Whitnall School Board Strategizes to Improve Academic Achievement

The Whitnall School Board continued its discussion about how to better serve students through a reorganization of its administrative structure at its meeting Monday.

Superintendent Dr. Lowell Holtz presented a preliminary organizational chart which adds an administrative team to specifically address and improve academic achievement, which is a priority for the district, Holtz said.

Members of the board, who must vote to approve the organizational chart in order to implement the structure, had questions and concerns about the suggested hierarchy.

“A level of trust is not nurtured, typically, in a top-down model, but trust can thrive in a team approach,” Holtz said.

The team would be led by the executive director of academic achievement, a position that would provide expertise in curriculum development, direction for the team, all necessary certifications and a focus on career and technology education, Holtz said.

Two current school principals would act as directors of elementary education and secondary education would focus on curriculum for K-4 through sixth grade and seventh through 12th grade, respectively, and collaborate to ensure the curriculum is cohesive and sequential through all grades.

A new position of learning coordinator would help facilitate communication throughout the team and assist in implementation, which would be filled internally from about a half dozen interested candidates, Holtz said.

“We really feel like that learning coordinator would help in the follow through,” Holtz said.

The team would also include the educational technology director, which would be a new hire to replace an outgoing technology manager.

Previously, technology was focused on helping teachers and administrators run the district's schools effectively. Moving forward, the educational technology would also need to bring technology into the educational experience, board president Bill Osterndorf said.

Board members expressed concern about the executive director of academic achievement being listed as a 0.3 full-time employee on the draft of the organizational chart.

“In the consulting work that I do, I routinely see situations where someone has two jobs, two bosses, two sets of responsibilities,” Osterndorf said. “Frequently that is a very difficult way to get anything accomplished especially for the person or group that has the smaller amount of time.”

Holtz said the percentage of time and workload for the executive director could be modified.

Osterndorf said he did not support having a separate director of elementary education and a a director of secondary education to be filled by two principals, because the district is not very large and only has four total principals. In that respect, it would be better to have everyone involved in the discussion, Osterndorf said, rather than half the total principals reporting on curriculum development to the other half.

“I think there’s huge value in having things done as a team,” Osterndorf said. “Whether this is the specific team structure we should use, obviously I don’t agree.”

Holtz estimated once the board approves an organizational chart, it would take about four weeks to fill the position of executive director of academic achievement, and about two weeks to fill the positions of learning coordinator, director of elementary and secondary education and educational technology director.