we need to make that difference it be that role model for our children. >> has a listen to the other young panelist talk, it reminds me very much of our youth when we started this. fifty-six years ago when i was listening to my peers talk about the injustices here in greensboro. >> thank you so much. [inaudible conversations]

about two more minutes of this discussion but we do have to leave it here. you can find it in our archive and you can watch anytime online. we will take you live to a form with school superintendents who work in urban areas. were talking about some of the challenges they face spread we will be hearing from the superintendent of the dallas texas independent school district and later, a full panel will discuss equity in education. >> what's nice is it has been a partnership that mcgraw-hill started as a partner and i'm very honored to have the opportunity to serve on the steering committee and to get to support. let me also say welcome to the cohort group. you have big shoes to fill.

they have gone on to do outstanding things. you are in a great organization. your support is an amazing university and we equally think and we want to be a sponsor for the good that can bring for everyone involved. you have a handout, when we talk about corporate sponsorship, there are some pieces that we are really proud of. this sponsorship is something were very proud of. you have a handout that talks about the detroit downtown boxing gym, we do that pro bono in partnership with the club in downtown detroit that has had amazing results on behalf of the students that

are dissipated. i just wanted to share that with you where i think corporate has a role to play in that role is through partnership and helping to make a difference for all kids. i also have the opportunity to introduce our keynote speaker for this afternoon. that has been a partnership that him and i have had for a long time. the doctor has been the boss for a number of the family, my brother has worked for him for a number of years and just retired this year. he talked constantly about what an amazing leader he is and continues to be. let me just share a few things before i ask him to join us and bring our afternoon keynote. the doctor has over 22 years of district leadership

experience. that is 22 and counting. he has three decades working in public education as a teacher, a coach and superintendent as well as the ceo. he's giving me dirty looks because he always wants a really short introduction but their stuff you have to know about him before he comes out. he has been the superintendent of two very large school districts. he currently serves as the superintendent of dallas isd, home of the dallas cowboys, i just want to put that out there and those. [inaudible] you like it in safe home of the 2019 super bowl champions. he's also been superintendent of the county.

i won't say what that football team is there. he has been in second tour of duty in dallas ifc. what's nice about that is dallas is where he graduated high school and where he began his career. he has a lovely wife and two amazing sons. just for the record, one of his sons graduated from princeton and his other son graduated from harvard. i think if you have those shoulders that he can ride on, he ought to get ready to retire. with that, would you join me in giving a howard university welcome to doctor michael hinojosa. [applause] >> thank you. good afternoon. first of all, congratulations

for being selected and part of this premier organization. i have been a member of a asa for more than 1994 and proud of it. they have done a great job for public education and they are our champions. first of all, thank you for your work. howard university, thanks for stepping up. this is a different paradigm than any other kind of job that there is. there needs to be specialized a training that occurs there. for the superintendent

academy, you are doing the lord's work. it's very difficult but it is very rewarding but, let me remind you of this, some people want to be superintendent but they don't want to do superintendent. there's a big difference. some people don't want to make the courageous decisions that you need to make on behalf of students when you have the stakes that are so high. be thinking about that as you go along your journey. of course we have to keep all of our items factual, not just because ron c-span but because all these superintendents know me. all the gentlemen and ladies that are in the room that have been a great inspiration for

me, i get my energies off other superintendents. just exciting, i work with double essay as a coach and a teacher and i get energized around superintendents. thank you for your introduction. even if i wrote myself. dwight didn't get the name quite right. we've known each other for a long time. [speaking in native tongue] that's why they call me mikey baby. dwight is working on his spanish. we do have a lot of latino kids so it's important to be

bilingual. eating in dallas, before me there were several superintendents in ten years. i am starting my tenth year although i had to take a break and go to georgia, every now and then i run into people and i see people and they don't know what to call me. i prefer to be called michael but people just can't say that. i said if you can't call me michael, how about, please don't call me doctor minnesota, please call me doc. as i described what i do, you will see that i'm interacting with people all the time and i said but you know what, i really like it when you call me big pop so in dallas, if you ask for big poppa this is who you're gonna get.

now, some people have trouble with hinojosa. the other day some but he called me [inaudible] i said seriously? we look nothing alike. she is a lot taller than i am. what are you talking about. but anyway, what i've learned in this business is if you take yourself too seriously, you can't connect. when you're going to do heavy lifting and urban work, you've got to be able to connect with people and you've got to be able to not to take yourself too seriously. i know the superintendent warriors in the room that have great relationship with, there's many times its top and people ask you have you been a superintendent for so long? how do you deal with it? i said actually, i have no problem, i sleep like a baby.

i wake up every three hours crying [laughter] not really, not really. i have a great job. i tell people don't feel sorry for me, i have a great job, i love what i do, i enjoy working and trying to help young people have a better opportunity. so, what i want to talk about first is everyone of you, and by the way, congratulations to the cohort. [applause] three specific why. you have a great master teacher. i know these teachers and their phenomenal and their great friends i've learned from them so you have a great

teacher. also you of a coach who will help you along the way. you will learn a lot of things through the coach. let me tell you, please do not underestimate the power of the cohort. you are going to be building relationships with each other. human nature will not tell you boss [inaudible] i will go ask people that i have confidence in, how do we handle something like this because as a superintendent, it's very hard to talk to your spouse about all the things. you could talk to your subordinates or board about everything but if you have a trusted colleague you can develop relationships that are very powerful. i've been to every academy i can get a hold of, so don't, if you the opportunity to learn from your mentor and the

curriculum, please don't lose the opportunity to learn from each other. all of you are very talented but you were selected because your set of experiences. all of you have had different expenses you have to overcome. why do i keep working when i don't have to? for small, because i love it. i am proud to be an immigrant. i was born in mexico. i was the last one born in mexico, there are ten in my family and my father said were going to the united states, the greatest country in the world, but if we go, you want to get an education. unfortunately for my oldest two sisters, they were 14 and 13 and we moved from mexico to lubbock texas and they didn't know what to do with my older sisters for they had gone to

business school but this was 1959 and they didn't know what to do with the two young ladies who have gone to business school and they put them in fourth grade. my two sisters did not graduate from high school. they went on and coped with it, but the rest of us graduated from high school. that's not bad. 80% graduation rate in the 70s, but pretty good. we were inspired as dad said you're going to school. four of us got degrees. here's the real legacy of my parents and why i do what i do. the real legacy of my parents is if you have ten kids, you're going to have a lot of grandkids. we know how to reproduce. my parents had 22 grandkids.

two of them are special needs of the not going to graduate from college. sixteen have graduated from college including my two boys who went to harvard and princeton. that is the power that an education can do for you and that's what you will be dealing with as a superintendent. that's your payoff. it's a long time in coming in you might not ever know all the lives you impact, but that's really what you can do because, i've been a suburban superintendent three times and suburban parents have a lot of agency. students have agency. there did pending on you to build that agency. the journey was quick. we lived in lubbock, ten of us

plus my parents, 12 of us lived in an 800 square foot home in east lubbock. then my dad got a church as heç was a preacher, as you can tell, he got a church in dallas texas and said were moving to dallas and when your parents try to convince you to move to a better place, a two-story place you no longer have to have five of you in one bedroom could have two stories, we got to dallas all right but it was the last housing projects in our station wagon got stolen the first night. but we have family. i fast-forward, doing pretty well, 1971 hits but what happens? in 1954 the federal government said you had integrate schools. from 54 until 71 dallas was

dragging their feet. then the federal judge said no more you're integrating right now and he made that decision in july. overnight the school district, and by the way, 1971 there were no suburbs in dallas. you can replicate the story all over america. there's very few suburbs in 1971 the integration, busing and all that turmoil hits and i'm a student and i'm expressing this and so and sing this from the eye of a student.tudent. getting an urban suit for intendants job is is hard. there's two-way. you can hope that the board picks you. hope is not a strategy. you can follow that route and that could help you or you could go and learn how toi%itt a

superintendent, work with boards and communities to move you up and learn and then eventually come back there. when i was hired the first time of the superintendent of dallas, they said i didn't have urban experience. i said wait a minute, i had urban experience from the eyes of a student and teacher. not necessarily as the ceo, but the perspective matters. i survived the busing, the integration, the fights, theç trauma, and i'm aimlessly wandering the halls in 1975. i've got friday night fever, saturday night fever, fever all the time.ç could they asked me too come and talk about a scholarship for future teachers of america. i said you think i can be a teacher? i had no idea what i would do

in dallas. i gotç the scholarship, $500. unit that bought me? not much. a dream that i could be an educator. i go off to college, not everything was perfect in college. i go back to university, if you are latino you had to have two ids to go the discos because they didn't want the local going with the college kids. unfortunately i got a young lady pregnant, i don't know how that happened but i was involved in that situation and i got my whole life is going to fall apart. and i was a 20-year-old dad making a difficult decision, i married a young lady who had been attacked and was still a

freshman and that tech, at that time, there was a lot of issues regarding race and class but somehow we persevered, we both worked real hard and graduated and became teachers. she became bilingual and i became a teacher as a student i became a teacher and the coach. two things help me become a superintendent. i was a government teacher. i'm not a politician, but i understand politics, if you can understand politics you're gonna have a rough life. those who say i'm just a well refined personal educator, but if you don't understand how all the dynamics work you're going to stumble because you

figure out there are a lot of politics in your life. the second thing that helped me is i was a basketball referee for seven years. how did that help me? ever but he was always yelling at me. i got used to it. you develop a sick skin. you have to be able to take a punch. i would just encourage you to do that. i went to that process, i was coaching had gotten divorced, my first marriage didn't work although i have a great relationship with my son from a previous marriage when he graduated from texas tech in three years and i was his best man in his wedding, but then having coaching for about seven or eight years in dallas and i was dating a young lady and i said babe, where we going to get married. she said i'm not going to marry a coach, are you kidding me, whetherç they become an administrator or something.

okay, i have my masters degree and i said okay, well, okay, let me try. i'm 29 or 30 years old, i apply for assistant principal job in dallas, i couldn't even get an interview. i went back and told my girlfriend, to be a coach. then she said did you try and the suburbs, i said and i can hire an immigrant guy from the hood. then i got offered two jobs. i went, i got a suit, i shaved and my girlfriend said babe, how do you like me now. then she dumped me. it's not what happened to you, is how you respond. that was the best day of my life. that marriage will work anyway. i will be over three. but you never know, these paths are not linear.

i went from assistant principal from assistant superintendent in four years in a suburban district. oh my gosh. now i think i'm somebody. i'm assistant superintendent, 36 years old in a suburban district in dallas. then i get the itch to be a superintendent. i get in your shoes. this is can be a piece of cake. i decided wanted to start applying for a superintendent's job. i applied for 37 jobs. i got one interview. unlike joe harris, he's the real mentor in this. i know how to get a job, joe knows how to do the job. just think about that. so anyway, i go out and i get an interview, 630 miles away

from dallas and is in el paso. el paso doesn't have suburbs. at 6 miles from the mexican border, 8 miles east and that's my first superintendent see. i don't know what i don't know. i was very lucky to survive as a 37-year-old superintendent. i didn't have this kind of program that would help me navigate those issues. so then my wife wants to move to austin. i didn't and so i said yes, ma'am, were moving to austin if i can get a good job. i applied for it and i didn't want to apply because i loved el paso. i took a job but this is what you face. they hired me and i said i can't be your superintendent because you have the confederate flag. i can't be your superintendent. they said no, don't worry about it, will take care of it. just come join us. we will handle this for you. i said okay, i looked at my

wife and said were not going to austin and she said yes we are. i said yes, were going to austin. i took the job because of mama ain't happy and nobody happy. i took this job with the board didn't deal with the confederate fight so as a superintendent you learn how to navigate those waters. i was not proud to be a superintendent of the school district that had a confederate flag. so what did i do? you had to be smarter than the fifth-graders to solve these problems. so what i did, i set a target and i said by the summer of 2000 we are going to solve this problem confederate flag for the board when you anything so i put all people on the committee and i hired the smartest attorney out of dallas and he came in and gave us a recommendation but we

also gave a charge of what the committee could and could not do so as you encounter these problems, becoming a superintendent, you've got to know how to navigate and how to create solutions that will get you the kind of result that will be sustained. then i get the opportunity to be a suburban superintendent in the houston area. a big nice district. one of the few districts i took over that was in great shape and i was really glad to be there. the reason i mention that district is because now, this is my third superintendent and i finally learned the secret sauce. these jobs are tough, but i started meeting with one of my predecessors. by the way, here's another thing. as a superintendent, when you become superintendent, raise your and if you've heard the story of the three envelopes. i'm a little to you anyway.

so, this superintendent was assistant superintendent. they said that the training you i'm ready, our tire and you can become superintendent. when you become superintendent, it's yours. key to the kingdom. now, if you get in trouble on the left door i left three envelopes. and so, when you get in trouble, when you get a dilemma you need to know where the envelopes are that will keep you out of trouble because i want you to be successful. he goes around, no problem, honeymoon, everything's going great and boom he has a dilemma. he goes in to the door and opens the door and the envelopes says blame your predecessor. a get out of jail free card. so he blamed his predecessor so now, next time it's only two more months, three months and he runs into another dilemma. he's used one of the

envelopes, he goes back and, opened the envelope and this is blame your predecessor and he said well. he got his contact extended and now is in year two but next time it's only six weeks before the next problem comes up and now this is the last one so he goes in, get the envelope, he opened it up and it says prepare three envelopes. who wants the moral of the story. you can't blame your way out of this. nobody wants a whiner. you wanted this job, you inherited it, you can't be blaming other people. that never goes anywhere. now i meet the superintendent and i start going to all the predecessors to get wiser and he told me the triangle of success forç superintendency.

he said at the middle of students, never forget at the middle of the student, at the top of the board, you work for board. your boards are elected official, very diverse, sometimes they don't like other, they get elected to do this job for free and most communities. but they are your bosses. over here on the side, it's the staff. the staff is very important. you've got your teachers, your principles, custodians, your bus drivers, everybody that does the work to make the school district will run an over here you have the community. you have the mayor, your taxpayers that don't have kids in the school, you've got vendors, you got all these community people because the secret sauce of this is that if you've got all three parts of the triangle working in the same direction, you can thrive and you can have a great

career. if you've only got two of the three, doesn't matter which two, if the board loves you and the staff loves you but the community hates you, all you can do is survive. who wants to just survive when you're trying to benefit students. and, if you've only got one of them, you better resign consider jobs over, you just don't know yet. ifç the board loves you but these two don't, party of your job is to make sure how you work that magic with everybody. i color-coded my calendar. i got my staff meeting on monday, i go to school every wednesday.çóçó wednesday is hump day. i want to see people at their best. go to high school on friday afternoon. it's all about perspective and attitude. can you imagine a high school principal thing what is he doing here. , thursdays are my board

days. i spent time with my board members. said tom who i am. i'm an e-mail about my schedule. i put my contract on the website, all my expense reports, there'st(ç no questioç if they like you they'll put up with the mistakes. you make mistakes. if not likable, they're looking for that first one. they look at all your expenseç reports. talk to everybody at the grocery store, tell me something about this guy. if that make yourself likable, and you got a good job. so then i finally get to go home to dallas in 2005. the school, he gets to see mew3 come home with superintendent, i finally get an interview in dallas, and it's first superintendent. you never know where this journey is gonna take you, but

you've got to add value, you've got impact. dallas is very urban. dallas is 155,000 students, 92% economically disadvantaged, you see the beautiful city of dallas, it's the construction crane. they have these beautiful buildings and then you've got the rest of the city and our kids are 92% economically disadvantaged. you heard the education department showed up briefly withq 44% english learner, we don't apologize for our demography. we are proud of our kids. i was one of those kids. someone helped change my trajectory and not flybe and urban america and that's why help restart the taxes urban council of superintendents and work closely with the council of great city schools because the urban superintendent is different than the suburban job. vince will tell you he's in san francisco. something crazy happens, they're looking for vents, wait a minute.

dallas is the namesake city. anything that happens in north texas, they want to talk to me on booktv about it. if you're an urban district, katie is code for houston but houston is where the media goes all the time if there's an issue. automatically, you have to be prepared to how you deal with that. in buffalo, i know james wasç in buffalo, that's for everything happened. urban superintendent, i was lucky, i knew the city but i hadn't been there in a bit. so i was able to move the needle little bit. we had some progress, and let me tell you, it's never going to be easy. the biggest mistake in my career, i'm one of the few people, the few superintendents that every time i left i got a pack my

own u-haul. the board was not there backing it up for me. some of that time you got to have humility and when you make mistakes it's very disarming if you own the mistake and try to talk your way out of something that you behave yourself into. in 2008, we found the come home, we had overstaffed and if you overstaffed, if you hire too many teachers, guess what happens. you've got to pay them this year or next year. i had to lay off a thousand teachers. no money was missing. no money was stolen but i'm the one that had to accept responsibility because we didn't have the proper staffing contro control. i have a news conference and go to a job fair. with attrition we hired 600 back but those three months for the darkest three months of my career. there was some talk of firing me on the board.

i said you can fire me, i deserve it, but if you fire me your argue for three months about who will be and armed and argue for three months about who will do the search annual need three months once you hire him. you won't havet( a iñ"psuperintendent for your hel. we can solve this problem. part of being responsible is having the ability to respond and handle crisis and own it and this was very high-profile. dallas is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country. every media outlet is there in two languages. your mistakes are very public. it's how you deal with those that will help you persevere. then i go to the land of milk and honey, i had a great job there, they didn't need me, they didn't need an immigrant because actually, their performance was very high. the average ac act scores

were asking americans was 22 in cobb county. middle-class afghan americans move into that county from florida or new york or california, i just had the skills to be able to calm the media down and the board down. then i can get to go back to dallas. my successor was also my predecessor leaves town quickly and they look around and they say mikey likes it. let's see if you will come back. they asked me tooç come back to mesa what you gonna do perishable, now we get to the real issue of equity. services the whole theme of your initiative. what is equity? that is giving the most to those who don't have. how do you do that? if it's a zero-sum game, if you've got new money, raise your hand if you have new money. i didn't see any hands go up. then you can give the new money to the ones who needed the most, but if it's a

zero-sum game and there is no new money and you've got to give resources to the ones who need it the most, then you've got to get it from somewhere. that's where you have winners and losers. there is where it becomes they see. so, i want to talk about one other thing. a lot of people think i was in a training session just like i was in a cohort at a university in texas and the professor said you guys are nothing but a bunch of hired hand. i said i'm a well trained professional and i have a doctorate degree and he said no, you're hired hand. he said he asked 35 superintendents already in our superintendency. he said raise your hand if you're going to retire right now. two people retired.

how many of your board members are going to retire into the community they serve right now. 80% said most of their board members will retire. it's their money, their kids, their school, you're the one to provide the inspiration and the leadership in convincing them to do the right thing you're the one trained on how to do this. every time i've taken a job, i follow the same plan. my entry plan is not you want to buy this watch, my entry plan is i do a lot more lifting than i do talking. my first 100 days i talked to 100 people and asked them ten questions. if you were in my shoes what would you first. what we need to do to make this the best district in the city, county, et cetera. what is the greatest expectation you have of the superintendent. number four, who are the most respected people on staff. number five, who are the external stakeholders that are critical to our future success. i've done that in all six

superintendency and what i'm really doing is an interactive qualitative analysis but i've already studied the numbers, i've already studied the budget and the account ability system, i know the quantitative stuff. but it teaches you the qualitative stuff, just like no one who the guy with the superintendent in dallas who had a great training program. he said michael, before you take that fence down, you know why it was put up. you may still be take the fence down if you know why, it helps you have an opportunity to have success. let's get to equity. what you think? we had really coined them this way, but we have four strategic initiatives in dallas. i want to tell you what they are now. when i got back to dallas we had 43 schools under improvement required status. they were being threatened to take over by the state. several of them multi- year,

this year we just announced last week we went from 43 in three years down to four. so what we do? we took the best teachers, we followed the charlotte mecklenburg plan, we did the best teachers and we sent them to the schools. we paid them a lot of money. and guess what, by the way, we had to fund the strategic initiatives first before we funded everything else. and guess what, if you're superintendent, 80% of your money is in people which means we didn't give raises to everybody, we put money in strategic compensation and our school turnaround program so that we could get the best teachers and the best principles to go to those difficult schools. those schools i had been improvement required status for multiple years got off in one year. same parents, same kids, same neighborhood but the difference was we sent in a

team of great teachers. in dallas we have a competitive edge because we have pay for performance. it's very controversial, half the staff quit in that my predecessor put together but now we are keeping the best teachers and losing the ones that are the best so now we know the best are, it's not a theory, it is 50% on performance in your classroom, 35% student achievement, 15% student feedback. we know which are the best teachers, we sent them to the toughest schools and they turned all the schools around. and so, that's one strategic initiative. it's about equity. that is nothing but equity. we had to pay a teacher in dallas can make $85000. i met a teacher making a $5000. in base pay is 73 and he gets $12000 as a distinguished teacher to go into those top schools. he is 28 years old, but it is

very hard to pull something like that off. you have to fund it on the front-end. second big equity issue, in dallas we have 10000 rising freshmen. 10000 rising freshmen. we started this program called our collegiate academy. : : :

>> so you've just opened up the opportunity for these students to get a better life. here's the other sad story in dallas, out of those 5400 kids, we asked the background of the parents, only 300 of their parents had some kind of credentials, an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, or any kind of credential. so what that tells us is these kids want a better life, and their parents want a better life, and they applied to go to one of these schools. the other thing, though, that's really expensive that we had to fund is early childhood education. we educate all 4-year-olds school day and all 3-year-olds half day. we put a certified teacher in the daycare centers cost us 6 million dollars of new money every day. why?

the reason my boys went to harvard and princeton is that i married up. my wife was an ap english teacher. she was reading to these boys before they were born, before they were born. i deserve no credit in that. but these kids in urban, they don't even know what a book looks like, but if you get them into schools -- now, that is a very costly program, but we funded that first. it costs us 15 million dollars a year for two years in a row to start the collegiate academies. it costs us 5 million dollars a year to fund this early childhood program for our kids. do you know how long the return on investment is going to be? it is going to be a long time before we can do that. and then our fourth strategic initiative is public school choice. you know when certain elected officials talk about choice, they talk about take public dollars and put it for a private education. when charter schools talk about choice, they say pick us, and we will let you know if you get in

and we will let you know if you stay in. what's the difference between an urban superintendent and suburban superintendent? i have lived both lives for a decade. suburban parents buy this home. they want their kids to go to this elementary school, this middle school, this high school and they sell the house, and move to the lake, move downtown, wherever they want. urban parents, my kids are right here. what's my next best option? and so we have created many choice opportunity schools. now, we've always had magnet schools. the problem with our magnet schools, you have to have a score, good score to get in. that's called selective enrollment. that's called ranking and sorting. i'm not going to make you raise your hand, but i'm not going to raise my hand because i'm not proud of my sat score, but i'm proud of the 4.0 i got from the university of texas when i got my doctorate. effort creates ability. you get smarter through hard work.

you can build agency. so we opened up -- we have new tech schools. we have all kinds of options, personalized learning schools, and now we have 4,000 parents that left dallas that are applying to go to our specialty schools. they won't go to our neighborhood schools, except now we've got two-way dual language at most of our elementary schools. they will come to that. that's where you have white parents, african-americans, second and third generation latinos that don't speak spanish and are speaking two languages. how do i get away with all of this? because i don't have to have a job. i can retire. no, actually it is hard. when we deal with people's two most prized possessions, their money and their kids, and so if you don't have a history of delivering, it's going to be hard for them to trust, but once you start delivering, we're going to our taxpayers.

by the way, our taxpayers look nothing like our kids. our voters look nothing like our kids. by the way, 50% of -- 60% of the money we get is from commercial revenue. 40% is residential. it's on a sliding scale, but we're going for a 13th tax increase and -- 13 cent tax increase and see if the community will support us now. because i have learned in my career that people have values. you hope that they have altruistic values, they will do it for the greater good, but if they don't, you will appeal to their property value. if you don't have a good school system, you can't sell your house. you have to support us. you have to be smarter than the 5th grade on how you address the greater good of a community you are in. some of us have been around the

block a long time and been in multiple states, we see the same game plan going from state to state to state. and now just coming to texas, and by the way, we're the godfathers of accountability. we gave this to george bush and went national and now we have been through the whole thing. but now we're getting a through f. i argued against it that a simple -- trying to put a simple answer to a complex issue is madness. but i was told they didn't have to negotiate with me. so i lost. so texas has a through f. so you also have to be smarter than how you deal with that. and i'm very pleased that this week our state accountability ratings came out, and actually the district i described, they gave us a b. and two thirds of our schools are a and b. and only less than 10% are d and f. but it's taking a lot of hard

work, and by the way, i don't believe in those letters, so we have come up with our own school performance framework. our own school performance framework, accomplished, an accomplished school. starts with an a. a breakthrough school, you were there, but now you broke through so you are a breakthrough school. competing school. you're competing but you're not quite there. a d, developing school. and if you're a focused school, but the focus is not a scarlet letter. if you're a developing or focused school in dallas, you get to apply for more money, which is equity to get you out of that predicament. and our campuses get to apply for $250 per kid more if you're a developing or a focus school, so that's not your pem -- that's not your permanent state. that's equity. you have to figure out how to put all that in there. so these jobs are very

difficult, they're very high-profile. you know, they're very rewarding. 95% of the people in the community are very positive. and since i have been on tv an awful lot, most people know who i am. hey, how are you doing, dr. hinojosa? most people come up to me and they recognize me and they thank me for my service. occasionally you get a few ankle biters that snip at you, but sometimes you get a little arrogant and say yeah, i know who you are. i say yeah i'm michael hinojosa, the superintendent. no, you're the you've got milk commercial. i have seen you on tv, with my moustache. [laughter] >> i will finish with these

three and see if there are any questions. my final message to you is, look to the past with pride. look to the past with pride. who you are is the set of experiences that you've engaged in that have prepared you for where you are today. and it's qualitative. i mean you didn't just learn by the numbers as we heard this morning. there are people attached and bodies attached to that. secondly, about the president, you've got to be enthusiastic. you've got to be excited. i'm excited about the president and the job that you are doing. if you are not excited, who is going to follow you? if you're not excited, who is going to follow you? i don't know why i have this job. nothing great is ever accomplished in the absence of enthusiasm. so you have to be a salesman for your kids and your community. and then some people look to the future with despair. i look to the future with hope

and aspiration. i think that now we have great kids. when you go through your schools and you see what these kids were doing, we didn't know how to do that when we were in school. despite these challenges, these kids are going to help us have a better life, when we're done. and so i always -- i don't let people -- and you know, we can bemoan the politics. we can beknown -- this too shall pass. america is great. we will persevere under any circumstance. but you have to have the appropriate attitude to look to the future with that hope and aspiration. that's my story, and i'm sticking to it. i don't know if i'm out of time, if we have time for any questions, but we have some time for some questions. all right. ready, fire aim. come on, now, come on vince, i know you are thinking about something. yes, ma'am? >> [inaudible].

>> he knows now. [laughter] >> [inaudible]. >> that's one of the things i'm most proud of. in my career -- good things happen by design, not by accident. in my career as superintendent, 32 people who have worked for me have become superintendents. [applause] >> and it is not by accident. what i do is i take the top 15 principals in the district, and they have to be the top 15. they are a diverse group. they have to be there on absolute performance, value added, and climate of their school, and i work with them for a year teaching them what i know, and many of those who are now superintendents started off with what i call the principal group. i have 230 principals. i just work with the best. and then the other thing that i've always done in my career, i've always put a principal on

my executive leadership team. i have a principal and a principal's supervisor that meet with our executive cabinet, our senior staff every monday, and what i'm doing for them -- and they have to be a great principal. can't be a whiny principal. has to be a great principal. they become an ambassador for us. they are behind the curtain. they see how we discuss things. they become our ambassadors. and a lot of those people have become superintendents. i have been doing this for 24 -- i have outlived some of those. they have already retired and i'm still working what's wrong with that picture? but part of that is, you have a belief system where you build capacity in others, and you teach them what you know and when you're vulnerable and when you admit to them, when you make mistakes, it is very empowering, and then it helps them be prepared for whatever else that they may face. other questions? yes? >> you talk about your calendar. when you think about calls coming into you, i'm sure you

get many many many calls. who is the call that you will always either take or return? which group of people? and then whose call are you less likely to return? >> great question, vince. always letting me off the hook on the easy questions. if it is the board president, i'm dropping everything i'm doing. babe, i can't talk to you anymore. the president is calling me. i have lunch with the board president once a week. i have lunch with all board members once every two months. the board president. now, the mayor doesn't call me very often. they have no control over us, but if the mayor calls, i'm going to return his call, immediately. also, what i do is i have a rigorous relationship with time. you come see me -- my staff meetings start at 8:37. that means everybody is there at 8:30, and we start at 8:37, cell

phone time. so people know that i'm very organized, but i'm also very protective of my calendar. i have been through breakthrough -- several times. i meet with my secretary every day. i don't have distractions in my office. i can't lead if i'm sitting in my office all the time. the calls that i won't take is one of the reasons it's helped me be a superintendent for 24 years is i don't micromanage my staff. if someone wants to jump my chief of staff or jump my hr person or jump my school leadership person, they are not going to get a call from me. i will ask my chief of school leadership why are they calling me. they will go investigate and come back. if you get -- if you get hung up in the minutia, then you can't lead. and so i have -- i get up at 4:15 in the morning. i tell my staff, sleep's overrated, but i'm not going to bug you till about 4:17.

then i will check my e-mails, send them an e-mail. i do my paperwork, my stuff off the clock because you're coaching all day long. you are the superintendent, whether you want -- you can't take your superintendent hat off. but if you start going beneath your people and subverting them, you're taking away their authority. now, i hold my people accountab accountable. if you don't do a good job, you don't get to stay with us. but i'm not going to call a news conference. if you start taking people's dignity, they will come get you. so just remember that. because everybody has personal dignity. if you take their dignity, they're going to come -- karma is tough. they will be back. so how you handle those things, you establish expectations just by the fact that my meetings start at 8:37. everybody is there at 8:30. everybody has their laptop. we're ready to go. we're done by 10:37 monday morning. we have covered the waterfront. we're organized.

they got their agenda over the weekend. they got to read it. we can take action. then i get to go out and do the other things they like to do. but disciplined people with disciplined thoughts, taking discipline action are the ones that get things done. great question. other questions? going -- going -- i'm not through talking. i do want to say that it takes time, and experience is a great teacher. mistakes are a great teacher. and humility is a great teacher. and if you think you've arrived, you know, you get humbled in a hurry. but it's the people that keep getting up and going to work and trying to make -- remember, urban superintendents, you're the lifeline for those students. that's why you have to have the

opportunity and the plan to get things done for students. so thank you very much. i really enjoyed it. let's have a great -- [applause] >> michael hinojosa is a hard act to follow. give him another hand. [applause] >> entertaining, but he speaks the truth. what he's telling you is the truth. i hope you all wrote that down, because it is the truth. and it's really appropriate that this next session on critical issues facing urban superintendents comes right after michael's discussion about equity, which is one of those issues. so as you, you know, get -- i see some people getting a drink or something, i'm going to ask our panelists for this last

panel to come up and join me at the podium. so that's alton. where are you, alton? he stepped out, okay. donna harris akins. donna? the panel not here? no? thomas parker? [applause] >> thomas parker! thomas parker is superintendent in allentown school district in pennsylvania since 2017. right before that, he was superintendent in michigan. and before that -- no, actually during that, he was a member of the urban superintendents cohort. so he was superintendent in michigan, left there and went to

allentown. let's give him a hand. [applause] >> thomas is also an alumnus of howard university, you know. regina jacobs, there she is, okay. she is is chief equity and member services officer at the national school board association. she provides leadership and management over educational equity, programming content, and research, before joining, she was the chair of the board in the prince georges county public school district. and she was president of the maryland association of fate of boards of education. she chaired an sba cube, which is the council of urbans board of education. she knows boards. she knows urban. she's a go to. alton, alton fraley, so glad to

see him. he is the past president of asa and he served for almost a decade as a superintendent in texas and has more than 70,000 students. he retired from there, at least that's what he said. and then he -- his hometown of texas needed a superintendent. he said he would serve as interim. he says he's interim, but i bet you he's going to stay. he's also -- [laughter] >> -- a member of the urban academy steering community. donna harris aitkins is at national educational association. she works with a variety of partners to further the agenda and is the association's primary liaison to the u.s. department of education. in 2008, and 2012, those presidential elections, i'm not going to say who got elected, but 8 and 12, she served as

nea's policy liaison to the democratic presidential campaign. she earned her law degree at hu and she's an active member of the district of columbia bar. look at this panel, you see we have superintendent represented, teachers, and board members because when we talk about crisis -- not really a crisis, but issues confronting superintendents, administrators and others in education who work if urban areas, you need kind of that joint force to see what's happening. so i'm asking the panel to help us center this discussion in this particular time and place. school districts reflect not only the communities within their boundaries, but they also reflect our political times. you know, i think of vietnam era

and what was going on at the same time with civil rights and with integration, and you think about reaganomics and that's when all that crazy not only the reaganomics era but all the things that were going on with districts and changes in education. and then there's our current national moment, which is still pretty difficult to understand. you know, but what we know from these eras is that education leaders mattered in the 60s and 70s. education leaders mattered in the 80s and 90s. and they matter today. so i want to ask each of you to answer this particular question. what does this current political and social context demand of school leaders? and what areas should the fourth cohort in the urban superintendent's program be prepared to lead on and lead

for? any order. >> i will give that a shot. okay. here we go. one of the biggest challenges we have right now is how do we focus on the work but we have to frame the work. there are four pillars of a community. one is people. so you have your family, raise your kids. you have the ability to provide. you have prosperity, and that's how do we persevere and perpetuate our values and our culture. the fourth one is governance, how do we agree to behave with each other in this space we share. and so as a leader of the community, you have convening

authority. you have framing authority. frame the issue in the context of regardless of what's happening at the national level, it's what we want here in our community. and we don't talk about how we have to change and change and change. it is about becoming. helping establish a positive shared vision within the community, and helping folks articulate and discuss what must we become to make this happen. it is focusing and framing. >> thank you, alton. >> this current political climate -- >> yes, it is okay. >> i would add that one of the things -- one of the couple of things that we look at at the national education association is making sure that every decision that we are making or

at least attempting to make sure every decision we are making is actually focused on students. so when you ask the question about what you all should be prepared to lead for, students. that's the ultimate desire and goal is to make sure that they have what they need to succeed, to thrive and to excel. one of the things that we know is coming, and i'm sure you all are well aware is press reports about school improvement because the new k-12 statute because of the cycle of decision making is about to hit the local level. so schools are being identified. in some states they have already been identified. if they haven't, it is coming. i remember a few years ago when schools were identified under the -- during the last administration, how it felt as a parent in the community when schools were identified. my kids did not happen to be in a school that was identified, but we had friends and family

who were, and it was devastating. it didn't matter what the labels were. it didn't matter what the principal or superintendent or educators tried to do in that school, it felt devastating. and so we are urging people to get ahead of that a little bit, get to know your communities, let them know if you know based on the data that you are likely to be a school identified or you're leading a district where schools are likely to be identified, get ahead of that, find out what people care about. one of the things that i have seen in the district where i live, and i should mention my kids are in middle and high school now, which is for those of you who are middle school educators, bless you. [laughter] >> bless you. [laughter] >> it is interesting to wear a couple of hats when i go home because i work in a land of data. i work in a land of looking at policy and working with educators, professionally, and

to come home and see, you know, the letters from the principal, the letters from the superintendent, talking to other parents as part of parent teacher organization, spirit wear, you know, back to school night, you hear what's happening and what's bubbling up, which is often very different from what we're hearing from educators, from the principal and the superintendent, but that bubbling up, the issues that are bubbling up there very much impact what is possible to get done in the district. if you don't have the support of your community, if you have -- not you, but your predecessor has generated some animosity from parents, it's going to be tough. and particularly if they don't perceive that you are not listening to them, it's even tougher. so one of the things i would leave you with is not only to focus on students which i know you all are, but make sure that

your parents and students know that you are listening to them, and i'm not suggesting that you're not listening, but they have to know it and feel it so that they know that when they say something or when they raise something, that you're actually taking into that consideration and let them see that response. >> okay. thomas? what is the current political and social situation demand of school leaders? and what advice would you give the cohort on that? >> so i absolutely agree with my two colleagues to my left here. but just to frame it a little bit differently for me, when i think about this current political climate and the responsibility of superintendents to lead with the focus on equity, with the focus on achievement, with the focus on parent student engagement, with the focus of engaging, teaching instructional leaders for schools, it continues to be a bit overwhelming for leaders to be able to do all of these things and to do all of them

effectively. so i kind of go back to my core. one of the most important things i learned as a superintendent actually came in grad school at eastern michigan university. i learned about organizational theory and the technical core of the organization being teaching and learning and that outside ring, that leader having the responsibility to bridge and buffer. so the superintendent really gets to exist in a space where you're bridging and buffering and ensuring that all of the necessary resources and support are filtering in through and to the school environment. but also you buffer a bit so that you help those who are engaging these multifacetted buckets of work and change that are happening at such a rapid pace, kind of give an opportunity to absorb those in a way that they can digest it and then be able to act accordingly. especially in urban environments

where there are issues of equity. there are issues of a financial concern and some historic issues as it relates to engagement with parents and communities. how do we find a way to bridge in the learning and supports that are necessary, but also buffer a bit and give people an opportunity to really engage in a way that allows them to grow and learn? and being a successful superintendent in this space, you have to be able to do that work effectively. ::

that quite frankly, some of us in this country have created and have not recognized on behalf of children. >> no more, she said. no more. thomas was in cohort number one, right? >> the best cohort. >> the best cohort, of course.

>> absolutely. >> what advice would you give to those in cohort four about how to leverage their relationship and wisdom of their peers and their mentors while they're in this program, and then tell us what you brought from your cohort that impacts you in allentown? >> so this for me was a really deep question and when i think about what existed for me and then what allows me to kind of carry on, i think of three buckets. first being competence, second being compassion and the third being connectivity. the first and foremost, the cohort gives burgeoning leaders in urban school districts the skills and competencies necessary to lead and lead effectively. the core of the work that we do is having the ability to effectively lead urban

environments from managing the politics of education and boards of education, however they may be constructed, to being instructional leaders in urban spaces where challenges may exist. that second level is what i call compassion, and it's back to bridging and buffering. how do you focus on the systems and numbers and things that may often seem abstract to the spaces where we really personalize the work for kids. that's really where equity lives. how do we take the numbers and translate that into personalization and increase how we meet the needs of kids across the board in urban districts. lastly, i will talk about connectivity. there's not a week that goes by that either sam or somebody in the urban superintendents

academy doesn't get a call from me asking how can i, how can you or how can we. the focus on building a network versus networking is really a critical and important part of the work here in the room. >> that's true. >> and in my time in the urban academy, i built a network. there's a really good network of leaders that i connect with as peers that we went through this experience together, but then there's also a network of leaders of -- do i want to say older? more senior, seasoned -- >> seasoned. >> seasoned leaders who we often reach out to for advice, for support or for often just an opportunity to hear how was your experience leading philadelphia,

and i'm trying to lead allentown which is right next door and we had some of the same and similar issues in an urban environment. so having that network that continues beyond the opportunity to just network is really important. what i think first and foremost the leaders here should be able to take out that last, make sure you value that network because in urban districts, in urban environments, you are going to need to continually reach out to other leaders who are having similar experiences to help you manage concerns in your own district. >> thank you. i want to turn to a question about children and actually focus on the teacher perspective. children come to school with their backpacks and in their backpacks they have their pens and pencils and -- i'm thinking of old backpacks. technological gadgets, whatever they need to help them learn in the classroom. often in urban areas, students come with a second backpack and

they're things you may not be able to see. one of my colleagues calls is the invisible backpack which is filled with aces, average childhood experiences. parents are incarcerated, they are exposed to opioids in their homes or community, or other substances, early and unprotected sexual activity, mental health issues, whatever. we know teachers want to do their very best for every student, but often they don't have the time in the classroom to deal with the whole child, and so i would like to know for you to tell us what teachers need from superintendents in terms of support to address that invisible backpack children bring to school. what can school leaders do? and i'm going to say superintendents but also principals, how can they help

teachers address those things with children? >> thank you. great question. so one, i would say it's a misnomer to think that students, that only students in urban areas come with the invisible backpack. every student who walks in the door has a set of lived experiences, good, bad, neutral, and every student needs something different. that's been the challenge from day one and remains a challenge, because regardless of which classroom you are in, which classroom you are teaching in, you have a set of students in front of you that is, yes, your classroom of students but each and every child needs something different. they need to hear something different, they need to feel something different, and at the same time you are trying to teach them. they know that you care. what educators need to hear from their leadership in their schools and in the district is

that they are going to be allowed to spend the time they need to get to know their students and if they need to stop on a wednesday or thursday and not teach the content because some tragedy has happened in their neighborhood or in their school, in their state, the kids are very affected by it. they need to know that you have their backs, that they can stop for a moment and make sure the kids are okay before they can resume because it doesn't matter whether they are teaching that day. if the kids are not in it, they're not learning. everyone is wasting their time that day. most superintendents and most principals get that, but because of other factors, test scores are not where they should be, so and so has called and said you must get to a certain place by a certain date or by a certain month, or the benchmark assessment is here today, tomorr tomorrow, many educators don't feel they have the space to do that. and where success has happened, where students are doing well,

there has been a blend of all of that and people are given space, a little bit of flexibility to make sure kids are okay and ready to learn before you continue with your lessons or continue with the project or whatever it is they had planned to do that day. it's going to take a village. sometimes it is not the teacher that is the expert in that area and that's okay, or should be okay. sometimes it's the school counselor, sometimes the school psychologist. so i would say if those sorts of specialized personnel are not available within the district, not available enough, that's another way that educators need to feel supported is that that's the space where some attention needs to be paid. >> thank you. what plays a critical role in the hiring of the superintendent but also in the guidance, i'll say, of the superintendent? what do you see as the board's most impactful levers when it comes to equities in education

and secondly, how do you think boards and superintendents should work together in concert to share accountability for student achievement? >> so you know, people hear me say this all the time, that we have traditional training. boards know what your role is and the superintendent runs the day-to-day. it takes much more than that. what i would say is when we talk about equity, our board just in december of 2017 in its 78-year history, first made a statement about what educational equity is, and so when we think about it and how we work with superintendents, it's really about the board making sure that the intentional allocation of resources is based on the needs of students. so what does that look like? quite frankly, we have four main areas we really talk about. those areas are again, as i said, the intentional allocation of resources.

if the superintendent is new to your district and the superintendent is not as experienced, for example, as dr. hinojosa, you are supposed to work together as a team anyway, but reality is what does that mean in your community to intentionally allocate resources? it does mean that you are going to give more to students who need more. then the other thing i think that's really important is we talk about what does rigor look like. the board's role is accountability. it really is, are you within a budget that has $30 million in the budget for teachers to get their master's degree but you are not holding the system accountable for where the teachers are assigned. if there's no relationship between master's degree and student outcomes, the board's role is to not approve that. the board's role is to make sure the resources are available for students based on their need and working with superintendents i believe emphatically that it's not just your annual retreat. it really is the board and

superintendent together meeting often. when dr. hinojosa talked about meeting with board members, that's what i was used to when i was a board member, a superintendent that communicated with the board, that talked with the board, that gave us weekly reports. not not communicating. communication is really important. the final thing i would say, it is a reality, board members live in the community. they know where the bones are buried. they know the political construct oftentimes. so you have to use your board to help you navigate that. sometimes use the board to help you get out of trouble you might have gotten yourself into because someone calls you with something crazy. just the political dynamic is really important. >> thank you. >> alton, you have been there. you have done this. when you think about the job of superintendent, someone earlier today said something about a north star. when you think about a north star to guide superintendents to

differentiate between always competing priorities of being an administrator, taking care of the buildings, the buses, the books and those kind of things, and the job of being the chief leader for children. what advice do you have for this fourth cohort as they will be leading urban school districts one day in the near future? >> thank you. i want to -- what are called these old guys -- >> seasoned. seasoned. >> you wear a lot of hats as superintendent. one is quarterback, certainly, to use a football analogy, where you are really trying to call the plays, but you can't carry the ball by yourself. you got to have folks who can help you. those are your blockers. that comes from communication. you have to set a vision as a team, it becomes a shared vision, and you put into motion

all the things you need to get that accomplished. sometimes it's giving not permission, but really authority to the campus staff to make decisions, to stop the assembly line and say this needs to happen first. it's helping really set the context. we go about being superintendents and doing a lot of different things, but one of the key factors is how do you get the organization focused. you cannot be everywhere all the time. you have to have folks out there in the field, what i call they have high accountability. it's having folks you can count on. that's critical. it comes in the building of your team. you have to build capacity and help them understand the whole brand of the organization, what we stand for as an organization and what behaviors must be congruent with building and sustaining that brand and as a superintendent, you have to be the chief role model for that. i'll tell you this, character

and integrity are very, very critical. very, very critical. there are a lot of folks who want to have the title and be the superintendent, but you really become one of the chief role models in terms of character and integrity because no matter where you go, ywhat yu did as a teacher or principal is one thing. for a superintendent, it's something else. you must be very clear about who you are and what you are all about and set that context and model the behavior you expect from those in the organization. >> all right. i want to ask you, each of you, to respond to this or if someone already said what you said, that's okay, but it's about school safety which is an issue everyone is looking at, no matter what geographic district you're in, no matter what size district that you're in. how can schools work on social,

emotional and academic learning and creating healthy and safe schools in a way that engages the community? what should schools be doing? everybody is asking that. from your perspective as superintendents, representing teachers or boards, what are school boards saying? >> so i will step into this a little bit and say that it actually goes back for me back to resource allocation. because as a superintendent, as you work with your governing structure, it's about identifying divisions of the district, what are your core values, what are those things that are important and critical and how do you allocate resources accordingly to address those needs. it's being able to challenge convention in some decisions that may have been made in the past and ensuring that you have the resources necessary to support kids in a critical and necessary way. i will give an example.

so for allentown school district this year, one of the things that we identified was we focused a lot of attention and energy on attendance and on discipline, on the back end of student behavior, but not as much focus and attention on the front end, on assessing and really being proactive in addressing some of those social and emotional needs and concerns of our students. so we began to allocate resources and re-align our organizational structure to implement critical and key people on the front end so that our organization shows value in addressing the needs of kids by placing the necessary resources in that space. so for me, that's the baseline, that's the first step, what your organization values is where it spends its time, money and resources. so we re-align the resources and now my responsibility is to ensure that we have really strong systems of support and accountability for those people

who are making the decisions and supporting those kids effectively cross the board in the organization. so starting structurally, and the ability to ensure that we manage our data in a way that personalizes the experience that our kids are getting, i think that really helps with social and emotional needs of kids because now organizations are beginning to invest differently in how critical and important that work is for our kids. >> i would add that in many cases, particularly when law enforcement in schools find out about some things that are happening on the front end, it's because they have spent the time to build relationships with the kids. someone in that school has spent the time to build a relationship with the kid who happens to hear something, overhear something, is on a text message, on an e-mail, sees a facebook post,

whatever it is. the infrastructure is critical. you have to make sure your buildings are safe. you have to make sure your staff is trained. they have to know what to do in an emergency. but one of the key things that has to happen is that those kids have to know that someone in that school cares about them and that they will listen. it might be a false alarm but it might not be. but if they don't think you are going to listen, they aren't going to bother to say anything. one of the other things is making sure your parents know that you're listening and that you're doing all the things possible. not everything can be prevented but making sure you are doing everything possible to make sure the kids are safe and that the right people and only the right people are able to access the building where their kids are. i'm sure many of you have been in these shoes. one of the hardest things that my husband and i have had to struggle with is, depending on what is on the news that day, are wlee letting our kids leave the house that day. i don't care where they're going. are we just taking a day and

staying in. as an adult, so far we made the decision life will go on, they are going to school, we will stay by the phone a little closer the next couple days, but some parents are making a different decision. some parents are making a very different decision about how their kids are going to be educated or how their kids are going to spend their extracurricular time because of things that have been in the news. i think we have all seen some of the political reaction to the school safety issue coming out of various venues. nea has certainly been on record against some of those and for some of those and where it lands for us is are the kids safe, do they have what they need. are educators making sure they are building the authentic connections with the kids so that they feel welcome in the school, all of them, and that they are ready to communicate when they hear something, see something or feel something good or bad, so that situations that

can be prevented, are prevented. >> i would just say one of the best examples most recently for me and the school board, our editorial staff came to me right after the broward county incident and said we have to be an article, our next theme will about about school shootings and i said that's great, that's a good idea but while you're doing that article, don't forget in school districts across this country, children are walking in their school buildings -- >> every day. >> -- every single day facing gun violence but no one is calling for gun control in those communities. so when you think about the urban superintendent setting, social emotional learning and trauma look very different. they walk to school every day or come to you from conditions of

poverty, maybe, but also the trauma that's happening in their homes. so it may not necessarily be an incident that, you know, quite frankly may not make national news or the daily news, but i think the board's role in that is to make sure that when we're again, allocating resources, that you have trauma-informed practices and training and that social emotional learning is part of the fabric of teachers who are facing students every single day, because they are walking into those classrooms in a very different way and trauma is their life. you know, emotional trauma is what they live with, that's how they sleep, that's how they get up. so i think that's very important when you're talking about an urb urban superintendent. fights that are happening in the community spill over into the classroom and into the building.

i'm just saying when we think about this, think about your setting and your role every single day that might be different than a middle class student whose parents have resources, quite frankly, to be strong advocates around gun control but need advocacy in a different way. >> a lot of the recent mass school shootings have happened not in the hood. think about it. they happen other places. children do carry baggage no matter where they are. i worked in urban inner city, i worked in suburban, i'm now in a rural place. no matter where you are, kids come with baggage. there are aspects of safety that are technical and you have to have procedures and protocols to check in. you have to have physical barriers, those types of things as well. as superintendent, one of the best things you can do is work on what i call atmospheric conditions. children who have been involved in mass shootings have had a

tense relationship in that school, be it bullying by student or mistreatment they felt from the staff. so when you create a more positive atmospheric condition for all of our children, that's going to help a lot. it's more about prevention than reaction. people do bring problems to school, but also, there was a time when school was kind of a sanctuary. maybe i'm idealistic but i think if we as superintendents, as school leaders, help create better atmospheric conditions across the entire community, they will see school as a place of sanctuary and they are less apt to bring things there but you have to have certain conditions where they do feel safe and welcome and supported. >> okay. i would like to open this up to the audience to broach any questions with the panelists about any critical issues that

you face, that you think you may face that you want to know more about. i would like to focus first on those in the fourth cohort. any questions, don't feel afraid, stand up. ask this panel. the experts are here. let me bring my glasses. i can't see that far. stand up and say your name? okay. >> so two questions for you. one is, how would each of you define equity, what does that look like in your respective roles? the second question is as we talk about trauma, some of the trauma sturndents come to schoo with, i often wonder about some of the traumas, our adults, our professionals, have also experienced and how does that influence what we are trying to do, attempting to do in our buildings, how do we support our adults who also may have experienced some of the trauma, if we even know about it?

>> thank you for the question. it gives me an opportunity to tell you what our equity statement is. it's short. we affirm in our actions that each student can learn and shall learn. we recognize that based on factors including but not limited to the ability, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status that students have been deprived of educational opportunities. it is the intentional allocation of resources, instruction and opportunities according to need. it requires that discriminatory practices and prejudice and beliefs be identified and eradicated. so we define educational equity as a national organization, understanding students in this country have been deprived of access and we define, you know, we talk about achievement gaps all the time but the reality is that opportunity gaps plus access gaps plus value add gaps

equals achievement gaps. so the kids come to us disadvantaged or without from the family dynamic and we continue that in the school dynamic that's what we see as educational inequity for student. the trauma situation with the adults you mentioned, it carries over to everything. there are adults working in our school district because of the trauma that they suffered, they can't understand or they have difficulty with students. that's why trauma forums doesn't just apply to students, it applies to them and an opportunity to deal with that in their own minds. >> anyone else? stand up and say your name. there you go. >> al preston. >> hi, al. >> question is, are there any specific challenges that you can share with us where you tackled equity head-on and like our speaker said earlier, there are

no new pots of money, where you may have had to move money to address a situation and faced significant challenge from the community? >> so i guess i'll speak about the challenge i'm about to have. >> as long as you focus on it, think about it. >> this is recorded so when i get in trouble going back home. so the work that we're undertaking now in the allentown school district actually is really closely aligned with the definition of equity that we just heard our director of equity at that time, highways actu who is actually a member of cohort four, when the policy was created in allentown school district, defined equity in a similar way and set the expectation that the district adopt policies and practices that were going to be aligned

with providing equity and access for students across the board in our district. so we adopted or began processes for this current school year that are re-aligning that policy to actual practice, beginning with an equity in budgeting process that will be re-aligned and designed to ensure that we are allocating our resources according to identified need in our district, from the human resources to those other finite fiscal resources, the expectation of myself as a superintendent based on the work that has been directed for our board is that we began a process to re-align our traditional budgeting and resource allocation system in a way that is in line with the newly adopted equity policy for the school district. so i expect to have some challenges along the way.

as a superintendent in my prior experience, we did some work that was similar but not in as much systemic way as the current experience, so talk to me a year from now and we'll see how it's going. but i'm really excited about that journey. my board and i are working together as a governance team on this work, because we know it's important, we know it's critical and we are absolutely dedicated to making sure our kids get the resource that they need. >> not only do you have a school district policy but you have a board who probably was pushed along by the nsca's mission on equity. that's really great to see it really can impact. >> if i could jump in, one of the things nea has been focused on the last couple of years in addition to the reauthorization of the k-12 statute is focusing

on racial justice in education. one of the things that we know, that we all know, is there is data that is collected, you all report it up to the state, the state report it up to the u.s. department of education and at least as of today, i checked this morning, the office of civil rights still has their data base online, where anyone can go and check the data around school climate, around educators, around who is actually in the school, the demographics, everything about a school and a school district, which can roll up to the state. so now more people have access to that information. what people choose to do with that information, people make different choices, but some of the issues that are prevalent when we talk about equity in schools and in school systems, the data is there. the data is telling us a story. you can walk into any school today, as many of you do, and you can see, you can feel what is working and what is not working, whether the students are engaged, whether they are

not. whether the students have what they need or do they not. one of the things that we attempted to -- we did advocate for during the reauthorization was making sure that every student is seen and that we are directing the needs of every student, which depending on where you are and what your strategic plan is and what your goals are for the school year, it's not going to look the same school to school, perhaps, or it's not going to look the same district to district, perhaps, within a state. that should be okay, because the goal is to make sure that the kids have what they need, not that their report looks pretty, though that is fabulous and necessary to tell the story, but kids need different stuff. and the goal of equity, if we're providing opportunity for every student, is to recognize that kids need something different and make sure they get it. so that is how we activate the term within our daily work

around equity and opportunity for students. speaking of the adults in the system who have experienced trauma or are experiencing trauma, one of the things that we have been very intentional and purposeful about is making sure that our members are talking to their peers. we have people on staff and we have leaders that we identify and cultivate who are trained in delivering professional development, talking to educators, talking to parents, talking to students, about trauma. but one of the things we have town found to be most powerful is the folks they work with being mentors, being people that they can count on, people they can talk to, safely. has nothing to do with an evaluation. it has everything to do with i need to talk today, today. not next week, today. and making sure that each person has someone to talk with who has had some experience with helping people move through traumatic

events. and sometimes i listen to you and also have a phone number you can call because i can only go so far. i can hug you, i can talk to you, i can help you through, but i'm not trained in this, whatever fill in the blank the issue is. but i have resources that can help you and hopefully point you in the right direction. i think it all goes back to listening and making sure people have someone they can talk to that's not just the students, that's the adults as well. >> next question? >> may i add a little bit? first i want to say ditto about the adult trauma. you mentioned also about how it takes a village sometimes to reach the young. who is raising the village? in many communities they don't understand equity. we struggle as educators with the equity question. so will communities as well because with some, it's like you are taking from the haves to give to the have-nots and the teachers who don't want to serve the have-nots will turn to their

friends who are the haves and so you have to be -- you have to inoculate your community. you have to help them understand what equity is. when you go to the doctor, do you want what your neighbor got or do you want to get what you need? it's the same with children. we think of equity in terms of poverty. children have a lot of needs, lot of needs, beyond what we look at from economic resources. you have to help your community understand we aren't talking about taking away from some. we are talking about creating a standard we want to get every child to. i think when you can help them understand, it's about a standard that we owe every ch d child, then it's about resource allocation. maybe a little less problematic. >> thomas said he will remember that when he gets back. in red. >> yes. i like what you said about the school as a sanctuary and in

this age of just high stakes accountability, what are some ways that you have engaged the communities and really particularly the school board around social emotional learning as a need for that, because oftentimes when we talk about progre progress, school boards often think of that in terms of hard data. what does the data say in terms of test scores. can you share some ideas or some language or approaches that you might use. we have a new strategic plan in creating a framework for social emotional learning as part of that, and want to make sure that i'm engaging the board in terms of what that actually means in schools. >> thank you. i'm kind of old school. i don't talk about test scores and i have served in communities again, where every child failed a state test and served in schools where every kid passed a state test in kindergarten. i try to have a conversation about our own experiences in school and what we all hoped for. we talk about creating those

conditions and again, atmospheric condition within the schools, where the schools feel safe to the adults and to the students and to the parents who come into them. i grew up out in the south, in a very rural place, and we had our church clothes, our school clothes and our play clothes. there was a regard that came along with that. when communities were first being founded, typically the first public building they built collectively was the church. with the church, you had a certain expectation about behavior of the folks working in the church and how we even conducted ourselves in the church. we called the church a sanctuary. typically the second public building built in the community was the school. and they looked a lot alike. the church with the steeple, the one-room schoolhouse. and we had an expectation of behavior of those who worked in the school as well as expectation how we behaved toward those who worked in the

school. and the school became in a sense also a sanctuary. so talking about how they want the school to feel, how do we build an atmosphere, a circumstance of encouragement, how do we help the children feel welcome here. how do we help the staff feel welcome. how do we communicate as a community that we are supporting what you do there. so it's kind of helping articulate not only an expectation, but an understanding of what it takes, because expectations become manifest, including our own behavior at times. >> question? stand up. i see your hand. >> thank you. i have a question directed to dr. parker and frailey. i heard dr. hinojosa talk about leading with dignity. in this land of accountability, as superintendent i'm sure you had to make a decision to remove a principal. i thank you for making the comment about you're just not solely focused on test scores

but in reality, we are all held accountable. at what point in your experience as superintendent have you had to remove a principal and if so, has test scores been the indicator? what's been your criteria? >> well, in one day i removed the principal and assistant principal. it was all about atmospheric conditions. they were so caught up in being administrators, they weren't doing administrative work, they weren't doing the work of leadership. you have to articulate your expectations across the board so that when you come in with your concerns, no one's surprised. you have told them what you expect and with this certain principal, i called him in, said okay, here's what's going o it's not what i heard, it's what i'm observing, because i have seen the same thing in staff meetings as well. i'm going out to the campus and i'm an old coach in terms of coaching of people, but how many chances do you give someone to mess up your school climate?

how long do you let it go on before you finally address it? i'm not only talking to the principal, i'm talking to the community and staff about expectations. when they see you are doing nothing about it, everyone's behavior is at risk of going into the tank. so you call them in, you go out to visit, you have a conversation of encouragement but also a conversation of certainty that these are what i call i can't have this situations. if they're not going to respond appropriately, then you have to respond with the removal and again, you want them to maintain their dignity and that you will help them exit quietly if they so choose. if they choose not, then you have to do what you need to do. it's just not a threat but hey, these are expectations and give them a chance but if you don't, you're not the bad guy when someone has to go. >> so i agree with everything

that was said, and i will just add for me, one of the things that i've had happened in my experiences most often is if you make your expectations really clear and you have strong systems of, and i always attached it to support and accountability, at heart i'm a middle school teacher so i believe i'm the chief teaching officer for the school district, so for my central office and my school-based administrators, step one for me is always giving you as much support as possible to help you be successful in that role. my requirement is not that you are acutely competent from day one, but that you work toward getting there and you find and leverage the resources that we provide to help you get there. if we get to the point where we are having a conversation about being dismissed, most often if you have really communicated well along the way, been clear

about the expectations, built in systems of accountability that have matched that support, people will find ways to find places to be other than where you are, and my experience has been with strong accountability systems and support, a lot of those folks find their way out, and for the people who don't find their way out, then you've created the document that you need to help make the decisions that are critical for kids. when i get to that point, i never lose sleep because i know in my heart that i have given as much support as humanly possible to that person so that they can be successful and ultimately, if i'm removing them, they're not meeting the needs of kids and my first responsibility is to support the children. >> okay. last question? i see a hand back there. >> this may be just a good followup question, but statistically, what ways are you

attracting value add talent to enter into this profession? specifically, millenials and linksters. >> could you repeat the question? we didn't hear the last word. >> linksters. that's anyone born after 2002. >> these are experienced, seasoned people up here. they know what linksters are. could you repeat the whole question? >> i think i have it. to attract people to the profession, right? >> she's going to repeat it. >> alton frailey, you mentioned pillars and one of them were people. based on this question that was just asked, the followup was how do we attract value add people into this profession? how do we do that? how do we keep it attractive and

specifically for millenials and linksters? >> well, i'm looking at how to attract anybody to your school system, period, be it to work or to bring their children to you. as interim superintendent, inherent to the school system that has been losing children to the not suburbs but even more rural county schools, that has come to an abrupt halt, i'm told, based on the data. i have been there since march. people are attracted and i say this with no -- to quality. your credibility is important. in the past, we may have had one applicant, we have over 40 applicants. people want to work for someone who they feel they can learn from, who they feel will allow them to be at their best.

that's for any generation. allowing folks to work in an atmosphere where they can be at their best, they feel they can be at their best. for parents who bring those children back into our school system based on the recent transfer request, they believe that there's good leadership. they believe there's going to be a good organization overall. so your own personal credibility is critical. it is critical. coming back home after 35 years being gone, and running into folks who have been following you and are now working in the school system, and when there's an excitement and eagerness about being there, your own personal credibility is very important. your track record is very important. people say well, you were like this as a child. i like hearing that. i was smart then too, right? but we know you are fair, you are compassionate, you are supportive. all of the attributes you want to have in someone you work for,

you personify with what you do as well. >> please join me in thanking -- >> if i could just add to that. >> you can. >> i will say this. it's one of the other pillars of being an urban superintendent we did not get to speak about as much and that's advocacy. so part of the issue of attracting talent to education, there are larger concerns than just individual districts. there are concerns about compensation, there are concerns about safety for staff. there are a lot of these other concerns that are more connected to governance at the state and federal level than just individual school district decision making and an urban superintendent to be effective has to have the courage and the ability to go out and to advocate in those circles for what's needed for that school district as well as other urban school districts around the country, and i think that's again, one of the pillars of the

urban superintendents academy is that it's building in that voice and building in that expectation so that when you finish this academy and walk into whatever that role is, whether it's your current role or your new role, you understand as well how to be an advocate for children and an advocate for the adults that serve them. >> go ahead. >> -- the female superintendancy. what's your opinion on that, especially for women of color? >> i don't want to monopolize. first of all, i grew up in a family of six sisters so women have been in charge when i grew up. as we mature as a nation, and

get away from this macho everything, i think we are looking more at quality and competence, and women have always -- of minorities always had to be twice as good and to fight. i'm seeing a lot more female superintendents around the country. i'm seeing a lot more communities, especially in this current environment, understanding that it's more about competency than gender. and when you're walking in that room, you have to be prepared, you are finding more folks that have been denied being a lot better prepared. i'm very excited about what we're seeing. in fact, i'm going to be involved in searches and i'm very excited about having the opportunity to put in place folks who are very competent versus just who have a certain gender. i'm very optimistic about it. i think it's the right direction. i know there's nothing that needs to be done that a good woman can't do as good as a halfway man, right? >> that's the truth.

>> or great man. >> i'm excited about that, though. >> i wanted to ask if you would like to comment on that question. if black women are more superintendents. >> unfortunately, i don't have any data. i'm not prepared to say what it is now. but i get lots of female advocates -- not i, my firm, the firm i work with. we are a small firm. we don't do the big searches. we do small suburban searches in new york. there are a large number of applicants and there are a number of females. there are some areas, i don't know what your research showed you, but there are some barriers in terms of becoming a female superintendent. that's a whole other discussion. the barriers are not necessarily because the men are taking the jobs. other kinds of barriers come for

women. so i often think about the fact that it's interesting our teaching force is primarily female and i often think about that and whether -- of course, i'm at the university but i'm not in administration. i'm in another section of the school of education at nyu. but i think that it's just a matter of time. i just think it's timing and if it takes seven generations, for those of you who are black to kind of, it takes seven generations for people to move, it probably takes three or four generations for women to move. i think we're there and we're going to go there. >> i certainly want to agree. it's been at least 20 years that we have at least more than one person who is studying women in the superintendent position and i know his work is probably the

most recent in this area but it's very confounding to all of us, especially for african-american women right now, it's at 4%. women in general, if you take in all women, the percentage is low and it's always lower than males, the total number of males, whether they are black or people of color, women are still behind. and how we grow that, i'm not really quite sure. because as larussa said, there are barriers. i do know there was an article maybe five years ago that listed what some of those barriers are. even now, those barriers have not been removed. some of those have to do with age related. first of all, we don't get our first superintendancy until we are almost 50 years old. women who get it somewhere

between 35 and 40 are rare. at some point you may want to have children, if you have not been married, so those are some of the things that come into play. i know darion driver left because -- one of those reasons is she wants to get married and she wants to start a family. some of those things have come up that stop us from moving as quickly. men, as you know, usually leap into a principalship by the time they're 30, or before they're 30. a woman who gets a principalship is way beyond that. i do know that you had a panel that talked about the fact that men get hired and promoted based on the fact that they probably can do it, where women have to have experience doing it. so with all of those different kind of complications, can we get it moved out of the way for us, i'm not really sure, but i do hope to see it before i stop

working. >> the first women's conference was in 1980 in chicago. we have the trans script of it and women went through the barriers. they repeated it again 25 years later and the -- they were still -- >> still the same for us. that's correct. >> so i am not a superintendent. and not trying to be. >> you can be, though. >> not trying to be. but i did come through law school and anyone who has been through law school has gotten piles of rejection letters until you land where you want to land. one of the things, in my career i have been told no many times as well. one of the things that sticks with me, actually two things, but the first thing that sticks with me is one person told me, someone who at the time i considered a friend, told me that they were not going to hire me or recommend me for hiring because they knew i had just gotten married and presumed that i wanted a family soon.

i said so -- obviously it was not during the interview, it was after -- i said so why would you presume that. two, why would it matter. if i'm applying for a job, presume that i'm an adult, presume that i have decided this is what i want to do and don't put your ideas of what i should or should not be doing as part of the process. it has nothing to do with it, because you would not do the same for any other person walking in the door. you thought you were being a friend and i'm here to tell you weren't being a friend at that point, to me. maybe to somebody else, but not to me. the second thing that i have noticed is many times in my career, as i have done different things, i am so focused, rightfully so, on trying to do the job that i forget the fact that part of my being, part of why i wanted to do something is to make sure i'm not the only one there and i forget that i need to take a little bit of

time, hard though it may be, to carve out some time and make a path for someone else. bring them to the meeting. go tap them on the shoulder and say by the way, i see you're doing a great job and you may not be thinking about this path that is open to you, but i got to tell you, you would be great at it. let's figure out a way to make sure that you actually get there. so if you see people who are in the system, who you think would be great superintendents, have you actually taken the time to tell them by the way, you would be a great superintendent. let's figure out what your path might look like. it will look different than mine but what's your path to get there. if that's your goal. if it's not your goal, maybe you should add it to the list of things you're thinking about. i did not do that early in my career when i was working at a law firm and two, when i got on to the policy side, and someone pointed it out to me that i wasn't. why aren't you coming to networking events. i was like i don't like going, i don't like it.

i'm an introvert. i don't do that kind of stuff willingly and happily. they said the point of going to a networking event is to not necessarily network for yourself. it is to go to go find the people who need some help, who need a pat on the back, who need a kick in the ass, whatever it is, but need to find someone else that they can talk to so they can move down their path to get to where they want to go. i'm not suggesting that that's what the barrier is in your profession but i would just offer that there are some things, regardless of profession, and i can only speak as a woman of color because i am one, the things that i decided to do in my profession that i have been in that i believe have made a difference. people have come back to tell me thank you. i don't even remember talking to them, quite frankly. thank you so much for telling my i could do it and here's where i am now. i think anything is possible. you just hope it's not a -- you have to have a plan to get there. >> howard university urban

superintendents academy i hope will give you that kick. join me in thanking the panel for this wonderful discussion. [ applause ] >> i will give you some statistics based upon that last bit of conversation. when we first sat down to create this program, one bit of information we had on our hands was [ inaudible ].

[ indiscernible ] >> tonight, book tv is in prime time with a look at the work of fiction authors featured on our fiction edition of in depth. typical american, mona and the promised land, down and out in the magic kingdom, little brother and most recently, walk away. and walter mosley is the author of more than 40 books, including devil in a blue dress, fearless jones and most recently, down the river unto the sea.

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he has contributed a great deal to his community and the legal profession. besides being an outstanding judge on the d.c. circuit court of appeals. >> judge kavanaugh has a special obligation to make his views on this topic clear give the president's litmus test. that he would only appoint judges who would overturn roe.

on the obligation, judge kavanaugh spells spectacularly. >> are we watching the nomination and a thorough review i am confident that judge kavanaugh will be an excellent addition donations highest court. >> watched day one of the senate confirmation hearing for supreme court nominee, brett kavanaugh. live tuesday, september 4 on c-span3. watch anytime on c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. >> treasurer homeland security and state department officials testify now at a hearing about sanctions on russia and their effectiveness. the senate banking committee held this hearing earlier this week.