Education Week - March 5, 2014 - Leaders to Learn From - S41

COLLABORATION
Robert Runcie
SUPERINTENDENT
Broward County Public Schools, Florida
BY KATIE ASH
I
n less than three years at the
helm of the Broward County pub-
lic schools, Superintendent Robert
Runcie has ushered in a new era of
collaboration and cooperation between
the Florida district and what
some say is one of the biggest threats
to its financial viability: the charter
school community.
That attitude is a far cry from the
historically contentious relationship
between the 262,000-student Broward
County district and the 95 charter
schools that operate there, said Robert
Haag, the president of the Florida Consortium
of Public Charter Schools, who
nominated Mr. Runcie for inclusion in
Leaders to Learn From.
Since the first charter school opened
in Broward County, "it has always
been us versus them," said Mr. Haag.
While charter schools in Florida must
be approved by the local school board
to open, they compete with the regular
public schools for students and
per- pupil funding. But when Mr.
Runcie took over the post in October
2011, instead of shutting out the charter
community, he called for a summit
to gather charter school leaders
in one room with district officials to
discuss, point by point, the concerns
of both sides.
In one meeting, Mr. Haag said, "it all
changed."
"There was no arguing," he said. "It
was all saying, 'How do we fix this?' "
That summit became the first of
thrice-yearly meetings between the
groups that have helped both charter
and district officials work more closely
and efficiently, said Mr. Haag.
As a result of the meetings, charter
school leaders now have access to the
district's email system, speeding up
communication with the district, charter
school principals meet regularly
with district staff members to keep updated
on accountability requirements,
and the paperwork and administrative
processes have become more streamlined
for greater efficiency.
"It's not an us-versus-them, but
how do we work together to complement
what's going on in the district,"
Mr. Runcie said. "The strategy I have
is, look, these are our kids. They're in
these public schools. We need to make
sure that whatever school they're in, it's
a high-quality school."
Mr. Runcie's work in the 403,000-student
Chicago district, where working
with charters has become the norm,
may have prepared him to take a different
tack from that of his predecessors,
Mr. Haag said.
The 52-year-old superintendent pre-
viously served as chief of staff to the
board of education, a chief area instructional
officer, the chief administrative
officer, and the chief information officer
in Chicago under now-U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan.
Community Outreach
It's not just the charter school community
with which Mr. Runcie has
worked to repair relations. His first
move as superintendent in Broward
County was to hold town hall meetings
to help repair the district's battered
public image.
Eight months before Mr. Runcie took
office, the Florida Supreme Court released
a scathing grand jury report that
found the school board riddled with
corruption and mismanagement. Two
school board members were charged
with taking bribes from contractors.
(One was sentenced to three years in
prison while the other was scheduled
to face trial last month.)
During the community meetings, Mr.
Runcie listened to residents' concerns,
said Patricia Good, the chairwoman of
the Broward school board.
"He believes that in order to have
positive outcomes, you need to communicate
effectively throughout the district,
whether it's internal or external,"
she said.
Mr. Runcie has also taken steps
to reach out to the Broward Teachers'
Union, which has had a similarly
strained relationship with district officials
in recent years.
Now, said Sharon Glickman, the
president of the union, she and the
superintendent meet about every
other week.
"We don't always agree all the time,
but we do want to work together," she
said.
In addition to strengthening relationships
with education partners, Mr.
Runcie said his biggest focus has been
on closing the achievement gap and
providing a high-quality education for
every student in Broward County.
Mr. Runcie, who immigrated to the
United States from Jamaica as a child
and was raised by parents whose highest
level of schooling was 3rd grade, saw
firsthand the opportunities that education
opened to students like him.
"Education was and still is the foun-
dation to develop the capacity to participate
in the U.S. and the global economy,"
he said. "Without that, you have
limited options."
The first in his family to attend col-
lege, Mr. Runcie went on to graduate
from Harvard University. He completed
a master's degree in business administration
from Northwestern University
in Evanston, Ill., before beginning his
career as the president and founder of a
for-profit management-consulting and
technology-service company-an experience
that the Broward school board
hoped had prepared him to straighten
out the district's finances and address
looming budget cuts.
Looking at achievement-gap data, Superintendent
Runcie said one of the first
things he noticed was the large number
of students being arrested for misdemeanor
offenses they committed in
school, such as throwing spitballs, getting
into shoving matches, or cursing-
and in particular, the disproportionate
number of arrests of African-American
males. (About 40 percent of the district
enrollment is African-American, and 50
percent is white. Thirty percent of the
district is Hispanic.)
Rethinking Discipline
That realization, reinforced through
meetings with Marsha Ellison, the president
of the Fort Lauderdale-Broward
County chapter of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored
People, prompted Mr. Runcie to pull together
a committee that included Ms.
Ellison, the Broward County sheriff, the
Fort Lauderdale police chief, and representatives
from the juvenile-justice
system to rewrite the district's zerotolerance
discipline policy.
Now, instead of meting out automatic
suspensions and expulsions, which Mr.
Runcie said merely made students
fall behind in school and did little to
improve student behavior, administrators
evaluate every incident and send
students to an intervention program,
where they receive counseling and support
services specific to their situations.
Then, when the students are integrated
back into the classroom, they
receive support from caseworkers for
up to 60 days, Mr. Runcie said.
The district also provided professional
development for principals and
school administrators to implement
the changes.
The new policies went into effect
at the beginning of this school year,
and already 700 students have gone
through the intervention program,
Mr. Runcie said, with only 28 repeat
offenders. Expulsions and suspensions
are down 60 percent from last
year, and arrests have decreased by
50 percent.
"We're having a huge immediate im-
pact," Mr. Runcie said. "This is absolutely
the way to go." n
LEADERS TO LEARN FROM > leaders.edweek.org
EDUCATION WEEK * March 5, 2014
| S41
Josh Ritchie for Education Week
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Education Week - March 5, 2014 - Leaders to Learn From

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