Dr. Jorgensen's Highland Highlights
November 18, 2019
Highland Highlights
It is with pleasure that I am serving the Central Lee and Highland Community School Districts as a consultant. My service to Highland is on a very limited basis where I act as an administrative advisor/coach to the Principals, Superintendent, Business Manager and Board President. This includes participation electronically in monthly administrative meetings, coaching and feedback through email and phone calls. I also will attend two on-site visits during the course of the school year to meet with administrative team members and teachers. I continue to prepare a monthly article on behalf of the district and share that article with the media, board, and the district website. I send a report back to all board members each month detailing the activities that I have I participated in on behalf of the district for that month. There is also an option to write grants on behalf of the district on a commission basis, which is something I hope to expand upon down the road.
My first site visit occurred during the month of October. I must admit to how much I enjoyed having a chance to visit staff and administration. I spent time working with the Aerospace Engineering teaching staff in providing coaching and support to this program. I had the chance to visit with the Agriculture instructors and tour the greenhouse. I was able to start these programs and wrote the grants for the greenhouse and aerospace equipment with the support of the school board during my time as Superintendent During my most recent visit, I worked with the secondary administrative team and guidance counselor on course development and visioning for the Career and Technical Pathways for the district in the near future. We did a major changeover during my Superintendent tenure in converting traditional vocational courses into 21st century programs. These areas were key areas of focus for me to develop meaningful career pathways for Highland graduates. It is an area I am very comfortable with and have a lot of history with. I had the chance to visit the elementary classrooms and meet with the Principal. I since collaborated with an Instructional Coach on a grant application.
I think what I found the most refreshing for me during the course of my visit was the positive atmosphere there was in the district. Some of that came from the passage of the bond issue. Teachers and administration viewed this as a positive statement from the patrons of the community and as a doorway to a future for this district. I must admit that during my time as the Superintendent in the district, that wasn’t the environment in which I entered. A lot of the time I spent as a Superintendent was about visioning for the future, but was constantly distracted by dealing with negativity from things that had happened in the past. The district was stuck in the mud and having a hard time moving forward. The board asked me to assist them in trying to move forward, which I did to the best of my ability, but there was a lot of hurdles we were trying to clear. I must admit that Mr. Crawford deserves a lot of credit for continuing on the pathway to create and implement that vision.
It is nice to say that the future I had envisioned has started to reveal itself. The discussions and planning are all about the future and not spending a lot of time trying to revisit the negativity of the past. I applaud the Board and Administration for reaching that point. The future looks bright for the district and the environment in the buildings has improved tremendously. I’m looking forward to my next unofficial visit in February and an official visit sometime later in the spring. The pride in the district is alive and well and the future is as bright as it ever has been. Check it out #HuskyPride
