AJ Crabill serves as Governance Director at Director of Governance, Council of the Great City Schools (national membership organization of the largest urban school districts) Conservator, DeSoto ISD (small school district on the south side of Dallas). AJ works nationwide to focus school boards on student outcomes governance. His book, Great On Their Behalf, published in March, discusses this. He also provides support to schools implementing Student Led Restorative Practices. He supports districts when a school is having challenging w/ its governance.
Trenches story: his biggest are examples as a student, instructor, board member. His ? is when we’re in the trenches. During his childhood, didn’t have skillset to see way out. Talented educators who inspired him career-wise. Ensured that for school system. Was working w/ st’s who were struggling-had made bad decisions. He didn’t manage the expectations they had of him how they deserved. Very dreadful. Had plenty of excuses. Rebuilt relationships. First was humble enough to acknowledge it- didn’t honor their expectations. Did the work to honor his word. He does better job these days. Recently, he wants to take group to conference but flights weren’t covered.
Talk about book Great on their Behalf: love letter to every school board member in country. Not in ? is the intention on heart of members. Method about changes ppl have to make in behaviors. Book is for ppl who want to serve on school board- or other advocacies. Not good to chase needs of ind. community members. In his book, he lays out why some board members fall into pitfalls of what feels good for 1 person but doesn’t help school system at large. What are the steps in living out aspirations for being an effective board member? Lays out 5 steps.
Can talk about trials and tribulations of being a school board member, he does a lot of work fixing issues when there are controversies: he had no idea what he was getting himself into. Didn’t know the mechanism. Ppl in community have different/weird ideas of what school board members can do.
Work with supt’s and school boards: many systems are institutions of ppl. Providing serves to kids. Tons of ppl involved. How do we keep everyone aligned? In DeSoto, there are only 10 principal. Another district is 200K st’s. More we scale up, it’s harder to maintain a vision. Such as curricular alignment. How do we keep ppl rowing in the same direction? We have to declare our priorities. Next step is getting clear about if your behavior is in alignment or not. System needs to be in place to see that. Need benchmarks in place to align resources w/ priorities.Discipline around resource allocation.
Support to schools implementing Student Led Restorative Practices: he wants t’s to be responsible for doing the work for culturally responsible pedagogy. Essentially we don’t get training for this, but ppl figure it out. He focuses on the quality of instruction st’s are experiencing. St’s and him are traveling to Chicago this week for that. We like to sit st’s down & create a safe space to have them gain a sense of connection. Doing a short RJ circle doesn’t fix things in the long term. Convo still needs to be had. Laboratory space to navigate conflict. St-led RP- st’s will process through situation. Train st’s to facilitate convos. We can pull st’s to lead this work. Strength multiplier. Person facilitating is gaining more skills about conflict mediation. Students are becoming stronger & stronger-st’s need a robust toolkit for this. It’s best for st’s to hear it peers.
Read his policy brief dropped in August about what educators can do if their school board is a mess: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chiefs-for-change_as-part-of-our-new-brief-we-spoke-to-school-activity-709031536
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We can talk about board elections/who should/shouldn’t be running, how to identify best candidates? Helpful for voters to understand the job of the board. It’s like any hiring process. What is the job aligned to do? School systems exist to improve student outcomes #1. There’s things students do, but this is WHY they exist. School boards exists to represent vision of the community. They shouldn’t do things outside that vision. You should vote for those who represent the vision/values of the community. You don’t have to be an education expert or legal expert. Board members need training on what the representation looks like.
Out of everything: all communities have a role to play in service to st’s. Not all community members have. St’s need to find a role to serve. He calls on all of us to think through what they can do in their community.
Where can ppl find you? email ajcrabil@ajcrabil.com Greatontheirbehalf.com Twitter, FB, IG@ajcrabill
site with school board related media/YouTube links View this episode on YoubTube: https://youtu.be/9kISR2YR2Fk
