Merging a School Story with a Common Vision

In creating a healthy infrastructure for any school, it is necessary to look carefully at the school's current and past story, and find a way to merge it with a school's common vision, if that has not already occurred. This is rarely done in our current educational settings. However, school redesign will not lead us anywhere without finding a way to merge a strong school story with a commonly shared vision.

I see the school story as a perception of the past and present situation that exists on a school site. I know that many schools are able to live comfortably off of a past school story that is no longer real. I worked at a school where the school story had been very strong in the 1960s and 1970s, but began changing sometime in the 1980s. The school story is a group perception. It is often perceived similarly by the school staff and local community, including parents. The changing school story in my community was one that was leading to parents that could were choosing to leave for neighboring public schools or private schools. The reality was that a declining school story was resulting in a drop in enrollment, test scores, and public trust of this school.

This school had no vision of hope for a better future for the school or its students. Without a strong and commonly held vision, I saw a continued erosion of the reality of this school community. In this case the school story and the school's vision were merging, but they were merging in the wrong direction.

As a new principal, I had to try and help the school community to rethink and recreate the school's story, and to do this I had to help this same community develop a common positive vision. Although it did not happen overnight, we were able to merge the two. When we did our community and our school was recognized for its success. With the recognition came grant funds, donations, positive media stories, and increased sense of appreciation by staff and community for their school.

This school went from a school where parents evaluated it with their feet, by choosing to leave; to a school that became so popular that parents were looking for ways to come to the school, leaving neighboring schools and leaving private schools to come back. The school story became so strong that the school actually became overcrowded and had to go on a year round schedule. Fortunately, this year a new school was built in the area and the school was able to leave the year round calendar and move back to a traditional schedule.

The merger of a school story and a common vision is not easy, but extremely important if we want our schools to improve academic achievement for all students, and to be places that parents, students, staff, and the community can be proud of. It will require strong leadership and high expectations. However, this can be done, I lived the possibility and my community made their vision a reality.