Why Shared Beliefs MATTER More Than Quick Solutions In Education | Transformational Educators Ep. 21

What if the real key to school transformation is not a faster plan, but a deeper shared belief? 

In this episode of Transformational Educators, host Matthew Flippen sits down with Jeff Powell, Superintendent of Rapides Parish Schools, Regional Superintendent of the Year, and President of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents & Administrators, for a thoughtful conversation on trust, servant leadership, school culture, and lasting educational change. Jeff shares how alignment, humility, and a clear belief in what students deserve can move a hurting campus toward meaningful, sustainable improvement.

Jeff reflects on his early years as principal at Tioga Junior High, including the moment he realized he had not built trust with staff the right way, the apology that changed the trajectory of the school, and the practical steps that helped restore unity. He also explains how those lessons shaped his work as superintendent, from building two-way communication to strengthening community trust and creating measurable districtwide progress. This is a rich conversation for principals, superintendents, aspiring school leaders, and educators who want to lead with courage, care, and purpose.

Rapides Parish Schools

Louisiana Association of School Superintendents & Administrators

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Transcript

Coming up...

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Lot of times people want to start with where we disagree. And nine times out of ten, that's gonna just lead to arguments and hurt feelings and things like that. If we can always back up, hey, let's start with what we agree on.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

That is Jeff Powell, superintendent of Rapids Parish Schools, a regional superintendent of the year, and the president of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents and Administrators. He believes one of the biggest mistakes leaders make is trying to drive change before building alignment around shared belief.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

It's not just we're pushing information to you, it's no we're inviting you into the conversation about the work that we do in our school system.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

He explains why communication alone is not enough and how trust is built when leaders stop broadcasting decisions and start inviting people into the work.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And that was the turning tide.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Today he breaks down how leaders can rebuild trust, align people around shared purpose, and create lasting improvement without burning out their staff or their communities. By the end of this conversation, you'll learn how starting with alignment changes everything. I'm Dr. Matthew Flippin, and this is Transformational Educators.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Jeff, welcome to the show. Thanks, Matthew. That's great to be on with you guys today.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Yeah, so uh it's an honor to have time with you. You are such a great example of a transformational leader. You know, one of the things that stands out to me about your leadership is uh the innovation that you've brought to uh repeats Paris. We know that you have had really high achievement come out of a district. I think the highest problem that it's had worked on expanding literacy, workforce development. I mean, just lots of great things related to student achievement as well. And I know it's had a huge positive impact on the community. So well done with that.

What was happening at Tioga Junior High?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Thanks so much. We we've got a great team here that's been really pushing to do some really cool and amazing things. And we've got a community that has just bought in and believes in the work that's happening. And so it really makes the work that we're doing fun. And of course, when you see the when you see the numbers move and more students having the opportunity to be successful, it just keeps the motivation going. So it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

I did want to back up and talk a little bit about uh your time as principal at Tyoga Junior High and give us a little bit of what it was like there and just what the confidence of the school was like, what the trust with the community was like, the family school uh relationships, in addition, just how you would describe the school when you first arrived there as principal.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yeah, so uh interestingly enough, Tyoga Junior High was the same junior high school that my wife attended when she was younger. It's a true community school. In our parish, we have 11 high schools and then feeder systems, elementary, middle schools that feed into those. And Tyoga as a community has uh five elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. And so Tyoga Junior High is the middle school that feeds into the high school, of course. And at the time when I was principal there, it was also a school that, while you had the five elementary schools feeding into it, it was also the first year that many of these students, about a third of the students, were coming from another part of the parish who did not live in in the community. So in those middle school years, you were uh trying to facilitate new relationships and and things like that amongst students who didn't necessarily grow up together and things like that. So uh that was that was uh created some some barriers for us sometimes. And then uh at the same time, I think one of the one of the biggest kind of hurdles or obstacles when when I became principal over there was Tyoga was was run like a junior high school. And so those in the education world that that maybe understand or don't understand the difference between a junior high school versus a middle school. The middle school concept is very unique, some might call it innovative, where you you divide the school up into smaller schools. Inside it have teams of teachers that work with the same students every day. They the students typically never leave outside of that part of the school other than to go to like their elective classes. So it was being run as a junior high school, and my background was middle school, the true middle school concept. So, so that very early on, uh the the when the teachers uh found out that I was going to be their principal, I was not their first choice. And I can't even imagine that. But um, I was not their first choice. There was a long-standing serving assistant principal who most people assumed that she was going to get that job. Even even I did. I was working in the parish. I assumed she was going to get the job. So it was, yeah, I think it was a little bit of a shock to everybody when when I was brought in to be the principal. And so, you know, there was a lot of different dynamics that I was having to learn coming from a, I was coming from a very rural 7 to 12 high school as an assistant principal, but I'd done all most of my teaching in in the middle school setting. So um, so anyway, it was it was a junior high school with a little over 600 student, and they were not performing uh well. They were they were a little below average and and just not growing.

Why did the first year with staff go wrong?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Sure. Well, and thanks for mentioning that about the because you know when you step into a new role, right? Typically you're replacing someone, and uh, and you mentioned this dynamic of who the staff was hoping. So they had a they had someone they trusted and knew for a long time. And here you just jump right in. So first you had to build relationships with staff. What did that early stage look like?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

I failed miserably.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Oh no.

The apology that changed the direction of the school

SPEAKER_01 5:30

In my mind, um, you know, I my first year of being principal at Tayoga Junior High was looking back and reflecting on it. I I think most people perceived me as coming in there thinking I was Superman and I was gonna solve all the problems that I had recognized at this school. And I did not do a good job at all of building trust amongst the adults. I I was very good at building trust amongst the students with the parents, even when we were disciplining them. They are like there was a tremendous amount of trust there. In many cases, the trust that I was building with the students and with the parents was almost undermining the trust that I was trying to build with the adults. And so I distinctly remember about a year, almost a year and a half into being principal, I had to stop and called a meeting with the entire staff. Then it turned into a leadership meeting with just a core group where I had to stand up in front of all 40 or so teachers and say, Look, I'm sorry. We haven't we haven't done this the way that we should do it. And uh we went through a series of exercises that day where we talked about who we want to be as a school, uh how we want to measure success, what do we want from our students and who we want to be as as educators. And that was the the turning tide. That that meeting I go back to as as one of the most impactful meetings from my time as being a principal of of how we were able to then move together uh on a path that was that led to ultimately the last two years of being principal there, we had double digit gains in student achievement, you know, highest achieving uh that that school had ever had, just a couple points away from an a on the on the state rating system in in that moment. But, you know, that the the first year and a half or so was a very, very humbling learning experience.

How do leaders rebuild trust with teachers?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Well, uh, you know, Jeff, first I thank you for sharing the real story. I mean, all of us want to do well and uh and to be able to recognize we're we're not doing well and to be able to pivot uh is a is a special gift being able to say you're sorry to your staff and that you know it's a level of vulnerability and honesty that uh I can imagine uh that you know that did make a huge turnaround. Now I'm sure there was some, is he really gonna do it different, you know, going forward? And uh because trust doesn't just, you know, can't say I'm sorry and it happens overnight. Absolutely. But was there something specific that you did to help just your day-to-day restore trust and connect it so that the trust with kids and families, you know, also helped?

What changed when Jeff became superintendent?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yeah. So so thankfully in that year's time, I was able to make good enough connections with our staff that I knew who the influencers were on the campus. And so a lot of our deepest, hardest conversations actually happened with them. And and we talked about some of these um more intimate processes of the work of what we all wanted to accomplish as educators and how we could go about doing that. And thankfully at the time, there was a ton of research on making middle schools work. And and so once, you know, I had had some experiences that they had never had with either the studying of the research and going to conferences that focused on this work, or actually go into I worked in a school that was like this already, and then I had visited other schools. And so once I identified kind of who those key people were, we started building some things together, and then we actually identified some schools in in other parts of the state and other parts of the country that were doing this. What I realized is I was asking people to do something they had never seen or experienced. And so when we got in the car, we drove over to Texas and we saw a middle school that had children that looked like ours that came from the same socioeconomic barriers and things like that. And then they had the opportunity to just sit down with teachers and with leaders at those schools and see and hear how things happened. That was life-changing for a lot of them. Uh, there was another school here in Louisiana. So, over about a year and a half, two years' time after that, uh, pretty much everybody on the faculty and staff um had the opportunity to go visit one of those schools. So it wasn't just the it went from the key leaders, then it went out from there so that everybody had an opportunity to see and experience what we what we all then agreed we wanted to build on our campus. So, so each step of the way, you saw a little bit more trust in whether they trusted me yet or not, they began to trust the process of what we were trying to do. And and nobody could argue that it wasn't what was right for children. And that's that's where we all, and and that's a one of the one of the biggest things from my leadership journey in in those early experiences was it's always best to start somewhere where we can all agree. A lot of times people want to start with where we disagree. And nine times out of ten, that's gonna just lead to arguments and hurt feelings and things like that. But if we can always, if we can always back up, hey, let's start with what we agree on. And and thankfully in education, most of the time we can all agree that we love kids and we do we believe kids deserve the best opportunity to be successful. Okay, then what is our role in in doing that? And so uh I think one of the most impressive things to me that I that I get proud of when I when I reflect on my time as Crunchboard Tiger Junior High, when I left there, Matthew, five years after I started, there was about 80% of the staff that we started with were still there. We were having unprecedented academic achievement advancements in our student population. So we didn't change students, we didn't change the adult. What we changed was our approach to the work and our belief system that was driving us and then the processes that that made the difference. And so that's one of the most exciting statistics to me when I think about our our journey of Taylor Junior High is that the vast majority of the people that we started with were still there when we finished.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

That is really beautiful, Jeff. I mean, uh yeah, I mean, congratulations on that. I was just wondering when you arrived at the superintendency, how did you apply that some of those lessons when you started the work of similar trying to raise uh well uh ultimately outcomes?

Which beliefs shaped districtwide communication?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

So understanding kind of my journey to this chair, I was a principal of a middle school here. I had served as an assistant principal at a high school. I had never taught in this parish, although it's the parish that I lived in. And then I became the director of middle schools and magnet programs here. So I'm saying all that to say that I have I had a lot of I have a lot of deep real personal relationships with a lot of people in a community that only has about 125,000 people, right? So we're not some sprawling metropolis. Well, then I moved down south um and worked for two and a half years in a in a chief academic officer role, basically an assistant superintendent. So I I went with a person who I had trust and had trust in me, but I knew nobody else in that community. It was it was really a trial, I mean, for from God, I if I were being completely honest with you. But I went down there, and one of the things that I learned there, Matthew, was I had to go build trust in a community of people that didn't know me. And and no matter how much I wanted them to know me, we didn't have a history. Sure. And so they didn't know if they could trust me, right? And it's hard, when you don't have history with somebody, I mean that's one thing I learned down there, right? Now we had a wonderful time. I have now lifelong friends from my two and a half years down there. We still communicate. It's great. We laugh about a lot of things. But anyway, when I had the opportunity to come back home as superintendent, one of the things I think that worked in my favor was I I had a lot of deep roots, a lot of deep relationships. Most of my adult life has been in this community and have lots of friends in diverse parts of the community. So there was a lot of trust already there. But as a leader, you don't want to um expend that trust right out the gate, right? Because I mean, let's let's be honest, in a lot of communities, the superintendent role is not one that people think about and they automatically think, oh, we've got somebody we can trust now in that and that leadership from. And so um we we opened up the first, you know, everybody had comes up with like a hundred-day plan, right? A 90-day plan. What are you gonna do the first few months that you're in the chair? And the entire first hundred days was basically a listening and learning tour that we spent doing surveys, that we spent sitting down with people, um, and and I think that led to the the at least the foundation of trust building. And that didn't build trust, but it it laid a foundation for because then the people wanted to know, well, what are you gonna do with all this information that you you you took time to listen, you took time to gather it, but then what are you going to do with it? And um, you know, asking, asking very specific, what what do our employees say, right? What do what do people say was was the big question that I told our board we were gonna focus on. But then we we broke that down into what do our employees say, what do parents say, what do students say, what do uh community leaders, what do uh elected officials, what do they say about our school system? And man, when you when you step into a role and you hear that like firsthand from people, it was it was eye-opening, but it was also refreshing, like because you you kind of knew where you were starting. We we answered questions like, what do our finances say? So like we did a uh a huge um kind of five-year dissection of where the monies in our school system were going. And I was able to uh all of this information I was able to give to our board in a retreat and and just kind of break it down and and again, even even with board members. So these in in Louisiana, local school superintendents are not elected, they're appointed by a board, but you know, we as superintendents have to apply, you know, and then get selected. So then you then one of the biggest uh I think learning curve for superintendents oftentimes is realizing that, hey, you're not just leading teachers and staff and students, you're also leading parents and a community, but you're also leading your bosses, right? Because a lot of our board members come from a variety of backgrounds. And if you're you're lucky and blessed like us, we have a diverse uh board. And so everybody brings, you know, we've got business acumen in on our board, we have retired educators acumen, we've got, you know, parents, you know, we've got all these different things, but we all need to be rowing in the same direction if we want to have the outcomes that that we all agree should be having. So anyway, all of that, the the information gathering, getting out into the public, communicating with people, and and really being an open book for people to tell, to write the story of who we are, who we want to be, was I think monumental very early on. That's led to us being able to do some things that we can talk about on here. But it it just it laid a strong foundation that we've just been able to build on top of ever since.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Outstanding. Outstanding. So I uh and just thinking back on the time at uh Tyoga, the communication, right, was a real core of what you're doing. And I know you've got your communication guru in the in the in the room with you now. So obviously you've put a high priority on uh listening, right? I mean, not communicating, not just being outward, but uh but obviously two-way communication, and then um investing in uh ensuring the message it does communicate the vision and the journey along the way. How did you go about implementing that at the junior high? And then what's that look like from a tactical standpoint in the superintendency?

How do you turn parent presence into partnership?

How can school leaders measure community trust?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, so if I can start like kind of where we laid a foundation for communication here, and then I can I can backtrack on how we built from from experiences as a as a principal and school administrator. You know, any any level of effective communication has to begin with understanding the perspective from which everybody is is coming from. And one of the things that we did very early on in our kind of um building a shared vision here in our community was about we we centered on what do we believe, right? What we came up with is that we believe that the students of Rapids Parish can and will achieve as well or better than students all across the state and all across this country. We believe that our teachers, the ones that work closely with our students every single day, our teachers and staff, they're the ones that are going to lead our students to these extremely high levels of success. But we also believe that our school building leaders, our principals, assistant principals, lead teachers, master teachers, they're the ones that are going to lead our teachers and our students. And then finally, the the one that we we tend to need to work on the most is we believe that our parents and our community want to support and celebrate in the successes of our students. And so, with that mindset, one of the things that we've had to talk extensively about is we talk about what we believe because what we believe forms the philosophical approach to which we view things, right? And why is philosophical approach important? Because that controls the thoughts we think, the words we say, and the things we do, right? And so if I say that I believe that parents in the community want to be a part of supporting and celebrating the work that we do, then that means the thoughts I think about our parents and our community should always provide evidence of that. The things that I say should always provide evidence of that. And the things I do should provide evidence of that. So if I say that parents in the community want to be a part of this, then I have to be intentional about scheduling appropriate meetings with parents in the community. I have to be intentional about communicating with them openly. I love the way you maybe said it earlier. Like, are we managing communication or is it an open communication? Is it a dialogue back and forth? And that's what we want. You know, one of the things that we did very early on when I became superintendent was make sure that every school had a media person that built a social media presence that uh maintains a website so that it's not just we're pushing information to you. It's no, we're inviting you into the conversation about the work that we do in our school system. So you take that kind of where we are as a community today in the district level leadership, go back to when I was a principal or school building leader, even when I was an assistant principal. Um, I had the privilege of serving um in our state as a president of a statewide organization that that was all about parental involvement. Um Louisiana Parent uh group here. And what we focused on is helping schools build very effective programming for engaging with parents in the educational program, not just sending weekly folders or not just sending that notes up. But no, no, no. We we want parents and not just fundraising, right? We we want parents to understand that we are partners together in the education of our children. And so we we started a parent-teacher organization at the high school that I was um the assistant principal at. And then when we got to Tyoga Junior High, we kind of rekindled something that and every because a lot of people say, oh, when when when child when children are in elementary school, oh, parents are very engaged. They, you know, they come to everything, they do everything, you know, all this. But when they get to middle school and high school, parents just drop off the face of the earth. Well, that's a that's a lie. I mean, go to every football game, go to every basketball game, go to the band concert, the choir concert. They're involved, their involvement just looks differently. And then the real question for the leadership is how can you continue to leverage parental engagement in a way that also still focuses on academic success because that's what we exist for, right? We exist to educate children, and the only measure of that is whether or not they're growing academically. And so, you know, I remember in my time at Tyoga Junior High, I would get frustrated because we had the Title I mandated monthly parent-teacher night, right? Where we tried to do a math night, an English night, this, and man, we'd have like 12 parents show up with a with a school of 600 students. But then I'd get mad because Thursday night, the band parent club was meeting, and I'd walk in there and be standing room only, you know, and they're all in there to talk about this, or I'd go to the athletic parent club meeting and the same thing, standing room only. So I got my band teacher. And the athletic director in the room, I said, hey, we're fixed to do things a little different. So we're going to have one meeting a month for parents. I don't care what night we want to make it. We make it the first Tuesday, the last Thursday, whatever night it is. And here's the deal. We're doing one meeting, and I get the first 30 minutes of it. So you tell your band parents and you tell your athletic club parents that, you know, when you're going to do, y'all decide what it is. And then you make sure everybody knows that when they come, we're going to have the first 30 minutes of it. And then we were able to capitalize. And look, we did some more innovative things. We made sure the choir students one time was like, you know, singing. You had to come up with innovative ways to get them engaged in the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

I love it. I mean, that's such a great example of a little outside the box, but also being present enough, right? I mean, you were you were there enough to observe and and see. And then also you had enough credibility that when you said, hey, let's do this a little bit different, right? You didn't have a revolt on your hands. No, that's that's really outstanding. Do you have a way to measure community trust right now? Do you have any way to say, hey, we look at KPIs, right? And so some of ours are definitely engagement. I mean, we measure engagement by, you know, persistence in courses and that kind of thing. But when you're looking at how's a community feel about us as an institution, do you have a way to measure that?

SPEAKER_01 23:51

So I'm gonna go a couple different directions. Maybe you're anticipating, maybe you're not. I mean, yes, we have some very standard metrics for measuring like our our um social media presence and engagement there. We have things at the school level with our parent-teacher conferences where they track how many student parents are coming, what we're doing during that time. Uh we have things like, you know, we we mandate K through sixth grade that everybody, every child does a reading log and their parents have to sign off on it every single day, like 20 minutes every day at home. So you have those types of things. But from a bigger picture standpoint as a superintendent, I'll tell you some of the biggest measures of whether or not the community is trusting you is Matthew, we have 14 different taxing districts in Rapids Parish. So, you know, basically every, almost every school feeder system has a has a taxing district in and of themselves. So if we want to make facilities improvements, which is a major difference, we have 42 different schools in in Rapids Parish. We have to go out and ask the taxpayers in that local community. And one of the taxing districts is a parish-wise, so you gotta appeal to all 125,000 people for that. But over the last three years, I think one of the one of the metrics that I think really attest to the trust in our community is we we've passed now uh right at 167, just under 170 million dollars worth of bonds to improve our facilities. And and that doesn't happen without trust in the community. And so when I go to our rotary club meeting here, which I think is one of the largest in the world, like not kidding, like they we have almost 200 people show up for it every week, and and they ask me to kind of give the update on schools. Like it is, it is like, you know, standing up, standing ovations at the end to, you know, when they see, and look, that that's taken a lot of work, right? They see every year when we release our student achievement data and they see that we've made historical gains, like every year that we have an increase now, it's it's higher achievement than what we've ever had before. So, you know, obviously we've got to continue that, right? There's there's some pressure there. But but when they see the work that's happening on the academic side, and then and then when you when they understand the complexities of the taxing system here, and we've had to do a lot of educating on that, right? People didn't understand why, well, why are all the schools in in Alexandria getting all these tremendous improvements? But us schools in the rural area, I mean, we're the we're the second largest geographical parish in the state of Louisiana, like geographically speaking, with with land above water. And so you you have to explain that to all these different communities. So I would say like one of the biggest measurables testament to the trust that our community has in our system is the fact that we've been able to pass now, now keep in mind, I said in the last three to three to four years, that's that's post-COVID in this anti-taxing community of uh, you know, that our country is in right now, uh, we've been able to pass them and are making the most significant improvement in our facilities than that's been seen in in probably two generations in our community.

The story that explains why this work matters

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Wow. Wow, that is really incredible. And that's a that is a great uh metric. It is a, you know, when you when you go to float a a bond, it is a clear like pass or fail, right? And uh, and so you know, really putting effort into that and being successful. I mean, I we know we talk to districts all over, and not all of them are having having success. So I'm sure they'll want to contact you after they see this and say, you know, Jeff, Jeff, help help help us with that. But you know, but I think uh well, I love the way that you tie it back to performance, right? I mean, it's it's a lot easier to say uh, you know, hey, we need funds because we want to do more of this thing that has been successful. And um, and that that makes a ton of sense. If you can think about either Tyoga Middle uh junior high or after that, but when you think about this, how um the efforts that you've put in have led to this improvement, is there a specific child or family or teacher that that you go back to to say, this is why we're doing this this particular way?

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Whoo, Matthew, it's hard to think about it without getting emotional. And I'm I'm an emotional guy anyway, but from the time of kind of reflecting on on what we'd be talking about today, I mean, when you think about a student, you know, I I can tell you when we were trying to change the culture at Tyoga Junior High. I don't know if I said it earlier, but I want people to understand that there were fights every single day at that middle school. Every day. I remember calling one of my buddies when we'd gone like five days without a fight. I'm like, man, like I don't want to jinx this, but we've gone five days without I mean that's how big of a deal it was. I remember sitting in my office one day with this this beautiful young lady who was growing up in a in a tough, tough situation. And there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that that when she was at home, she had to fight her way to survive. And I understood that and I respected that. But I remember having a a real heart-to-heart conversation. She was getting into some trouble at the at the school, and and I was having an emotional conversation with her, and I said, I understand where you come from. But what do I need to do here to convince you that for the eight hours that you're in Tyoga Junior High School, you can block that out. And while you're here, you're safe. And there's no I will protect you from anybody that would challenge that feeling of comfort and safety here. And and I truly felt that as an obligation because I knew what she went home to. And and I don't think she had a problem the rest of the year, but but she like I had to tell her, look, my wife has never fought somebody, and you can grow up in that with that mindset, but it's gonna take work. And so I I will never forget that conversation with that young lady as long as I live. And and I saw the light bulb go off. And it was hard for her because that's not what she had ever experienced. So, so that that moment with a child uh where I we went into a tough situation, and then but that's what it took. By the time we left Highway Junior, hi, it was it was so cool, man. We had our end of the year, eighth grade graduation, and and the the students that were getting recognized had made it cool to be good. And that was the culture of the school. And I think any school level administrator would say, man, that's what I want. I want it to be cool to be good, not the I'm gonna go fight because I want to be cool, you know, that mindset. And this is so funny because, you know, sometimes it's the people that we we have some of the most troubling issues with sometimes, but there's a couple of them that since that time, now we're 10 years, almost 15 years removed from being a principal, but several of those folks obviously are still employed through the district, and now I'm the superintendent in the district. And, you know, one of them showed me one day where she still has the sticky notes in her binder from when I would come visit her class and just find something positive to say. And I mean, we're 10 years removed, and she still has, and these are grown, these are grown adults, right? And then um another one who we had probably the most tense conversations and and and write-ups, to be frank, as I'd had with any employee. Um now is serving, currently serving on one of the one of the teacher advisory boards that we have to try to get input. And to hear her come to meetings and reflect on our time together when I was her principal in the most positive and flattering light. I mean, I I said in a meeting a few uh a couple months ago and almost came to tears, just hearing her talk because I know the history, like I know I know what really went on, you know, but but to hear her reflect on those moments very positively just just re-etched on my heart and in my mind that while the work we do as leaders is hard, the the worst thing that we can do in tough times is nothing. And so, you know, we've tried to make it a point to always keep things moving in a positive direction, no matter how hard it no matter how hard it seems.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Absolutely. Thank you for sharing those. Uh Jeff, uh testimony to your your deep care for people, children, and and your staff, and and your willingness to challenge people to do more, be more than they are. Um but you but obviously you're able to do that in a way that's that still communicates. I love you, and and because I love you, I'm not gonna leave you where you are. I know a guy who uh who wrote a really great book, I love, uh, that that's the story of the whole thing. I love you, and uh, but I'm not gonna leave you where you are. You've probably read it. Jeff, thank you for uh thank you for this time. I mean, uh so many wonderful lessons. I probably should take hours of time to capture some of the principles that you implement and and uh just the way you live your life. You know, we'd love to see so many leaders you know follow. Uh so thank you again. For those of you that are watching uh Transformational Educators for the first time, uh please follow us so you never miss an episode. And and until next time, uh keep leading with purpose and transforming schools into places where everyone thrives. If today's conversation gave you fresh insight or inspired you to lead with purpose, please follow the show and tell a friend. It helps us reach more educators who want to make a difference. For more stories, resources, and tools to support your leadership journey, visit Graceland.edu. Until next time, keep leading with courage and care.