photo by: Peter Hancock/Journal-World File Photo

This Journal-World file photo from Jan. 6, 2017, shows Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson in his office.

Teachers in four Lawrence schools voted recently to apply for the Kansans Can School Redesign Project’s Apollo phase — but if you don’t live and breathe Kansas K-12 education, that statement might leave you scratching your head.

Here’s a primer on the statewide initiative — why it’s happening, what it could look like, what it means for Lawrence and when all Kansas schools will be redesigned.

Where did the redesign idea come from?

In 2015, Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson toured the state to talk to community members and business leaders and announced based on what he’d learned that Kansas schools “may need to be redesigned,” as the Journal-World reported on Sept. 16, 2015.

Although the people Watson heard from generally agreed that basic academic skills were important, the vast majority of skills people listed as important were nonacademic skills, such as communication, interpersonal skills, citizenship and ethics, and the ability to work in teams with other people, the Journal-World reported.

This led to a new vision statement for the Kansas State Board of Education: “Kansas leads the world in the success of each student.”

It also means stepping out of the “one-size-fits-all” approach that relies exclusively on state assessments, and into a model driven by four principles: student success skills, personalized learning, community partnerships and real-world applications, according to talking points from the Kansas State Department of Education.

What does redesign look like?

Lucinda Crenshaw, who teaches science at West Middle School, reached out to the Journal-World last week to talk about redesign.

She’s been excited about the prospect since she was Region 2 Kansas Secondary Teacher of the Year in 2016. As part of that honor, she got to tour other schools statewide and be present in the discussions around the results of Watson’s listening tour. She’s kept up with redesign as it’s rolled out, and she and some other teachers at West, including Kathy Gates and Lisa Greenwood, have been working to inform others in the district about what they’ve learned.

The short answer is that redesign could look very different from one school to the next — that’s largely due to the desire to step away from a “cookie cutter” approach, instead asking each school to determine its community’s needs and build from there.

The state has some guidelines and requirements for redesign schools — five outcomes, and the definition of a successful high school graduate. Otherwise, schools have a good deal of freedom in what they do.

The five outcomes are social-emotional growth, kindergarten readiness, individual plan of study (IPS), high school graduation and postsecondary success. A successful high school graduate, according to KSDE, “has the academic preparation, cognitive preparation, technical skills, employability skills and civic engagement to be successful in postsecondary education, in the attainment of an industry-recognized certification or in the workforce, without the need for remediation.”

For the schools that have launched redesigns this year, Crenshaw said the state hasn’t been requiring much reporting and has tried to avoid too much interaction with outside forces so they can just focus on rolling out their new systems. But the Journal-World has reported that in some redesign schools, students are no longer split up by age and grade levels but rather by experience, for instance.

photo by: Mackenzie Clark

Lucinda Crenshaw, a science teacher at West Middle School, tells Lawrence school board members on March 25, 2019 that even though West is not one of the schools that voted to apply for the Kansans Can School Redesign Project, she and her colleagues are excited and willing to help in the process.

Crenshaw named a few examples and ideas for potential redesign components:

• Types of course offerings: An English credit could look a number of different ways, for example. Students who plan to go on to a traditional college would benefit from different types of exposure and assignments than students who want to go into technical fields and would need to learn to read and write about technical things, she said.

• Scheduling is another topic up for discussion, particularly at secondary schools. Crenshaw said some schools are adding more flex time, for instance. At Liberal High School, according to an article on KSDE’s website, plans called for bells only at the beginning and end of each school day.

• Community involvement and real-world application plays a big role. Crenshaw suggested perhaps a class that would have students train dogs for emotional support, or to challenge students interested in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — to build a tiny house to donate to someone in need. Students could do more job-shadowing at area businesses, or fill roles for the district, she said.

• Looking at space differently: Crenshaw said that at West, there’s green space in the middle of the school that doesn’t really have a purpose. Though West would not be one of the district’s redesign schools, she said she would like to see something happen with that space: perhaps a butterfly garden, or “maybe we need to raise chickens. I don’t know,” she said. “We just need to think differently. What’s going to get kids excited about coming to school?”

• Monitoring different data: Schools will have to determine ways to measure students’ social-emotional growth over time, Crenshaw said, by looking at what’s already out there and coming up with their own ideas. They’ll want to measure things such as how students work through frustration, talk to people face-to-face rather than just via text, and seek out resources and help when they encounter difficulties.

Who’s redesigning?

Statewide: Across the state, 110 schools in 47 districts — including nearby Spring Hill, Olathe and Ottawa — have applied to participate in one of the first three phases of redesign: Mercury, Gemini I and Gemini II.

The first seven districts, constituting the Mercury phase, were announced in August 2017; those schools and some of the Gemini I schools launched their redesign plans in fall 2018. The other Gemini I schools and Gemini II will launch this fall.

In Lawrence: Schoolwide teachers’ votes, held March 18-22, met KSDE’s required threshold of more than 80% at Broken Arrow (90%), Deerfield (92%) and Hillcrest (88%) elementaries and Free State High School (81%). The school board agreed at its March 25 meeting to allow the district to apply. If the district’s application is accepted, all four will become redesign schools, a spokeswoman for KSDE said via email.

The deadline for applications to Apollo, the fourth phase, is Friday. Selected districts will be announced April 16-17 during the KSBE meeting in Topeka.

Watson and Brad Neuenswander, deputy commissioner of KSDE, answered many questions about redesign in a video about the Apollo phase, available at ksde.org.

“If we believe, in your application, you’re ready to get engaged, we’re accepting,” Neuenswander said in the video.

Thus far, KSDE has said that once a district’s application is accepted, if additional schools decide the following year that they want to get involved, those schools don’t need to reapply.

What does it mean for participants?

The schools that participate in redesign will become models for other districts. KSDE’s goal is to have all 286 Kansas school districts redesigned by 2026, according to its news release.

It’s a big commitment, though. Each school would have a redesign team of roughly five to seven classified staff, ideally from different areas of the school. That team will be responsible for conducting the research to determine the school community’s needs, and it will meet at least once a week, according to the KSDE video. Every other week, the redesign team will go to regional training sessions.

KSDE has said that teachers heavily involved in redesign should expect to spend about 80% of their time focusing on everything they already do in their classrooms and about 20% on redesign research, training and planning.

Who decides how schools redesign?

Crenshaw said there’s a lot of autonomy and flexibility for teachers within their classrooms in Lawrence. However, “in our current world, it’s a hierarchy thing and administration and the school board have more, I would say, perceived power than teachers feel they necessarily do on how things get done in a big system,” she said.

“This has to be teacher-driven,” Crenshaw said of redesign. “It has to be the teachers that are the ones pushing for this, that are doing most of the research, and administration should be the support to help these things happen.”

She said it’s scary for any business to change the way major decisions are made, but the state has been supportive that teachers need to be the ones leading the way in redesign.

“The research supports that if you want to have a system change, you need to allow the people who are doing the work the leadership role,” she said. “… We have always had teacher committees, but some of our frustration has been we work and work and work on these committees and we give our input, and then it doesn’t look like what we suggested — or maybe a little bit, but not all of it.”

Parent, student and community feedback is also crucial to redesign schools. A yearlong timeline for participating schools includes communication with stakeholders through each step of the process.

District leaders have voiced support, both before and after the local teachers’ votes. In board meetings, Superintendent Anthony Lewis has said that the district’s first strategic plan is being structured to accommodate redesign, and board members have told Crenshaw and others who have spoken about redesign during public comment that they appreciate their enthusiasm.

What will it cost?

KSDE will provide at no cost the intensive help and professional training to each school’s redesign team, which Watson and Neuenswander said would cost about $350,000 per year if districts were to seek it from private companies. The schools that are redesigning before it becomes the new basis for accreditation in a few years will have the advantage of having that training.

However, the schools will be responsible for costs associated with substitute teachers, transportation for redesign team members to attend all-day biweekly trainings, and other such logistics.

The training sessions for Lawrence redesign teams would be held at Greenbush, which moved in July into the district’s Wakarusa Valley building south of town at 1104 East 1000 Road.

“They’re not going to have to travel very far to attend a lot of their training,” Bart Swartz, Greenbush associate executive director, told the school board on March 25.

What’s the timeline?

If the Lawrence school district is accepted, approval to engage in redesign will come back to the school board, according to materials in the board’s March 25 meeting agenda.

Beginning this month, KSDE will provide schools the necessary information for the planning year (aka Mission Inception); “individualized regional support” will be provided beginning in fall, according to the video from KSDE. Through spring and summer, teams will pilot some initiatives and form a comprehensive redesign plan.

Apollo schools will be expected to roll out their designs in fall 2020 — aka Show and Launch.

Where can I learn more?

KSDE’s website, ksde.org, is full of resources for schools that are participating. The department is also on Twitter, @KSDEredesign and @ksdehq, often broadcasting live video updates on redesign.

There are also podcasts on the subject, such as “Kansas Moonshot: School Redesign,” which showcases what’s happening around the state.