Feb. 21, 2019
Focusing on Our Students' Success
"Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems." -- Gever Tulley
 
Dear Team DPS,

Thank you to everyone for the tremendous efforts over the past few weeks to create a stronger environment for our students, educators and community. Throughout this time, I have been inspired by the passion and commitment that I witnessed, from students, teachers and SSPs, central support staff, schools and district leaders and parents and community members. I can't remember a time when so many people were driven to action, all with the goal of creating a stronger school system and focused on supporting our students. It's why I wanted to become the superintendent of DPS and why I continue to find encouragement in the work we can achieve together.
 
A focus on our students' success and how we can work together to create a supportive culture for kids is what drives me. I'd like to share my vision and the priorities I believe will help us create this culture.
 
In order to fulfill the tremendous promise our children bring to our schools each day, I'm committed to three key priorities to ensure every classroom across our city is a vibrant center of learning:
  • Equity: Our schools are places where every student is affirmed for who they are while being nurtured to excel.
  • Instructional Excellence: Our schools are places where every student receives high-quality instruction every day. This means we need to deliver the highest-quality supports to our teachers and leaders as they work day in and day out with our students.
  • Collaborative Teamwork: Our schools are the center of our communities, and we must work hand in hand with our educators, families and community members. We must build strong teams to help design solutions for our most persistent problems.
So what do these look like in action? In the coming days, I'll be sharing more details about my entry plan and providing you with opportunities to get involved and help shape it. This will include the work we'll do to address the top concerns identified by our community during the superintendent search, such as closing the opportunity gap and increasing equity and outcomes for all kids.
 
I have been a member of Team DPS for almost 30 years. I know a lot about what we do well and where we fall short. I have also spent the past semester both listening and learning from the perspectives of others. And I am driven to ensure that we can have a greater impact, in part by focusing our efforts on fewer, high impact efforts to help us reach our goals.
 
This will require discipline and a willingness to do things differently. Added to this, we have made commitments to increase teacher and SSP compensation, to increase pay for our hourly workers and to make needed investments in special education. We know our state's funding system falls far short of what we need to ensure that our schools have all that they need to support our students and staff. I am working to reorganize our central support teams so that we focus on the work that has the strongest potential to help us reach our goals.
 
We will also need to reduce, restructure and find savings to help fund our commitments. To this end, we have eliminated performance-based bonuses for central office leaders and will be reducing more than 150 staffed or vacant full-time positions in the central office, along with creating savings through greater efficiencies.
 
In the coming weeks, we will also be restructuring some central office teams. The goal behind this restructure is to align us to the narrower set of high-impact priorities mentioned above, eliminate redundancies and find efficiencies through the consolidation of teams that do similar work.
 
There's no doubt our schools will feel the effects of these changes. Our goal is to increase focus and impact even while we are reducing the size of the central support teams. And even so, I know that creating new approaches will be hard, both on the teams going through changes as well as on our schools who have to adjust as the support systems change.
 
I know how hard our central office professionals work; they are committed to our schools and our students and I want to acknowledge and thank them for their dedication to DPS. I will be sharing more details on the upcoming changes next week.
 
These are difficult choices and there is no one right way to structure our teams. I know that every member of Team DPS is committed to achieving our vision, Every Child Succeeds. As I make these changes, I will also be focused on this vision. I invite you to get involved as we continue to share more details.
 
We will keep you updated as more information is available. In the meantime, thank you for all you do for Team DPS and our kids.
 
Warm Regards,
Susana  
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