00:00:00] Dr. Jim: Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. How do you build a continuous improvement in innovation culture when you're already on solid ground in terms of performance? If you're already good, What needs to be put into place so you can become great.
One of the elements of this journey involves overcoming the resistance to change. If you're laying the foundation for greatness, there's a lot of front end relationship building that needs to be done. Your strategy needs to be clear and it needs to incorporate feedback from the front lines.
This is true in most businesses and is especially critical 12 education, space. This episode focuses on the best practices that help you set the stage for continuous improvement and taking your organization to the next level So who's going to be guiding us through this conversation?
Today we have tom burkhalter superintendent of the varroca black hawk school district in wisconsin Tom leads one of the top 100 school districts in wisconsin and is in his first year District Administrator for Viroqua Area Schools. Prior to that, he served [00:01:00] in the roles of Principal, Associate Principal, Dean of Students, and Educator in rural districts throughout the state of Wisconsin. He lives in Viroqua with his wife, Kim, three sons, Will, Owen, and Jake. So he's in a zone defense like I am with three meat heads as well. Tom is also a doctoral candidate at Edgewood College, and his dissertation is focused on the relationship between school board and superintendent and its impact on the superintendent's longevity.
Tom. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:28] Tom Burkhalter: Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Jim.
[00:01:29] Dr. Jim: so super pumped to have you on the show. And the bio just scratches the surface on what you're into. And one of the things that I'll point off, point out right off the bat is with three sons and hashtag relatable I have an idea of the chaos that you're dealing with. So it's good to have you hang out with us. So before we dive into the main part of the conversation and talk about building a continuous improvement and innovation culture and continuing to focus on that.
On building [00:02:00] that elite organization. I think it's going to be important for you to set the stage a little bit and share with the audience some of the key moments in your career that helped shape your focus
[00:02:11] Tom Burkhalter: we can talk about the moments of my career, I think probably more important for understanding me and where I've been and how I got to this point. It's really probably needs to go back a little bit further. So I'm I'm the son of a pastor and a and a factory worker.
And and when growing up, I'm the oldest of six kids four of whom are adopted and to have special needs. And so this was a a piece where as growing, as I was growing up in a lot of ways, I was a third parent there was a big age gap and and saw firsthand how that that relationship was so important between a parent and a child.
And then, fast forward to college where I had the opportunity, I was a history and broadfield social sciences major. And about halfway through my sophomore year, my the head of the college of education sat me down and [00:03:00] said, Hey we'd like you to try something different.
And And that was family consumer sciences. And so that was a totally different change, very female dominated field. And one that was really incredible for me to begin that journey and teach within that field. It's really a degree that's that's it's up and coming, but it is an outstanding degree for teachers that Maybe don't want to be stuck on one subject.
[00:03:22] Dr. Jim: There's one thing that I want to pull Out and get your perspective on so you describe your childhood, your background as the oldest, in a family that included a Pastor and a factory worker and then some siblings of yours who had special needs and The reason why it caught my interest is because we often see schools in any community be that hub that supports and tries to bridge the gap of some of the most underserved within the community, some of the weakest within the community, and it helps to bring them to that next level or help them make them help make themselves [00:04:00] sufficient.
And the reason why I point this out is I'm curious to understand how your experience. Being that third parent some of your philosophy in terms of the role of the school in the community and how the school acts as a supporting agent for the broader community. Tell us about what influences that played in how you view the school district and schools in general.
[00:04:22] Tom Burkhalter: it was really interesting. And so as I was growing up, I went to a small rural school in Wisconsin. And I do think that while maybe lacking a little bit in, in resources and maybe even some skillset at times, it was always. Very clear that the people mattered most, right? There's the students everybody knew everybody.
There was no like somebody hiding or, going under the radar that was never an option when you have 30 kids in your entire class. That's not an option. And so I, I do think that was really obvious. Growing up that, [00:05:00] that essentially those that needed the most resources got what they needed or at least the best effort from that, that local, school district.
My freshman year, we actually moved to our neighboring school district. And almost immediately we had a situation. And again, I don't want to spend too much time on myself because I think the organization is great. But I think it does give you some understanding. My, my mom and my dad both had pretty catastrophic injuries about a week apart.
My dad broke his femur and it was bedridden for a, for quite a while. And then my mom broke her back. A week later, and so I was the oldest had say, had that five younger siblings and it really, forced me not only to grow up, but also start a partnership with our local school district that I had never experienced before, which was, I was talking to teachers.
I was picking up homework. I was picking up my siblings. I was, taking over that part of that life. And it was really. Amazing to see my local school district and the part and the impact that they had on me of stepping up my principal. Yeah, it was it just, he was there for us and [00:06:00] was able to really help help our family.
And that was a, it was a really cool thing to see all of this community come together for some very community minded people that were my parents. And to have a community rally around based out of the school was something that I think was a model that I can use going forward in my career.
[00:06:16] Dr. Jim: No I think that's a really good perspective and I want to spin that forward a little bit and get visibility into what your first impressions were when you started in Viroqua as a superintendent. Now you've had some time in the district prior to getting this role. You had some context, but tell us a little bit about how your views changed or evolved as you set foot into that big chair.
[00:06:43] Tom Burkhalter: Yeah. So actually I Was in Clintonville before this. I didn't, I did not come up through the ranks in Viroqua. I have a history with Viroqua that is super unique in that I was born here and raised in the neighboring area. And definitely understood some context, but I went away and [00:07:00] Viroqua changed in and pretty drastically, in my opinion, for the better.
And when I got here, it was a really unique and almost surreal experience and a very full circle, moment for me during the interview process when we were going through that, I asked a question that I think was super telling of our school board. And if you don't know, the superintendent interview process is incredibly intense.
It's a multi day piece for most districts. And you are talking with, I think there are around 30 people total that were a part of my interview process. So this was a very intense piece, but during my last interview I asked the question of if I'm so fortunate to be offered this position, why should I take it?
And I'm on my school board. That is one of the most polite school boards, most educated school boards that I've ever seen that never talk over each other in any context or any situation. Spent the next 45 minutes of my interview. Talking about why they love this place. And they love this place because of the people and the [00:08:00] amazing experience that has experienced that they bring to this area.
So this has become a hub for people from all over the country to move into bring their skillset bring their knowledge and then also bring a different expectation. And so that is really where. In the end, it was, where do I want my boys to grow up? Where do I want them to go to school?
Where do I want them to graduate from? And Viroqua Area Schools was absolutely the top of the list after that conversation. And I knew from about, probably seriously about 10 minutes into that conversation that this is, that I was going to accept the position if they offered it to me. But it was just an absolute joy to watch my board jump over each other and talk about, this is an amazing thing that happens.
We have live music all the time. Our food is amazing. We've got this growing and budding energy here that is not like most of rural Wisconsin or most rural communities right now. And so I was very excited to see that. And on top of that, there is an expectation of excellence. And I know that every district says that but few have the evidence [00:09:00] to show that it is.
And Baroque was one of those schools. could go on for a long time, Jim.
[00:09:04] Dr. Jim: It's interesting when you're going through your answer. I had I had a flashback to my recruiting days. So I spent a lot of time as a recruiter. And when you said a 30 person interview, I was like, Oh, there was, there would be no way that I would be entertaining that sort of process.
Because generally when you have that kind of process, it it indicates a level of disorganization within a yeah. An organization where they have that many voices involved in it. At least that's been the experience on the private sector. But what was interesting, what I really liked about what you described was how you turn the tables and ask that question.
So for anybody that listens to this conversation. The question that you phrase. So if I'm lucky enough to accept their have an offer extended, why should I take it? Why should I work here? I think that's a phenomenal question from a candidate perspective, because the flip side of what you experienced.[00:10:00]
Should be setting off like massive red flags in your head if nobody's got an answer for that So I really like that and I really like that aspect of the experience And I think that's going to be broadly valuable for a lot of folks So I want to tie all of this together to the broader context of the conversation, you mentioned that every district has an expectation of excellence.
And that even came out in the interview process. Now you're in one of the top 100 districts in Wisconsin. And the question that I opened the show with is how do you build a continuous improvement culture if you're already on a really strong footing? How did you walk through that process?
[00:10:38] Tom Burkhalter: I think I think it starts off, that story starts in 2020 when the world shut down. And then a couple of weeks later, I'm interviewing for my first super intendency, right? And so I, I think it was a whirlwind for a lot of reasons. Typically you would come into a district and you wouldn't touch anything for that first year.
You would sit and wait and [00:11:00] listen and learn. And that's absolutely where I feel most comfortable during a transition. However with the pandemic and we had to get, we had to get students back in, in school and how are we going to do that? And we had to surround ourselves with the right group of people to try to make decisions.
The same year that I came in over half of our admin team. Turned over. And so this was a piece where we have essentially a new team some pieces that had been here a while, but that we're still trying to learn and grow together. And I think the biggest thing right away was just calling it out and saying, Hey, we're We know that this is going to be a tough process and that we're going to make mistakes.
But we're going to try to make the best decisions that we can for our students and our staff. And I do think that was well received. And I do think that we created a process that through the help of some shared leadership, even at the time, even though we didn't have the systems in place that we still brought together and gained consensus on a plan that allowed us to move forward [00:12:00] as a team that again, in a typical year, there's no way I'm getting together.
We had our leadership team. There were probably 25 teachers and staff members on that group that was a little large, but that was the system that they had in place here. And, yeah, We met multiple times over that summer, so I'm hired and then it's boom, go, no, sit back, wait and see or anything along those lines.
And I do think that we started the ball rolling at that point on really setting the groundwork for some shared leadership for some pieces of allowing voice where maybe there wasn't, an opportunity prior to that, but definitely there has been since then.
[00:12:38] Dr. Jim: So I want to sit in this spot for a little bit because you're dealing with three big issues. As you set foot in the role, you have the pandemic and all the things that are associated with that, transitioning from offsite to onsite or vice versa. You have turnover across your admin team, then you have the process of [00:13:00] understanding the landscape before you can actually figure out your strategic plan.
So those are three major. Obstacles that you have to face. And you're talking about. Shared leadership, tie all of that together. When you're looking at those three major issues and. You're trying to build a leadership muscle that is focused on continuous improvement. How did you split out all of those things and make it consumable?
[00:13:27] Tom Burkhalter: Yeah I think, go, went back to the teaching roots, which is start with the end in mind. If I need my students to get to this point, right in the end, we need to be back in school in some capacity. And providing a great education to the best of our ability under the circumstances and starting from, the spring of 2020 when we were not in school, we were online or sending home packets for the elementary and to get to something that was, doable in the fall.
I do think it was, let's start from the end. And now let's [00:14:00] create actionable steps together on how to get there. And so we did, we built it. It was not the first meeting. I said, all right, here's what we're going to do in meeting one. Here's what we're going to do in meeting two. We're going to meet 17 times before the school starts, school year starts.
And then we'll have, it was absolutely, what do we want to see? What do we want school to look like in the fall? And a lot of it was, we wanted it to be as safe as possible. We wanted to be able to connect with kids on a on an E, more of a, an emotional level, even to be able to build those relationships because the spring in the spring that wasn't.
It's something that our teachers had a skill set for or admin had a skill set for was a zoom call and truly understanding everything that happens and being able to read people online. And so I think then, working backwards from there, it was a piece where we. We wanted to get we threw out different options.
We threw out different ideas and what we were hearing and worked backwards. So then we got to a level where we're like, All right, here's what we're going to do. We started in a hybrid model where half of our students [00:15:00] came one day, half of our students came the next day and then every other Friday.
Was it perfect? Absolutely not. But it was built by our staff and our admin together. And I do think that was what enabled Our staff to truly get behind it. And to provide an outstanding education during that timeframe.
[00:15:16] Dr. Jim: So I like how you deployed the hybrid model because it's similar to what a lot of private sector organizations did when they were thinking about their transition plan. What I'm curious about, And still a little fuzzy on. So some of the things that you describe, when we think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you're operating at those things at the base level of that hierarchy where you're talking about safety and security and those sort of elements.
And then At the same time, you're tackling some of these higher level things when you're talking about continuous improvement and building a an expectation of excellence. Usually you can't do both at the same time. So tell us about how you tackle the other aspect that's at the top of the [00:16:00] pyramid while still building the bottom of the pyramid.
[00:16:02] Tom Burkhalter: Yeah, I think it, it definitely goes with clarity in what we're trying to accomplish. And I think our board sets that tone. And with our school board we've had the conversation for years, and it's one that. We still have, we have more student days than most schools around us.
Not more staff days, but more student days. And the conversation with our staff is, or with our board, and it's almost a non negotiable at this point, which is, no, we provide such a high quality, not only education. But we are our security blanket. We are, we're, we are, we're a school of 42 percent frame reduced lunches.
It's where a lot of our students get their best meal of the day. Two best meals of the day where they get snacks, where they get food and where they get that comfort of being in a safe place. And so I think that from our board, and that was very clear from the beginning for me, but it's.
Absolutely. Very clear to our staff that we don't do just, we don't just provide an excellent education. We have an outstanding meal program where we [00:17:00] actually grow a lot of our own foods right here on site. We have a hydroponics greenhouse where we grow all of our lettuce. And right here on site, it goes from the, it gets harvested that morning and it's on trays that are in midday.
And so it's a, it's an incredible expectation of excellence for each Even the most basic of needs. And so I think that has coupled with the fact that our staff holds themselves to an incredibly high expectation. It was a piece where if we're going to do this we're not going to do it halfway.
And so what steps and what and what practices do we need to put into place and that included teachers teaching other teachers how to do, some zoom calls or setting up Google classroom in a way that made more sense and really jumping on together. And again, I think it was a total team effort.
And our staff is an outstanding staff. When we look at it across the board I can't complain at all. This is an, A phenomenal staff that's here for the right reasons.
[00:17:54] Dr. Jim: So I want to I want to drill in a little bit more on that. So there, there's some constraints in what you [00:18:00] described and I think this is going to be important for other listeners who are in rural districts to understand how you bridge these gaps. So typically when I think about a rural district, you talk about, a lot of green space and travel time with students in the district, and then you also Have to deal with some of the resource constraints as well, where rural districts aren't as well funded as maybe urban districts or suburban districts.
So you're delivering all of this in. Generally in an atypical environment. So that's interesting in and of itself. But the other thing that I'm thinking about is when you look at the demographics of your district, where you have 42 percent of your district at free and reduced, What were the steps that you took to bring the community more aligned with what you were doing as a district?
Because oftentimes in rural districts, you might get a lot of pushback in some of these things that you're trying to put into place. Because certain [00:19:00] elements in the district would be like why are we doing that in the first place? Why don't we just focus on teaching? So walk us through how you brought the community into alignment with what you were doing.
Because it sounds like the board was already aligned. So how did you overcome some of the community challenges?
[00:19:13] Tom Burkhalter: Yeah. I think that, that kind of bleeds into, the next step of our story. And that's that at the time it was solely based on communication and trying to get that out to everyone that, Hey you could pick up food from this time to this time. Deliveries were made to rural homes via our bus drivers who we still had to employ and wanted to, employ and And so as we're going through, I think that was a piece that, that communication was key of letting people know where things were happening, when they were happening, why they were happening.
And I think that led, to a piece here in the following November after we had some footing after we had our kind of ducks in a row a little bit and we were back full time and really starting, to see some. Some part of normalcy and it [00:20:00] was actually delayed twice and we did a community conversation and it was called a future search process and really was was incredible as a person that has never led a district or a community through something like this it was really key to get somebody on board.
That it wasn't me. And so we did have an hire an outside consultant out of the Madison area and he came in and we spent a year planning this huge event called our community conversation. And then we had to postpone it twice due to COVID. And so we're again, in an interesting spot because you really like to do that right when the superintendent is new, it's allows, The, the community to set the tone of what they expect from their local district and allows myself in that situation to really get to know community members, some leaders throughout the community.
And we were a year delayed. And so when we got in there I didn't really know what to expect. We are, this is not a process where you're like, Oh, you rah, rah. We bring in 30 people. They write a [00:21:00] new mission statement in two hours. And then we go, you, this is done. This is a process where it is a Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.
And our, we're asking people to give up 12 hours of their time over this three day period. And I was thinking, man, if we get 10 people, I'm going to be excited. That's a lot of time to give to your local public school. And Jim, we had 80 people show up immediately just by the sheer number, not about the great work that they put out or the priorities that they set us forward with.
But just in the sheer numbers, what that tells a new superintendent is, wow, there are so many people in this community that not only care, but have so much pride in this this this school and the product that they're providing to their community. And one of the first pieces of that process is to do a historical timeline of your community.
And so they went back as far back as they could go and the local historians, and I don't mean like formal historians, but the local storytellers had an entire night to essentially [00:22:00] start from the beginning. And how did we get here? How did we get here as a community? How did we get here as a district and.
And then that process from there goes past, present and future. So we're looking historically, we're looking at where's the snapshot right now, where does the district fall and where do we want to be in the years in, in, in the years after this, we actually had every one student per grade level of our elementary come out in the cap and gown, and we did did the graduation song as they came out and they flipped over their graduation year and it says, what do you want for us?
And it was really just a tone setter of how important this day was for our community and our district to really set the tone of moving forward. And in the end, we ended up with a great list of priorities and things to focus on as we went into our strategic planning process which was the following summer.
[00:22:48] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I really like the emphasis you put on getting as many of the voices possible involved in the process because
When you look at the fundamentals of executing any [00:23:00] transformational change. You need to have alignment across all layers of whatever you consider your ecosystem of your organization, because oftentimes if it doesn't move forward, it's because you got a breakage in the communication chain somewhere in there.
I want to switch this back to internal consideration. So we're talking about one of the things that you focused on was distributing leadership across the organization. And you mentioned earlier on that this might be a new sort of concept for The educators and for the team in general. And you're also at the same time going through a admin change as well. when you look at all of those sort of variables what were the things that you did to make sure that, the team underneath you wasn't getting overloaded? You're not a huge organization. So if you're adding more onto everybody else's plates, somebody's going to turn around and look at you sideways and be like, I don't have enough hours in the day to do what I'm already doing and you're giving me more.[00:24:00]
So what was your process to walk through that and make sure that people weren't getting fried?
[00:24:05] Tom Burkhalter: I think it's a great question and one that we probably didn't do well enough right away. Truly, to be honest, I think What we wanted to do. And so what was in here before was that we're building leadership teams and district leadership team. And it was a typical school leadership team, which was it was a representative democracy, one person from every grade level or category.
And it was exactly what most of them are, which is you have You select an individual, and they become a representative for who they represent and their grade levels, and they bring problems to the table, and then it's an hour long every month of, All right, here we go. Admin team.
Here are all the things you need to work on and you need to fix. And then we'll see you next month, right? There was no background, no, no understanding of that. And it's not, in my opinion, a leadership team. And I had this conversation with that group. [00:25:00] There's difference. There's differences in actually leading versus you are bringing a your questions, comments, and concerns forward, which we absolutely need to be receptive to.
And this is through no fault of our staff at all. This is how most districts are set up and how most district leadership teams function. And so what we really wanted to do and and we kept hearing it, we have all of these ideas. We just need a place, right? We're not getting a seat at the table when decisions are made about what we do or how we do it.
And that was a frustration and over brought it forward over and over again. And so we went to, the drawing board and looked at, to look through our options and one of them. That we really felt provided what we needed and what our staff needed was called guiding coalitions.
That's just one of the frameworks, that you can use. But part of our local guiding coalition framework that we really felt was necessary was some leadership training on what does this actually mean and what it is and what it isn't. So this is not a representative democracy.
This is a piece where [00:26:00] we are. Selecting people that front with different skill sets with different voices to be heard and then giving them support and training on how to lead our district through change. And so this is small groups. They're 8 per building. There's nothing at the district level because the district has essentially shifted to, we support our buildings and our staff.
It's not a, it's not, we're above this situation. The board sets the goals for the district, the building and the building level teams now create their goals and how they're going to accomplish them. And this was a two year onboarding process. We're in the, we were in year two and two of our buildings and in year three and in the third building that we piloted it.
And that was at our middle school. And and again, it's not been a, Hey, this is an A to B process of this great face here because it's totally a change. And from a teacher's perspective, I think just like for me with the organizations that are above me at the state maybe even CESA level, CESA level of some [00:27:00] of my pieces of why don't you guys do that?
The superintendent organization. Why don't you, why don't you go do that and do it this way? And then they ask you, okay, do you want to serve on a team or, or be a part of the change? And so I think that there, that's a big change for our staff. And one that I'm very proud of how they've responded is taking ownership and taking understanding.
And I think that's a common misconception when it comes to leadership, right? Is it that You become a leader because you want the power, right? You want to be the sole decision maker. You want to be able to control other people's actions. And that's so far from the truth, at least with the leaders that I know.
Where it's, I want to use my skillset to help as many people and have as much of a positive impact as I possibly can. And then when we get into these roles, it becomes very isolating. You're the only one with a lot of information. You're the only ones with a lot of of these things. And and then you're the only one that is expected to make these decisions.
And almost always there's a pocket of the [00:28:00] population that thinks they're wrong. And that's all, that's always going to be there, even with a team that's always going to be there. But how do we get the, as many eyes on a problem? As we can and as many solutions to the table as we can, and then how do we collectively initiate that change and see it through so that we know whether or not it worked.
And that was really the point. And the whole goal of our we call them coal labs. And and that's why we decided to go down that route. But again, it has not been. It has not been perfect. And I do think that We've had to provide more clarity for the teams and we'll have to continue to do that because I do think that there's some role, not confusion but when you start something out like that and you want the group to select their own goals and work on what they want to work on, it does leave some of this area of, is that our role?
Is it not our role? And so we've been really working the last year and a half on clarity.
[00:28:55] Dr. Jim: There's a ton of good stuff in wWhat you just described and the things that you did to [00:29:00] prevent burnout. And, it's a it's an evolving process. But I think the one key thing that I like most about what you described is, Your perspective on leaders and what leadership looks like, and you reference it yourself.
A lot of people are under the misconception that in order to be a strong leader, you need to be the one that's pulling all the strings and has all the information. That's actually a hallmark of weak leadership. If if you're hoarding information as your job as a leader, you're pretty weak as a leader.
The strongest leaders are the ones that distribute information to make sure everybody's on the same page. And just like what you said, have a lot of different eyes on the problem, because if you're the single. Source of truth. You're also the single source of failure. Because there's going to be a lot of other viewpoints that are going to get missed because you're so narrow minded in, in, in how you're looking at a problem.
So really great stuff. So I want to spin this forward. And when you [00:30:00] look at all of the different things that you did, what's been the impact in terms of raising the level of performance across a district from the time that you set foot in the district, what have you seen?
[00:30:10] Tom Burkhalter: There's been a couple of things. One, it has not all been this smooth sailing thing, piece or approach. I, we, education is a tough place to be right now. And I know that's true for a lot of different, different work, places of work and a lot of different categories.
But I absolutely, maybe behind healthcare, we've probably been one of the most scrutinized industries in the country. And so how do we adjust through that? I think is going to be our next great our great challenge. And I do think that it's important to note that this has not been, again a linear process.
This has been a process that at times has felt clunky. It still feels clunky sometimes when we know we didn't do a great job at at bringing that clarity to everyone. And that causes frustration. But I do think that the one thing as we're going through is recognizing that [00:31:00] frustration, acknowledging that frustration.
And yes this job is hard, no matter what it is in education. And we have great people. We have great students. We have great families. We have great teachers that are gonna gonna be the reason why we succeed. And I think that piece through all of the Craziness of the last four years has been the driving force is that there is a belief that we have not necessarily all of the right people and pieces in the right place, but that as a collective organization We have the talent and the compassion and the skillset to take us wherever we need to go.
And that confidence there has been really key. And it was in most ways here before. So that's where I think, and we've talked about this before of, this is by far the hardest district that I've had to lead. Because when you're a good school district and most of the things that you do work pretty well it becomes a [00:32:00] piece of identifying what levers to pull become much harder because the you're in appearance and sometimes reality throwing out a lot of good to have the potential to be great.
And that is a piece that we had a situation. The year after the pandemic, when the first scores came out, where our elementary scored well below what we expect and for sure what the teachers expect. And so what happened was something that was truly amazing and it was not administrator led.
It was not a piece where we said, you need to get your act together or anything like that. We presented the data like we always present the data. We had them come up with, Hey, what are you seeing? What are you noticing? What are you wondering? And they essentially came out both verbally and through their actions said, this is not acceptable and this won't happen again.
Multiple staff led book studies that had nothing to do. We had teachers come forward and go, Hey the district by these these texts for our staff, because it came through with this. That [00:33:00] doesn't happen. And in a lot of districts, it's a, let's wait for the, the administration or the leaders to tell us what to do in order to move forward.
And again, I think that culture of excellence was here before I got here. And I'm hoping that we are expanding on it now. And our scores have improved drastically since then throughout the district. We're at the highest that our high school has ever been. We scored the highest on this in this corner of the state in Southwest Wisconsin for our high school.
And that doesn't happen without a ton of hard work and being able to understand when change is needed. And that has been really cool that it has not been always been again district administrator or a principal saying this is the lever we need to pull. And now with giving the teachers a seat at the table with this decision making process, my hope is this becomes even more clear as we go forward that, hey, we may not need to do a total course correction or turn this boat all the way around.
But what are [00:34:00] the small changes that we can make so that we continue to grow? And the other piece is and this has been a change even for our admin team is really the understanding that my job as the district administrator is not to make my, my administrators comfortable. It's not. My job is to keep them just uncomfortable enough to keep learning and growing and changing for the better.
Not so uncomfortable that we have a mass exit and everybody leaves and everything like that. But, just uncomfortable enough where complacency doesn't set in. And I do think that is one of the dangers of being in a district like ours. Is that we can get to that point of good is good enough or better than our other, local peers.
So that's good enough. And when we look at our numbers you've heard it before and we'll hear it again. If you have 20 percent of your students not meeting the expectation who's telling that parent that it's okay for that, their kid to be in that 20%. I'm not [00:35:00] telling that parent that.
And again, I think our staff has been. Overwhelmingly supportive of our students and making sure that they hold them to those high expectations and the proofs in the pudding. When you go and look at our academic achievement and the way we've been able to improve scores over the last 5 years.
[00:35:16] Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Tom. If folks want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
[00:35:21] Tom Burkhalter: Yeah, you can give me a call here. As you can tell, I don't mind talking. And it's always better for me to be able to ask questions and be able to respond verbally for me. Yeah, you find it in the show notes and and you, or you can email me. You can also find all of our strategic planning process and everything online.
[00:35:40] Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us, Tom, and sharing your story with us. When I think about all the different things that we talked about, there's two points that I want to emphasize and when you look at both of those things taken together it really paints a picture in terms of the action plan that a lot of leaders might consider taking when they're [00:36:00] looking at tackling any transformation effort.
So you stepped into the role with a lot of different variables that weren't in your favor. When you took over the role, you had to deal with a pandemic. You had to deal with admin turnover. You had to deal with. A lot of variability in terms of how school was supposed to sort of function and the way you tackled it Is by approaching it two different ways simultaneously one Rather than hoard all the information and quarterback the entire situation you decided to distribute leadership across The district and get a lot of voices Involved in the discussion to have the best informed path forward.
And that's a leadership lesson that a lot of people need to understand is that the strongest leaders are going to be willing to share as much information and distribute their power as possible in service of the best possible outcomes. So that's one step that I think is really important. And then the other piece that I think is important.
That's specific to the circumstances of your district. You're already coming into [00:37:00] a performing district. So how do you get them to understand the value of taking to the next level? And I think the big lesson that I drew from conversation is that you put faith in small incremental improvements.
And the reason why that's important is that there are no moonshots if you're already doing well. So if there aren't any moonshots that you can take, you need think in terms Little steps in the right direction, because those little steps those little steps taken with pigheaded discipline over time lead to big outcomes.
So that's the shift in mindset that I think is really useful for a lot of organizations and leaders to consider. Distribute your leadership and focus on small incremental improvements over time. I'm
applied to it, and you'll get the results that you're you want to achieve. So I really appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing those thoughts.
For those of you who have been listening to the 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 [00:38:00] 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.