Brian Schmitt and Community Schooling in Genesee Valley Central Schools 3/5/22

Brian Schmitt, the superintendent of Genesee Valley Schools, shares his work in creating a community schools model for his district. 

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Welcome back to this week's episode of education matters New York. I'm your host, Wayne Ackles. I'm very excited to have my good friend and mentor Brian Schmidt with me from Genesee Valley Schools. He is here today going to talk to us a little bit about community schools. And I had the good fortune of following up Brian at Fairport, I got his office, which is still the best office in that building, in terms of view and other things. But that's a story for another time as well. At this point, I'd like to turn it over to Brian and let him tell you a little bit about his background and how he has landed himself as the superintendent at Genesee valley schools, and then we will turn things over to the conversation around community schools. Thanks for coming, Brian. Hey, Wayne, thanks for having me. My career is is certainly reflecting was 25 years in education now. For a guy who didn't want to go into education I sure have fallen far started as a Spanish teacher and rural school where I grew up Cato Meridian and went from there to Rochester City where I taught for a number of years at the now closed James Madison School of excellence. It is now the Wilson Prep Academy went from there to Webster Thomas High School where I taught for a couple of years and while in that transition started to get the bug to be a leader in schools. And so I went to St. John Fisher, and got my degree in Education Administration and got hired to Fairport in 2004 as one of three assistant principals of Fairport High School. From there I went to Easter Rhonda coy, I was the principal of East Ridge. And then I was the principal of Hannibal High School. And then from Hannibal high school, I left in December of 2012. I took the job as the superintendent at Genesee Valley Central School. So I've been there for this is my 10th school year, which is hard to believe that that that kind of continuity, I have no longer serving superintendent there and the district was formed in 96. And, you know, it's a beautiful, beautiful place. It's in Belmont and Angelica, New York was just a picture as campus, the building itself, it's a one, one building district that was built in 2004, or open, I should say, in 2004. And it's just absolutely gorgeous. So it's a privilege to be the superintendent there. Well, it's great to hear and I can relate to working in that single campus building with the Honeywell experience I've had and working with David bells. And I know that's a name that you know, from your past. And yeah, I want to get to, and it's funny that we're talking about smaller schools. And I think the need around community schools, I think really lends itself to those smaller rural communities. So you've been doing a lot of work for the Genesee Valley Central School District in the area of community schools, Blaine how that work began, and what community schools are and what it looks like today, you know, from where you started, to what it looks like to the programs and things that you have working today. So when I came to GV, it was made very clear from the Board of Education, they wanted our school to become the hub of the community. The goal was to have our doors open to be Invitational and to be a true partner with the community. And the lens that I inherited was that hadn't happened in the past that there was some some viewed as a an elite institution up on the hill, the doors weren't open, we weren't community friendly. They didn't get access when they wanted to get access, that we weren't good partners within the community. And so it really started with a needs assessment and taking a very close look at who our kids were, and are, what are their needs? What were the parenting needs, what were the community needs. And so we did a number of surveys, and got a lot of really good feedback about what community perceptions were from all the stakeholders, and we surveyed students, parents, our administrative team, certainly the community. And what we heard loud and clear was they valued the school, they thought we did a pretty good job of educating kids, I would say pretty good, not where we are today. And that they really wanted the little things improved. Like Unfortunately, our bus drivers got the highest credit in our cafeteria staff got the lowest credit. And then the reality of it was it was along the lines of things that community knew about. So from there, we really started to take a look at how we were serving meals to our kids. And so we I learned of a program called the Community Eligibility program. And what that meant meant was that we were able to if we applied and qualified, bring free breakfast in lunch and an after school snack to our kids. And so we applied and we were successful. So I believe in 2014 we were able to to feed our students, three, basically three meals, two meals and a snack three meals a day. And so that was that was really huge. I had a staff member there who say told us that we saved her over$2,000 that year alone because she had two hungry teenage boys who were buying doubles every day in the cafeteria. And so we rolled we continued looking at what additional needs our community had and so we rolled that, from there into an extended school day program. And as we started wrapping around the extended school day program, we realized that there was not a lot of quality daycare in our community. So we applied and one of the things that I will add you'll hear me talk a lot about is the relationships that you form with community partners, and then with external partners who can really help benefit the school. I had a relationship with Terry Delahunt, who was a grant writer, I met her while I was in handle, Terry came in and started helping us to to develop and evaluate grants. And so we received a grant to expand our three pre program into a three pre kindergarten program. And so we had a one four year old program, that we only had 22 students into it, and then we had a headstart program, and the Headstart program just wasn't meeting our needs. So we really kind of built from there and continue to build as a community school program. So when we talk about all of the services we provide, we teach students from two and a half to 21. We feed kids two meals a day plus their snack, we have a telemedicine program that provides a great partnership and opportunity for families to use telemedicine, so they're not taking time off of work. But child has an element they can come in, we use Bluetooth technology, we connect them with a doctor in Buffalo, and they can test them like during COVID. This was great. We were doing COVID tests, and then running the test to Buffalo. So we had the same day results from the lab for our families to get the COVID results. We also test for flu test for strep, we test for pinkeye just a wide variety of those components. And then you know, the money and many other pieces we looked at is how we can build additional community programs to support that community. You know, that's fascinating stuff and good stuff. And I remember one of my first conversations I had with you, it was not long after you had started the food programs, and it's amazing to hear how that's built. In terms of the telemedicine. I was fortunate when I worked with David bills and Honeywell I we had started to do some of that with some mental health services that the community can come in and access as a family. And that was kind of where we started to dabble with it at that time to hear how that's grown and to hear the impact that must have had during the pandemic especially when you didn't have to you know, when it was so difficult for people to find test and things other places to have a known entity, the school be there to help support that. That's that's neat stuff. I wanted to circle back to you mentioned Terry Delahunt. Yeah. And where is she located? Now she She actually lives in Florida. Okay. She kind of she works remotely and visits us a couple times a year. So again, we just submitted a an over $2 million Community Schools grants a federal grant that we just applied for we the most recent grant we got was a $60,000 Ralph Wilson Foundation generator Z grant, and it's funding an Adventure Club for our kids. And so we're taking kids, whitewater rafting, and we've done zip lines and indoor rock climbing. And in March, we're taking them to the smuggler's notch, Vermont to go skiing and really trying to explore one of the great things about living in a rural community is the outdoor resources that we have. And so many families and communities live there, frankly, in that community because they love the outdoors. They love to hunt, they'll to fish. And one of the things we've really struggled with is how do we make sure that our kids are prepared to live in the community. Beyond Android, we are finding and many community rural communities find this all the time is the brain drain that comes from those brightest and best go off to college. And then they get absorbed in the areas from the colleges or spread out other places. And so we also had a group of students who are incredibly disconnected from school and like every school does, we really monitored them all the way through elementary school, we got to seventh and eighth grade, and they were continuing no matter what intervention we put in place. They were still struggling. And so we are in the northern tip of the Appalachian region. So we qualify for a grant called the Appalachian Regional Commission grant. And so we applied for a grant that would develop a building and Trades Program. And so we just started that Building Trades Program this year, we were successful. So we're partnering with welzel Central School District, as well as Alfred State University and the Allegheny County Land Bank. And so the design of this program is we hired a a former project manager from a local contracting company who does major projects in schools and businesses, and he is teaching kids the trades by actually working in Allegheny County Land Bank owned homes to help refurbish the homes so that they will be able to join the housing market again, and so really excited about this. So what really is it we got the we got the grant, we hired Jake Greifswald, who's a phenomenal teacher. We have six students Genesee Valley, six students from Wellsville, who are completely disconnected, started them as fresh as freshmen. And we're having a phenomenal experience with them. And so unfortunately, because of the pandemic, they actually the land bank didn't own any homes. And so what we've done is we've shifted, so they're supporting the Allegheny County office of the aging for special projects for senior citizens who don't have the funds to support a portrait pair or a small repair on the house. And they've also built a shed for the land bank. And they're in the process of doing some other projects for the district. And so they're actually going to shift the model into building tiny homes and be able to sell those on an annual basis and start a business. And what was great about this grant is in addition to the startup funds of the program, it provides funding for the work to continue year round. So any of the work students that wanted to they could work and get paid after school, as well as over the summer. So the work on the House wouldn't stop based upon the school calendar. And so in our community schools application, we just look to hope, we're hope, hoping that we get this grant, we think we're well suited to do so and that we'll continue that work and actually expand the program. So we're really excited about it. That sounds like such an exciting program. In one word done, I'm going to share some contact info with actually someone that was a guest and one of my colleagues at work. Mark Payne, he was a large equipment operator, and he works with me and DDS, as a training coordinator as well. And he lives in the region that nearby to where you guys are. And I think he might be a resource for you to tap into going back into maybe the beginning stages here for just a minute, when you were first trying to decide on okay, you looked at the food model first and building on those programs. Were there other guides or programs that you said, you know, what we want to model? We're going to, we're going to model ourselves here, or we're going to take a little bit from this program and take a little bit from here. What were some of those that when you were first getting started? Well, Wayne, you've heard me say that the best educators are the best thieves. And so certainly, we looked around what other people were doing and try to model or emulate and learn from people who already had a Community Eligibility program or looked at some of the grants they'd have applied for, and were or were not successful. So a lot of what we've done, we've done a lot of learning tours and visited other schools. And it's not just leadership, it's also incorporating a group of stakeholders to come to gain that buy in and to get their perspective from their community to do that, so I we also focused on and the old hierarchy of Maslow, you know, my firm belief that there there's not fed, if they're not closed, that they don't feel safe and secure, then they can't learn. And so we really focused on those first tier needs of children, to make sure that we you know, we, we wanted a Applied Behavior Analyst to be able to come in and support some of the behavior needs of our kids, we couldn't find one to hire. So we grew our own. We wanted a licensed clinical social worker, we couldn't find one. So we grew our own, the district invested in paid for the the degrees for this, these individuals who live in the communities to get certified in these areas. And then they give us a time commitment to beyond those. And if they choose to leave leave earlier, they will owe us some type of portion of their the cost of their program. But that's working for us. And so we really are focusing on food, shelter, support, and then we really focused on the culture of the district. And the conversations were around. Who are we as an organization, and what do we want to emulate? And we had conversations about, you know, what are the best practices we want to see in the classroom? If I walk into any classroom? What are the attributes of that classroom that I could see, if I have a parent or a child who's looking at a teacher? What are the adjectives they should be using to describe the type of person that we want to have at Genesee Valley? So we've identified and developed the ideal candidate, as a teacher for us. And so when we have our interview committees we share who the ideal candidate is, and what our goals are very similar to what we did at Fairport. Yeah. You know, again, best educators, the best thieves, and but really, really spelled out very clearly here is the vision for who we want to be as an organization. Here are the steps that we're going to take to get there. And we certainly stumbled along the way. But we've had a lot of successes to support the children and families of our community. Well, it's funny, you mentioned fair report, you know, as we were talking, Dave paddock was one of the first guests on the show. And one of the, you know, you've hit on two things that are really prime interest for this show. And actually three things one is culture. We talk a lot about culture and how to improve culture. The other thing is mental health and the well being of kids outside of academics. And then the third is those opportunities for those non traditional paths to careers other than, you know, the typical college bound. You know, we talk about college and career ready. Well, there's an awful lot of emphasis on college ready, a lot less on career Ready. So it's neat that all three of those things have come up just in the last few minutes. So that's, that's neat stuff. So when you started this work, how did the community respond to this? Did it take it sounded like the community was ready to get on board? They were looking for a change. Was there any convincing that you had to do? Or was it a fairly smooth transition, or? Well, I think like anything, there were some bumps in the road. But the idea that all of a sudden, we made an announcement that they would no longer have to pay for lunches. That was a pretty popular decision, like to be the superintendent. And I often said early on that I don't want to be the superintendent that says, By the way, you have to start paying for lunches again. Because there you know, there is no such thing as a free lunch. You know, about four years ago, we recognized that there was a significant impact to families for classroom supplies. And we changed our model from in teachers individually ordering their own supplies to a supply, essential supply, closet and system. And we were saving significant amount of money with it. But we were looking at, and we started reviewing the list that teachers were sending home to parents for the summer list that we're finding things on there. Like we had one teacher who was asking for toilet paper, you know, tissue boxes, markers, all of the things that we had in central supply. And so we started asking the questions, why are we taxing our community with these things? What are the things that are in addition to things that we already ordered, that we're asking parents to provide for? Right, and when we looked really closely, it was binders, that was one additional real piece of things that we weren't ordering a lot of. And so we made the announcement four years ago that the district will provide all the all the classroom supplies for every student pre K through 12. And so we do that. So the most, the largest expense has been calculators, you know, but honestly, with our, we have a technology plan that allows further replacement. Um, so we're able to budget for so many a year, we spread the cost out through the years, it's the same we would do with iPads or any other technology, and it serves us really, really well. So we've been able to provide so when you, you know, we've been able to provide all of those basic needs that are typically the cost for families coming out. And so if you come to Genesee Valley, you don't pay to see a play, you don't pay to see a basketball game, you know, we do have fundraisers and our messages that we want to support our kids in the extracurriculars, the idea that you're going to pay taxes to our district to come to have your children come to our school or live in the district. And by the way, we're gonna charge you five bucks to come to play doesn't fly while with with me and our staff, it's against our culture. So that's who we are. And so the little bit of money that we would take in takes away from the message of who we are as an organization. That's, again, good stuff, and that consistent message, you know, centered on culture and who we are and what you're trying to do. What would you say to those? You know, I know there might be people hearing this not familiar with the needs maybe that a lot of kids run into and Maslow and any of that, what do you say to those folks, that what you're providing the access to telemedicine, the free, you know, free plays all of that stuff, the school supplies, that that's not the work for schools, they, you know, schools are about reading, writing, and arithmetic, that's what they should be doing. And not in the business of, you know, lunches, and all that kind of stuff. So we have been talking about 21st Century Skills for over 20 years now. And what I have seen as a school leader is the D evolution of parent and it's incredibly frustrating when I look at the needs of our students who are coming to school and point blank, our kids are coming, needier and needier every year and so the reality is that we can step back and say, You know what, they're going to learn a work ethic at home, or they're going to learn manners at home, or they're going to understand what character development is. And oh, by the way, they're going to be able to understand social media, and you have a high level of media literacy when it comes because parents are having those kinds of conversations with kids will, I'm sorry, they're not. More and more students are coming to school with a deficit of the skills that our generation, I sound like an old man that our generation earned. And so we're having to I come back to anyone who has a naysayer, if not us, then who? And the reality is, if our parents are meeting those expectations, that means we're able to spend more emphasis on the parents who aren't the kids who don't have that at home. And you know, when you look at our school, our our population when they opened the building and was approximately 180 kids, and we have about 600 in the building right now. And the reality is, we still use all the classrooms because we have more smaller group settings that are needed because of the increase in skills. If I was to say that one failure or one area that I haven't improved enough upon, and we've been really working hard on this is the literacy rate of our kids coming out of first grade. And so we have developed little incentive programs where we're sending but we give books To all the kids who come for Christmas presents, we give books at the end of the school year when we have our community picnic. You know, we started creating we have a will be called the JAG design. It's a business that students can involve for making anything from T shirts to bags to a lot of laser engraving and kind of just press printing. And so we started creating Genesee belly onesies for babies. And we're in the process of forming partnerships with our area hospitals so that when there's a student was born in our district in the area hospital, they get a care package from the school. It's a future Jaguar and trying to wanting to welcome them to be Emelia part of our community. You know, there's more and more of this effort has happened to taking place regionally. I'm also really proud as is. I'm one of the authors of our regional BOCES Community Schools Kosar. It didn't we didn't have a community schools closer until about five years ago. And what this coaster provides for us is access to a lot of great training and support for our students and their families. And so we've been able to bring in a wide variety of presenters, it also helps offset the cost of our telemedicine program. And so, I was a strong advocate for that in our region. And so now many of our schools in our region have access to not only the telemedicine program, but they also have access to shared school psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, and then more importantly, training, we're doing a lot of work on trauma. The reality is we understand that that trauma impacts a great majority of our population, it has long, long lasting impact on our kids ability to learn and to be successful adults. And so we're doing everything we can to try to address it at an early age and provide the most inclusive and supportive environment possible for our students. Well, you know, it's it's funny that you mentioned trauma, and I think I was saying this maybe two episodes or so ago, you know, prior to the pandemic event, you know, we were starting to see those trends they had been going up. And I seen some of those trends as a school leader who had to pinch it from time to time with the younger grades. And some of the most challenging students were actually in the younger grades that hadn't, you know, been fully socialized yet and didn't have all the supports at home. And so I think that's a great response, if not us who and I think that's a way that we can all look at this because someone has to take this on, because those those youngsters will eventually be teenagers and eventually expected to be contributing members of society. And if we don't have the tools for them, if we haven't taken the time, if someone hasn't taken the time, you know, that cost for them will just continue if a district was starting to look to do more with community schools, and I know that as a school leader, I mentioned my time at West Genesee, I was even thinking, you know, that that would most people would say, well, that's a fairly well off suburban district. But I saw needs that were starting to, again, Eclipse what you know, even the resources that a West Jenny had, where would you point someone and say, okay, here are some resources that you could take a look at, that could give you a start and some some areas to focus and look at, I would first start off by identifying the needs of your community. And so I think a needs assessment survey of all your stakeholders will really drive to light what your priority should be. And obviously, you're taking a look at, you know, what your district vision is, what your mission statement is, what your what resources you have. And the other. You know, one of the pieces we did was we took a we took an inventory of the resources that in support we already had in place, we didn't want to duplicate something, we didn't want to throw something out with the bathwater that was already already working. But the reality was, that's a key component. And so it was it was really simple. You know, there's a wide variety of surveys that are out there. Anyway, you wanted to reach out to me at Genesee Valley, they certainly could do so. And I would share the survey that we used. There's also we use the the Allegheny County has a in most almost every county does, does a Youth Survey every other year risk at risk behaviors. And one of the things that stood out from our survey early on, when we started really taking a close look at this. It was a suicide ideation of our teenagers, particularly teenage boys at from the ages of 13 to 17. And it was it was almost 80% of students had considered suicide at one point, or at least reported they considered suicide or had suicide ideations. That was That was scary to us. And the idea that we want to make sure that we had enough mental health supports in place. And so we really took an inventory of how well do we know the kids? And we did. There's an activity that we did at both levels where we put the kids names on the walls and who's got the past relationship, and then we really identify the ones that we didn't have. Sure, unfortunately, three years ago, we had a middle school student commit suicide. And that was really hard. And so we took a real close look again, as you always do at your practices and your policies and the communication that we've had with families and the partnerships that we've asked so I would start with start with identifying the needs, I would I would do an inventory of your own components. And then what I would start small because like anything you do, you want to have some small wins. And you want something tangible that you can really communicate to the community. And so we've used social media a lot. Families are really busy. Yeah. And so what I look at is, what burden Can we pick up that take off my family, and it may be as simple as a family dinner. And so every year in August, before school starts, we host meet the teacher night, this event is designed to take place in advance of the school year starting. So the first contact that parent and a teacher may have is not well, Johnny was messing up in class again, yeah, it's positive. And so we serve a meal. We partner with a number of community organizations who have resources that are available to kids, we bring in the Cub Scouts, we bring in all the different clubs and extracurriculars to that made people may want to sign up for. And we do it in our cafeteria, the elementary go in their classroom so that the parents have the command and see the classrooms in advance the kids coming in very little conversations is around syllabus, or it's more. Here's who I am, I am your son's ninth grade social studies teacher, I can't wait to have him or her in your class. And oh, by the way, we get people there. Because we provide a meal. We always every time we do something we feed people. And food is what brings people to our we can have the best speaker in the world. And if there's no food, nobody's coming. Sure. And and that's such a smart strategy, not just the food, but also to have that first interaction. Be one that's not there's no stakes, and it's all just hey, let's meet each other. Everyone, you know, sort of like the beginning of the football season. Everybody's undefeated at this point. Absolutely. And it starts a nice clean slate for everyone. i One last thing I wanted to ask them on you you hit on this earlier, you mentioned the ski trip to smuggler's notch, what are you hoping that this will develop with your students? You mentioned a little bit if you could go in a little more depth on Now I'd love to hear more about the skills and things that you see them come on, you know, the question is really timely, because I was having multiple conversations today about particularly about how intentional we're being about developing skills in our kids. And we have a careers course that we offer every year. And it's basically it's a life skills class that we give to seniors. And so we have a school resource officer who borrows a local police car and puts students in the back of the car. And he talks to students about what it's like to be what what do you do when you get pulled over, we have our bus, our head mechanic walks them through how to check the oil in a car, how to change their license plate we have our senior economics teacher does a budget with them and walks them through what budgeting is and talks about credit cards, talks about mortgages, talks about many of the very most important lessons that everybody argues they don't get taught in school. But I'll tell you a Genesee Valley they do. We were very intentional about that. Having said that, we still see many of the skills we want kids to be able to, to have when they graduate, not at the level that we want. In particular, we're seeing our seventh and eighth graders transition with the lack of those skills. And so we want to be more intentional about how do you collaborate, you know, how do you communicate effectively around what you're doing? How do you think critically, how do you problem solve all of those 21st century skills that we've talked about? Equally, what I have found is that having the opportunity to get kids out of the classroom, and engage with them in activities that they enjoy is essential because it builds the whole person. So we have a very robust athletics program. We started an archery program, we have a Trap Team, we have the ski, the ski club I've done for a number of years I was chaperoning on Tuesday night, and it's a great way as the superintendent to be coming down the slopes and have a fifth and sixth grader yelling to me to come and go for a ride with them. They know who I am. That's cool. You know, that's great. And then again, in larger districts, that's much more challenging to do, because that visibility just by numbers is so much more challenging. So so my goal is a couple of things. One is every year, we do a trip, our seventh graders go to either Washington DC or Boston, paid for by the entire district. We run it through a coaster with our local BOCES. And and basically all of the aid generated covers the cost. We purchased, we actually purchased a coach bus. So believe it or not, New York state allows you to outfit a school bus as a coach bus and still generate New York State Transportation aid on it. No kidding. And so we did it. And so we have a bus that's completely outfitted in gray and black with the Genesee Valley Jaguars on the side of it, massive storage compartments underneath it. And so we use that rather than than taking students or you know, running coach buses. We use that bus and so over five years, it saves us about $50,000 in coach bus fees. And it really we've generated all those eight so I bring those opportunities up because I firmly believe that if you are taking kids out of that element, and you're giving those life experiences, I don't know if we'll ever have them again in life. Sure, I don't know how many kids will go to Gettysburg or go to Washington DC on their own after they graduate from high school or Boston for that matter. You know, and I take it back to me as a teenager, when I was 16 years old, I sold by cow and I bought an airline ticket to Sweden. And I was a Rotary Youth Exchange, Ambassador, and I participate in that program where I hosted a teenager from Sweden, and I went to Sweden for a little over a month. And we remained friends to this day for, you know, nearly 35 years later. And it had a profound impact on my life. And so my goal is, if you think back to what you really remember about your high school experience, is it your algebra class, or the concepts you picked up in there? Or is it the ski trip, the senior trip, going to the sea, those events, those experiences, athletics and extracurriculars. And so we want a full package of really robust educational experience for our kids. And so that's why we put a lot of time and energy into doing those experiences. And I think that you know, that example of the rotary exchange for me it was it wasn't quite as far as Sweden was that French club trip to Montreal, there you go all those years ago, and how that opened up. And, and we're both from Cuba County, both of our schools were blue Devils, even though Maria had the proper Blue Devils, not the CATO Meridian ones. But you know, Cayuga County is a rural county didn't have you know, and Brian and I are about the same age, he's a little bit younger and more handsome than I am. Those opportunities were not, you know, real nearby for us, and you needed those opportunities to see the larger world and that still exist. And we think that you know, in this day and age with social media and, and the internet, you can see those things, but to see them live and in person really has a much more lasting effect than anything you can show on a screen for sure. Brian, this has been a fantastic time together, the time has flown is I had a feeling it would I hope I can get you back on here again, to do a follow up or track into some other areas that we can explore sometime. Always a pleasure. And thank you for the opportunity. Alright, thanks again and all of you out there be well thanks for tuning into education matters, New York, and we will see you again next week with our next guest