CASBO School Business Winter 2022

Going on the

offensive

Culture

California Association of School Business Officials Winter 2022

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Number four Winter 2022

Tatia Davenport

BOTTOM LINE One voice, one CASBO Diane Deshler

GUEST FEATURE Does your organization’s culture reinforce its strategy and purpose?

Hubert Joly

IN FOCUS MEMBER Calli Coleman

IN FOCUS ASSOCIATE MEMBER Matt Phillips

Muhammad Khalifa, Ph.D. Professor, author shares how culturally responsive leadership can liberate all learners

Julie Phillips Randles

Volume 87 24 4 0

Going on the cyber offensive How districts should prepare for, respond to cybersecurity threats

Jennifer Snelling 40 FEATURE Culture correction

ABOUT CASBO

The California Association of School Business Officials is the premier resource for professional development in all aspects of school business. Founded in 1928, CASBO serves more than 24,000 members by providing certifications and training, promoting business best practices, and creating opportunities for professional collaboration.

CASBO members represent every facet of school business management and operations. The association offers public school leaders an entire career’s worth of growth opportunities.

CASBO MISSION

As the recognized authority in California school business, CASBO is a member-driven association that promotes ethical values; develops exceptional leaders; advocates for, and supports the needs of, members; and sets the standard for excellence through top-quality professional development and mentorship, meaningful collaboration and communication, and unparalleled innovation.

CASBO BY DESIGN

For the past 16 years, CASBO has been dedicated to the organizational planning discipline as a method for guiding the association into a successful future. Last year, the association completed its sixth such plan, CASBO by Design 2.0, a living, breathing document that guided the association in its long-term planning process, which is grassroots in nature, invigorating in procedure and motivating in outcome. Work on our next strategic plan began in 2021.

CASBO has long been committed to organizational planning because the approach has consistently helped the association envision its future and determine the clear steps to get there. The road map that strategic planning provides has allowed CASBO to remain focused on its unique mission, goals and objectives and to respond effectively to a continually changing environment.

For more information on CASBO by Design, visit casbo.org > CASBO + You > About > CASBO By Design.

Stay connected casbo.org

Publisher

Tatia Davenport

Editor in chief

Joyce Tribbey

Features editor

Julie Phillips Randles

Contributors

Jennifer Fink Nicole Krueger Jennifer Snelling Art Director Sharon Adlis Ad Production Tracy Brown

Advertising sales manager Cici Trino Association Outsource Services, Inc. P.O. Box 39 Fair Oaks, CA 95628 (916) 961-9999

CASBO OFFICERS

President Diane Deshler Lafayette School District

President-elect Tina Douglas San Dieguito Union High School District

Vice president Eric Dill Carlsbad Unified School District

Immediate past president

Richard De Nava San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools

California School Business (ISSN# 1935-0716) is published quarterly by the California Association of School Business Officials, 1001 K Street, 5th Floor, Sacramento, CA 95814, (916) 447-3783. Periodicals postage paid at Sacramento and at additional mailing office. Submit address changes online by logging into your account profile at casbo.org.

Articles published in California School Business are edited for style, content and space prior to publication. Views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent CASBO policies or positions. Endorsement by CASBO of products and services advertised in California School Business is not implied or expressed.

Copyright 2022 CASBO. All rights reserved. The contents of the publication may not be reproduced by any means, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Published December 2022

Aftershocks abound

Another discussion on culture? Yes! As leaders, we’ve heard so much about and have a vast spectrum of perspectives on the topic of culture – but how many of us feel we really have our arms around it?

After all, the pandemic created culture shock for all of us. And we haven’t had a chance to articulate where, how and to what extent those changes have affected the culture of our organizations.

The way I see it, we’re now in the “aftershocks” – a smallish earthquake that follows a larger earthquake in the same area of the main shock, and is caused as the displaced foundation adjusts to the effects of the main shock.

Large earthquakes can have hundreds to thousands of instrumentally detectable aftershocks that steadily decrease in magnitude and frequency according to consistent pattern. In some earthquakes, the main rupture happens in two or more steps, resulting in mul tiple main shocks.

Starting to sound familiar? I thought so.

By now, we’ve arrived at the point of trying to understand the effects of culture shock and aftershocks on our various audiences. For example, when it comes to students, we know that the dashboards we have available to us are out of commission – aftershock No. 1. Related to employees, 77% of global workers reporting burnout – aftershock No. 2. And, of course, there’s our parents who are still recovering from two years of being more involved in their students’ day-to-day learning than ever before – aftershock No. 3. But there is good news. We can address these aftershocks, no matter how deep and rumbly, with a few simple steps:

1. Determine how we want to be known by our customers. At CASBO, we want to be known as the association that was there for you. That helped make you better at what you do. That responded when you needed us. That gave you a sense of community as staff, leaders, friends and peers just by being a member.

2. Specify what we’re promising our customers. CASBO’s mission is to be the foremost authority on school business. No matter what’s happening to the ground beneath us, that will remain our focus.

3. Translate that to every corner of the organization. This includes staffing, processes, structure, promotions, rewards, leadership development. How can we think, feel and act consistently in what provide our customers across the organization?

Each of you is an integral part of the culture in your districts. And just like at CASBO, it’s incumbent upon you to address friction, processes, policies, budget priorities and more that aren’t congruent with delivering what you promised to your customers.

When we do this, we’ll always be valued by our customers – no matter what aftershocks we face! z z z

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IF THERE’S ONE THING the last two years have taught school leaders, it’s the value of embracing new pathways as they open before us. It’s a lesson I first learned from my daughters, and something that now influences my role as CASBO president and my daily work.

When my oldest daughter, Josie, started school, my expectations for her were based on my school experience. I assumed she would be the type of learner I was, and would follow my K-12 path academically and socially. This thinking was unrealistic.

I should have recognized that each of our children, and all students, are unique and have their own paths to follow in school and into their futures. And it’s the same for each of us as adult learners and school business leaders. There are path ways before us to embrace and celebrate!

For me, that’s where CASBO comes in. It’s a place where I belong, where I can (safely) be myself and feel comfort able around other professionals and col leagues. I can grow and strengthen my leadership and technical skills and, at the same time, be true to myself and the values that guide me.

This experience has helped me be more inclusive of others, and it taught me to listen more intently – which in turn

One voice, one CASBO

creates a sense of belonging for others as well. It has also guided me when it comes to creating cohesive teams and building strong professional relationships. This sense of belonging to a greater whole and being able to share successes and frustra tions allows me to come to work with a smile on my face, and make room for joy in the workplace.

I’ve seen this happen firsthand at CASBO, too. At our recent Professional Council Summit, volunteer leaders who are experts in their respective fields came together to collaborate and grow. We were able to celebrate our unique ness and create a synergy that strength ened our individual voices and the voice of CASBO in districts, county offices –and even statewide.

It’s the same for CASBO as a whole. The power of one CASBO member grows into the power of the CASBO’s voice as an organization. And it all emanates from the many ways our cultures, characters and experiences shape us.

It’s about being comfortable with who you are and what you have to offer, while acknowledging that there’s still more to learn, more challenges to face –and accepting that you have a safe place to ask for help or admit you have more to learn.

In other words, it’s about celebrating the inclusion and belonging we’re all striving for in our districts. By definition, inclusion comes from the efforts and behaviors an organization values and fosters. Belonging is what everyone in an organization feels as the result of inclu sionary efforts.

I hope you’ll join me in elevating CASBO’s voice to benefit our colleagues statewide and the students we serve. z z z

Diane Deshler President

Does your organization’s culture reinforce its strategy and purpose?

By Hubert Joly

Early in my career, strategy was seen as the key to business success. More recently, purpose has become an essential element of doing business – the North Star and inspiration meant to orient all company activities. But there is often a large gap between a company’s purpose and what its employees experience, and a simple communication campaign about the great new company purpose won’t do much good on its own.

So, what’s missing from this picture? We’ve all known for a long time that besides purpose and strategy, something else is critical: culture, or the essential elements of how an organization and its employees behave, as well as its governing beliefs and principles. And yet, culture often receives less attention than purpose and strategy.

As a business leader and a student of other business leaders, I now believe that a tight connection between pur pose, strategy and culture is critically

important, because culture plays such a powerful role in making purpose and strategy come to life. I also believe that, as leaders, we can shape our companies’ cultures faster and more profoundly than generally thought.

The purpose-strategyculture triangle

What do successful companies like Microsoft, Netflix, Best Buy and many others have in common? Culture has

been the fertile soil that has enabled both their purpose and their strategy to come to life and drive extraordinary performance at scale. In my experience, magic happens when purpose, strategy and culture are tightly connected and aligned, reinforcing each other. Why? Because employees must be willing and able to unleash their individual and collective human genius to support the company purpose and strategy, and this can only happen in a culture perfectly aligned with both.

When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, for example, the company was known for its aggressive, combative and competitive culture. It was losing ground, having missed key waves of technology innovation. Since then, the company has gone through an amazing resurgence. Yes, Nadella and his team did update the company’s purpose from putting a computer on every desk to “empower[ing] every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” But I believe that the major driver of the company’s amazing resurgence has been the reinvention of its culture in support of that purpose, which implied addressing unmet, unarticulated needs. Central to that strategy was moving from a dominant “know-it-all” culture seeped in a world domination and zero-sumgame mentality to empathy and a growth mindset critical to a more open culture.

Conversely, poisonous cultures have been responsible for the downfall of companies or their leaders. Hubris, for example, is directly related to energy giant Enron’s web of fraud and financial misconduct, which led to the company’s collapse in 2001. And in 2017, Uber’s cofounder and CEO Travis Kalanick was forced to step down after it emerged that the ridesharing company, famous for its “bro culture,” was rife with bullying, sexual harassment and discrimination.

I like to think of purpose, strategy and culture as a triangle: Each angle con nects with and shapes the other two, and if one changes, the other two must evolve and adjust to maintain balance and shape, or the triangle breaks and falls apart.

Which angle you focus on first or at any given time depends entirely on circumstances. As I was once told, try ing to do everything well at all times is a recipe for “heroic mediocrity.” When I became CEO of Best Buy in 2012, for

example, the company was in serious trouble. The priority was to act fast, fix operations (meaning execute the existing strategy better) and create the energy, hope and all-hands-on-deck spirit that would enable us to save the company together. This was not the time to pon der over an elegantly worded company purpose or craft a new long-term strat egy. The times called for straightforward operational improvements, which helped reignite the company’s culture around customers and frontline employees. A few years later, once we had stabilized the business, we felt ready to move from survival to growth. This is when we de fined the company’s purpose to enrich lives through technology, adjusted the strategy accordingly, and began reshap ing the company’s culture to make this purpose come to life.

A singular, simple, powerful idea

I find that articulating a succinct formulation that encapsulates culture around a singular, simple and powerful idea that everyone can connect to makes it easier to shape and spread the culture. Simplicity and emotional connection are powerful because they fuel energy, focus and action.

At Best Buy, we asked people who knew the company best to think about who we were, as a collective, when at our very best. We also asked: If the company were a person, how would it behave?

“As an inspiring friend” was the answer. It came from within organically and aligned beautifully with our purpose of “enriching lives through technology by addressing key human needs.” It also captured how we wanted to behave and who we wanted to be in every aspect of the business. Think of a friend: Someone who understands you and cares about

you and what you need. Someone who listens. Someone who connects with you on a very human level. Someone who does their very best to help you when you need it. An inspiring friend is someone who possesses the human qualities you most admire and aspire to. This simple yet powerful concept helped transform how every Best Buy employee related to not only each other, but also to custom ers, suppliers, shareholders and local communities. It guided our efforts to reshape our business, our management systems and the environment in which all of us operated. In short, it crystalized our culture for every employee and made it easier for our purpose and strategy to come to life.

The leader as role model

“The way you change behaviors is by changing behavior,” Russ Fradin, the lead independent director at Best Buy when I was chairman and CEO, once told me. Simple, isn’t it? Jokes aside, he meant that leaders clearly signal change and shape the culture through their own behavior and actions. Role modeling starts at the top. When I became CEO, for example, I spent my first few days working at one of our stores in a small town near Minneapolis. I wore the same blue polo shirt as our sales associates, with a badge that read “CEO in training.” I observed, asked questions in the store and over a pizza dinner with local staff, and listened. By doing so, I signaled the importance of listening to frontliners to help fix what was broken. Besides setting the cultural tone, I also learned a lot about what worked and what didn’t, which critically informed what we needed to do to turn the business around, including matching Amazon prices, investing in the online shopping experience and reallocating

the space in the stores to accommodate faster-growing product categories.

Satya Nadella also illustrates the power of role modeling. After advising women during a conference not to ask for a pay raise but instead have faith in the system to close the gender pay equity gap resulted in backlash, he sent an email to all Microsoft staff. “I answered that ques tion completely wrong,” he wrote, before saying women ought to get equal pay for equal work and should just ask for a raise if they think they deserve one. He further highlighted that this was a topic he had much to learn about, thereby beginning to shape the culture of empathy and the growth mindset that was instrumental to Microsoft’s resurgence. A few years later, Microsoft reached pay parity between women and men.

To be authentic, role modeling must reflect one’s own values. Leaders should therefore not be shy about connecting their own personal purpose and beliefs with the company purpose and culture they’re shaping. Leadership is less about being the smartest person in the room, and more about creating the environment that will enable the purpose and the strat egy to come to life.

How to shape an effective culture

Changing a company’s culture requires more than role modeling, of course. In my experience, there are three types of levers companies can use to profoundly shape an effective culture: business levers, management levers and “human magic” levers.

Business levers

“Operational progress creates strategic degrees of freedom,” including around organic growth, partnership or M&A

activities, one board member told me when I was CEO of Carlson Companies. In other words, improving operations influences strategic choices. He was right of course, and he could have added that changes in business operation shape a company culture, too.

When we focused on fixing customer pain points during the Best Buy turn around, we emphasized the importance of acting from the outside in and from the bottom up. That made it clear that the future of the company depended on listening to customers and making their lives better. Similarly, Best Buy’s suc cessful partnerships with suppliers like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony and even Amazon to create branded mini stores within our Best Buy outlets in troduced a more expansive perspective than a traditional zero-sum-game stance. And acquiring technology companies that offered health services helped shift employees’ view of Best Buy from an electronics retailer to a company enrich ing customers’ lives through technology.

Management levers

Key management processes directly impact culture as well. What kind of people do you appoint to positions of power? What kind of people does your company recruit? Does performance trump bad behavior? How are decisions made and by whom? How does your company measure and reward success? What are key business rhythms? How are meetings conducted? What kind of controls and compliance are in place? All these structures, processes and rules can shape culture.

At Netflix, for example, there is only one policy for travel, entertainment, gifts and other expenses: “Act in Netflix’s best interest.” That’s it. Also, there are no companywide rules on office hours

or the number of vacation days employ ees can take. These reflect the culture of “freedom with responsibility” that CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings credits for the company’s radical reinvention into a streaming and creative giant that seeks to entertain the world. But this “no rules rules” approach goes hand in hand with other management levers that shape culture, such as seeking to recruit only “stunning colleagues” and rewarding adequate performance with a generous severance package; providing a lot of context to facilitate decentralized decision-making (for example, by sharing information openly and broadly); and of fering frequent, honest and constructive feedback.

Over my career, I’ve learned to start monthly performance management meetings by talking about people and organizational issues, then the business and finally financials. This may seem like a small change, but it reinforced a culture that put employees at the center.

Human magic levers

These are the essential and interconnected ingredients that, together, create an environment in which people are eager and able to fully give their energy and talent to serve the company purpose.

During my time at Best Buy and through research I conducted when writ ing The Heart of Business, I’ve learned about the power of six ingredients: mean ing, human connections, autonomy, psy chological safety, mastery and a growth mindset. How do you enable every em ployee to connect what drives them with their work? How do you create an envi ronment where employees experience genuine human connections? How do you give employees enough autonomy to allow them to be their best? How do you ensure employees feel safe to be who they

Does your organization’s culture reinforce its strategy and purpose?

are and express what they think and feel? How do you enable learning and growth?

Articulating the company’s culture as a singular, simple and yet powerful idea makes it easier to answer all these questions and use all three levers with that in mind. This is how the idea of be ing an inspiring friend shaped so many of our decisions and actions at Best Buy, which all converged toward building a very human culture that supported the company purpose and strategy. For example, Best Buy decided to eliminate scripts for sales associates and instead encouraged them to use their ears, their eyes and their hearts when interacting with customers.

For a long time, I focused on strategy far more than purpose and culture. This

was a mistake. In a world that’s now par ticularly volatile, uncertain and complex, crafting and pursuing a top-down and linear strategy is rather pointless. Who could have predicted the COVID pan demic? Or put together a detailed strat egy that could survive the consequences of the war in Ukraine? What teams need is a guiding frame to be effective and en ergized when the unexpected invariably happens. In a recent conversation I had with business leaders struggling with the challenging state of the environment, we concluded that being guided by our purpose and some key principles – a way to describe culture – and then doing our best was going to work better than hoping we had a clairvoyant strategy we could predictably execute. z z z

A version of this article appeared in the June 10, 2022, issue of Harvard Business Review. Reprinted with permission.

© 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp.

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Calli Coleman

She’s an expert at learning on the fly

By Nicole Krueger

After her 14th tax season in public accounting, Calli Coleman felt burned out. She wanted to do something different.

When she accepted a job with the Shasta County Office of Education three years ago, she got a bit more than she’d bargained for.

Her first day on the job, she learned that instead of working for the general business department, she’d be doing accounting and data management for the county’s Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA), which distributes funding to ensure all students in the county get equitable service for special education.

“I didn’t know what SELPA meant. I had to get a crash course from my predecessor,” she says. “I found out my job also consisted of data management, and I didn’t know what that meant either.”

On top of all that, she began work just as the California Department of Education was transitioning to a new data management software platform and hiring an influx of new data managers. While still learning how to do her own job, Coleman suddenly found herself fielding questions from people in 30 different districts.

“I was pretty new at it too, and I was answering the same question 30 times,” she says. “Then the pandemic started, and some

people were working from home, some alone in their offices with masks on and their doors closed. Everyone was in their own separate bubble. We have this amazing network of 70 data people across the county, and none were talking to each other, but they were all calling me with the same questions.”

Her solution was to start running a monthly Zoom meeting where special educa tion data managers could share information and get their questions answered – once again stepping out of her depth and venturing into entirely new territory.

“I was doing it by the seat of my pants,” she admits. Undaunted, she took an online course to become a Google Certified Educator and carried on.

Coleman credits her ability to learn on the fly to a concept she discovered while studying business at Simpson University: continuous improvement. In manufacturing, managers constantly look for ways to remove bottlenecks and make their operations as ef ficient as possible.

“I really grabbed onto that concept. I’ve always tried to make sure there’s some kind of improvement happening in my life,” says Coleman, who recently earned an MBA from Trevecca Nazarene University and applied for CBO Certification. She adds that much of her

motivation comes from her two teenage sons. “I really want to show them that my hard work pays off and that a good work ethic is really valuable.”

A former munitions systems journeyman in the U.S. Air Force, Coleman is no stranger to tackling new challenges. During her time in the military, she spent three years in Okina wa, Japan, and was deployed in Saudi Arabia after 9/11 – an experience she describes as both terrifying and enlightening.

Today, in addition to her monthly SELPA data manager meetings, Coleman runs a statewide virtual roundtable for special education accountants through CASBO, and recently started a similar roundtable for special education data managers throughout the state.

With only 130 SELPAs in the state, “it’s really hard to find people who know what you do and can answer your questions,” says the CASBO Special Education Professional Council member.

“It’s an opportunity for all these really amazing, smart, experienced people to share their knowledge at a state level, while also providing this sense of camaraderie so they’re not feeling hopeless, alone and overwhelmed.” z z z

Photography by Marian Morgan-Hunt

Matt Phillips

For him, teaching about finance begins with learning

By Nicole Krueger

California schools are getting a boon this year: an historic surge of one-time state fund ing to help students impacted by COVID-19. It’s a blessing for districts that have struggled to meet the financial demands of a pandemic environment – but it also brings its own challenges.

“Because the money is going to run out at some point, the challenge is using the funds judiciously and prudently so schools don’t find themselves with an ongoing commitment they can’t pay for,” says Matt Phillips, who helps districts navigate the red tape and fiscal pitfalls around these one-time dollars.

“I jokingly say we’re in a ‘plandemic.’ Districts have to keep coming up with overlapping plans, and each one getting is attempting to solve the same problem, which is that students have fallen farther and farther behind.”

As the director of management consulting services for School Services of California, a CASBO Strategic Alliance Partner that provides financial and business consulting to school districts, charter schools and county offices of education throughout the state, Phillips draws upon nearly 20 years of experience in school finance to distill complex legal information down to

the operational level to help school business leaders understand in practical terms what it means for them.

But that’s just part of his job. He also spends a significant amount of his time help ing districts and their employees negotiate salaries, benefits, class sizes and other work ing conditions.

“I take a look at the finances of the district to see if things are on track or not, and to provide comparative information to help the two parties see eye to eye and agree that the facts are facts,” he says. “It’s hard to come to a settlement when you can’t agree on the facts.”

Phillips, a father of two and CASBO associate member who has completed the CBO Certification Program, would have become a teacher if he hadn’t found his way into the world of finance. Instead, he got a business degree from the California State University, Chico, and began his career auditing school districts for a small Sac ramento firm. He then spent time working within a school district before transitioning to School Services.

“I loved my work in the school district, seeing the direct impact of implementing programs and how they benefit the kids,” he says. Although he no longer sees the direct

impact of his efforts within a single district, he finds value and happiness in knowing his work indirectly affects children across the state.

“I love the travel aspect of it – getting out there, rolling my sleeves up and working with folks in their environment where they’re most comfortable,” he says, adding that he enjoys spending time in new places and acclimating to the local culture.

“Because I talk to a lot of different people from a lot of walks of life, I try to spend more time listening than talking. Wherever I go, I have to understand what the challenges are in that area. Not all areas are created equal, and not all have the same challenges.

“Anywhere I go, I’m learning as much as I’m teaching.” z z z

Photography by Hope Harris

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By Julie Phillips Randles

lives, I did not know about the historical practices and policies that schools per petuated, where curriculum, pedagogy, programs and activities were not created with them in mind,” he told industry journalists in 2020. So Khalifa began studying educators who were breaking the mold, and found a mentor right in his own backyard.

rural initiatives at The Ohio State Uni versity to help administrators and staff accept students for who they are, and to encourage teachers to make lessons relevant (hip-hop in the room? Go for it!)

And Khalifa, a Black man from a socially conscious family, found himself agreeing with these deficit views.

“Although I knew something about the challenges my students faced in their

Joe Dulin, a Black principal who led a 400-student urban alternative high school in Ann Arbor, allowed the young teacher to study his approach. That research put Khalifa in meetings with communities, and made him privy to intimate conver sations with family, candid rap sessions and student conversations.

Today, Khalifa uses his position as a professor of educational administration and the executive director of urban and

He has published four books and more than 50 other publications in some of the most highly rated journals in education. His most recent book, Culturally Respon sive School Leadership, is a top seller and is being used in more than 100 leadership training programs worldwide. And he is currently writing a book on culturally responsive instructional leadership.

He is also the president of the CRSL Institute (Culturally Responsive School Leadership) in St. Paul, Minnesota, which helps administrators conduct researchbased audits of their districts to root out and eliminate systemic disparities.

Muhammad Khalifa, Ph.D.

Muhammad Khalifa, Ph.D., didn’t launch his career as an executive leader in a wellappointed corner office. Khalifa began as a classroom teacher, standing in front of rows of Black and Brown students in Detroit. He’d spend breaks in the teachers’ lounge, where his colleagues were happy to use the water cooler to pass along advice about the students they shared: Jerome needed an attitude adjustment. Laquisha’s parents clearly didn’t care about her. Manuel needed to apply himself and stop expecting teachers to assign passing grades just for showing up in the seat.

Khalifa, Ph.D.

Acceptance, servant leadership, advocacy, overlapping, nurture – all are daily words in Khalifa’s life.

“School leaders must be students of the histories of the communities they serve, including the traditional barriers to education that communities have faced. School leaders must also understand the historical context of the institutions they represent to these communities. But they shouldn’t stop there; they must, then, be able to translate this knowledge into effective leadership practices in their schools and districts,” he says of the institute.

The result is schools that liberate students.

CASBO sat down with Khalifa to get his insights on culturally responsive leadership and how schools can do better in this area.

What’s one thing you changed your mind about recently?

In this post-COVID space, I have changed the way I think about how educators should engage the communities they serve. I have for years advocated that educators and educational leaders need to spend time outside of their own

Muhammad

If leaders only focus on schoolproduced data, they will always arrive at the same conclusions.

organizations and in the communities where families live. This allows them to more deeply understand, to grow trust and to more poignantly adjust the organization to meet diverse needs. However, recently, given the constraints of COVID, I was able to see the many unique ways educators used to engage parents and students that did not always include physical visits. So while physical visits are still valuable and necessary, the current times call for us to be more flexible in how we engage community spaces.

What’s your go-to mantra in hard times?

What is meant to hit us, will not miss. And what was meant to miss us, will cause no harm.

As a former educator and administrator, what historical practices and policies did you see schools perpetuate related to curriculum, pedagogy and activities that harmed marginalized students? The erasure of marginalized students from the curriculum and pedagogy has been very harmful to marginalized students. This happens in a number of ways.

One is leaving them missing from the written curriculum itself. Another is having instructional practices that are not inclusive and that are far more beneficial to middle-class, white, suburban students. And third, the climate of the classroom context is often exclusionary and hostile toward marginalized students.

What unique leadership skills are present in culturally responsive leaders?

Culturally responsive leaders must lead institutions in ways that affirm the learning, cultural assets, relationships and other educational needs of Indigenous, Black, Brown, ELL and any other marginalized students.

Such leaders must learn how to engage communities in non-colonizing ways, and must allow community dis courses and concerns to take precedence in the relationship (not only schoolrelated issues). When determining the needs of marginalized students, they must use data, with special emphasis placed on community-based data (student voices, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) data, equity audit data, etc.). If leaders only focus on school-produced data, they will always arrive at the same conclusions.

Culturally responsive leaders must also find ways for these community voices and experiences to shift all leader ship and system-change processes within the organization. So while it is important to discuss and tackle equity-oriented data head-on, it is also necessary for hir ing, recruitment, retention, goal-setting, professional development, coaching and mentoring, curriculum development, professional learning community work, community-engagement and other leadership work to all have culturally responsive measures with measure ment/evaluation/accountabilities em bedded throughout these tools and processes.

What specific actions create congruence in moving from knowledge to action?

I encourage districts to have culturally responsive leadership training in conjunction with equity audits. Equity audits allow organizations to know their strengths, weaknesses/gaps, how they might prioritize equity reforms and where they should start.

Since so much money is spent on making sure teachers are culturally re sponsive, leaders are often left behind. So even with a powerful tool like an equity audit, which literally can be a road map for how to chart the equity journey, the

Since so much money is spent on making sure teachers are culturally responsive, leaders are often left behind.

Khalifa, Ph.D.

leaders may not have the capacity to carry it out!

That’s why we recommend both. And we also recommend Community Participatory Action Research (CPAR) and YPAR projects, so that the research can be continuous, even beyond the eq uity audit.

One service you provide is performing school district equity audits. What are you looking for during these audits? Our equity audits are unique in a number of ways when compared to other models the industry.

For one, we seek and include all stakeholder voices, not only that of the board, executive leadership, principals and teachers, but also of families and students. Secondly, our surveys and in terviews are all grounded in scholarship. This allows us to take up the personal journeys and interpersonal relation ships, but also to push far beyond that, into understandings about how reforms can take place at the system level. From our research, we already know the most common causes of inequities in schools and districts, so our researchoriented tool removes the guesswork and speaks directly to the needs of districts.

And of course, all of our equity audit reports come with a separate recommen dations report, and can even be followed up by Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL) coaching.

You’ve said that school leaders can be influential in their communities when it comes to advocating for cultural responsiveness. What steps can they take? What does that look like?

The biggest encouragement is for leaders to learn from communities, and only after that, be advocates for community-based causes. This is necessary because trust and rapport is a necessary component to CRSL schooling.

Because of the harsh histories around schools, it’s up to leaders to actually take the onus, and to lead and establish a relationship with the communities they serve (Yes, ALL OF THEM). If you can not establish this, you will never be seen as credible.

I have seen this happen most directly when leaders show up in their com munities’ time of need. To advocate for community-based causes may seem daunting or unreasonable for many lead ers, but that is how education has always

Muhammad

Our equity audits are unique in a number of ways when compared to other models the industry.

(historically) happened in many margin alized communities.

You’ve mentioned equity teams as key to supporting cultural responsiveness. How should these teams be structured and what is their role?

Equity teams should be given power to improve schools and should not merely be there to allow administrators to say that they have one. Equity teams should be well-versed in the current equity data, as well as the reforms that the district or school have chosen.

Students and parents should be influential on the teams, but they should never be burdened with the work. Prin cipals must be modelers of the work, and equity teams should be a safe place for them to lean into the work.

Equity team members should rotate on and off, so that capacity grows hori zontally in the organization. And equity teams must seek out nontraditional forms of data, and nontraditional reforms, so that they can enrich the equity journeys of the school in new and unique ways.

Where can our readers learn more about culturally responsive leadership?

There is loads of free information on our website (crsli.org), and the introduction to my widely read text on culturally responsive leadership is available for free on the Harvard Education Press website hepg.org/hep-home/books/culturallyresponsive-school-leadership z z z

Julie Phillips Randles is a freelance writer based in Roseville, California.

The biggest encouragement is for leaders to learn from communities, and only after that, be advocates for communitybased causes.

Nearly 189 million school days are lost

every year due to the common cold.

Going on the cyber offensive

By Jennifer Snelling

It was about 4:30 a.m. on a July Saturday in 2019. Lorrie Owens, chief technology officer for the San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE), was awake, but not expecting a work call. While on a weekend boating trip in the mountains, the district’s financial systems manager quickly looked to ensure the financial system backup was completed overnight. When the manager couldn’t log in, he used an alternative method to circumvent the block. Once in, he noticed that some of the file names had been changed. He knew something was wrong.

The SMCOE system was being hacked. The criminals were in the pro cess of encrypting the financial system’s files. Owens immediately shut down the entire network, which includes 23 school districts that are all on the SMCOE’s financial systems.

Owens, a CASBO organizational member, and her team began to investi

gate. Over the next week, as the system remained down, they combed through every piece of network equipment and every end-user device. Without the net work, none of the business departments in the county’s 23 districts could function. Plus, special education classrooms had no internet service, and some districts had no phone service.

“They had only been into our network a short time, but it was still a very costly event because we couldn’t bring up the network,” says Owens. “We had to check anything and everything that connected to the network. For us to do all that in a week was a miracle. It was lucky we caught it in time. If we hadn’t seen it until Monday morning, it would have been over.”

Cybersecurity has been in the news a lot since Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was targeted by the Vice Society, a ransomware organiza

tion, in early September. The attack took LAUSD’s website offline, causing staff and students to lose access to their emails and education management systems.

While the hacking of LAUSD has made a lot of headlines this year, the district is not alone. Brett Callow, threat analyst for the digital security firm Emsisoft, told the Los Angeles Times that hackers have attacked at least 27 U.S. school districts and 28 colleges. The stolen data from at least 36 of those organizations ended up online, and three organizations paid ransom to the attackers.

For years, bad actors largely ignored K-12 education. That’s changing as criminals realize that districts house large troves of valuable student infor mation. Cybercriminals sell the data on the dark web, and students don’t know it for many years until they apply for a job or federal student aid. The data is

How districts should prepare for, respond to cybersecurity threats

Going on the cyber offensive

particularly valuable because criminals use it for years before anyone realizes it was stolen.

“We have an added responsibility to protect our students,” says Owens. “We have this valuable data, but we don’t have the resources that banking or medi cal systems have. Bad actors know we are vastly underfunded and under-resourced for cybersecurity.”

The house metaphor

Thankfully, CASBO members and other experts can offer some pro tips to help you avoid some of the nightmare scenarios they’ve experienced.

Secure the house.

Owens thinks of her computer network as a house. Protect your systems by setting up effective security and ensuring

that, if criminals do get in the door, the valuables will be hard to find.

Be careful who you let in your house.

Owens beefed up security after the SMCOE breech. She recommends ensuring you have appropriate software that logs what’s happening and alerts you if something unusual happens.

Data breaches often come from outside vendors, so ensure you’re con tracting with responsible third parties and vendors. Attorney Gretchen M. Shi pley of CASBO Premier Partner F3Law, and chair of the firm’s eMatters Practice Group, recommends that the technology department and purchasing depart ment understand that contracts with outside vendors must have protective measures.

California’s laws are more restrictive than the rest of the nation, says Shipley,

Data breaches often come from outside vendors, so ensure you’re contracting with responsible third parties and vendors.

so if the vendor is national, they may not conform to California laws. The contract should include a robust data privacy agreement that specifies what the cy bersecurity framework needs to look like, holds subcontractors to the same standards and specifies indemnification, meaning if the contractor allows the data breach, they will pay the district for the damages incurred.

Two-factor authentication is an important method for verifying who is logging into the system. It is less conve nient for employees, but the protection is worthwhile, says Joe Ayala, chair of CASBO’s Technology Professional Council and director of technology for Santa Clara Unified School District, a CASBO organizational member. The district is enacting a policy that requires anyone who can edit or touch student data to use two-factor authentication. Ayala warns this has to be worked out with unions since it requires employees to use their personal phones to log into work accounts.

Test the locks.

Shipley recommends that districts conduct annual penetration testing, either internally or with an outside forensics team. “While it can be expensive,” she says. “It’s worth the $15,000 so that you’re not spending $500,000 in damages.”

Hide the valuables.

The first thing bad actors do is encrypt your data so they can ask for a ransom. They target backups, so entities feel pressure to pay a ransom to retrieve their sensitive data.

Owens recommends using air gaps to protect your backups, meaning store them separately (from a virtual stand point) from all your other data. “It’s kind of like having separate houses on your

property,” she says. Because San Mateo’s backups were air-gapped, it slowed down the hackers, and they didn’t have a chance to get the data.

Thomas Tan, executive director of technology services for the Huntington Beach City School District, a CASBO organizational member, says backing up data and, just as importantly, testing the ability to restore the backup data successfully, is like insurance. Backups, especially off-site backups, can also help in the event of a disaster like an earthquake.

“Better to have multiple copies of immutable data backups, meaning that data cannot be corrupted after backup by malware or ransomware,” he says. “Back up to local servers on different parts of the network, backup data to the cloud with storage services like Wasabi, Back space, Azure and Amazon Web Services. As the saying goes, ‘Backup religiously or prayer may be your only hope.’”

Education is the best prevention

The best prevention efforts will not be successful if someone lets a bad actor in through the front door. Tan’s county office of education, Orange County, has a team dedicated to cybersecurity. They provide a network security evaluation report that contains the top network security items that need attention.

“Cybersecurity is most effective in layers, similar to how increased layers of armor offer more protection,” Tan says. “The first layer of defense is user educa tion and awareness.” The district sends monthly online safety reminders and educates and sensitizes users to recognize different kinds of cyberattacks. For in stance, check to ensure the email matches the sender, and avoid clicking on links or opening attachments. If in doubt, call the sender for verification.

Better to have multiple copies of immutable data backups, meaning that data cannot be corrupted after backup by malware or ransomware.

Going on the cyber offensive

“Sophisticated phishing tactics can deceive even vigilant users into giving their sign-in credentials to the bad guys,” he adds.

One Huntington Beach user reported that an email from their school principal had a suspicious file attachment. The email asked for the user’s cell phone number so they could text them back. The text link could have activated or down loaded malware and collected personal information.

Two things protected the Huntington Beach system: Google Gmail displayed a warning alert message, and the user was suspicious because the email address was not recognized as a district email.

These types of attacks, called social engineering attacks, use something or someone familiar to the user to try and gain access. Another common social engi neering attack asks users to change their direct deposit paycheck information.

Santa Clara has seen this type of deposit scam. An entry-level payroll person pulled an email from the spam folder without checking where it was from. Someone else in the office caught

it because the request was for the new superintendent.

Santa Clara USD has a central email connected to the help desk, called the Phish Bowl, where staff can send any questionable email for an extra look.

“Technology is viewed as something separate instead of a tool that’s integrated into all our existing systems such as cur riculum, financial services, etc.” says Ayala. “We strive not to make the person feel silly. We just give positive reinforce ment when they are careful.”

Owens herself almost fell for one of these direct deposit scams. She got an email saying there was a problem with her account. Because it was payday and the logo was from her bank, she thought something had gone wrong with her paycheck. Luckily, she realized that her bank should not have had her work email and avoided clicking on any links. San Mateo conducts regular phishing tests for users to remind them what to look for. People don’t always like it, but Owens says it’s an important educational tool.

It can be difficult for smaller districts to have the resources to devote to cyber security education. Smaller districts can join The K12 Security Information eX change (K12 SIX), an organization where districts can share tactics, techniques and procedures for attacks as an early warn ing system for similarly sized districts.

In the event of …

Despite the best preventive measures, there is a chance that you will have to deal with an attack at some point. What should you do?

Prepare an incident response plan. This plan can be a part of your overall agency’s emergency response.

The plan should include knowing your insurance coverage and navigating

Sophisticated phishing tactics can deceive even vigilant users into giving their sign-in credentials to the bad guys.

the investigation and insurance claim. Shipley says many people don’t realize that general liability insurance covers cybersecurity. They will do the investi gation, put you in touch with the FBI, provide any required notices and partici pate in your response team.

Owens says to be aware that you or an outside company may want to do your own investigation to get things up and running before insurance can step in. To get back to business more quickly, be sure to know how you can preserve evidence while you do the investigation.

“I had 23 districts with no internet and people with no phone service,” says Owens. “We had to get that up and run ning. I would recommend knowing the steps that will get you business continu ity and preserve the evidence you need.”

Determine legal requirements or notification.

Owens had an outside company that determined no data was removed during the SMCOE breech. As soon as possible, determine if the event meets the legal definition of a data breach because an unauthorized data breach triggers notification requirements. Shipley says it is not a data breach if someone steals a laptop but can’t get into it.

If it is a data breach, you need to determine who must be notified. If you sent out 15,000 emailed invitations to set up an account and only 10 students set up accounts, then you only need to do 10 notifications, not 15,000.

The district must provide credit monitoring for anyone whose data has been compromised, including both cur rent employees and employees receiving retirement benefits.

Communicate with stakeholders.

Owens recommends having a unified, clear and honest dialogue with your

stakeholders. SMCOE held briefings every morning and met twice daily to ensure they were all hearing the same thing. She recommends having one point person for your stakeholders and the media.

“If you have people saying the same thing differently, it can get out of hand very quickly. Even with what I thought was a very well-coordinated communi cation strategy, there were rumors out there,” she says. “We were able to quell them pretty quickly.”

LAUSD kept stakeholders updated on Twitter and set up a hotline. “Their

public information officer was being very responsible,” says Shipley. “All you’re required to do is put a letter in the mail (notifying stakeholders of the breach). Outside of that, a robust communication program can help calm the nerves of people affected.” z z z

What is your district doing to shore up cybersecurity? Share your suggestions at LinkedIn/CASBO.

Jennifer Snelling is a freelance writer based in Eugene, Oregon.

Culture correction

By Jennifer Fink

To say the COVID-19 pandemic was disruptive is a bit like saying World War II was disruptive. Both were global events that affected (and continue to affect) individuals, societies and countries in small and large ways. And both exposed pre-existing problems and highlighted the need to create new systems and structures. Simply returning to the pre-war status quo in 1945 would have been a massive mistake. Similarly, reverting to the pre-pandemic status quo in our schools is also a bad idea.

As Frederick M. Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute wrote in an article earlier this year, “The disruption born of this once-in-a-century pandemic could yield a once-in-a-century op portunity to reset K-12 schooling.”

Of course, that’s easier to write (or say) than it is to operationalize. School districts and communities have been ravaged by COVID-19. Educators are shell-shocked and over whelmed, with many still processing the upheaval and losses of the past few years. Districts nationwide are coping with seri ous staff shortages while trying to support the mental health and well-being of traumatized students – while attempting to demonstrate progress toward remedying the much-discussed “learning loss” that occurred during the pandemic.

Prioritize district culture to decrease stress levels, save time and resources

It’s a challenging environment, to be sure. But although resetting district cul ture sounds complicated – and like one more to-do item on an awfully long list – prioritizing culture now can decrease stress levels and save valuable time and resources. You don’t need a dramatic plan either. You can start simply, right now.

“Positive culture is a byproduct of what a leader does to create trust, to have engagement with employees, to show respect for everyone,” says CASBO retiree member LaFaye Platter, an execu tive leadership coach and former deputy superintendent of human resources who previously worked at Hemet Uni fied School District. “You have to be the change you want to see.”

Accept reality

We’re not going back to normal. The tectonic plates have shifted, metaphorically speaking. To move forward, you must first acknowledge and accept reality.

Don’t try to gloss over challenges. Though well-intentioned, so-called

“toxic positivity” is actually “a kind of philosophy of denial, where nothing is ever really going wrong, and where the power of positive thinking can be used to invalidate any criticism or concern, no matter how legitimate,” according to an EdSurge article by Stephen Noonoo.

It’s better to admit and name your losses and continuing challenges. Your validation of these facts creates space for team members to acknowledge difficul ties. And difficulties that are out in the open are difficulties that can managed.

It may be helpful to note that although you (and your team) are bat tered and tired from the challenges of recent years, you’re also probably a bit stronger and more resilient.

PJ Caposey, superintendent of Meridian Community Unit School Dis trict #223 in Illinois, likens this growth in capability to the gains made by athletes after grueling practices.

“We’re in better shape now,” he says. “Now that we’ve gone through the hard practices, the normal stuff feels a lot easier.”

It remains important, however, to consider the energy levels of your staff. “We have a tired population right now,” Caposey says. Be sure to include time for rest and rejuvenation.

“You can’t just push, push, push and keep expecting great results,” says Grant Schimelpfening, assistant superintendent of administrative services at Lindsay Uni fied School District, a CASBO organiza tional member. “You have to realize that people are human and give them a little bit of grace and space.”

People first

“One of the things we actively do now that we didn’t do before is actively check in with people, regardless of how they look,” says Aaron Heinz, deputy

Culture is to a school as character is to a person. It’s who we are when no one’s watching.

– PJ Caposey

superintendent of administrative services at Colusa County Office of Education, a CASBO organizational member, instead of assuming that all is well in the absence of obvious distress.

That’s smart, Platter says. “It’s relationship first; task will follow. Rela tionship first, second and third; the work will follow.”

To underscore their investment in staff well-being, the Colusa County Office of Education has purchased a teletherapy package; employees have access to up to six sessions per year. The country office of education is also helping one of their districts obtain a mental health grant that will be used to build and staff an on-site

mental health office to provide services to students, staff and district parents.

The Lindsay Unified School District is also focusing on the mental well-being of staff. “We hired a social-emotional learning specialist,” Schimelpfening says. “A manager can invite her into a meet ing, and she’ll run some social-emotional activities, such as breathing exercises or a connection exercise, with us.”

The pandemic pivot to remote work has helped many districts realize that previous practices, such as in-person only conferences, alienated some fami lies. Zoom teleconferences allow family members to connect with teachers more easily – without requiring expensive

and time-consuming travel – so many districts are opting to continue offering families (and staff) remote engagement opportunities.

“We now allow more flexibility to work from home, where in the past, we have not,” Schimelpfening says. This flexibility helps staff balance personal demands and work commitments.

Focus on what’s possible

“If the pandemic taught us anything, it taught us that we are way more agile and flexible than we ever thought or dreamed we were, so why not leverage that, rather than doing back to the way we were doing things before?” Schimelpfening asks.

The pandemic revealed the possibilities of remote work and edtech,

suggesting ways in which districts may be able to use technology to add flex ibility. The COVID-19 crisis also under scored the importance of mental health and the value of communities of support. How can your team build on those pos sibilities? Together, brainstorm positive actions you can take to create a better tomorrow.

Although school culture is “typically defined by the worst behavior we com monly tolerate,” Caposey says, you can’t effectively reset district or school culture by focusing on bad behavior. Instead, you need to clearly identify and model the be haviors you’d like to see. When you focus your time and attention on positive pos sibilities, you enhance the overall school climate and culture.

“The only power we have is our ability to influence others,” Platter says.

Smartly allocate talent and resources

Now is the perfect time to evaluate what to keep and what to let go.

Caposey, the Illinois-based superintendent, is laser-focused on iden tifying return on investment to decrease unnecessary or inefficient expenditure of time, talent and resources. “We had a high-quality culture survey that we re ally liked in our district, but was about $40,000 a year. We found a competitor survey that’s $2,800. That competitor product is probably 85% as good as our previous survey, but $37,000 is a teacher,” Caposey says.

He uses this thinking to evaluate all purchases. “If I’m considering a $40,000 solution, I’ll ask, ‘is that worth two-thirds of a teacher?’”

With your team, talk about what’s working well and what is not.

The “conversation should focus on what has gone well … and what we need to keep in order to best serve kids, and, at the same time, what we’ve learned we no longer need,” Caposey wrote in an ar ticle for Edutopia. “We must actively seek, at both the organization and individual levels, to clean the less meaningful and frustrating elements of the job off the plate.”

Caposey “forced” himself to make a list of the five things that bring him the most joy in this job. His list included one-on-one meetings with direct reports, data talks and coaching his leadership team through challenges, so he deliber ately re-did his calendar to focus most of his time on those tasks over the next two weeks.

The result? “I spent less time on … distractions that were not only a time sink but also an emotional drain,” he wrote.

Identify the unique talents and skillsets of each of your team members

and encourage them to spend most of their time utilizing their skills. As noted in an American Enterprise Institute ar ticle about education after the pandemic, “Having a superbly skilled early literacy instructor teach addition or watch stu dents eat lunch simply because he’s a second-grade teacher is a bizarre way to leverage talent.” Taking the time to divvy up tasks according to specific skill sets and preferences may ultimately increase productively, and will almost certainly alleviate some of the stress that can lead to burnout.

Keep at it

It’s not easy to sustain new practices. Old habits, as they say, die hard. And when challenges arise – as they certainly will – it’s tempting to revert to previous practices.

Resist the temptation to abandon your efforts. Remember: There’s a reason you decided to reset your district culture. Your previous culture may have been familiar, but it wasn’t working for every one. It wasn’t serving everyone’s needs.

Reminding yourself (and your team) of the why behind your culture reset can generate the determination and energy you need to persist past challenges.

Positive changes can happen pretty quickly, but it takes time to completely reset district culture. “It takes about three to five years to bring about change that sticks,” Platter says.

Continue working with your team. Acknowledge and celebrate forward progress. “You can get changes rolling in a year,” says Heinz, of Colusa country. “Changing culture is like steering a big cargo ship. You have to plan your turns miles in advance, and it’s slow, but it ab solutely can happen.” z z z

How are you creating a healthy, sustainable culture in your district?

Tweet us at @ CASBO to let us know.

Jennifer Fink is a freelance writer based in Mayville, Wisconsin.

Plan

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This year, continue on your path to success with CASBO.

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