First State Educate’s Julia Keleher says she hopes expanding the role of the nonprofit will foster more community understanding about school boards and education. Photo from First State Educate.
During the first three years that nonprofit First State Educate has been at work in Delaware, it focused on finding school board candidates and supporting them in campaigns as a means to improve state education.
While it remains the only state nonprofit to focus on building the capacity of school boards, the agency has begun to branch out. Now it:
Holds free monthly workshops for board members and the public on topics such as how agendas are set, featuring state officials and involved residents.
Has created an online Center for Excellence in School Board Governance, a growing bank of expert information on topics that board members need to know, such as parliamentary procedure, ethical decision-making, and financial management.
Provides mini-grants for school board members to pay for things such as a community breakfast, which allows them to engage with the public.
Pays for a Colonial middle school principal to participate in the national Learning Heroes’ Family Engagement Leadership Institute program on enhancing community engagement, in an attempt to help that school attract more public interest and build a better understanding of what’s going on.
Sponsors a state spelling bee for students whose schools may not have them, but want to participate. The winners will participate in the National Scripps Howard Spelling Bee.
“This is a real pivot for the organization,” said Julia Keleher, First State’s chief strategy and operating officer.
The organization launched in 2019 after executive director Laurisa Schutt, and organizers hired a Philly organization called Building Impact to do a landscape analysis of what was happening in Delaware education. It identified levers of change and suggested the best strategy for driving real change.
Several of the things it identified were allowing policies to bubble up from the ranks — like the weekly bedtime stories night started during the pandemic by Harlan Elementary Principal Tracey Roberts. Other recommendations were finding more community support for schools and getting more people involved in school boards and decision-making.
“The logic being that if we improve the decision making at the local level, you have a better chance of improving student outcomes,” Keleher said.
First State Educate’s catchline on a Google search defines the nonprofit’s goal: “We can create an education system where everyone who seeks extraordinary places of learning has access to them. But we have hard and disruptive work to do.”
One of the common sayings about any system that needs changes is that the people closest to the problem are where the solutions should be, Keleher said.
The organization, a 501(c)3, isn’t a politically partisan one, and can’t be under the federal rules for nonprofits. It does have a 501(c)4 sister organization, First State Action Fund, that can be politically active.
“The point is when you mobilize the community, when you invest in people, when you create opportunities, you start to do something different,” Keleher said. “You can change the narrative.”
First State Educate impact
Jeffrey Menzer, superintendent of Colonial School District, is familiar with First State Educate and points out that the organization was supportive during city school district referendums.
The nonprofit’s intentions are pure, he said, but it’s in a difficult space because Delaware’s 19 school districts operate independently.
In addition, there are no one-size-fits all school board members. They come from different backgrounds, jobs, points of view, and levels of understanding about the system.
And they are all volunteers. They’re not paid.
“I think it’s just a difficult process to do, absent understanding the dynamics of each community and the school board and the relationship that the board has with the district as well as with the community,” Menzer said. “So I think that that’s where they can run into troubles, because everybody has different relationships. And a lot of times the relationships are what drive the actions.”
The organization can’t say that a school board should act in a specific way because not every school board is set up or functions that way, he said.
He thinks the monthly meetings and online expert advice are a great move.
“I think that that’s a step in the right direction for them instead of trying to make it sound like everybody must do it this way,” Menzer said. “I think their approach of ‘here are things that you should understand and can know as a board member’ are definitely something that they’re going to probably see a greater return on investment with the community.”
He said First State Educate’s biggest area of contribution may be helping schools engage with communities and help communities understand more about how school boards function and how education in general works.
Calvin R. McCullough Middle School principal Hyacinth Lewis, who is participating in the Learning Heroes program, came back raving about the way facilitators handled the programs and what they are encouraging the members to do to involve more people in the community, he said.
“Trying to help the community strengthen their understanding of the education system is where First State Educate could really continue to help,” Menzer said. “While they want to make boards better, you’re going to make boards better by inherently making your community stronger and more understanding. And then it flows up.”
Keleher agreed that each district’s operation and board is individualized, which makes it difficult to make content that’s unigue to each, but she hopes school board and community members will find aspects of First State Educate’s programs that do apply.
She said more parents and community members need to be involved everywhere to help them understand why their children who are making As and Bs don’t do as well as expected when standardized testing time comes.
How to do that is always the issue, she said.
“Strategically, if we sort of build the muscle for community engagement, then we have more people that we can turn to to say, ‘Hey, would you like to come to some of these meetings?’ This is why this is important,” she said. “So they kind of go hand in hand.”
First State Educate has some heavy hitters on its board, including Thère du Pont, president of the Longwood Foundation; Jim Kelly, chairman of CRED Technologies and former chief operating officer of ING Direct and Desa Burton, executive director of ZipCode Wilmington.
Others are Jack Perry, partner in TNTP; former deputy chief of academic enrichment for the School District of Philadelphia and founder of Prestige Academy Charter School; Samanta Lopez, Education Department chair at Delaware Technical Community College; and Jocelyn Stewart, formerly of Barclays, and now also acting as interim executive director.
The nonprofit has drawn funding from the Longwood Foundation, the Good Samaritan Foundation and M&T Bank.
Keleher is First State Educate’s only full-time employee. Yvonne Johnson is a consultant for New Castle County, and Terry Hodges was just hired to work in Kent County. A Sussex hire is expected soon.
Keleher said that will help the nonprofit better understand how to help school boards, candidates, and communities in those areas.
“You’ve got to have your finger on the pulse to be able to source those examples of excellence,” she said.
In most districts, the school board sets a vision and charges the superintendent with achieving it. But often, the board merely ratifies the superintendent’s goals.
She said that one thing school boards can do is require more community engagement, in whatever form that takes.
“As long as there’s a good decision-making process, then I think the community is served,” Keleher said. “If you’ve just got people arbitrarily saying we’re not going to do it and we’re not going to tell you why, and they’re not willing to listen to each other, I don’t think that that’s ideal.”
