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Administrators shared their goals for teachers, parents, students and the public during an Albert Lea school board workshop centered around strategic planning Monday night hosted by Sheri Allen, an associate consultant at TeamWorks.

Those goals included a high percentage of students performing at or above grade level, improved communication between families and school administration and improving student engagement.

Allen has over 35 years of experience in public education, including serving as superintendent of Mankato Area Public Schools, where she focused on building relationships throughout the district. During that time, she used TeamWorks.

“I believe in it, I used it and it worked,” she said.

She touched on four area pathways for school success, and asked what administration’s desired daily experience is and paying that forward.

“The piece of equity is about the lens of meeting people where they’re at so they get what they need, because it’s different for people,” she said. “Embedded in everything we do, asking the question, ‘Is this what people need? Do we need to do something different, and why?’”

Those four pathways included an education leadership system, the classroom to boardroom, partnership leadership and school analytics.

The classroom to boardroom strategic planning process includes assessing reality, describing a vision and setting up a strategic plan.

“When you’re doing your strategic planning structure and elements you talk about governance and management,” she said. “Governance is the board, management is the superintendent and administrators.”

Board work also included community engagement and receiving feedback.

According to Allen, classroom to boardroom process deliverables include board structure and protocol expectations, a board governance plan, a strategic road map, a three-year operational plan, a desired daily experience, elements of classroom practice for all, measures and metrics of a vision and planning and knowing the district’s history, context, trends and influences.

She touched on the educational leadership system, specifically in the context of three different authorities: governance, management and consultation.

Governance included the board of education, while the superintendent, district administrators and principals fell under the role of management. Consultation included staff, parents and the public.

And those three leadership systems operated under two levels of interest, with the board, superintendent and district administrators and principals falling under the role of district interest, while staff, parents and the public operated under self interest.

“The education leadership system is a goal to help boards [and] administrators to really work well together and help you engage in consultation with the staff, parents and the public,” she said. “As those adults come to you in different ways, it really is about you as a team and how you’re working well together so that, I’ll say it, so that they don’t feel like they’re just being brushed off.”

She stressed none of the different groups, whether those whose interests were for the district or for themselves, was more important than the other, and said the different roles played provided credibility and transparency and voter buy-in.

Allen argued the board served five primary functions under governance: district governance and policy, operational performance oversight and organizational development direction, board governance policy, superintendent relations and policy engagement, community relations and advocacy of public education.

As management, administration had six responsibilities: resource management, instructional leadership at the principal level, performance management and professional development, seeing continuous improvement, ensuring practices and procedures were aligned with district policy and providing relations to the staff, parents and the community.

As consultation, staff, students, parents and the community had authority to voice self and community interests, assess the risks and benefits of various options, could resist or oppose change and provide feedback and input to management and governance.

She asked the school board as well as administrators to highlight their strengths and weaknesses in the current reality as well as what should be done.

“This is when you get to do your hopes and dreams,” she said. “You just get to say, ‘OK, for students this is what we want it to be.’”

One group’s goal was to have 90% of students at or above grade level, and another group wanted to increase student engagement. For families, one group’s goal was to have seamless communication addressing familial needs, helping families to understand options for students both as students and after graduation and helping “families to be empowered to be partners in their student’s education and engaged.”

According to the company’s website, TeamWorks works to “clarify roles, improve relations and increase accountability” and uses customized coaching and processes to help school districts reach what they “ought to be.”