look at you know being in the big chair looking at all of these sort of headwinds What were the things that were going through your mind when you're trying to figure out?
Okay, what do I tackle first in terms of? What my priorities are.
[00:08:40] Jennifer Brown: What I knew to be true right when I took over was we were in a district with that lacked systems, like we didn't, we did not have an HR department, we did not have leadership. Structures. We did not have communication structures for internal and external. So [00:09:00] communication was lacking. We were not good at storytelling and talking about what we did really well.
We were not good at engaging the community in schools to know how to prepare kids to enter into the larger community after graduation. And our infrastructure was failing. We went through every school in Michigan, some tough times in the late two, 2008, nine, 10 and stopped investing in infrastructure and our buildings were literally falling apart around us.
Knowing that we didn't have a lot of funding to address the infrastructure and knowing where education was going and allowing a lot of flexibility and how we meet the needs of students. Our 1950s, 60s buildings were not aligning with what we needed to meet those student needs, including programming, which with COVID really escalated mental health, behavioral health needs for our kids.
[00:09:54] Dr. Jim: That's quite a list of things that that you have in front of you as far as things that are headwinds. And when I [00:10:00] opened the show, I talked about how a failed referendum actually helped set the stage for the direction that you took. tell us a little bit about the story behind that you have all of these different things that need to be addressed.
What did you do? And then what was the outcome of that?
[00:10:15] Jennifer Brown: So quickly, we did a facility study almost the year after I became superintendent, we hired a third party to do a facility study to really get our heads wrapped around what were our priority needs for infrastructure and partnered with that, we, I really set out a campaign to talk to the community about what they wanted to see in schools for their children and for the future.
Paralleling that first year, trying to build a story about where do we go from here in our strategic plan. And what we found, what we listened to and heard from the community is, yes, our buildings are a priority, but more importantly, we want programs that support, continue to support and build upon what our students are needing to be effective in the 21st [00:11:00] century.
So what does that look like? We want more STEM education. We want robust arts education. We want to make sure our kids have flexible programs that are career driven. And our teachers identified we need more natural light. We need more space to make sure we're providing collaborative education opportunities, project based learning opportunities, problem based learning opportunities.
So we packaged that all together. To go out to our community to try to say this is what we need from an investment perspective to upgrade our buildings and provide the programs that were identified in that year of learning.
[00:11:34] Dr. Jim: So when you look at that process at the, I'm oversimplifying, but you have two different buckets that you need to address. You need to address the infrastructure side of it, and you need to address the curriculum and programming side. if I'm understanding you correctly, when you went to the community, it was to address both of those needs. When you went forward with both of those, it eventually ended up failing. How did you recover from that?
[00:11:57] Jennifer Brown: It took a minute to breathe because it was a big [00:12:00] effort. And then we went back to the groups that we knew had were pretty negative on increased taxes. Nobody likes to pay taxes, but nobody who likes to pay taxes. So we asked what part of this proposal really prevented you from supporting our students and our schools, and most of the answers we received were we just didn't want, we don't want any more taxes.
So we also then went to the groups that voted yes, and we identified quite a big group who just assumed it would pass and didn't vote and re engaged the community in a way to say that these are really the important things. We need this. We also heard some negativity around a new gym, gymnasium. We don't need another gymnasium.
That's a want, not a need. So we eliminated the gymnasium. We really resold the story as these are, this is a needs based referendum and not a wants based. And then it did pass overwhelmingly at that time.
[00:12:57] Dr. Jim: So when you look at your communication [00:13:00] strategy, the second go around, what were the things that you shifted? That got the fence sitters back in the game and also reframed some of the misconceptions.
[00:13:09] Jennifer Brown: We emphasized we really emphasized the programming aspect that we were bringing alongside the infrastructure and building buildings. We also included, we better communicated the programming, I will say that. We didn't increase the programming, we better communicated the programming that would enhance what our students are, were experiencing at Cadillac Area Public Schools.
So since that passage of the bond we are doing before and after school care programs, enrichment programs so that we have more opportunities for our kids to engage in some of the things that they really love about school.
[00:13:44] Dr. Jim: If I understood what you did, part of your effort was talking about what an actual program involves versus talking about all the different programs that exist, and that helped get more buy in.
But tell us a little bit more about how those [00:14:00] programs shifted post referendum that really connected with the community and helped get it over the line.
[00:14:06] Jennifer Brown: Cadillac prides itself on excellence in academics, arts, and athletics. So we really wanted to make sure that programmatically, we were able to show families in the community how we were building our academics to meet all learners. So that included STEM, steam, coding, robotics, and our buildings were not offering space for those programs.
So we had a gym that was shared for a cafeteria in our elementary building. So that was really limiting what we could do for wellness and health. We didn't have any robotics labs, and now we do. We didn't have dedicated art and music spaces. So we have now dedicated art and music spaces in all buildings, including programming.
So every student K 12 has access to music, art, P. E., STEM programming within the school day. Then we expanded those programs [00:15:00] outside the school day to enhance. Enrichment opportunities. So those were some of the things that we really focused on and then flexible spaces. So in our high school, we built a student commons area that could be used as flexible space.
It can be a performance space. It can be an online for our virtual learners space. It's the cafeteria. It's the commons. It's serving lots of different opportunities. And we really modeled that After what college campuses look like, so they would be excited and engaged to be there and had large spaces, intimate spaces, collaborative spaces and flexible spaces,
[00:15:36] Dr. Jim: I would anticipate a fairly easy sell to the community when you lay it out that way. The one thing that I'm thinking about is, was there anything that you did either in the lead up to the referendum or even post referendum as you're going into implementation that incorporated the commute the business community to help inform where some of these programs go or how these [00:16:00] programs are structured
[00:16:00] Jennifer Brown: Yes, so we, we had town hall and community forums. We met with chamber groups, the industrial groups, manufacturing groups, small business owners, all the service organizations. And when we talked to them, they really identified. They'll train our kids, but they want us to focus on soft skills. How do we communicate together?
How do we collaborate together? How do we show up? How do, how do we represent in a professional way? So they did identify many of the aspects of the programs that we have for us to emphasize with our students. So that was really great feedback for us.
[00:16:37] Dr. Jim: When you look at the advisory role that some of the business entities have taken in terms of how the curriculum is shaped, has there been any examples where they've taken it a step further, where they've been much more hands on in the instruction or additional enrichment elements of these programs that you've launched
[00:16:54] Jennifer Brown: Yeah, so once we successfully passed that initiative, we reached back out to our [00:17:00] business stakeholders and we created business partnerships within our elementary school. One of our focus areas is to make sure that we are connected to the community and providing career opportunities for kids. We're pretty good about job shadowing, internships, externships.
At the secondary level, but we were really lacking in the elementary. So we re engaged those business partners and we established a business partner program. So each partner has a classroom that they adopt. And we had like health care is fourth grade government agencies, third grade aligned to the academic standards, and then they will push in and talk about what jobs are available within their industry.
They'll bring in props, they send certificates. So they will visit that classroom and the teacher will reach out to coordinate more opportunities for career awareness and that partnership. And in exchange, they get a plaque to put in their business to say they're a business partner with Cadillac Area Public Schools and we send them a student.
photo. So that was a [00:18:00] really great value add for our students, but also for our business community to show their support for schools. And then we promoted the business as a business partner. So they had some marketing opportunities with the schools.
[00:18:11] Dr. Jim: when when you look at where they got started. So you had this at the elementary school level. Yeah. Why did you decide that it was important to start at that level versus let's say middle school or high school?
[00:18:22] Jennifer Brown: I think it's easier for us to find opportunities for middle and high school to connect what they're learning to the community and business. It is more challenging to do that work within an elementary Mostly because our teachers are busy delivering content and learning for four core academic areas and building those relationships.
So we felt that, one, didn't ask too much, task too much of our businesses and didn't ask too much of our elementary staff, but would have a really
[00:18:55] Dr. Jim: So we spent a lot of time talking about the programming aspect of what you did at [00:19:00] the district. But you still had some pretty significant infrastructure issues that you needed to solve, too. And you touched on some of those earlier.
What was your strategy? To address all of these different infrastructure issues dealing with spacing and any number of things. You had buildings that were falling apart. So walk us through that.
[00:19:18] Jennifer Brown: Once we had our facility study complete, unfortunately, every one of our buildings needed significant overhaul specifically with HVAC, plumbing, roof classroom space, everything was really in need of attention, and we knew that we couldn't tackle everything, and we also knew that in a rural um, low socioeconomic community, you know, passing a referendum that would increase taxes would not be successful.
So we really worked with our architect and our construction management firm to look at how we could sell these upgrades in a way that would really increase our efficiency. So it makes sense for, hardworking middle [00:20:00] class folks. To make it make sense for them that this was going to be need space.
So what we did is we closed an elementary building which was a challenge And we restructured the entire district what we did, so we could shrink our footprint and manage that footprint more efficiently so that we could be responsible with these dollars in the future. So, We wouldn't go back in 30 years and say, hey, we need to do it all over again.
That was essentially what was behind that work. We restructured four K 4 buildings to three K 5 buildings. And we restructured a 7, or 6 7 building to a six, seven, eight building, and then we had an eight, nine building that we closed, and that created space for a nine, twelve.
So essentially, we shrunk ten buildings to seven and that would allow for us to have some efficiency and help people make sense of what we were asking, because at the end of the day, we asked for sixty five million dollars, which is mind [00:21:00] blowing in the community, the size, but that allowed us to do everything on the list.
And do it well and meet the needs of our kids, our learners and our community because there's a lot of community spaces within our district. We are a community schools philosophy. So we allow the community to come into buildings to use our spaces for lots of different things. And that was very successful.
[00:21:21] Dr. Jim: So it's interesting that you describe the consolidation efforts and when I'm thinking through. What you describe as a tight knit community, if a segment of that community sees a school going away. That's going to create its own set of problems, too, where people are going to be irritated because of the commute impact and, the idea of losing a school in especially rural communities or any communities where there's financial stress.
Losing a school out of that community is a big deal. So how did you navigate that friction that comes from having to shut that down? Because that's not good either.
[00:21:53] Jennifer Brown: It isn't, and we had one, the elementary that we closed, that was a point of contention. We spent a lot of [00:22:00] time with the families. in that neighborhood at that school. And what we did was we tore down most of that building that was in really bad shape and told the story. Honestly, and in a transparent way the, when that, the time period in which that was constructed, the problems with that, we actually did a whole exercise on what it would cost to rehabilitate that building versus tear it down.
And the 1 part of the building that was in good shape, we kept as an early childhood center. So that was really strategic and when we needed it for our growing preschool programming, and it remained a school asset. With a very large playground for that neighborhood that they could access after hours and create more of a community park.
So that was really helpful. Another one of the buildings that we are closing now is central administration. So we're moving into a space. Nobody cared about us and displacing us. So we are back now and in one of the K 12 buildings where we can be closer to kids. So we were able to [00:23:00] sell it. We want to be closer to kids, be connected to the work we're doing.
That was another strategic, easy sell. And then just efficiency. So when we've restructured the 8 9 building, we didn't tear that, we tore some of it down, but it, we were moving 8th grade down, keeping 9th grade with high school in that building. So we talked more about the programmatic benefits of separating middle school students from high school students, both academically, but socially and emotionally.
And that with a lot of research, was another successful strategy.
[00:23:33] Dr. Jim: So now, when we look at the landscape, You've shifted how programming is structured, you've shifted the district in terms of number of buildings, you've shifted a lot of the infrastructure issues and when you look forward, how did that set the stage for the type of learning that you, that, that happens within the district?
We opened the show talking about building a district for the 21st century learner. How did all of this fit into [00:24:00] that broader purpose that we talked about at the beginning of the show?
[00:24:02] Jennifer Brown: So really excited about what we're able to offer our students in the way of academics, arts, athletics social, emotional learning opportunities and behavioral supports. We have a wellness center that's embedded in our buildings. It's really shaped the way for future to be adaptive and flexible.
So we designed classrooms that we felt would grow with learning. We know learning changes. We know our students needs change. So a lot of our spaces were designed for as multi use. So they will grow with whatever might come. It's impossible to predict the future, especially in education, but we do believe that we're set up.
for at least the next 20 to 25 years to meet the needs of learners that might come our way with the improvements that we made infrastructurally and then our commitment to continue to evolve programmatically to meet the needs of our kids.
[00:24:58] Dr. Jim: So when you look at all of this [00:25:00] change that you've implemented. What's been the initial impact that you've seen of all of these shifts that have happened since the referenda was passed?
[00:25:09] Jennifer Brown: There's a lot of pride, like I think essentially people are proud to send their kids to our schools. Recruitment and retention of staff. We come and look at our buildings, our beautiful living spaces. That's been a real positive for our internal human resources and recruitment.
And then mostly, It's like the talk of the town. People are really excited to be here and that helps not only our kids and our schools, but our community. And making sure our community is healthy and growing economically with jobs and job creation. That's really exciting.
[00:25:45] Dr. Jim: We covered a lot of ground. When we talk about what we covered so far, we talked about solving for infrastructure, solving for programming, community and business engagement. We covered a lot of territory in terms of this project that you've been working on.
If you were to advise [00:26:00] some other district leader who wants to tackle something like this within their district. What are the key principles that they need to keep in mind to be able to successfully pull off what you pulled off?
[00:26:10] Jennifer Brown: Sure, I think I spent maybe my first three to five years saying regularly to people close to me, our leadership team we have to go slow to go fast. So you really need to understand where you're going to do it right and well. And that's going to take time. Time to invest in where are you currently, where are you currently?
Takes a minute to really get your head wrapped around that. So if you're new to a district, that takes well over a year. If you aren't new and you have a pretty good grasp of that, then I do think you need to spend a lot of time in creating systems of communication. What do your internal stakeholders need to hear from you to know and understand the why?
What do your external, when I say external, identify those stakeholders? Are they your parents? Are they your business community? Are they your board [00:27:00] of education? Are there any other strategic partners you might have in serving your students? And to know and understand their why. And for them to know and understand where your intended outcomes are going to be and why they're the intended outcomes.
And I think that takes time and then build some if you're going to do something like we did with a huge capital improvements campaign, you really do need some core groups for each of those demographics to help. a steering committee or a strategic planning committee, something where they can be partners in distributing communication information, but also mostly listening to those stakeholder groups, and then pivoting when necessary to make sure people understand and know the why and the why has to be centered in kids.
So that would be my advice to somebody looking at doing some of this work.
[00:27:47] Dr. Jim: If folks want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
[00:27:51] Jennifer Brown: Probably best is email
[00:27:52] Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing your story and it's it's a lot to get in roughly a 30 minute conversation. So I know that [00:28:00] we're leaving a lot of stuff out of the detail. But when I think about this conversation, and I think about what stood out to me, everything that you've mentioned is important.
And I think it's valuable for people to keep in mind. But as I was listening to the story, one of the things that stood out Was something that my wrestling coach in high school said. And when I was just starting out, he said, if you want to get really good at something, don't focus on all the flashy stuff.
You need to make sure that you're standing on a solid foundation of the basics. And the reason why your story reminded me of that. Was that one of the first things that you did when you came in was set up the infrastructure within the organization from a communication systems and processes perspective that would help you springboard into success, and that was, and I think that's an underrated thing that probably had a big influence in how you were able to recover from a failed referendum and move forward.
So I think when other leaders are looking at inheriting a district with a lot of headwinds, You, [00:29:00] there are probably several reasons why those headwinds exist. But one of the things that they need to consider is, are we on strong footing from a foundational perspective? Are we standing on strong footing from a community engagement perspective, a communication perspective?
And if not, let's fix those things first before we tackle the big shiny object. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. For those of you who've been listening to this conversation, if you like the discussion, 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.
You can find that at a engaging leadership show. com 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 helped them build a high performing team.