The Power of a Network, title
spacer spacer
line break

Packed and Productive: A Meeting of the Leadership Team
   By 8:00 in the morning at the Mission Hill School, Pilot School leaders had begun to congregate in the library.  After mingling and grabbing coffee, it was time to get down to business: today was one of the monthly Pilot Schools Network Leadership Team meetings.  The packed meeting agenda called for a discussion of governing boards, a review of proposed Boston Teachers Union contract language additions, and a presentation of new data in a research report on Pilot Schools. 
   The governing boards are part of what make Pilot Schools unique; today, leaders shared how governing boards operated in each of their schools.  Leaders split into two groups—K-8 schools and high schools—and handed out copies of election-to-work agreements for 2005-2006, governance board by-laws, and principal evaluation tools/processes. 
    Leaders talked about the role of board members and the operation of their governing boards.  They shared ideas and sought advice from one another, including recruiting new board members and designing more effective principal evaluation processes.  At Boston Day and Evening Academy, for example, the board’s executive committee evaluates the principal.  At TechBoston Academy, the governing board addresses the school’s “big issues,” often political decisions. 
   Next, the whole Leadership Team reviewed the proposed BTU contract language additions affecting Pilot Schools.  The executive committee had previously approved the language additions.  A spirited discussion ensued as leaders considered the language and proposed further changes.  After consensus, CCE’s executive director agreed to bring the changes back to the negotiating table with the union and district leadership. 
    The meeting ended with the CCE Research Team sharing research on the progress of Pilot Schools.  Data showed the Pilot Schools out-performing the district averages, while being generally representative of district demographics.  Leaders welcomed the good news as the packed and productive meeting came to a close.
line break
back to top
line break

Expanding Voice: The Staff Network, 2005-2006
Our mission is to educate the staff, families, and community about our uniqueness and special purpose as a model of educational reform. The Staff Network will foster cross- school relationships to create a K-12 pathway as members continue to maintain small and supportive learning environments for all students and families. The Staff Network is a forum to develop a collective voice empowering mutual relationships across Pilot Schools, BTU, BPS, and the broader community.

Staff Network Beginnings

   One October afternoon, Pilot School staff from across the Network gathered at the Orchard Gardens K-8 School for the second monthly meeting of the Pilot Schools Staff Network.  The main items on the agenda were to develop a mission statement and develop concrete action steps as the group moved forward. 
    “What is the Staff Network about?” was the prompt for drafting the mission statement. Staff broke up into small groups to brainstorm and write responses on chart paper, and then re-convened as a large group to share ideas and record them all together on chart paper.  Ideas were grouped by topic area.  For newly created Pilot Schools, opportunities included “educating staff, families, and the community on what it means to be a Pilot School” and “creating a sense of community across schools.”  For veteran Pilot Schools, ideas included staff “helping new staff learn about Pilot Schools” and having “opportunities to open classrooms/schools across the Network” so that staff and schools are able to learn from one another.
   Additional ideas addressed the union and the public, “strengthening relations with the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) as well as a position within the BTU” and “strengthening our public voice [as a Network].”  Another topic area was curriculum development across schools and within classrooms, and creating more forums for conversation on Pilot School issues.
Members developed a draft mission statement, which would be further revised in subsequent meetings, and moved on to future topics of discussion: 1) Pilot School areas of autonomy, 2) Work Election Agreements (WEA), the process to develop WEA, and the template language used for WEA, and 3) data on Pilot School successes and challenges. 

The Staff Network at Work

   At the next meeting at the Young Achievers Science and Mathematics Pilot School, staff reviewed the draft mission statement and they then shared Work Election Agreements (WEA) across schools, examining the “boiler plate” for agreements that includes required and optional language.  The discussion generated thoughts on why WEAs are important, challenges, and questions.  One teacher stressed the process component of WEA, including how various schools decided on their respective WEA.  It was decided that in following meetings staff would examine two specific WEAs as examples of both content and process, and discuss decision-making processes in their respective schools. 
   Members returned to their respective schools with increased knowledge about WEAs.  “I brought back the information to my school…and it was changed,” said one Pilot high school teacher during a subsequent Staff Network meeting at Boston Day and Evening Academy.  It was “heartening,” said another teacher, to learn about the different agreements.  A CCE coach asked what the group wanted to walk away with after this meeting.  “I want to hear how it [decision-making] works in other places,” said one teacher, while another hoped for “some cross-polinization of ideas.”  Still another teacher suggested, “a protocol for recognizing and making change.”
   One staff member explained how her Pilot elementary school is staff governed, “What does it mean to be staff governed?” she posed to the group.  At her school, the staff of 12 makes all decisions through a fist to five – a show of five fingers means approval and a fist means disagreement and the ability to block the decision.  Being staff governed means “power and responsibility,” she explained, for “you’re really in a situation of shared leadership….It’s a phenomenal environment to work in.”
   After discussion, staff turned to a decision-making matrix tool to think about how decisions are made in their respective schools.  The matrix showed constituent groups and decision-making categories, and staff filled in where different groups had decision-making authority or input.  The group noted the following: culture is defined by how a group solves a problem, transparency about process is important, and not all groups can or should be involved in every decision.  Staff found the matrix tool useful, and thought about ways of using it in a leadership team or whole staff meeting.  “I’m looking forward to being able to introduce that [decision-making tool],” a teacher stated during reflection, “I thought the meeting was really helpful.”

line break
back to top
line break
  “Exploring Diverse Faces of Leadership”: The 2nd Annual Youth Conference  
     On Thursday, April 14, 2005, the Greater Egleston Community High School (GECHS) hosted the second Pilot Network Youth Conference, Exploring the Diverse Faces of Leadership.  The goal of the conference was to encourage students to look past the typical and stereotypical representations of leadership to ones that connect with urban students today and provide bridges into their futures.  Students from Pilot high and middle schools were welcomed by a slide show of GECHS students “doing their thing”: showing work during exhibitions, and learning and demonstrating skills at their Friday community internships. 
   The conference opened with a panel that represented the racial and ethnic diversity of leadership in Boston: City Councilor Chuck Turner, Melissa Colon of La Iniciativa, Ernesto Arroyo, son of City Councilor Felix Arroyo and founder of The Foundation, Lisa Guscott of Guscott Properties, Yusi Wang of Citizen Schools, and Professor Joseph Cooper of University of Massachusetts, Boston. Panelists told their stories and shared their diverse perspectives about leadership with the audience of engaged teens.  “The speakers were great,” said one student, “They helped a lot by giving out information.”
   After lunch, the students went to workshops ranging in topics from “It’s Bigger than Hip-Hop” to “Leadership through Financial Empowerment and Independence.”  Many students conducted workshops based on the conference theme, with an audience of fellow students, staff, and community members.  “Everyone pitched in and helped us out – I liked that,” said one student. The students re-gathered at the end of the day to share their learning and revelations, which clearly demonstrated that Pilot School students are indeed our future leaders.		  
 

 back to top