Recently, I spent the weekend out of town with my family. We returned on a cold December Sunday evening to discover that the furnace had been off all weekend, and our house was freezing. It was a fairly easy fix for us. Within a few hours, our house was back up to temperature. But as I sat freezing, waiting for the house to heat up, I thought about students who are homeless, or whose family is unable to pay the heating bill. These students will come to our schools with a need to learn and achieve at the same level as more affluent peers. Those of us committed to the improvement and achievement of students in Title 1 schools have embraced a challenging endeavor. Homelessness and poverty, language and cultural barriers, federally mandated sanctions, budgeting and reporting requirements, and compliance reviews are some things that our to-do lists have in common. With a myriad of demands from so many different areas, collaboration and networking could easily be pushed to the back burner or removed from our list completely. We look at the demands of our workload and conclude that we simply do not have time. I would urge each of you to preserve time for collaboration and networking. The ideas that we share, the information that we learn, and the momentum that we initiate, when we come together as a group of professionals dedicated to school improvement has the potential to transform education in our state. None of us can accomplish everything by ourselves, but we have unlimited potential to initiate change as a united and collaborative group. I very much look forward to our Summit on March 11th.
Happy Holidays.
