The Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education

In year five, we welcome back The Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education! President Dr. Dana Rickman and Vice President Matt Scott bring us this year's Top ten issues in Education! We also welcome guest correspondent Jason B. Allen!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All right, buddy, welcome toanother edition of the Leadership beIN Loud podcast
with your host recalled the Rice.And as you can see, some moan
is out. But y'all know thisguy because he's subs in all the time.
So I'm still going to introduce hisself and we'll go from there.
Hi, everybody, I am JasonB. Allen, longtime educated here in
the state of Georgia. I currentlyam working with the National Parents Union as

(00:21):
the national organizing Director. Now Ialso will have to say that if you
are in Georgia, I lead anorganization called Lilly's Foundation. We support grandparents,
caretakers and seniors who are raised theschool age children. He's like the
roundabout talent man. There's a lotof other stuff he could say, but
I'll let him be modest today.It's fine, all right. So one

(00:43):
of these people you know from twentynineteen, twenty eighteen, who's I have
to say every time she can?Who's president? Now? And then we
have a new face that is joiningus. So I'm gonna let them both
introduce themselves and we will go fromthere, starting with the president. Well,
thank you very much. I amDana Rickman, President of the Georgia
Partnership for Excellence and Education, Andas always, I am thrilled to be
here to have this discussion. Sothanks for bringing us back each year.

(01:06):
Robert doesn't give me a choice,and I look forward to it. I
look forward to that message every timearound this time. I look forward to
that message. He earns those bigbucks at the nonprofits bay. You know,
what's the least he can do.I'm just it's the least he can
do. He can't hear us.He's outside, but he can't hear us.
But I'm sure you hear it whenwe watch it. Yeah, I'm
talking trash. I love him.And I'm Matt Smith, the director of
Policy and Research at the Georgia Partnership. I am the new data. You

(01:29):
might not be able to see whenyou look at my face, but yes,
I am the new data and theprincipal author of the Top ten,
which we'll be talking about today.Claud to be here, all right,
so let's do our recap. Danatell well, either when y'all tell us,
what is the top ten and whyis it important? Sure, I
guess I'll start, you know,just we talk about this particular edition.
It is our twentieth edition. Sowe're excited that we have been in people's

(01:51):
minds for two decades, and thenwe're really excited about that we have a
few little tidbits in this particular editionthat really sets it off when we hope
to can continue in that general direction. I would say that, like the
Top ten issues, what's really greatabout them is we highlight things on the
policy agenda, but we also highlightthings that maybe are not getting as much
attention as we think they might.Warrant, I want to kick a dot

(02:15):
of our president Dania Rickman. Shecan give a little bit more of a
context because she wrote I think tenor eleven of them, so she knows
she's as much as this as Ido, so she can kind of give
a greater institutional context for the topten. Well, you know, it
is the sort of the seminal publicationof our organization, which is a you
know, educate education, workforce advocacyorganization. We're nonp partisan, nonprofit,

(02:40):
but we do advocate for these issues, especially for greater access to opportunities for
everybody along the educational spectrum. Andwe define you know, early learning all
the way through post secondary and adulteducation as well, and also workforce development
opportunities. And so this is ourbig publication that comes out every January,
right before this legislative session starts.And what we try to do is take

(03:04):
really complex issues and boil them downto as straightforward as we can so the
average person who's not in the weedsof education policy can really understand why is
this important, why do we care, and what can we possibly do about
it, you know, at theend of the day. And so whether
you're a parent, an educator,just an advocate for education, hopefully this

(03:29):
document is accessible to you and thatit helps you understand how to engage to
really make opportunities better. All right, So, without further ado, let's
jump into it. I was actuallygoing to skip one. I'm very interested
about one. So even when youhave to start with number one, Issue
one entitled resetting the public Discourse,Rising above rhetoric and division, when we

(03:52):
put this issue together every year,we don't do it in a vacuum.
It would be so easy if wejust sat in our office and wrote out
ten things. But we pull togetherare all of our friends and colleagues and
everybody in the space, and likethe fall of the previous year, so
other advocates, other community leaders,other state leaders, elected leaders, and
we get into a big room andwe really talk about like what's going on,

(04:14):
Like what are the issues, andto try to really you know,
assess where we are and what weneed to talk about. And we really
wanted to dig into, as youknow, what are some of the big
structural barriers that we need to addressacross the state. And we kept running
up against this theme that everybody istalking about but no one's really saying,
is that our biggest problem right nowis divisive rhetoric and you know, just

(04:39):
adherence to ideologies and just no constructiveconversation. And until we get past that,
none of this matters, you're notgoing to make any progress. And
so we decided just to really toput a stake in the ground and actually
just say what everybody's been saying,but say it, you know, publicly,
is that we've got to find away to come together, as we

(05:00):
say, you know, rise abovethe noise and come together and say,
go, what do we really agreeon? I think most people agree on
ninety nine percent of stuff. Wewant good things for our kids, we
want good opportunities for our communities,Like we want to engage. How can
we come together with common language anda common understanding of what we want,
where we want to go, andthen go from there on how to get
there instead of just yelling at eachother and not listening to what the other

(05:25):
one says, because we're not goingto get anywhere with that. And so
Matt took some time to really digin and you know, Georgia being a
local control state, some ideas aroundhow communities can really take a leadership role
here. And you see things differentcommunities like Portrait of a Graduate, where
communities have come together and say thisis what we want our high school graduates

(05:45):
to know and do and be,and they have really had these community conversations
about what's important to them, youknow, and that helps guide these discussions
and get away from the US versusthem, me versus you mine yours,
like no, collect what do wewant to see? And so kind of
lay the foundation for a lot ofthis. Yeah, and I would add

(06:06):
to what Dana said, I thinkreally what we're trying to say is let's
push the reset button. Let's bemore people centered, let's be more community
driven. Let's really think about whatit takes for us to do right by
our children or our community partners.And so I think that that's really what
was crucial is to say kind ofin a vacuum where we don't do anything,

(06:28):
we're going to fall back on thisadversarial kind of friction field kind of
rhetoric in that as our politics becomesmore nationalized and as we hear from everybody
about all these different issues, reallywhat we're saying is, let's get back
to basics. What do we needin our community, What do our children
need, what are our working adultsneed? And how can we actually foreign

(06:48):
policy with them in mind instead ofideologies that maybe don't serve them as well.
So it was the notion that wetoss it back to community to kind
of say, take back your communitiesand not necessarily depend on your advocates.
Or is it more of what weneed to sit everybody down and be like,
okay, listen, this is thecomedy nominator. How are we going

(07:09):
to make this work? The secondone, well's sort of both and like,
really this is a common denominator andreally sit everybody down. And I
think our state leaders can model thisbehavior as well, But I think you
get more immediate traction in a smallercommunity setting where because you know, all
politics are local and you can seeresults sort of right away, and so
you think about, you know,what do I want from my child?

(07:31):
That discussion is going to happen atthe community level, and so you can
have these pockets of discussion and kindof figure out and then you kind of
get away from a lot of thenonsense issues that tend to rise up to
the state and you know, havethem debate different things that may or may
not really impact education, where wecould really focus on some and because most
what a lot of people don't realizeis most education policy, most of it

(07:55):
is actually decided at the local level, the local school boards. Most of
it funding and you know, statefunding and things like that. Broad strokes
are at the state level, butthe day to day stuff that really affects
the kids and looking to the youknow, you're a teacher in the classroom,
now, most of the most ofthe decisions coming down are going to
come from your local school board,and so most of the politics is really

(08:16):
local. So if we can geta hold of that, a lot of
the that so we're nonsense issues,but things that don't really impact it would
keep them from bubbling up to thestate for state leaders to take hold of
it into like, yeah, Ihave a new charge and it's like,
Eh, that's not really going tohelp and all data for all the talk
of like parent involvement, student involvement, really what we're trying to champion,

(08:39):
even though that's not we're not directservice nonprofit, but we are advocating for
the idea too that when we thinkabout communities, that teachers and students and
parents and community members are agents ofpolicy too, the idea that even though
they might not be under the goldDome, that they do have a stake

(09:01):
and frankly a responsibility to figure outhow they can help their communities and help
their schools and help their students thrive. And so that's really something that's kind
of my my soapbox is the ideaof that you are a policy maker,
You are an agent for change andto empower people to feel that they are

(09:22):
and especially as a you know,a future kindergarten teacher, you are a
policy maker. And I don't feellike this is one of those talk show
things where I say you are apolicy maker can be That's why I came
off, That's how I came offbut anyway, But anyway, what we

(09:43):
want to do is is to empowerpeople but also give them the resources to
do that. And that's what weoutline and Issue one is that this isn't
just a school board issue. Thisisn't just a you're in a t You're
a teacher in a classroom and thisis what you can do. It's everybody
doing something and us being able toleverage that from a community space. So
that's great. I wanted to jumpin and say that school boards play a

(10:07):
major role in this, the bureaucracyalso the policies in working with parents across
the state. So I'm going backto the beginning of this month with our
Georgia Parent Week of Action, weengage four hundred and ninety four men and
fathers in education equity, a bigpart of data that is missing, especially

(10:31):
Georgia which is one of the statesthat has a high number of single dads.
To the point that was just madeabout teachers, parents, even students
playing a role in policy, Iwanted to take us to issue three around
student mental health, which is ahuge concern for parents. By our National
Parents Union data, some of thesolutions to issues that are. First of

(10:56):
all, this is amazing. Iknow everyone can't see this twenty addition,
but this, I mean even acouple. It's very very fancy, fancy.
I love how it also just spellsout here are the issues, here
are things to watch, and youknow, here are ways that people can

(11:18):
get connected. Parents and students aresaying that they would love to see more
counselors. When we talk about issuenumber three and student mental health, we
know that yes, they want morecounselors, but also there's an issue with
counselors not being able to do theirjobs efficiently because of being overwhelmed, and

(11:39):
so as maybe the Watchmen. Ilike that series too, But for these
top ten issues, what could wecollectively do to help school boards maybe reimagine
the true essential role of counselors,especially when everyone is from the first lady

(12:01):
on down to everyday people in ourcommunity are saying, hey, not just
our young people and our children needhelp with mental health, but also our
adults. So just curious as towhat recommendations you all may have for those
of us working with parents, teachers, and students on how we can maybe
encourage school board members to reimagine howcounselors are being used for you skip because

(12:28):
I didn't want to get into twoissue too. Is I almost want do
issue to last because that's literacy.Yes, that is no, because it
might actually take a lot of time. Let's get an issue too, because
this for me as a teacher,this has been a thing. Well,
actually that's still health. Literacy isstill social emotional learning and counselors. So

(12:50):
yes, I did. So.We still don't want to say nothing is
really changed. We're on literacy,but maybe looking at the health aspect of
how can we help counselors to beable to do their jobs to really get
parents, teachers, and students tosupport they need. Okay, well let's
introduce issue too, and then weget tied in together. Let's introduce issue
too because this is this is verybig and I was like, this is

(13:11):
the one I was actually interested inhaving the conversation about because between metrics,
ruble rigs and actually being in thereto issue these things. Yeah, it's
a whole thing. It's a wholething. Well, we used issue too.
And a recent policy enactment House spilledfive thirty eight, which is called

(13:33):
the Georgia Early Literacy Act, asthe frame for this issue and just kind
of illuminating what's going on at thepolicy level and how that's going to affect
practice in the classroom. So,yeah, that act was passed last session
in twenty twenty three, and ithas a series of different requirements in it,
but the underlying focus of it isthat to get all schools in Georgia,

(13:58):
all districts in Georgia on board toteach reading in a specific way,
the approach called the Science of Reading, which has something that phonemic awareness and
how we teach reading, and soto implement that, there's a couple of
different things that this legislation requires districtsto do update their curriculum to make sure
their curriculum aligns with these tenets ofScience of Reading. They have to have

(14:24):
universal screeners reading screeners for K throughthree that they would administer throughout the year
to track how the students are doingand are they doing well. And these
are screeners we're talking about, notassessments, so don't get those confused.
And then there's other requirements in therefor the teacher training, the amount of

(14:45):
professional development that's going to be requiredof teachers to get up to speed on
how to teach reading, and thenhow the university system are teaching new teachers
and how they pull that into theircurriculum, the teaching of the teachers,
the ones who are are getting theireducation now to become teachers, and so
it's a big shift for a andthere have to be fair. There have

(15:07):
been some districts across Georgia that havebeen doing this all along and so like
they have little that's not going tobe But for most districts this is a
really big shift and one of theissues, one of the many issues is
there was no additional state funds tiedto this, and so districts are having
to some of them having to wholesaleredos of curriculum, teacher training, all

(15:31):
of this other kind of stuff inreading, and so there's been a real
focus on how do we support districtsto implement all of this in a relatively
short amount of time. The screenersand the curriculums are being chosen now and
starting to be implementing this coming fallof twenty twenty four. So there's still

(15:52):
a lot of moving parts on thiswith the goal of increasing you know,
how to get more it's reading ongrade level more effectively and efficiently. Yeah,
I didn't think I realized how muchof an issue that is. Like
I have third gradert and I wasfloored to discover. And it's not just
because my sister teaches. She's acoach at another school. And when I

(16:15):
was we were just talking around thedinner table. Yeah he's the third greadest
blah blah blah. She was like, no, it's not just yours.
It's across the board with third gradersjust lacking a lot of the necessary skills
they needed to be on their gradelevel reading wise. Uh. Quick question
though, screeners versus assessments. Ascreen an assessment is the ones we think
about when we're you know, testingkids, right, like the milestones amount

(16:37):
all this, like what do youknow and what didn't you learn? Like
it's just a test of what youshould have learned or should know by a
certain amount of time. A screeneris looking for. It's just like a
quick check in time of is therean issue with where you're supposed to be
right now? And so it doesn'treally it doesn't reflect in a grade.
It doesn't. It's not you forteacher evaluation. It's really just used a

(17:02):
sort of a quick little check ofare we looking for issues here? So
you hear about screenings for mental health, it's like, oh, it might
be the first level, maybe youneed a referral for depression or something.
But it doesn't really diagnose. Itjust kind of screens and flags kids that
might need further diagnosis interventions and sortof puts them on a deeper path for

(17:26):
more support. So that's something thatwould look different in every space or should
that be something that's like uniform?You know, it's funny you mentioned that.
Yeah, I was the State boardmeeting on Wednesdays. Say, they
did talk about this at LINK Andso part of what happens is is that
you have not to get too technical, but when you're talking about the reliability

(17:48):
and validity of an instrument, andthen they might have fifteen or twenty particular
screeners, and then they are comparedon their relative validity, and so it
gets really confused when you go andtalk to people that aren't psychometricians, that
aren't data scientists, what does thismean? Right? And so there has
been a lot of that happening withus, where people will call us and

(18:11):
say, well, what does itmean A bit is a strong or if
it's a moderate screener, right.So what happened is the State Board approved
a list of sixteen screeners that theyfelt would meet the legislation requirements that districts
would have to pick among the useone of the sixteen in their district.

(18:33):
But sixteen is a lot and soand you know, to Matt's point,
people were like, well, whichone is the best? How do we
know? Right? And so theDeal Center, the Sandra Dunnagan Deal Center
for Language and Literacy, did acomparison, like a real deep dive into
comparing them to each other, andthey kind of ranked them and there were
like eight of them that were consideredhigh quality, great, another bunch that

(18:56):
were considered good, and then therewere three that were like, yeah,
they're not so great. So therewas a big State Board meeting yesterday we're
in February now, where they droppedthe bottom three and say, okay,
districts can now pick amongst these nowfifth thirteen available screen What is after the
fact, So some people might havealready used some of the other ones,

(19:17):
Yeah, but we're talking about movingforward for this coming fall, and so
now the districts have to pick oneof these thirteen screeners to administer three times
a year for kindergarten through third grade. And then there is also a corresponding
list of what they're calling high qualityand structural materials. And so the curriculum
that you use to teach from inK through three has to come from this

(19:41):
approved list by the school board andthat those have been vetted, that they
know that they align to the scienceof reading and all these other kind of
things. And so, like Isaid, some districts who have been doing
this already probably already or using thesematerials, so it's not a big switch
for them. Other districts have not, and so some districts may have to
to use a whole overhaul. Areally interesting example, Fulton County Schools has

(20:04):
been using their COVID relief dollars overthe past now almost four years to actually
do this to make this move toscience of reading. And when you hear
them talking about how they used toteach reading in Fulton County, Fulton County
is a charter system and so they'llhave their each school has their own advisory
board or whatever. Well, theysaid they had many, many different curriculums

(20:29):
and reading programs being taught throughout FultonCounty, and even at schools that had
the same like reading program, theyhad different levels of professional development and some
were being implemented really well. Andso they're like, you know what,
Nope, nope, nope, we'retaking it all up and they you know,
committed to one curriculum that they knewwas vetted one thing, and they're
retraining all of their teachers. Now. They've been doing this over the past

(20:52):
three years now, and it's costthem close to about ninety million dollars.
And so this it's a big district, so it would be expensive, but
this is where we talk about likesmaller districts, it wouldn't be that much,
but that's a significant investment. Andso for local districts, for smaller
districts, especially ones that don't havethe internal capacity like a Fulton Orguenette,

(21:15):
like this is a really big lift. And so to expect them to be
able to without additional resources, there'sgonna be some implementation pain. And it's
one of those where it's like,you know, you just can't pass along
then expect everything to be better,Like we really need to focus on how
we're supporting this transition, how we'resupporting the teachers. There is a requirement

(21:37):
that is it all? Ok?Through three teachers have to have a level
of reading training and some sort ofliteracy certification, not official one, but
like and they can get that forfree through the Cox Campus which is online.
But there's other ways to do that. But just organ I mean,
as you know, getting professional developmentas a teacher in your spare time,

(21:57):
right, you go and get that. And so just the logistics of getting
everybody retrained, it's a big left. So that causes a lot of questions
and like how is this? Yeah, where you going to chop money from
too? And how long will Ithink teachers are used to like, okay,
well how long will this last beforeI have to change everything again?

(22:18):
Hopefully this will hold and you won'thave to change everything in five years.
But you and we have new Englishlanguage arch standards going in next fall too,
so you got new standards too.This is delightful so looking forward to
this today that you bring up agood point too. I mean, we
have reading coaches, where will wefind them in rural areas? And so

(22:38):
I know a lot of our ruraldistrict superintendents say, you know, I
would love to have an interventionist.But you know what, this is my
best elementary you know, reading teacher, and so who am I going to
hire? If I promote her,there won't be anybody to fulfill, and
so there are other considerations around fundedcapacity. I would also interject that some

(23:03):
of more smaller districts, which greaterdo you pick, what instructural materials you
pick? It's difficult what it mightbe that the same person might be making
that decision for all three levels early, middle, and high and have specific
expertise in early literacy. It's verydifficult, and a lot of times what
we have observed kind of anecdotally isthat in certain areas of state they might

(23:29):
not know what the requirements are,or they might have situations where they lean
on their peers and that may ormay not be the most effective instrument.
So there's a lot going on.The further you get from the capital,
the more the information may or maynot flow down, and so we're hopeful
that the Literacy Council that was alsocreated last session will allow for better information

(23:52):
flow down the districts so they knowwhat they're being held accountable for and that
they can respond in a way thatreally been a fits their communities. But
one thing that's a real great point, Matt about the information flows. I'm
actually curious from the both of you, Like, you're working with parents and
this is a big thing that's goingto affect all the kids and all the
districts, especially the littles, Imean the case through three. But like,

(24:15):
to what extent do parents understand thisbig transition? And you're in a
third grade classroom, I mean,you're the target of all of this,
and so what information have you receivedso far? And so I'm curious from
like, I mean, we knowthis because it's our job, but you
guys are the ones who really needto know this well, I will say,

(24:38):
And having gone to the capital thismonth with parents and families, a
lot of people are frustrated because itdoesn't make sense. Why are we still
wasting dollars on figuring out what screenerswork. So when we hear from parents,
they're like, we may not.Also, I will say that we
have parents who are also teachers professionalswho have been in the education space,

(25:02):
but for everyday working parents who arenot in the education field, they quite
frankly don't feel like we know whatwe're doing. And it comes across as
such because one, when we thinkabout literacy still being a crisis in Georgia,
we still have the same lawmakers andpeople in positions that said, oh,
we don't need reading teachers any longer. I was certified as a reading

(25:26):
teacher in Georgia and then it waslike, oh, we're doing a way
with reading teachers. So it's sillyat best to think that we are now
as a state saying that one ofour top ten issues is literacy. Went
ten years ago when we were arguingthe saying that we really need to make

(25:47):
sure that we have reading teachers.Some of the things that parents have said
is why haven't school libraries actually mergedinto being media and literacy centers. That
still has not happened in Georgia,And so to parents, it's not making
sense. They're getting reports saying thatmy child is not on grade level,
my child cannot read, But whydo you have phenomenal teachers who have gone

(26:10):
to school who are getting these trainingsand they don't know the science of reading.
And so parents are concerned about accountabilityif you are going to the state
and being trained or maybe an independentorganization, and then you're coming to a
school district that is then also trainingyou to come into a classroom, into

(26:30):
school buildings and not know how toreach and teach children to read. Is
alarming and it is quite frankly insultingto parents who are like, but you
have the nerve to get an attitudewith me and say as the expert that
my child is not doing AB andC and I should be doing more at
home when the standards keep changing,the curriculums keep changing, the screeners are

(26:53):
changing, this is changing, andso this is what parents were expressing to
lawmakers that we had come down tothe capital this month to express their concerns
around literacy, and no one passinglegislation could explain why it made sense to
say, oh, we're going toremove reading teachers. Yeah, I'm a

(27:15):
more practical level, because I'm justI'm the practical baby, just explaining to
parents what this looks like, becausethey get this list of stuff and you
kind of shift them in one direction, and then when you have a more
practical conversations about their particular child,they're going but you just said this,
and I don't understand how this doesn'tdetermine this, But she still can't do

(27:38):
X y Z and I'm fairly new, so you know, my is just
from sideline viewing. It's just alot to explain to parents, and then
getting parent participation is a whole otherthing. A lot of the kids their
parents. We literally had to cornersome parents, like we've been trying to
get you for weeks, Like yoursituation is kind of rough with this particular
child. We love him, thisparticular child, this situation is rough.

(28:00):
We're gonna need some input from you, like how are you feeling about it?
You know, because retention may bea thing. We may literally have
to do this because this particular childcan't write a sentence. So it's just
a whole thing. Like he said, things are always changing. So like
I said, I'm new to it. But one week we're discussing this,
and then the next week I'm like, well, what about what we just
discussed last week? I just learnedan acronym last week. What are we

(28:23):
doing now? I will say thatcommunication with my school's exceptionally good. We
have a very good leadership team,so they very good about passing our information
and what's different and what's new andso on and so forth. I'm very
interested because this will be my firsttime going through professional development over the summer,
so this will be when I reallyunderstand what's really happening. So I'm

(28:45):
very interested to see how this isgoing to play out. But I know
just now walking into the situation Iwas walking into giving this permission to parents
has been a thing. It's reallybeen a thing trying to explain why this
doesn't affect that we're pointing to thisone thing, but your child still can't
get results. It's a thing.Yeah, I understand that, but let's

(29:07):
segue that into the mental health thing. To answer your question about mental health
and counselors, it would take sortof a broader picture that I think sort
of an evolution that has happened,especially since COVID, that the school board
needs to catch up like that howwe fund schools needs to catch up on
is the school now is the communityhub or to view it that way,

(29:33):
and to think about if you needmental health services, if you need you
know, supports, it's through theschool system now that most students and sometimes
their extended family are identified as needingsupports and services. And not to say
that teachers need to be doing that, but for school boards to understand and

(29:56):
a lot of them do sort ofthe new view of what a school can
be and resourcing it appropriately and reallyunderstand. Okay, so if we are
going to be the community hub toidentify mental health needs, other needs for
families, for the students to besuccessful, what are the partners that we
need to have in place that canactually provide those services. And what kind

(30:18):
of supports do our teachers and othereducators need in the building to appropriately identify
or at least have a enough trainingaround identification of some issues that they know
who to refer to and is thatreferral person actually there. So there's a
lot of moving parts, but youthink about like there's you can get health

(30:41):
centers in schools now, the communitypartnerships. But I don't want to be
misunderstood as we're saying that schools andteachers now need to take this on.
But it thinks just sort of organicallythat's what's happened, and so we need
to resource them properly so that theycan get the needs to the right resources.
So it's not them, but theycan be the conduit to connect.

(31:02):
Yeah, I would say too,there are many agencies, wells nonprofits like
ours that are exploring the idea thatcounseling is not just something where we're just
like teachers, counselors are getting burntout because they're dealing with social emotional issues,
but they're also we're asking to alsobe you know, college and career

(31:27):
counselors as well. That job needsto be split to it's actually two different
jobs. Graduation coaches. That wasa really big thing, and it was
communities and schools, Thank God forthem, and it was really impactful to
the point that you were making andthen it's everybody doesn't have it, and

(31:47):
so when it's not consistent now thecounselor is back doing that second role.
When we saw that things were improvingwith the graduation coach, right, and
so I think right, you werekind of highlighting something we had about ten
or fifteen years ago where we didhave for a time a graduation coach in

(32:08):
each high school in the state.And so I know that it can be
really great rhetoric politically to say wewould like a reading coach in every elementary
school and a graduation coach or counselorand every school. And I think that
kind of in the abstract that makesa lot of sense. But the question
is is like, how do wefund that? And I think that,

(32:29):
you know, how do we kindof build collective and plical will around that?
And I think that there are peoplethat are interested in that. In
fact, the Georgia Department of EDand their luge lay priorities this year actually
said that they would like to havethat bifurcation of having social emotional counselors and
having graduation coaches. Now, Iwill say that hasn't gotten a lot of
traction to session, but there arepeople in both parties. Members in both

(32:52):
parties are interested in addressing that.It's just one of those things where you
know, if you think of kindof the political agenda, it's like a
grocery list. They're only about eightor ten spots on that list, and
that things. It's not that thingsare unimportant, it's just that things will
kind of hit the political agenda nextyear. And again, I'm not going

(33:14):
to hijack your podcast, Ricardo,but there is something we're really excited about
where like need based financial aid andpost secondary that's something that came out just
yesterday. It won't be addressed thisyear, but people have kind of put
up in kind of on a marqueein big bright yellow letters, you know,
coming soon twenty twenty five. Andthe great thing is, for the

(33:35):
first time I can remember, wehave three Republicans and two Democrats sign on
for that bill, and so weare really really excited about that. And
so but we also understand that whilewe might be impatient, we know that
next year this is gonna be somethingthat's going to get a hearing. People
are going to talk about it,parents and student advigates will be at the
Capitol and talk about it. Sowe're really excited. And so that's something

(33:58):
we have to always remember too,is that this is on the mind of
people, and this is to becontinued, and this is something that will
probably be on the policy agend therefor next year. I love that.
But getting back to the local conversationsand policies at the local level and sort
of combining your mental health question withour first issue around Common Cause, is

(34:19):
that if you have a community cometogether and you have your local school board
involved, because they're the ones thatare really deciding on how do we divvy
up the money that we do have, What are our local priorities, what
are the positions we're going to fundbecause state funding funds a lot of positions
in the schools, but there's alot of local funding that fund other positions
and fund things like social workers andcounselors for the districts that have local funds

(34:44):
to do that. And so thinkingabout what do we want for our community,
how do we want to use theschool system, and what partners do
we need to bring into the tableand have sort of a comprehensive plan of
support for what the community needs andthe families in that community, and really
thinking about, you know, howcan we you know, connect these mental
health supports, or if we don'thave them, how do we track them?

(35:07):
How do we find the partners?You know, things like that,
And so you have a proactive schoolboard that could really lead and sort of
craft those discussions. The school boardplays such an intricate role. I love
a point that you made earlier centeringmental health and how even counselors and educators
are like, hey, you know, we need additional resources, and you

(35:29):
know, our data shows that Georgiahas the resources. Our school districts have
the resources, but the resources areat central offices. And so when I
look at smaller school districts in Georgia, and I'm like, Okay, they
have a central office. It's abouttwenty five maybe fifty people there. But

(35:50):
they're still effective because at the endof the day, all of our districts
have to report whether you have fivehundred students or fifty thousand students. The
point that I'm making is in ourdata that we've collected for parents, they
would like to see superintendents, andI know that this is the area to
watch. That's why I'm bringing thisup. They would like to see superintendents
be able to say, hey,we have all of these talented people in

(36:15):
the central office. We're gonna takesixty percent of this and put this back
in schools, to the example ofwe have health centers and we're bringing in
the community resources to the school.But the schools also need support with technology
still, they need support with reading, they need support with science. We
have all of these people with degreesand certifications in central offices. If we

(36:37):
really want to talk dollars and cents, if we move these people back,
I'm educated nineteen years if I getto keep my salary, but I'm impactful,
and you say that we're going totake you out of central office and
move you to a school. IfI'm doing this for children, right,
If I'm doing this for families aslong as economically I can see provide for

(36:57):
my family, If they put mein the school, I could be more
impactful. Why are we not movingto see more of that, to save
more money and get recist resources tostudents directly. Okay, okay, before
y'all go, we need to moveon. Okay, we gotta move.
We gotta move, all right.So I'm skipping to eight. The funding
cliffs we need to get into eight. So let's let's go to eight.

(37:21):
Eight is funding? That was Yeah'slet's go to eight. So, as
you probably know, there's a thingof COVID pandemic. The federal government set
came in and between twenty twenty andtwenty twenty one, Georgia school districts received
about five point nine billion dollars offederal funds to recover from the pandemic.

(37:43):
Those you can't see me. Idid air quotes because the assumption is we're
going to re recover. We haven't, but that money expires in this September.
That was my next question. It'sif it's not, they've either had
to have spent it or it allgoes back. So the end is so.
And separately, we've been doing astudy with the district sort of tracking

(38:04):
like what they're spending their money on, what does that look like, What
are some of their challenges, andyou know, there's a lot of them.
Everybody warned them like, don't putit into like salaries, because it's
going to go away, right,Like you hire a bunch of people,
they're only to be high. Butyou know, at the end of the
day, you know, ninety percentof a school district's budget is salaries,

(38:25):
and so there's only so much nonsalary things you can do to support student
learning and all these other kinds ofthings. And so a lot of districts,
like Fulton County used that ninety millionI talked about earlier. That was
this money they used to do that. But a lot of districts were really
lucky, especially if it's hard nowto even think back and remember like twenty
and twenty twenty one, like theschools were just trying to how do we

(38:51):
open safely? Like how do weeven operate? You know kind of thing,
and then around twenty twenty two theystarted thinking about, okay, how
do we remediate, how do wecatch people up and keep people safe,
and you know, keep our teachersfrom quitting and teacher and educator mental health,
all of this stuff. It's hardto remember how bad it was,
but the most districts put money intolike the remediation and also the mental health

(39:15):
supports for the students in the schools, and so you saw a lot of
tutoring, extended learning time, youknow, all of these things. But
then and then they hired you know, social workers, mental health stuff,
They tried to get partnerships in place, planning for They knew that they were

(39:36):
going to lose the money at theend of the four years. But in
the intervening time, we have alot of inflation, and so a lot
of the stuff that they planned,like their transportation costs, especially rural districts
with gas like doubled and they hadn'treally planned for that. There was also
a change in the how much moneythe state health plan was going to cost

(39:58):
for districts. For teachers who arerolled in the state health plan, costing
the district millions of dollars of increasesthat they were not planning on that they
have to make up the difference.And now the districts have gotten hit with
the requirement to redo all of thisreading stuff, and so a lot of
the districts that we've talked to said, yeah, we had sort of a

(40:20):
plan in place to continue the essentialstuff, but a lot of that got
eaten up with the increase in healthcare costs, and now we have to
figure out how to fund this readingstuff. And so each district got a
different amount of money based on theformula for the funding, but on average,
districts are going to lose about tenpercent of their total budget for this
upcoming year, and ten percent isa really big hit. And so one

(40:45):
of the things we want to makesure, especially our legislators are awhere.
There is this assumption, or there'sthis notion floating around that schools and districts
are just flush with cash and wedon't have to worry about funding anymore.
And frankly, that could not befurther from the truth. And I think
districts now are starting to feel likethey're getting some traction and what they have

(41:06):
put into place to help recover,you know, from the pandemic, remediate
some of the effects, you know, getting good partnerships take a while to
build, so getting good partnerships withmental health supports and you know, community
supports that's starting to take off nowat a time when what it has been
funding it is getting ready to comeout from underneath them. So districts are

(41:27):
really struggling now and trying to figureout how to prioritize the absolute thing they
got to keep it's really working andwhat is considered you know, extra.
Yeah, and so that's what thisissue is really about, and really thinking
about how can we help sort ofthere's no world in which anyone's going to

(41:47):
say, oh, yeah, we'lljust put five billion back in, like
that's just just saying, oh,just replace the money, But how do
we help districts really evaluate and prioritizeand maybe economies of scale or how can
we come together to make some ofthis stuff more long lasting? And so
that's what this issue really looks at. Yeah, and I think that really

(42:10):
to your point, data around likeevaluation, that's really important. But people
don't know what they don't know.And the idea that you know, educators
superintendents know how to build for medicaidfor a school based seal center, or
that they would know that in certainsituations they can use a combination of state

(42:35):
and federal funds that are being underutilizedright now to support some of their work,
to free up maybe potentially some budgetfor other things. There need to
be catalyst, community catalysts that say, well, we know how to do
that, or it's going to bereally complicated, but we can figure out
how to put all this funds togetherfrom all these different sources to be able
to triage and then eventually be ableto thrive eventually based on setting up a

(43:00):
new structure. But it takes timeand a lot of this idea that,
oh, well, the pandemic willfigure it out, even though it's been
four plus years, it's going totake longer than that to figure out how
to strengthen those partnerships. And sothat's kind of where we're at right now.
And obviously as a state, whatwe would hope to do is be

(43:21):
able to talk to every superintendent andto talk to every school leader and to
every community partner that wants to beinvolved. But that's why we think that
at the local level, that's howit could take take kind of a new
way of doing it, because likea community driven leadership, strile means that
you're invested in it, and you'dbe able and would want to do that

(43:42):
kind of work because it's going tobe hard. You don't need somebody from
Atlanta to come and work with youwhen you're in ben Hill County. You
need ben Hill County to figure outhow to do it. And so that's
kind of what we're trying to espousenow is that they have the resources,
we want to help them figure outhow to use them. Okay, So
for the last and I'm actually goingto circle back to issue seven about superintendents

(44:04):
because apparently they do play a majorrole in this and the turnover has become
alarming. So yeah, let's doissue seven. Well, I you know,
I always like to say that inDecember of twenty nineteen, the superintendent's
job was almost impossible. It's arough job, and it's more than just
the instructional leader of the district.Like my predecessor, Steve Dollinger used to

(44:29):
say, when he was superintendent ofFulton County, he had more buses than
Marta, He had more cafeterias thanthe Malla Georgia, Right, he would
say that, And so it's you'rerunning a big corporation as well as instructional
leadership. And so when the youknow, the pandemic hit, there was

(44:50):
no training or guidebook of what todo during a global pandemic. And so
these superintendents, bless their hearts,whatever decision they made, they probably had
at least fifty percent of the populationthat they serve mad at them. Open
schools, closed schools, mass,don't mass, give teacher raises, give
kids time off. I mean,all of these things just about how to

(45:12):
safely run a school. When again, back in twenty twenty, we were
getting reports of people dying everywhere,and so but then we think, and
there has been a lot of lipservice, I think, and a lot
of sort of public acknowledgment to theimportance of leadership. We hear from our
state leaders all the time. ButGeorgia doesn't have like a statewide support structure

(45:37):
for training, developing professional support forsuperintendents. There's not one. There are
there's like GLISSI, the Georgia LeadershipInstitute for School Improvement that does that,
and they're great. GSSA, thisGeorgia School Superintendent's Association, they're great.
Different districts, like you know,Gwennett has their own leadership development program to

(46:00):
support there. But that's those arepockets, right, pockets of excellence.
Like statewide, we don't have asupport structure, and now the superintendent's job
is just almost untenable. And sowe see about it. We've seen a
fifty percent turnover in local leadership sincetwenty twenty. Some districts have had more
than one turnover. And so,you know, anytime any organization is trying

(46:22):
to make systemic change, if you'vegot a new leader every two years,
you're not going to get anywhere,right and so and so you think about
like the teachers in the classroom andall of this stuff coming down from the
state, and you've got a newleader churn in with a new vision,
like no, wonder things aren't gettingyou have you know the big pandemic relief
plans that they put into place intwenty twenty, That may have been two

(46:45):
or three superintendents ago that had thatvision of what to do with that money.
And so we really need to thinkabout how do we support and maintain
and sort of groom quality leaders forthat position, and how to keep them
there past I mean the average andGeorgia's went two years, two years,
five months. Yeah, yeah,And I think that part of what we

(47:07):
kind of discovered when we wrote thisissue is is that everything is about a
comprehensive and coherence strategy. How doyou have capable and talented superintendents, Well,
you have capable and talented principles andassistant principles. How do you do
that You recruit from the best andbrightest among your teacher workforce, and so

(47:27):
I think what we learned was thatthese things are Sometimes we think about them
as separate strategies or separate funding objectives, but really what we found was is
that part of why we have thiscrisis to a certain extent is how do
we equip people not just through thepipeline from starting teaching to retirement teach retirement,
but how do we as they continueto promote themselves and move further in

(47:51):
their career, how do we havethat upward mobility as well kind of dealt
with in terms of making sure thatwhen you do get into the superintendency that
you're ready to get and you couldhave like the best I mean, the
number one thing for a student ishaving a high quality teacher in front of
them, but you could have thebest, most notable teacher on the planet,
and if they are not supported bygood leadership in the building and good

(48:13):
leadership at the district, they willbe ineffective. Like there's just no other
way around it. And so understandingthe connections of all of that is that
you've got to leverage all of thosetogether and you can't have one piece.
So you're like, ah, that'dbe fine, which makes them more complicated,
but it's like you have to havequality. It's interesting the reason we

(48:36):
need to state structure. If youthink about schematically excuse me, teachers could
meet together formally or informally in theirschools. Principals do usually have district days
where they do go work with theircolleagues. If you're a superintendent, you're
the only person in that district.And so how do we figure out ways
that they can be regionally or statewide? And we actually saw about fifteen superintendents

(48:58):
yesterday that are part of this kindof fellowship program, but they were at
the state board, and so arethere more opportunities where we can bring them
together to strategize the network so thatthey can figure out while we're fortune a
state wide strategy, how they canfigure out how they can get professional learning
as they kind of mature in theirpositions as well. Yes, pitiful,

(49:21):
okay, pitiful final thoughts. It'salways the stretch, you know. It's
I think it's become frustrating to me, and it's probably true for everything of
how political the education system has become, you know, a decade ago or

(49:44):
maybe more so now, it wasone of the few bipartisan issues like we
all agree upon, and however wegot here. I think there's still a
lot of great stuff going on inGeorgia in the education system, but it's
in silos. It's not connected,and it's not raised up and talked about
and celebrated the way that it shouldbe. And there are a lot of

(50:07):
barriers both structural that have just sortof historically been there that we still need
to be working on and also sortof dramatically made up now by this divisive
discourse that we're going through right now. And so I think there's a lot
to celebrate, but I think wehave a lot to work on too,
and we're headed in a good direction, but we need to do some hard

(50:30):
work to headed an even better direction. Yeah, I would I rip on
that data in terms of and we'vereally been thinking about our evolution as a
policy nonprofit, and the idea thatwhile we're not doing the community based work
all the time, we want tomake sure that we reckon with the fact

(50:50):
that at the end of the day, we want our policy to be people
centered, community driven, but alsofuture oriented, right, And so like
that third piece about like economic development, workforce development, making sure that our
economy will be competitive in ten fifteenyears is so crucial. But really,
at the end of the day,what we're trying to figure out is kind

(51:12):
of discerning. And I use discernmenta lot, but the idea that when
I think of discernment, I think, Okay, what is complicated in terms
of our structures or our funding thatwe can overcome? And when we think
of discernment, it's like, isthis something where it's a one foot wall
that we could easily step over oris it a ten foot wall that might

(51:32):
be harder to climb over? Andso I think sometimes when we think something
as a barrier obstacle, we don'tthink, oh, well, let's ask
questions. And I love your ideaa Jason about like parents, it's like
bringing them in to say, isthis a problem that we can solve now?
Is this something where I need yourinput, like we need to get

(51:54):
real interpersonal about this, and Ifeel like our politics make us depersonal,
and so how can we kind ofcommit to kind of returning back to issue
one, like pushing the reset buttonand saying we're not going to let this
division, you know, keep usfrom having our communities where we want them
to be. So I know thatsounds a little bit kind of like a

(52:19):
kind of like, you know,a beauty pageant reply, but that's really
I believe that we can get there, you know what I mean and have
world peace. Yeah, exactly,world peace right, and yeah, literacy
for all right, No, butanyway, like the idea, right,
Yeah, I'm just curious how thisis wttle resonating with you and the parents
that you serve. I think parentswant to see change, and they want
to see common things, common sensethings happen. I know that superintendents have

(52:45):
to make hard decisions, especially aroundbudgets, and you know, quite frankly,
a lot of the financial changes thatare upcoming. And so the idea
of school boards, you know,hiring superintendents that really can come in and
say, hey, we have alarge workforce in this one central area that
are not touching families and children.And then also remembering this little analogy that

(53:10):
are wrote down, there are threeexperts that are missing in this work,
children and students because this is actuallyhappening too, and for them, they're
not in these conversations. A lotof this is happening to them, and
it's being told to them. It'snot you know, being asked, how
is this impacting you? What wouldyou like to see? But also who

(53:31):
are the primary teachers and this hisparents and families. If they're not at
the table in regards to what thesethings look like, how do we help
make changes, we're not going tosee impact. Who are the specialists in
teaching And a lot of people willsay superintendents and district leaders and not taking
anything away from them, but teachersare the experts. They don't just have

(53:55):
the credentials and pedagogy, but they'reseeing this every day and those of them
who are truly called to the workare actually implementing things that are actually working
in real time. So I thinkthat if we could find a way to
maybe in the spirit of pta,really bring together parents, teachers, and

(54:15):
students, I think that we couldsee more solutions to the issues instead of
next year, it'll be like thesewere the ten issues, but we still
have them and maybe a couple ofmore. Maybe we'll have seven if we
really work with parents, teachers andstudents. But we don't know. We'll
have to see. I don't know. Being on the other side of it

(54:37):
now is like a whole different world, which I knew it would be.
But literally, teachers are all thingsto all students, and I think that
that's where the shift that has happened. It's like schools are not just schools
anymore. We like, I've hadto hug kids and walk them through I'm
not talking about small kids, walkthem through decelerations and emotions and on top

(54:59):
of teaching them and rule bricks,and it's a lot, and I think
the higher ups have to recognize that, Yeah, some of these kids really
are not eating when they're not atschool, Like they want three and four
lunches because they know once they gethome that's it, or they want breakfast
because that's it. Mental health,all these things are real when you're in
a classroom setting, and it canbe a bit overwhelming, and you just

(55:20):
have to remind yourself that it's thework and that you've clearly been called to
it because it's not for the faintand art. But you know, for
me having these education conversations now beingon the other side of it make a
world of difference because you know,you guys coming here and filling in gaps
and really painting a bigger picture meansa lot, especially for somebody like me
who's really new to it. Soyeah, we just have to continue these

(55:44):
conversations and actually implement and execute somethings, not just have conversations. Let's
actually do the work. But youknow, special thanks again to our part
the family because we're five years andthe family doctor Rickman, and our new
family member at uh SO. Wewill see you, same time, same
place. On the leadership. Inlive podcasts with your host were called Derice