Committing to leading and learning

I would like to congratulate the Iowa City Community School Board, administration and the Iowa City Education Association for committing their personal time and energy to complete Leadership for Student Learning.

The training helps illustrate the positive impact that school boards can have on student achievement. It is based on the Lighthouse Research Project completed by the Iowa Association of School Boards, which found common elements among high-performing school districts, including: setting high expectations, focusing on instruction, setting clear goals, investing in professional development, properly using data, leadership and collaboration.

We have committed to a series of work sessions to review the 5 Critical Roles of the School Board and the 8 Conditions for Productive Change, as set out in the training. All of this will be highly focused on student achievement and delivering our educational mission.

This work is very timely as we have also committed as a district to complete a strategic plan which will link our mission, goals, policies, directives and action plans. This will enable us to be more focused going forward on achieving better educational outcomes for students and to better support our outstanding teachers.

One immediate and simple change will be to ensure that everything we do and everything we spend time on is strongly linked to student achievement.

I view this as a strong commitment by district leadership to move our district forward with positive and productive change which will greatly benefit all our students. We are fortunate to be a very strong school district today. Our role is to build on this strength and make our District great both now and in the ever changing future.

I would appreciate community support and involvement to help us get this done for our students.

l Chris Lynch is a member of the Iowa City Community School Board. This column represents his personal opinions and not necessarily those of the board. Comments: chris.lynch@iowacityschools.org