Excited to feature Andrea Castañeda, Superintendent of the Salem-Keizer School District, in today's installment of #100DistrictConversations. Andrea is not only a valued member of my Kinfolk 39 cohort at the Pahara Institute, but also a dear friend who I'm hoping returns to Rhode Island some day soon!

For those familiar with Andrea, her insights are always insightful, bold, and unapologetic. In our recent conversation (#9 for this initiative), Andrea shared key points highlighting her partnership expectations, which can serve as guiding principles for any organization seeking to collaborate and enhance value through district connections.

"We try to think about major strategy in a 4-square charting impact on one axis and the effort required to implement on the other axis. We can only manage one or two ‘high/high’ strategies at a given time. Any more than that, and the accumulated change management load will threaten the success of all the work. It takes discipline to balance our ambition for progress with the realities of complex work in a dynamic system. I think we hit the sweet spot with a carefully chosen blend of 1-2 ‘high/high’ and smatter of ‘high/low’ and ‘high/mid’. However, we’ve had to honestly reflect at times when we face the reality of our actual bandwidth; we’ve had to drop exciting initiatives, which can be tough!

When our district contracts with an external professional learning provider, it’s under the understanding that we are bolstering current capacity through a pain point for a short period of time, and then the commitment concludes. It’s not a never-ending partnership. We want to know:

• How do you show up as a partner? Are you bringing a structure and routines, alongside a certain amount of flexibility and administrative diligence?
• Do you show up feigning curiosity, but are you simply looking for ways in which your product line fits into what we are already doing so you don’t have to change it? Or do you actually allow for personalization?
• Do you do excellent work in the background to advance our goals and are you giving us access to that information behind the scenes or between touch points? You cannot leave the people who are paying you in the dark until the next time you connect.
• How do you share your expectations of the district? Are you laying out foundational commitments so that if something goes sideways that you’re making us aware and holding us accountable?"

Additionally, don't miss the bonus footage of Andrea addressing the Salem-Keizer community last week. Through the use of first-person videos, Andrea effectively delivers authentic messages to all district stakeholders simultaneously, ensuring a consistent and aligned communication approach from the leadership. Check out the video here.