Educator Services Career Advancement
Commonwealth School Leadership Project

Leadership Across Massachusetts

Massachusetts SAELP Demonstration District
Case Study: Chelsea Public Schools

I. Introduction & Background Information

1. Please describe your district (size, geographic location, demographics, etc.)

   The Chelsea Public Schools support instruction for nearly 5,800 students from Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12 at 10 school sites, including an alternative school for behaviorally or socially challenged students. The district is almost 70% Hispanic; other minorities constitute approximately 15% of the student population. Most students come from home where English is not the first language, and about 20% of the students are or have been in English Language Learners' classes.

   The City of Chelsea has an official population of about 40,000, although there is an estimated undisclosed population of 5,000 to 10,000. The median income is about $30,000 annually; 60% below the state median. Thus the city is one of the most impoverished in the Commonwealth.

   The city lies immediately north of Boston, across the Mystic River. Beginning with the building of the Tobin Bridge in the 1950's, the city increasingly has grown isolated from the mainstream commerce of the capital city while continuing to grow as an immigrant gateway community. The only city ever to fall into state receivership, the city recovered from massive corruption and fiscal mismanagement during the 1990's to become an exemplary reformed urban area under a city manager system and to earn in 1996 an All American Cities designation.

   Since 1989, the public school system has been administered through a unique partnership whereby Boston University handles all affairs but reports to the state legislature and to a locally elected school committee. The school committee has devolved all its authority to a management team designated by the university but retains a right to dissolve the partnership at any time by a simple majority vote. Since the beginning of the original ten-year partnership, the city and school committee have twice petitioned to renew the relationship. The present contract with the university runs through the 2007-2008 school year.

2. Please rate your level of familiarity with human resources planning at the start of phase II of this initiative (e.g. unfamiliar, familiar, very familiar).

   Very familiar.

3. How and when did you begin the human resources planning process in your district?

   The district planning anteceded the present SAELP program with the advent of the Boston University Partnership in 1989. However, the comprehensive approach of addressing leadership and cultivation of native talent for leadership did not begin in earnest until former superintendent Irene Cornish initiated an administrative internship program for the 1997-98 school year.

4. Please identify the specific content area ("area of pain/leverage") your district focused on as part of the SAELP process, and please describe why that was the focus.

   Our specific focus addressed cultivation of native talent for assistant principal and principal positions. We believe that with the set-aside of at least one administrative internship each year, we would be able to develop cooperative identification and selection procedures and design a suitable leadership development program to support novice school-based leaders.

5. What is the vision for that content area?

   The district vision is to provide a comprehensive program of mentoring and apprenticeship for school-based administrators who will be credible and ready to assume assistant principalships and principalships when incumbent leaders retire.

6. What are the district strengths in that area?

   The initial strength resides in the capabilities of existing leaders. As they retire, however, we intend to call them back as mentors and advisors. Out of the internship program, previous superintendent Irene Cornish also developed a lead principal model so that new principals and emerging leaders would have identifiable human resources to call upon.

7. What are the district challenges for that area?

   The challenges tend to be financial and temporal: to maintain and support internships and to provide sufficient time for mentors to work with aspiring leaders.

8. What are the goals for that area (briefly)?

   The principal goal is to maintain an apprenticeship program through discretionary funds held in trust by Boston University for the Chelsea Partnership.

9. Team member selection: who was included on the team and why?

   Members were selected by function: superintendent, assistant superintendent, the two lead principals, the president of the teachers' union, the past president of the school committee, the district's director of personnel, and the district's strategic planner.

10. How did this team interact with district leadership?

    The team is largely synonymous with "district leadership".

11. How will this team interact with district leadership in the future?

    It is the district leadership.

II. Process Summary

1. Please share highlights of team process: what worked well, and why?

   The SAELP Demonstration District program provided deadlines and due dates. Without them, longer range planning could well have fallen to daily exigencies.

2. What did not work well, and why?

   District-to-district sharing did not, I believe, yield as much benefit as the planners had hoped.

3. What specific issues or challenges did the team face in planning for the content area?

   Further Restrictions of time and finances.

4. How did the team resolve these issues or challenges?

   By setting aside time and money.

5. How could this process be improved?

   I'm not sure that there is any easy one-statement answer. Garnering more time is always the issue when considering long-range planning.

III. Learnings

1. What were key learnings from this process?
   • That leaders must delegate
   • That no one person can be good at everything
   • That the burden of bureaucratic requirements and reporting under the aegis of "accountability" will not readily dissipate
   • That district leadership must listen to the constraints of time and resources in the schools, and
   • That without long-range planning, there will be no viable resolution.
2. What was most valuable?

   The time to plan.

3. Was this process helpful? If so, will your district plan to apply it to other content areas ("areas of pain") in the future?

   Yes. In fact, we have had to apply similar processes already because we are a consolidated application district under the No Child Left Behind Act.

4. What would you do differently in applying this process to another area?

   I doubt that the plenary sessions with other districts lent as much help as ESE and other planners might hope. The individual, district-based work sessions with Future Management staff was irreplaceable.

IV. Next Steps

1. What issues or challenges remain for your district in terms of developing strong human resources functions? How are you planning to address them?

   The issues center upon maintaining a competitive salary structure (a financial issue), sustaining trained personnel locally to prevent their departing for richer climes, and continuing to find ways of rewarding worthy personnel beyond the checkbook. Addressing them will be a matter for the continuing leadership team to assess, for the central leaders to bring to the larger community, and for all to propose resolutions.

2. What would be most helpful for your colleagues to know as they start the human resources planning process on their own?

   What both the immediate and long-range personnel needs of a district are likely to be.

3. What would be your advice to your colleagues if they were to adopt this human resources protocol?

   Don't let the process alone become an idol; use discretion and common sense, and keep as many leaders and potential leaders as possible informed.