Board to Board
November - December 2023
News from the Board of NWESD A message from our superintendent
As many of you may know, I recently announced my intent to retire at the end of this current school year after nearly three and a half decades in public education. The majority of those years has been spent in the NWESD 189 region. Throughout those years, I have been influenced and supported by some extraordinary mentors and champions and have also had the opportunity to work with some incredibly talented and dedicated educators, colleagues, board members, and friends. I have truly been blessed with an incredibly fortunate and fulfilling career. While it is too early in the year to start getting overly nostalgic, contemplating retirement over the past year has also been an opportunity for me to reflect on the changes I’ve witnessed over the years. My first full-time teaching position was at a high school that received one of the first generation 21st Century Grants. At that time, the turn of the century was still over a decade away, and the grant enabled our staff to envision the skills, experiences, and habits students would need to be successful in the new century. And now, we are nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century. Time does indeed fly!
What’s inside?
In those early days, we got many things right, including an early emphasis on what would later become more commonly known as the six Cs – character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. Other things we got wrong, or more accurately simply had no way to foresee, even with the benefit of working at the time with several nationally renowned futurists. While we saw the evolution of technology as key to students’ future, the scale and pace of technological advancements far exceeded anything we could have dreamed of in the late 1980s. The ubiquitous nature of technology, miniaturized into thin, rectangular smartphones carrying hundreds, if not thousands, of times the computing capacity of some of the earliest personal computers on which the Microsoft Works suite was a productivity revolution was beyond our imagination. State and national learning standards, the WASL, Columbine, Y2K, NCLB, AYP, SBAC, RTL, RTI, the Great Recession, ESSA, Sandy Hook, TPEP, STEM, STEAM, CTE, McCleary, WaKIDS, TK, HIB, LGBTQ+, COVID, global pandemic, and HSBP are just a mere sampling of the acronyms, initiatives, events, movements, and trends that have defined and shaped the past several decades in American education. Depending on your age, some of the
items in this list may be completely unfamiliar to you. Change has been the only constant, it would seem. Amongst all that change, I would also argue that a few things have endured. The first is that public education – available and accessible to all regardless of gender, race, creed, or means – remains the backbone and lifeline of our democratic society. Students’ self-perceptions and future aspirations are molded by the relationships and interactions – positive, negative, spoken, and unspoken – with the educators in their lives. The bus driver, the custodian, the crossing guard, or the lunch lady can be the most important and influential daily interaction a student experiences. And educating all kids to high levels as the unique individuals they are remains the most challenging, exhausting, worthwhile, and fulfilling endeavor there is. Whatever the future may hold for me, and for all of us, I know that young people will continue to look to all of us for leadership, guidance, support, and compassion as they navigate their individual paths of exploration, growth, and development. If that sentiment makes me seem a bit nostalgic, I’m good with that.
Larry Francois
Superintendent, NWESD 189
• The search for a new superintendent begins – Page 2 • The NWESD continues to grow – Page 3 • Celebrating area teachers, students, school boards – Page 3