As recent research notes, the COVID-19 pandemic elevated rates of burnout and turnover among school and district leaders. These shifts often had a destabilizing effect on schools across the country, further highlighting the impact which responsive and supportive leaders can have in the experiences of both teachers and students in a school. According to Donaldson, leaders must be relational (fostering openness and trust), purposive (committed to shared action), and “Action-in-Common” (a belief that the organization can solve problems better than individuals alone).

The COVID-19 pandemic also provided educators with the opportunity to reconsider how schools can bridge divides across cultural, linguistic, and racial barriers. One way which educators can ensure that students from diverse backgrounds feel a sense of belonging is to create curricular offerings which are culturally relevant and responsive. By creating coursework which is drawn from students’ lives and interests, culturally responsive and relevant strategies can capitalize on the knowledge and resources that students possess rather than viewing these as deficits which need to be overcome. Second, and relatedly, educators may also strive to develop these offerings collaboratively with students to ensure that their perspectives and opinions on what should be taught in classrooms is taken into consideration.

LaFayette Jr. Sr. High School Case Study Highlights

I would say priority number one is making sure that the community trust that when they’re giving us their most valuable commodity – their children – we’re making sure that they stay safe. After that, I think it comes to relationships… and some teachers will say curriculum, right, because they [students] are here to learn and I agree with that. But again, it goes back to that piece of — if we don’t have a relationship with that kid, they’re not going to learn from us. – principal

 Are you a teacher because of your curriculum and your content, or are you a teacher because you want to create opportunities for students?” – Big Picture teacher

School Selection Criteria

NYKids studied LaFayette Jr. Sr. HS in our 2012-13 study. At that time, LaFayette Jr. Sr. HS was identified as a typically performing school based on its graduation rates. In this study we used New York State graduation rate data from 2021 and 2022 (the most recent at the time of study sampling), which included cohorts who started 9th grade in 2017, 2018, and 2019. This analysis yielded several emergent positive outlier schools (those that had shown improvements in student performance outcomes), including LaFayette Jr/Sr HS. The Jr/Sr HS is located in central New York about 10 miles south of the city of Syracuse. This rural district borders the Onondaga Nation, home of the Haudensaunee “firekeepers.” The District’s four schools include: Grimshaw Elementary School, which spans grades PK-6; the Onondaga Nation School which serves Onondaga youth from Grades PK-8; the Jr/Sr HS; and the Big Picture School (a school within the Jr/Sr HS) that offers young people the option of developing an individualized project-based learning plan with internship experiences built into the weekly schedule and support from an advisor/mentor.

Highlights

Proactive and purposeful centering on relationships and well-being

…we all work together really well to help students. They really do come first. – support staff

One distinguishing feature of LaFayette Jr. Sr. HS in recent years is their proactive and purposeful attention on building positive youth-adult relationships and supporting youth well-being. As the principal explained, in this relatively small district “… we all pretty much know what’s going on with every kid. We’re all familiar with either the home situation or whatever their [students’] struggles are”. While being on the smaller and more tight-knit side of the spectrum aids educators’ inside knowledge of youth needs, LaFayette educators acknowledge that relationships are built, not a given. Following suit, LaFayette educators described efforts to infuse relationship-building into the fabric of the school. These efforts have included forging closer ties to Onondaga families to close gaps in understandings about different priorities while at the same time holding up the value the Onondaga offer to enrich this rural community.

Stabilizing leadership and fostering a leadership pipeline

“In a small district, it takes many hands.” – principal

Another notable characteristic of LaFayette Jr. Sr. HS is the purposeful attention to stabilizing leadership and developing a sustainable leadership pipeline. One veteran teacher provided historical perspective on the effects of leader turnover and where the school has arrived regarding leadership in more recent years.

There was a lot of administrative turnover … So when (the current principal) was hired… there was a lot of skepticism. Like how long was he going to be around? There was a lot of skepticism around his investment in our district. As time went on, I think he proved that he was in it. And he sort of sat back the first couple of years and took a lot in. Made little changes, but mostly just observed. And I would say after about two years, he started trying to make some bigger changes…  he’s been our driving force of change … and he’s very willing to step out and try new things.

In LaFayette, a couple of promising strategies become apparent about attracting leaders and securing a pipeline of leaders for the future. First, in this district, distributing leadership roles and responsibilities to staff leading professional learning communities (PLCs) has been a successful “grow your own” and leadership distribution strategy. Second, and along the lines of “putting the Oxygen mask on first”,  leaders seek out and use experienced mentors they know personally or through professional networks to guide them – particularly in relation to being strategic about change efforts – including how quickly they implement a change to ensure staff are ready and on board to support innovation.

Innovating around curriculum, instruction, and interventions

District leaders described the challenges of aligning curriculum and instruction across grade levels, particularly in relation to literacy and in the context of the student learning impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As one leader explained, “it [change to literacy programming] has not been without bumps and gripes”, but “…. we needed to bring our district together and identify a common approach for ELA instruction. And we’re making the move in the right direction”. At the time of this study, LaFayette as a district, was working on aligning the types of assignments students were receiving across grade levels and across content areas as well as shifting to equitable grading. These have been multi-year processes reliant on the above two highlights of centering on relationships and wellbeing and stabilizing leadership to support such school and district-wide shifts. These alignment efforts have been coupled with testing out, and improving on, innovative instructional and intervention approaches.

The entire LaFayette Case Study is available on our website here! Keep an eye out for the remaining case studies of emergent and persistent positive outlier schools in the coming weeks!

As always, we thank you for your interest in NYKids!  Please reach out to us at nykids@albany.edu or follow us on X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn! We also encourage you to contact us if you are interested in NYKids direct school improvement support this summer.