LM May 2023

The first and last sessions are site visits and the other seven sessions will be held virtually. Why did you decide on that format? Dugan —That was intentional because we wanted to keep costs down and make it more accessible. For rural educators, it is sometimes tough to get away. We don’t have as many layers of staff as larger districts. Also, the virtual format allows us to be able to get some high-powered speakers from across the country. What is the cost, who is the target audience and how many people will be accepted into this cohort? Dr. Orzel —Our cost will be $1,000 per participant. You can split that up between two fiscal years, if needed. Group discounts are available. We want to be really flexible with our superintendents. The target audience began with superintendents. However, when we started talking to superintendents about it, they mentioned, if we can’t be there, we would want to send someone from our team. The leader we spoke to also said they might have a central office person that’s really interested in this or a building principal. Therefore, we have opened it up to superintendents, central office and principals. Our minimum target is 20 people. We’re almost there, so we know that we will exceed that. We’re happy to take as many people that are interested in the cohort as we possibly can. Also, I want to go ahead and remind everyone that rural doesn’t only mean central and Southern Illinois. We have rural districts all over the state of Illinois. In fact, I just had a superintendent that represents a rural district close to Wisconsin, and she wants to be a part of this. We went ahead and launched it. At that point, I had the opportunity to travel around to a lot of different regions and, anytime that I’ve brought it up, people were really interested in this. like Dr. Tina Halliman, who is a representative from South Cook, said that’s a cohort that I could really benefit from, even though I don’t serve in a rural school district.

Can you discuss how the relationship part of joining a cohort is unique from other professional development? Lovel —The very fact that I’m taking part in this podcast today is the direct result of participating in ISAL V, where I met Dr Garrison. It’s incredibly We also have CoSN, the consortium of school networking. They’re going to be talking about the empowered superintendent toolkit because, in this time, a superintendent cannot just be a business manager or a fiscal manager. We also have Dr. Lori Gonzalez, who is an award-winning superintendent from Lamont, California. What topics will be covered and who will the guest speakers be during the sessions? Dr. Garrison —The October 6 session is virtual and will focus on the Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools. I’m currently the president and Larry is our president-elect. During that session, we’re really going to focus on the work of the association and the research of why rural matters. There’s a great network of support, but we really want to hone in on the research of rural districts. Dugan —Jennifer was being modest. I think she and Larry will do an amazing job. As far as the other speakers, we have Dr. Kim Alexander, the CEO of Collegiate Edu-Nation, which is a relatively new small pilot district. They took 20 rural districts in Texas and have achieved massive results. Instead of a P-12 model, they’ve kind of embraced a P-14 model. It’s some trailblazing work. Lastly, the Zoom sessions will be held on different days to accommodate people’s schedules. We know that sometimes there’s always a meeting that happens at 10 o’clock every Wednesday. We tried to work around that. One other thing is that the two site visits do not start until 10 a.m. The reason is because we want people to be able to travel from wherever they are in the state to be able to get there. We will be done by 3 p.m. on those two sessions.

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LM May 2023