Message from
FADSS CEO Bill Montford
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FADSS Business Partners are Your Partners in Success
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As we continue to work together during this challenging and unprecedented time, I want to give a shout out to FADSS Annual Business Partners. It is important that we continue to recognize the role that FADSS business partners play in supporting superintendents and school districts year-round in their efforts to provide a high-quality public education system that graduates students prepared for careers and post-secondary education.
While we all have had to pivot and adjust as we navigate the continually changing educational landscape – so too have FADSS business partners. Many have been “in the trenches” with school district staff working shoulder-to-shoulder to ensure that students continue to have access to a high quality education.
Though our business partners are also facing tough financial decisions, they have made supporting FADSS and Florida superintendents a priority. They have worked with district staff to ensure that students receive needed technology, internet access, additional educational tutoring and educational supports, and even ensuring students receive needed meals.
We all know that there is more to public education than simply curriculum – running a school district covers myriad services, products and industries. And FADSS is proud to have the best of those industries as FADSS Annual Partners. These companies have been vetted and selected because they not only provide a high-quality, valuable service to school districts; they also exhibit the highest caliber of integrity – which is a paramount quality in becoming a FADSS annual partner.
Below is a link to FADSS 2020-2021 Annual Business Partner Directory which includes a company description and contact information. FADSS is proud to partner with each of these companies and I encourage you to reach out to FADSS annual business partners directly if there is a need for their product or service in your school district.
~ Bill Montford, FADSS CEO
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Collaboration Yields Positive Outcomes for Students
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At impactFLORIDA, we believe great teaching matters. Our mission is to empower education leaders to recognize, support, and scale great teaching practices so that all children are able to realize success in life.
In December, we partnered with FADSS and the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) to empower a small group of new superintendents to select a small team of principals and district leaders to engage together in a series of interactive workshops to build their collective capacity to use data in effective continuous improvement practices.
District teams from Gilchrist, Indian River, Marion, and Santa Rosa joined the Data Impact Cadre and became Impact Florida’s newest members of Districts for Impact, an initiative focused on sharing and promoting promising instructional leadership practices and structures across school districts.
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Understand what effective continuous improvement and data literacy looks like
- Understand the conditions necessary for effective continuous improvement
- Apply their knowledge of effective continuous improvement to identify potential solutions to gaps in student performance on the Algebra I EOC exam.
This unique learning experience was designed as a “sprint” to support new Superintendents at a critical juncture in their tenure, offering four virtual learning sessions over the course of six weeks . In our first session in December, we engaged superintendents in initial reflection on their students’ performance in Algebra I. Superintendents also selected a school or schools to partner with, so they had the partnership of school leaders for this learning journey.
In early January, we brought the cadre together to reflect on their current continuous improvement practices, reviewed school and district-specific Algebra I data, and shared strategies for identifying a specific problem statement. Two weeks later, teams explored feedback on and refined their problem statements, identify root causes relative to their identified problem statement, and identified critical roots that offered the greatest intervention opportunity.
The cadre will meet again in February to reflect on our learning, identify barriers to implementation, and discuss how we can support each other moving forward.
In just a short time, thanks to the strong leadership of these superintendents and the hard work of their teams, each of these school districts identified a clear, concise problem in Algebra I and the critical root causes underlying those problems.
What’s more, these teams gained a better understanding of how to create the conditions necessary for continuous improvement to occur at scale and shared out their learnings at the FADSS New Superintendent Certification Training in late January. New Superintendents learning to use data to solve critical barriers to student success in Algebra 1 over a two-month sprint? That’s a win in our book!
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News Articles of Interest You Might Not Have Read
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This post is part of LPI's Learning in the Time of COVID-19 blog series, which explores evidence-based and equity-focused strategies and investments to address the current crisis and build long-term systems capacity.
Source: Edsurge.com, By Dominik Dresel, Jan 21, 2021
Source: USA Today/The Hechinger Report, By Azure Gilman, Feb. 12, 2021
“Even though people think school systems are closed, we’re still providing all the services that we do during a typical school year,” Phoenix Union Superintendent Chad Gestson said.
…Phoenix Union received about $12 million from the first coronavirus stimulus bill, according to Gestson. “That sounds like a lot of money, but if you think about buying a laptop for nearly 30,000 teenagers ... that, in and of itself, is your entire stimulus money,” he said. “That leaves no money left over for Wi-Fi, no money left over for PPE, no money left over for all the other expenses.”
Source: USA TODAY, By Erin Richards, Chris Quintana, Feb. 11, 2021
Source: K12Dive.com, By Kara Arundel
Despite challenges, districts have worked to communicate effectively with parents, document efforts and use early dispute resolution approaches throughout the pandemic.
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FADSS New Superintendents Training Update
Congratulations to new superintendents! All recently elected and appointed superintendents have begun training for initial certification in the Florida Superintendents Special Certification Program. On January 27 and 28, new superintendents successfully participated in the first of 5 training sessions, titled, “Equitable, Highly Effective Instructional Opportunities for All: The Superintendent’s Role and Responsibility.”
These superintendents are now preparing to take the Instructional Leadership subtest of the Florida Superintendents Exam. The next training session – “Astute Resource Allocation to Support a High-Performing School District” will be held on February 24 and 25. If you have any questions on New Superintendent Training, please contact Diann Morell.
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Be sure to follow FADSS on Twitter at @PublicSchoolSup and tag us in your posts so we can help share your district's news and accomplishments.
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FADSS Legislative Updates
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With legislative meetings fully underway, FADSS is actively monitoring and participating in (as current conditions allow) committee meetings.
A comprehensive overview of the week's meetings and outcomes is provided every Friday in the FADSS Legislative Update from FADSS General Counsel Brian Moore. The update is emailed directly to every superintendent and their administrative assistant every Friday.
If you missed an issue or want to refer back, the Legislative Updates are archived on the FADSS website and can be accessed here.
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FADSS Business Partner Spotlight
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Join FADSS Platinum Partner Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH®) for a free webinar entitled:
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While remote teaching presents a number of challenges, one that needs particular attention is educational equity. How can educators ensure that all students are set up for success?
Register for FADSS Gold Parnter Lexia Learning's free webinar for strategies to help you better address the needs of emergent bilingual students during this time.
Thursday, February 18, 2021 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST
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THANK YOU to ALL the
And thank you to ALL the
2020-2021 FADSS Annual Business Partners
for their support of FADSS & Florida district school superintendents
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Florida Association of District School Superintendents
208 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32301
850.577.5784
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