1.6 Step-up-to-excellence:a change navigation protocol for transforming  (Page 10/20)

At the completion of the District Engagement Conference the Strategic Leadership Team and Change NavigationCoordinator organize the district into academic clusters (e.g., a cluster can be one high school and all the middle and elementaryschools that feed into it), a cluster for the central administration staff, and a cluster for all other supporting workunits. They also charter and train a Cluster Design Team for each cluster.

As stated earlier, the unit of change for SUTE is an entire school system rather than individual schoolswithin a system. Although the entire system is the unit of change the SUTE journey is navigated by organizing the system intoacademic clusters, a cluster for the central administration, and a cluster for all nonacademic supporting work units. The academicclusters must include at least one school-based administrator and one teacher from each level of schooling within the cluster (e.g.,in a preK-12th grade cluster there should be one administrator and one teacher from the elementary, middle, and secondary levels ofschooling). This membership formula assures that the entire instructional program within an academic cluster isrepresented.

One cluster is also formed for the central office staff. This cluster includes all the functions housed in thecentral administration unit. Finally, there is cluster formed for the nonacademic supporting work units (e.g., cafeteria, buildingand grounds maintenance, and transportation).

All of these clusters are formed to facilitate the district’s transformation journey. Each cluster has a Cluster Design Team that is trained in the principles of whole-systemchange. Each team guides the SUTE transformation journey within its respective cluster. The daily work of all the Cluster Design Teamswill be coordinated by the Change Navigation Coordinator. The Strategic Leadership Team provides broad strategic oversight of theteams and the coordinator.

Step 1: Redesign the Entire School District

Navigating whole-system change requires simultaneous improvements along three paths:

• Path 1: Improve the district’s relationship with its external environment, which improves relationships with key externalstakeholders.
• Path 2: Improve the district’s core and supporting work processes (core work is teaching and learning; supporting workincludes secretarial work, administrative work, cafeteria work, building maintenance work, and so on).
• Path 3: Improve the district’s internal social infrastructure (which includes organization design, governance, policies,organization culture, reward systems, job descriptions, communication, and so on.)

Near the beginning of Step 1, the Cluster Design Teams collaborate with the Change Navigation Coordinator toorganize their respective clusters to begin the transformation journey. They do this by chartering Site Design Teams within eachschool building inside the academic clusters, within the central office cluster, and within the supporting work unit cluster. TheseSite Design Teams are staffed with highly regarded faculty and staff who do the daily work of teaching children, managing theiradministrative units, or providing support services. The people on these teams will be the ones who create innovative and powerfulideas for improving their building or work unit’s 1) relationships with the external environment; 2) work processes; and 3) internalsocial infrastructure. This is an important principle because the field of systemic change believes that the people who actually dothe work are the people best qualified to improve it (Emery, 1977; Emery, 2006; Emery&Purser, 1996; Weisbord, 2004).