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Dear Colleagues,
I had an excellent start to the week last week by welcoming the state officers of Educators Rising Kentucky to Frankfort for their in-person meeting.
Across the country, school districts find themselves in a continual shortage of high-quality educators. Groups like Educators Rising are one way to help us increase the teacher pipeline. This career and technical student organization provides passionate young people with hands-on teaching experience, sustains their interest in the profession and helps them cultivate the skills they need to be successful educators.
Educators Rising comes together to provide a clear pathway to address teacher shortages, increase educator diversity and support teacher quality. If the schools in your district are not participating in this organization yet, please check out the Educators Rising Kentucky homepage and see how it might help your students find their path into teaching.
This week also is shaping up to be a busy one. Today and tomorrow, I will be attending the Council of Chief State Schools Officers (CCSSO) Policy Forum. This will be my first in-person meeting with CCSSO and I am looking forward to connecting with other chiefs and state education agency officials.
During this meeting, we will be having policy discussions about how states ensure every student graduates from school ready for college, careers and success in life. We will be engaging in policy discussions with experts and colleagues about key policy issues defining the education system today and in the years ahead, as well as hearing expert analysis on the policy landscape and sharing state perspectives on the challenges and opportunities ahead.
On Wednesday, I will be participating in the next Commonwealth Education Continuum meeting. Established in 2021 to strengthen the education pipeline at all levels, the continuum is co-chaired by Kentucky Lt. Governor Jacqueline Coleman, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education President Aaron Thompson and the Kentucky commissioner of education. I look forward to our discussion, in which we will be considering our priorities for 2024.
And finally, KDE will be convening the November Superintendents Advisory Council meeting at 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The members will be hearing an update on United We Learn, and an overview of Support Education Excellence in Kentucky, Superintendents Annual Attendance Report and Growth Factor. The meeting will be in-person at KDE.
I hope you have a wonderful week of learning in your districts!
Sincerely,
Robin Fields Kinney
Interim Commissioner of Education
Sign Up Now for School Improvement Planning for Performance Excellence Training
A two-day School Improvement Planning for Performance Excellence training session will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET on Nov. 28-29 at the Central Bank Center in Lexington.
This training will assist leadership teams in an increased understanding of how to apply the performance excellence systems approach to continuous improvement. This training will focus on an increased understanding of the role of the school improvement plan by developing school improvement goals, creating strategies, and developing and implementing action plans toward increasing achievement for all students and organizational effectiveness.
Tools used during the sessions will include the appropriate Jim Shipley workbooks, Teams System Check, linkage diagram and the plan-do-study-act process. Additionally, the work session content will include activities around leadership team-building, using needs assessment practices, building school mission statements, assessment of the school as a system and use of the performance excellence criteria in a systematic way. The content will be from Jim Shipley and Associates, led by certified Kentucky Department of Education facilitators.
Each person interested in participating must fill out the School Improvement Planning for Performance Excellence registration form no later than Nov. 17. Questions regarding the training should be directed to Charlotte Jones.
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