Eyes Wide Shut

Readers of this blog have already begun to send condolences. Arguably, condolences are premature. If you have not yet heard, the Superintendent's Budget presented to the Wake County Public School System Board of Education this Wednesday did not include Triangle Leadership Academy.

TLA's lack of inclusion in the budget was not unexpected. As you know, the financial downturn we continue to experience made service in other member districts this year possible only by drawing down on carry-forward funds accrued over the last five years. The drain was unplugged but the spigot was off. On the other hand, we cannot now pretend not to know what we know. So what do we know?

The record shows that we have not sat idly by waiting for Superman. Instead, we have worked on multiple fronts to envision future scenarios, including alternative revenue streams and organizational identities for TLA. We have drawn on the wisdom and experience of consultants, stakeholders and customers far and wide. You have likely been part of those conversations and for that, we are grateful.

Our journey from a well-funded, award-winning school leadership development consultancy to one fighting for its existence is worth noting. In the last six years, TLA and its consultants developed and delivered a portfolio of products and services that represents over 1200 hours of face-to-face learning. Its portfolio includes the complete VitalSmarts suite (the only organization in the Triangle to be so designated), Leading and Learning Through Teams, Leading Change, Creating High-Performance Learning Cultures, Using Data to Focus Improvement, and and many, many others.

Our courses say nothing about TLA's induction, mentoring, and coaching programs nor its partnerships with two regional universities in designing and delivering graduate programs in School Administration and Educational Leadership. The record shows that these home-grown leaders tend to stick around in far greater proportions than those not matriculating through our cohort programs at a time when more than half of school leaders are within five years of retirement. Demonstrating our efforts in succession planning, the other bookend of our scope of work, TLA has created and coordinated programs and experiences for leaders at every level, from classroom to boardroom.

Perhaps our most surprising accomplishment, however, was the adoption by the North Carolina State Board of Education of TLA's functional leadership development model to serve as the new standards for school executives. I recently asked a group of 40 of the state's best principals if they knew the source of the standards and the evaluation process they supported. No one had a clue. That's okay until it's not okay. Maybe now is a good time to remind folk of the work of the Academy.

Don't get me wrong. Change is good. Tough decisions must be made. Adaptation is the strategy of survival. But in coming blogs, I want to reflect on other TLA accomplishments, not because we are prideful people but because we know that what we have done has served many leaders well. We know this because of our evaluation of each and every event we have sponsored and frequent follow-on surveys and interviews. In fact, Wake Education Partnership has earned a Z. Smith Reynold's grant to explore more deeply how and to what extend TLA-trained leaders have impacted student learning and educator retention.

Part of what the Academy teaches is that effective leaders balance confidence with humility. We are unabashedly going to work on the former without forgetting the latter. We want to create a new and improved model and we thank you in advance for your ideas and even your objections. At the same time, it is important to understand the trade-offs we may be poised to make and to keep as much of the baby with the bathwater as we can. In other words, let's not pretend not to know what we know, eyes wide shut.