Listening to our scholars, our teachers, administrators, parents, union members, neighborhood leaders, community residents, businesswomen and men, civic leaders, titans of industry and more, you can hear the same thing: the precursors to wholesale cultural transformation. The cultural norms surrounding this district must be transformed to provide educational achievement for all scholars. That transformation is coming in four key sectors: scholar engagement, community engagement, faculty & administration, and governance. When the conversations guiding these four areas are transformed, we will be a district and a community that consistently provides our scholars with all that they deserve. As our school district returns to workability, so too will our local and regional economy. The fates of our communities and our entire region are inextricably interwoven with the fate of the Kansas City Missouri School District. We can choose to restore both.

To understand the culture of an institution, you need to listen to the conversations that describe it. As we transform the conversations, the behaviors and actions of the people within the district will be transformed as well. Over the next four posts, I'll share the conversations that can be heard surrounding scholar engagement, community engagement (our families, neighborhoods and civic leaders), administration & faculty (our curricular and instructional leaders) and governance (our elected board of education leaders that serve as the connectors between community engagement and faculty & administration). In the final post, I'll begin to discuss what's next for us as a community if our choice is to create a school district that works for all scholars.