Lindsay Unified School District – Inviting Stakeholders to the Table

Before moving to a Performance Based system in 2007, Lindsay Unified recognized the importance of developing a future-focused strategic design to support district transformation. Inviting a broad base of stakeholders to a set of community forums, five core questions were asked:

1. Why do we exist?
2. What are the core values that will govern how we will interact with one another?
3. What are our guiding principles?
4. What is our vision for the future related to learning? and
5. What is the description of our graduate?

The combined results established the Lindsay Unified Strategic Design which continues to serve as the primary blueprint for transformation.

The core values identified and agreed upon by all stakeholders, including parents, community members, learning facilitators, their Union, staff, administrators and the Board of trustees are:
Integrity, Commitment, Excellence, Risk Taking, Teamwork, Accountability, Improvement, Openness, Alignment, and Courage. A rubric for each core value has been established (Core Values Rubric)

The Strategic Design supports our mission: “Empowering and Motivating for Today and Tomorrow.” It articulates core values and guiding principles, provides clear direction and guidelines for change, aligns all decision making, serves as the framework for all future visions, and promotes continuous improvement.

See Shared Vision Video

We’ve seen great academic progress overall (see pg. 6-10). Cultural change has led to huge improvements in attendance, decreased discipline, decreased violence and gang affiliation, and increased school bonding. Fact Sheet.

We did not anticipate how vital this strategic design process was to stakeholder buy-in and for informing us on systemic shifts necessary to support transformation to the Performance Based System.

Everything we plan and do is held against the strategic design as the overarching standard. So far, that has kept us aligned and productive. The overextension of this guide would be to inhibit creative and innovative strategies which are not fully aligned with the 2007 vision.

Other organizations that are considering devoting resources in this area should consider the great value of including broad stakeholders early in the process to support systemic change – include learners!

With regard to the design of learning expectations, there are a couple of key questions to consider.

How will you give all stakeholders a voice in the design of competencies, rubrics, and curriculum expectations?
The buy-in of staff and learners is critical in the development of this work. Both the product and implementation will benefit from educators feeling like they have had a voice in the rubrics and progressions and how they will work in vertical alignment, assessment, and other curricular decisions. In doing this work, you are in fact redesigning instructional culture and this requires a strategic focus on honoring learning facilitators’ content knowledge, teaching experience, and ability to lend honest feedback about defined rubrics, progressions, and scoring criteria and policies.

How will you communicate these rubrics and other related curricular components to all stakeholders?
This is particularity important for learners. True empowerment in learning comes from them knowing the defined progressions and rubrics, scoring criteria, and pacing expectations. When learners can describe their own learning and progress, they can then articulate it to their families and their learning facilitators. This takes strategic thinking by learning facilitators and tools to support communication. This video demonstrates examples of such tools for curricular communication.

• “Beyond Reform: Systemic Shifts Towards Personalized Learning” Marzano Research, 2017. Book written about the transformation process by Lindsay Unified SD.
• www.lindsay.k12.ca.us Home page with multiple links to videos, info-graphics, and articles about Lindsay Unified.
• 30 minute video on the LUSD story
• Movie on SMART Goals and Code of Cooperation

Please contact Barry Sommer (bsommer@lindsay.k12.ca.us), Amalia Lopez (amlopez@lindsay.k12.ca.us), Brian Griffin (bgriffin@lindsay.k12.ca.us)