 Lakeland Public Television presents Currents with host Ray Gildow, sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, offering tax preparation for individuals and businesses across from the City Hall in Niswa and on the web at NiswaTax.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Lakeland Currents as we begin our tenth season. Hard to believe that it's gone that fast. And through all these ten years, our underwriter has stayed with us, Niswa Tax. We're very appreciative of that, and you probably have noticed if you've been watching Lakeland Currents that we actually shoot this show now both here in the Brainerd Studio, where I do it, and we do it also in the Bemidji Studio, where Beth Wesley is the host of Lakeland Currents there. And we are in the new night, Friday evenings, which is probably a little better night for us because it ties into other public relations programs, like Almanac. So we're happy to have a new time and a new day of the week, and we will be bumped from time to time by hockey. Hockey's taken over, you know, it's pretty important, I guess. So once in a while our programs will be delayed because of the hockey programs, but we're happy to be here, happy to be joining you again for our tenth season, and I'm very happy to introduce to you tonight the new superintendent of schools, Lane Larson in Brainerd. She comes from the Bagley area, so if some of our viewers are from Bagley, you know who Lane is already, but happy to have her here and talk about some of the things that are happening in the Brainerd School District. She's brand new, so she's learning the system and learning people, but welcome to the show, Lane. It's good to have you here. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Tell us a little bit about your background, because I know you've spent a lot of time in Bagley, but what is your background? As you started, I began my career in Bagley, and I was a family and consumer science teacher for 16 years, and for about the next 10 years, I was in administration. I was an elementary principal, assistant principal, assistant superintendent, and all the way to superintendent, and so I was in Bagley for 26 years, and then my husband and I moved to Thief River Falls, where I was superintendent of schools there for seven years, and this past winter, a fortunate opportunity came about with the Brainerd School District, and I threw my hat in the ring, and here I am, so it's an honor to be here. I remember reading in the Chronicle of Higher Education back in the 90s that we're going to be seeing huge shortages of leadership, not only from higher ed colleges, but also from K through 12, and I think that's come to fruition, not only are we seeing leadership shortages, we're starting to see shortages in teachers, and to me there's nothing more important in America than education, and it's a shame to be seeing this happening, and one of the statistics I read last night, I did do a little preparation for this, the average superintendent in urban America is only lasting about three years and six or seven months on the job. That's an incredible turn over. That's an expensive process, you're losing a lot of experience in some of these situations, and it's creating turmoil in our educational system, don't you think, when we have to have that kind of turn over at the top? Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with you in the fact that I think that being an educator is the most wonderful and the most important job that we can ever have, and so it alarms me too, when we have such a teacher shortage, not only in Minnesota, but throughout the entire nation, and it goes all the way through to the administrative positions as well, and it is, because consistent leadership we know is something that's really important as far as building on the strengths of a district, and to continue to move forward and do what we need to do on behalf of our kids so that they can be competitive in a really global society right now. What do you think are some of the global reasons why there's such a big turn over at the top? Especially in urban America? Yeah, I think that there's just a number of challenges in education today, and I think that the jobs throughout education have become very difficult. There's a lot of diverse needs. I know even yesterday at Rotary, they were talking about areas like with mental health needs and such that we have. We have a lot more expectations. Our kids need to be very competitive in a global society like I talked about so that technology is a huge piece. I think the financial reimbursement to districts and living within the budgets that we're given make it extremely difficult. But I still have to come back to the fact that I think it's the most wonderful job that you could ever have. There's a lot of people out there, a lot of great teachers and administrators that work in every single way to make a difference in the lives of our kids, and I can't think of anything more rewarding to be doing than to be a superintendent of schools right now. I had your predecessor Bob Gross on last year and we talked about how often Americans are compared to European and Asian schools and how the test scores always don't look very good. And one of the things that Bob pointed out was that in many of these countries they teach to a certain level of standard and there are certain students who if they're not capable they don't even get put in the mix. They're not part of the group so to speak whereas we take care of all of our kids. We put them all into the groups whether they have special needs, special education issues and so that tends to skew those scores and makes people think we're not doing a very good job but one of the things Bob mentioned was the same thing you're mentioning is we have wonderful teachers who are so dedicated that we sometimes overlook that and it's sort of sad that they're getting lost in the shuffle of financial funding issues as we know the funding for education has been decreasing for really about 25 years K through 12 and higher ed and about 80 percent of our cost are people and so we have to have the people and when you walk into a district like Brainerd what are the things that you looked at here that you particularly liked? Well first of all I've had a great opportunity since I've been here in July to meet with a number of community citizens and to meet with my administrative team and many teachers and there's some common messages that I hear consistently about the Brainerd district. First of all that the teachers and the employees overall throughout the district are just top notch. They're top of the line and it's just so exciting. A second thing that is a common message throughout is that we have a very strong tradition of excellence in our school district just last week I was identified by the commissioner of education that three of our elementary schools are reward schools. Three of the top elementaries in the state of Minnesota and so we have that strong tradition of excellence that we get to build on. And the third thing that I hear overwhelmingly is community support. And I'm learning that as I meet people and as I experience being the superintendent here that people really love their school. They're very proud to be Brainerd warriors and really want to do everything they can to support and provide the best quality education that we possibly can for our kids because they are our future. Now when you said the elementary schools were reward schools what does that mean? Well there's different rankings based on the test scores and this only qualifies for our school district for schools that receive title funding and the reward schools are the top schools that are closing the achievement gaps within whether it's within ethnicity or if it's within special education, if it's within gender but one of the things that we noticed is that within these three schools that we were making huge strides in closing the achievement gap so that all our children are successful and they can live their purpose and so that we can help to give them what they need for their future. Now did you walk into a strategic plan that's in place currently for the district? Is there a strategic plan that the superintendents have been working through regarding building and that sort of thing? There's a number, as far as a systemic strategic plan that's one of the things that we're working on right now but one thing that I visited with my board and administrative team is the fact that there really are six areas that we really want to focus on and work with strategic planning. The first one I think has become very visible to the people in the Brainerd Lakes area and that is that the past year they've been working on a facility plan and they've worked through the Cunningham group and just last week we had a final product for what they after they've done their assessments what the needs are for the district and so now we get to move forward and condense it a little bit. We get to meet with more staff, meet with our students meet with the board again to talk about what are the priorities now, the must do items the should do items and so on and to communicate that with the public and to hear from the public as to what the needs are. So facilities certainly that have been out in the forefront of our district, but there's a number of other areas. Certainly we want to always close the achievement gap and to have high academic accountability and so that's something that we've been working on. The financial accountability to our constituents we owe that to our generous taxpayer to ensure that we're living within our budget. We always want to work on the communication within our district both internally and externally with our community to build on that and technology is a huge piece as well that we want to be looking at how can we put the technological needs of our students and our staff in their hands so that they can be competitive with a world that's going very very technological. I'm a graduate. I went through the high school here and I know a lot of the elementary buildings are really old. In fact I think if you look across Minnesota a lot of our elementary schools were built in the 30's and 40's and haven't really been upgraded much since that. And it's getting more and more difficult to get bonding bills passed to upgrade facilities but is the district growing with students or is it fairly stable or where are you at with enrollments? Our demographic study as far as the district certainly shows an increase in students and we are already this fall and the demographic study certainly shows that we're going to be continuing to grow as we move forward and so that is one of the issues that as we're faced with facility changes within the district that we will want to take into consideration. Also the age of the buildings, how technologically advanced it is and how we're providing the needed education the space needs and the educational adequacy needs that our students need to be competitive even as we move into the 22nd century you know being almost 17 years into this one that as we move forward what are our students going to need and our teachers going to need to make that positive difference. So are you seeing the greater need for facilities at the elementary level or at the high school level or middle school or what are your early studies revealing? The early studies certainly are that there need to be some updates at the high school and also in our elementary schools. Forest View Middle School for those who have had the opportunity to tour that building that was just finished I believe it was nine years ago just a lovely facility that is meeting our needs right now and the elementary schools they're having wonderful results but we really are busting at the seams in some of those areas so to look at what are the needs at that level and then the high school of course will we do in that area so we're excited to bring to look at the plan that Cunningham has and also to bring it forward and get more support ideas and from our staff and our students and bring that forward to the board so we're very excited about that opportunity one thing I should say when I was in Thief River Falls I did have an opportunity to work on a building bond project and to do a little over 70 million in project to the facilities there all staying on site that we had at that time and so I'm looking forward to going through this process again. Looking forward to it? You are a crazy woman. I really am. I guess so but I really am looking forward to it. I know I've done a number of shows with the University of Minnesota extension and we've looked at the population projections for the grander area and you're right I mean there's a lot of projections for growth some of it will be with senior citizens obviously but it's also going to have a lot of new young people coming to the community you really have to plan for that and that takes some strategic thinking and it also takes some courage by the board and the superintendent and the local community to make those investments. One of the sad areas that we have to deal with that we never dealt with 25 years ago was this whole issue of security. We are spending I know I was at the college and we started spending a lot of time and resources to make sure that our students were secure. Do you have a security plan that you use in the district for all your buildings and how do you approach that here in Braydard? Well as we move forward with the facility projects that we'll be looking at one of the major probably the major goal as we move forward will be the safety and security of our buildings. Now some of our newer buildings some of the buildings have extensive safety and security systems in the district right now and some of them aren't as comprehensive as other ones and so we will be looking at some kind of a uniform safety and security measure because truly the number one goal of the Board of Education is to ensure the safety and security of all of our learners and our staff and to provide that environment that is conducive to learning and that kids can come and really do their best work and the Board is committed to that. I don't think people who don't work in these environments understand how complicated that is. We're public facilities we're trying to be welcoming to people to come into our buildings and yet we have to be very cautious and careful sadly because of what's happened around our country but I know that's a very big challenge. This school district has a really good reputation for preparing kids for education after high school I don't mean that they all have to go to a four year college because they certainly don't but I think that's one of the real rich traditions of the Brainerd School District that you've walked into and I think you'll appreciate that. What's your management style? Do you try to get out into all the buildings on a regular basis or how do you operate? Is it as visible as I can within the buildings? At the activities outside of school and in the community? To me that's part of the key of this whole piece. You talked about one topic that I think is so neat. Just the other night I was at a district advisory committee meeting and I was saying that I couldn't believe how comprehensive it was the number of people from the community that were engaged in what we were providing in our district and we have new legislation through Minnesota within the last couple of years called World's Best Workforce. They talked about just exactly what you're talking about first of all what are the standards how are we meeting the standards in our districts and taking those standards to ensure that our students have the work-ready skills that they need to get good jobs when they leave Brainerd High School. We have the CLC or another two-year college that they have the skills to be successful there and if they move on to a four-year graduate programs beyond that are we providing the opportunities for them to be successful. That's one of the areas that I get very excited about is that I believe that our staff takes it very seriously, our board takes it very seriously and our curriculum and assessment committee takes it very seriously and we're ensuring what our kids need to be successful and to live their purpose in the future. That's I think very, very critical piece. And again the community support I just I couldn't get over how many community members cared and showed up for that meeting. There's a lot of manufacturing companies in the area or just businesses that are welcoming to students to come in and sort of shadow what's going on in the places so that's you're absolutely right that's really cool. The businesses really that collaboration now between the school district, the college, the business community and our communities is really what it's going to take to move us forward. We have to work together in a collaborative manner and I'm thrilled about that. Excited to be doing that. What is your view of the funding that's going to be going on in the next biennium? Do you have a sense? I mean I know that superintendents work together in the state on these issues but I suppose without knowing who's going to win in the elections it's hard to get a real handle on what you think might be happening for funding for school. But do you get a good sense that there's a lot of support to continue to fund education in Minnesota in the ways that we needed to fund it to keep it going in a healthy manner? Well you talked about it that we really have seen a huge decrease in funding. You talked about for 25 years but 10 for sure even more than that. School districts were just behind where we need to be as far as growth and so on. I do believe that there's a lot of support that people value education highly. Clearly I believe it's about a third of the state budget goes into education itself. And so it's clear that certainly our taxpayers value education. It's just there's X amount of dollars to go around and how do you distribute those dollars with everything with all the needs that we have within the state and within the nation. And so we keep plugging away, we keep working at it. Our legislators, I believe the legislators here are very good as far as being able to visit with them and to share our concerns and they hear us and I appreciate that when they go to the legislature. A superintendent's job can be pretty lonely at the top. I have a number of friends who have been superintendents. Do you build in a support network for yourself to have that kind of support when you need it because you do have periods that are really challenging as you know because you've been a superintendent a couple of school districts. How do you manage that? I agree with you that it is quite lonely a lot of times and there's lots of reasons for that but I'm really fortunate in that I have an awesome husband and I have two just incredible daughters that have a strong family system and great friends that are great support systems that really love me for being lean and accept that. Professionally I have a lot of colleagues as well. It's a different relationship but I feel very supported and primarily from my family and my friends but yeah, it can be hard. Yeah, you bet it can be hard. I don't think most people think about that but you're torn in the directions of the board and the elementary schools and athletics and all those things. It's hard to have all those hats and wear them and be at all those different places but do you have a strong interest in athletics? Very much so and so that's part of what we do is we just attend a lot of things and we meet a lot of people that way which is fun and the other thing is that there's a lot of athletes in the area that are in the same kind of in the same boat and we become very good friends and like if it's some kind of a work related issue you can give just like a scenario or something kind of brainstorm a little bit and that's really a helpful support system as well. The other thing that I really believe that is strong about Brainerd is we have a really strong and healthy board of education and administrative team that I feel really comfortable with and I believe that we are just a really strong team that want to move forward on behalf of our children and to and all of our learners in our district and for our whole community to continue to be a state leader. You and I were both at the same rotary meeting yesterday where we heard about one in four Crowley County members has mental health issues. That was absolutely amazing to me. I didn't really realize that's significant which also means you have mental health issues with students. Do you have enough help in the school districts to help deal with those kinds of issues? I know having been a classroom teacher myself sometimes when you have issues with two or three students, you just don't have time in the classroom to deal with them and I know over the past X number of years there's been many cuts made to counselors. How is Brainerd faring in that area? I agree with that. That really is an area that I believe we need to work on is providing that support to children and to their families and to our staff because there are a higher much greater need even when I started being a superintendent 11 years ago. There's a greater need than there used to be. I think providing more counselors more homeschool interventionists mental health support throughout our communities is really an important piece and I believe that the members from ESUNCHI yesterday when they brought it up that it really was kind of a rude awakening to everyone about the needs that we have within not only our state but within our nation and our world. I don't know if people understand how that can I don't mean this the wrong way but it can pull down a teacher's time with the rest of the kids because it takes so much of their time if they don't have that technical support for those types of students in their classrooms it makes it very very challenging for teachers and boy my hat's off to the teachers in the classroom because that is such a hard job. How are you dealing with many bilingual issues in Brainerd? We have some and then we have the E-R-E-L-L support in department and so we have some of that and throughout my career in education we've dealt with that quite a lot and we're seeing more of that. We just have a couple minutes left here but you talked about technology what are some of the new things that are happening in the Brainerd district with technology? I know you have a website but could you just briefly touch on some of the things we're doing? Some really exciting things are happening within our technology department right now that is really moving forward. We are just going to be showcasing our new website probably in October we're getting a new communications director here shortly within the district we had all new laptop computers put in the hands of our teachers just within this past year we have many of our classrooms have iPads computers, we have carts for computers we're really updating the computer technology within our district what we need to make sure and to ensure is the fact that we have the staff development to help support our teachers as we move in that direction because a lot of our, even our curriculums and such are coming out on technology to save money regarding books and such and so we need to make sure that we have the professional development and the tools available to our teachers so they can do the work that they want to do with technology. Will the students have any opportunities for online learning or that will be something you're doing? We already have some of it and we'll continue to do that as we move forward and so one of the things that I know is a big initiative in school districts right now is one-to-one technology as far as being able to save money with textbooks and those kinds of things and I would guess that we'll be moving in that direction out of time probably in slow increments but it certainly is something that our kids will have as they move into college and move forward so So were your communications person will that be the primary responsibility for them is to work with the website and those issues on the web? Yep and doing all the things that we want you know one of the things that we want to do is brainer like I said has such a awesome history of excellence and we need to tell the people about all the wonderful things that are going on all the wonderful initiatives I know I've been throughout the schools just again this last week and every day I just get amazed by all the great things that are happening we had forest day last week and went through the school forest and all the education that's taking place there we had Rachel's challenge this week and what a wonderful opportunity that was for our kids to do some work with anti-bullying just every time I turn around I'm learning about the balloon program and how the education foundation has been so support of it helping us and so we really want to showcase we're doing great work here in Brainerd and we're very proud of it and we want people to know how great it is Well we're out of time but you're not out of time I want to wish you the very best in your job and you've got a great attitude and I think you're going to be a real plus for the Brainerd community and thank you You've been watching Lakeland Currents where we're talking about what you're talking about I'm Marie Gildow, so long until next time