Leading in Tough Times

As our school district (like many others in our state and the nation) face some tough economic times, we need to take stock in what we are about. What is the purpose of our organization, and is it a worthy purpose?

As I see it, our purpose is now (and shall remain) to be that of providing the best educational opportunities for the students of our community that we can possibly provide.

Is that a worthy purpose? I certainly believe that it is because if we fail to provide the best learning experiences for our children then we have fallen short of equipping them with the tools to face the challenges that will confront them.

With increasing demands of accountability and responsibility and decreasing resources, our challenges are intensified; however, with these challenges comes the opportunity to make our system more effective and efficient at what we do. Remembering that our core purpose is educating children, we begin to examine all that we are doing and re-focus our resources on that core mission. This is not to say that we should that we should narrow our attention to just reading, writing, and arithematics, but that we focus on providing all of the skills that our students need to allow them to be successful as citizens and to compete in an increasing tough economic environment. That translates into stressing the "21st Century Skills" that we often espouse as part of our mission.

For us locally in R-32-J, this means that we need to invest in our own infrastructure even in tough times, so we can continue our mission of preparing of students for their future. Therefore as we look for operational efficiencies in our system, we should allocate the resources to strenthen and expand our infrastructure, so we can go about our work with even greater efficiency. Investing dollars to create a technology backbone that will enable our teachers and students to utilize current and emerging technologies is a proactive rather than reactive strategy that will allow our students to benefit now. Now is important because "now" is our only opportunity to reach and teach this group of students. They are a resource for our community and nation that we cannot afford to waste or leave underutilized.