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Welcome to the Exceptional Educators Podcast by FrenalyticsEDU — where innovation meets inclusion in education!
Each episode features candid conversations with district leaders, school leaders, classroom changemakers, EdTech founders, and executives — all dedicated to transforming learning for each student, especially our learners with unique abilities.
With a focus on extraordinary educators and the exceptional students they serve, we explore the latest in special education, accessible technology, and inclusive leadership. Whether you’re shaping special education policy, pioneering new EdTech tools, or looking to grow your impact in the classroom, this podcast is your front-row seat to the future of inclusive education.
Listen. Learn. Lead. Be Exceptional. 🎙️
Welcome to the Exceptional Educators Podcast by FrenalyticsEDU, where innovation meets inclusion in education. I'm your cohost, Matt Giovanello, the CEO and co founder of Frenalytics. At Frenalytics, we put special education and English language learners front and center. Our award winning FrenalyticsEDU platform helps streamline progress monitoring, improve communication and compliance, and offers truly personalized learning to your students of all abilities. Each episode of our podcast features candid conversations with district and school leaders, classroom changemakers, ed tech founders, and industry executives, all dedicated to transforming learning for each student, especially our learners with unique abilities.
Speaker 1:With a focus on extraordinary educators and the exceptional students they serve, we explore the latest in special education, accessible technology, and inclusive leadership. In this episode, Exceptional Educators is exceptionally thrilled to welcome Doctor. Kellen Adams, the superintendent of Leavenworth USD 453 in Kansas, just Northwest of Kansas City on the border of Missouri. Kellen has grown professionally from a middle school teacher to a coach to a superintendent and professor, and he offers a rare blend of classroom experience, district leadership, and higher education insight in his now superintendency role. Serving a diverse military adjacent community, he leads with a sharp focus on inclusive learning, innovation, and preparing every student for success.
Speaker 1:Kellen, thanks for joining us this morning. It's so nice to meet you. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey, good morning, Matt. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Of course. Let's kick things off, Kellen. We love to ask our guests a little bit about their why, what brought them into education, and what keeps them here. What's your why?
Speaker 2:My why would be I firmly believe that not every single child has an amazing opportunity. Sometimes the plight of life deals you a hand that not necessarily is the best. Public school can serve as that equalizer. It could serve as that opportunity for a number of kids. And I firmly believe in providing the best opportunity and the best chance for children here in America.
Speaker 1:I love that. You're exactly right. We've heard that sentiment echoed a couple of times from some superintendents and district leaders who say that access to opportunity is limited, but talent is everywhere, and public education is the great equalizer to lower that barrier, and I love that you're so committed to this space. Thank you. You've held a lot of roles.
Speaker 1:Aside from your superintendency position, if you had to not be biased, what did you love most about a prior role of yours? What was your favorite?
Speaker 2:Sure. Actually, first district leadership role, I was superintendent just outside the Wichita, Kansas area in a district of about 2,000 students. What I loved about that is they just passed a bond issue a month before I started the position and allowed me to oversee about $36,000,000 worth of new infrastructure. We built two new elementaries and a performing arts center. It also allowed me to really dive deep into the operational side of the district.
Speaker 2:I managed primarily the business office, transportation, etc. But that helped me see that how when a well run operationally efficient district exists, that that allows the district to be focused on what it should be, which is teaching and marketing. So that's probably at the top of my favorite list, honestly.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I mean, what a capital project to run. That's huge. Most district leaders maybe only see a small portion of that, and the fact that you had multiple buildings going up under your leadership there is so cool. One of the things, Kellen, that we talked about before we started recording was that efficiency piece and the unfortunate reality you're facing at Leavenworth, just like district leaders all over the country are, which is declining enrollment and somewhat relatedly, as a direct second order effect for some districts, changes to your budget as a result.
Speaker 1:You have had some really tough decisions you've had to make with reductions in your budget. What is looking within the district level result in it for you all? What efficiency changes have you been making? What are you considering? What's on the road for years ahead?
Speaker 2:Sure. Probably some contextual background that's important. Our district at the turn of the century was over 4,000 students who are, one of the states continue to be one of the states, largest, I would say, districts as far as density, but smallest as far as land mass. We are only 17 square miles. We're not even the entire city of Leavenworths.
Speaker 2:Only three districts are actually geographically smaller than us. Again, primarily suburban district, but in a lot of ways feels urban in nature due to our demographics. Again, over 4,000 students today. We are projected that next fall we will be under 3,000 students. So just in twenty six, twenty seven school years, about a 25% reduction.
Speaker 2:As you could probably imagine, that comes at the same time as student needs have changed. While enrollment has gone down, the number of students with an IEP has actually increased. There is not a proportional decrease in that count. Additionally, the number of students in poverty, limiting poverty, has slowly ticked up each school year for us. Our total free and or free and reduced are up.
Speaker 2:What's important is here in Kansas, the school finance formula funds students on an enrollment based, as who is enrolled on September 20 each year. And so more students equal more dollars, less students equal less dollars. As you lose a student here in Leavenworth, it's in the neighborhood of 10,000 to $11,000 that walks out the door. So as you can imagine, just the loss of 10 or 20 students, you're already into a 6 figure type of loss. What's been important for us is how do we minimize the impact to the classroom directly?
Speaker 2:And at the end of the day, I want kids and families to feel this the least, and at the same time recognizing I can't just put it all onto the back to the adult because if we ultimately break them, they're the ones that are serving kids. So a lot of it has honestly come from the administration side. We've reduced our administrative head count by about 25% right now. So there are less good men and women serving in the background in those administrative roles. A lot of the work doesn't go away.
Speaker 2:It just gets shifted and or put on to other people, unfortunately. So you have to balance At the end the day, what I don't want to do is burn our people out and or erode the culture further. So there is a balance. Right sizing, of course, has been a conversation we've had ad nauseam. Going back to less kids in a school or in a classroom, theoretically, you should need less adults.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't just always work that simple. I like to tell people all this all the time. If 20 kids leave the district, it is highly unlikely that they all left from the same third grade classroom. If they did, this would be easy. But the reality is what you did is if you lost 20 kids, you lost a senior, two juniors, a freshman, you get the idea.
Speaker 2:Right? And so that right sizing conversation, while it's absolutely appropriate, there's a lot of nuance and a lot more difficulty to it. But I would say at the end of the day, what we have attempted to do is one, not damage the culture. I'm happy to say that we've cut $8,000,000 in the course of two school years, and no one has lost their job. We have yet to even entertain a pink slip process.
Speaker 2:Right? Have we had to have shifts of people? Have we had to have transfers to a new position, new school? Absolutely. But as we like to say, if you want to be a pioneer, we have a spot for you.
Speaker 2:I'm also happy to say we've been able to do some form of a raise the last two years. I don't say that it's anything life changing, but we've been able to keep up with some of the impacts to inflation. So just being able to do those two alone despite the challenge, I think is huge because otherwise, as you know, that's a huge hit to culture. Then the other thing I'm happy to say is we have yet to actually cut a program. So from the student experience, family experience side of the house, we have yet to end the proverbial last class into any of our programs, whether that's CTE or otherwise.
Speaker 2:Again, have we had to be strategic about how many sections we offer? Maybe we don't offer that class every year, etc. Absolutely. But we have not actually put an end to any program.
Speaker 1:I think that phrase of right sizing is the key piece here, where you're trying to strike a balance between the needs of your students and your community, how they've changed over the years and the decades, the realities of your staff on who's on payroll, and the amount of money that's available to disperse and spread out to all of them. It's a really tough balance to strike, but it sounds like you've done that quite successfully. I know I'm sure there are more changes that you'll be making in the school years ahead, but it kind of makes me start thinking about this AI component and how I imagine everything from the district level all the way down, efficiencies are more possible than ever before with some of these tools in place. So tell me a little bit about that. I know in terms of Pioneer, you are the living, breathing example of it.
Speaker 1:Not only your name, but it's also your pioneers literally with what you're bringing on. If I'm not mistaken, you're their first school district in Kansas to bring on Badge School, but tell us about how those technologies and others have made you more efficient and allow you to do more with us.
Speaker 2:Sure. Excellent question. To your point, we are the first city in Kansas and the first school district founded in Kansas, also the first high school. And so the saying goes, you know, we want to be pioneers in every way. This is another example of that.
Speaker 2:To your point, our chief communications officer is to credit for having us be the first district in Kansas last year to be all in on Magic School. That was provided to teachers, but I will emphasize one key point that I think has still served us well. We never required them to begin using it or never gave any hard requirements of what it would look like for them. We established what I would argue was some good guardrails and guideposts, but at the end of the day, we really wanted it to be a grassroots type of implementation. As you can imagine with any other implementation, we've had some early adopters, we've had some late adopters, and certainly some laggards, But at the end the day, I don't have one person that's came to me and said, I really don't appreciate how the district forced us to use this.
Speaker 2:In fact, what I've heard honestly quite frequently is people appreciate how they've been able to kind of jump in, wade in at their own pace. What I wanted to talk about today is actually not necessarily in the classroom because my experience has been less there, what I've seen with us doing at the leadership level. Back to the previous point of how do you become more efficient? How do you do essentially the same amount of work with physically less men and women? This is where AI has been a game changer for us.
Speaker 2:I have seen us be able to one, reduce the physical time on task. So truly taking and reducing minutes and hours, labor hours for the men and women. And two is allowing them to shift their focus and also arguably maintain their cognitive load. And what I mean by that is I'm no longer asking them to spend three hours in something that is monotonous, repetitive, or otherwise, but rather shifting that three hours to more strategic, analytical type of thinking as the AI tool does the monotonous, the repetitive, etcetera. I'll give you a couple examples because I think it's important to illustrate like where and how have we seen that.
Speaker 2:But one of them was, I'm sure most districts always do this in some form or fashion, but some type of input type of setting prior to a major decision. So I always like to say you have both input and feedback. Input informs a decision. Feedback is after a decision. So in an input stage, you may do a community stakeholder survey.
Speaker 2:You may have listening sessions, town halls. You get the idea. There's various mediums. But you have a lot of data that comes in during this input gathering session. And the one I like to visualize a lot is when there's chart paper up all over someone's office, and you've got 18 different colors of markers, and the door is closed and doesn't open until we've finally gotten all the data into the broader categories and we've started to remotely organize it.
Speaker 2:What I have seen is that process that would have taken six and eight hours previously, that could be done in maybe an hour or two with some of the tools that are out there. The second part I like about it that I don't think gets stressed enough is it removes the human error and element of bias. Now my team could focus on those deeper levels of analysis, reflection, and then ultimately, like some of the decisions that usually result from it. That is where I've seen a lot of efficiency there alone. What I really like and what I wanted to stress, Matt, is it is not necessarily us doing less work, but rather us shifting where our time and effort and energy is spent on the more important.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I love those examples. Thank you for sharing them, Kellen. I think it's important to help us get in the mind as we're listening to this episode of how you're applying AI at the district and central office level, because to your point, it's very different than how you're applying AI in a school building and even in a classroom level. You're exactly right.
Speaker 1:From what I hear a lot of district leaders on this podcast, some of their staff are scared about AI merely because of the anxiety around not knowing exactly what it does or how to best embrace it, and then yet others are worried staff wise about it replacing them. And I think you're giving really concrete ways of saying, Hey, we're not replacing you as teachers. Not replacing you as staff. We're not replacing you as district leaders. We're pushing you to use your brain a little bit more and go to that higher level thinking, and all of this stuff that is really mundane that you're used to doing just because there was no better way, well, now there is, and we're now going to outsource that for lack of a better phrase, and we're all going be able to get more done with less.
Speaker 1:I love those examples. It's really cool.
Speaker 2:When we embraced AI, and even to this day, there is still that concern that, hey, you're just embracing this, and eventually my position's gonna go away. I've said this to our bus drivers and custodians. I do not ever imagine a day in which our our buses will be driven by machines. I just I can't imagine kids on there. But you know what we might have?
Speaker 2:We might have tools that help make the bus safer or allow for the bus to be tracked better for parents to know when and where their children are at. To our custodians, I still want a human element to clean our buildings. But we may be able to entertain robots that help you with the 30,000 square feet of flooring that needs to be cleaned every night. And then to our educators in the classroom, I still firmly believe no matter what, no matter how long we go in this, this whole K 12 public education concept that the teacher in the classroom will always be the number one factor. So I have no intention of replacing that individual.
Speaker 2:Rather, I have a hope of helping them do their job better.
Speaker 1:I think that if there were ever a time where we tried testing that a little bit, even before this whole AI wave really hit us over the past couple of years, it was during COVID. I think that, for better or for worse, in a lot of our districts and areas around the country, emergency remote learning via Zoom and otherwise had to happen, but there's no replacement for that in person relationship, that in person teacher and that in person student sitting at a desk in a classroom, whatever that classroom looks like, to really advance their learning. I think that if we had to ever test it, we were forced to, backed against the wall, and I think we realized that that will continue to be the way forward in almost every aspect for students. I'm grateful that you firmly believe those things and that there are ways to augment and further enhance this energy beyond. Let's explore a little bit of a different topic, Kellen.
Speaker 1:I know that you are in a military adjacent community, and you have a really big responsibility of supporting your military connected students and their families. Not every district has that feeling, they're not even familiar with it. What do you make of that responsibility? How does that look? What are you doing uniquely to support your community, being so close to a base?
Speaker 2:Well, first let me start with I want to thank anybody listening that's ever served our country. I've always had what I felt like was an appreciation for the military, but I have a whole new appreciation for it now having lived here for three years. This is my first real experience, so to speak, with the military installation the rest of my career has just not been adjacent to. But again, just a little bit of context, we are in Leavenworth. Just north of me, actually, it's only about a half mile from my office where I'm standing right now, is what's known as Fort Leavenworth.
Speaker 2:And the interesting part about Fort Leavenworth is that I would say, a nontraditional type of post and a nontraditional type of assignment. What I mean by that is it is what is known as the intellectual capital of the Army. Folks come here actually to train. Typically, they are officers, and they receive high level training at what's known as the command and general staff college. So generally speaking, we don't have folks that are training in say an infantry type of environment.
Speaker 2:Rather, they are sitting in traditional classrooms in a very much university type of setting, preparing for the next assignment as they hopefully continue to ascend in their career. I bring all that to your attention because it makes it a little bit different in that sense versus maybe some of our more traditional military installations. But regardless, I want to say this, our military connected students are absolutely, unequivocally, without hesitation, adding to the value of the school system. And I mean that. What I see, and for us, it's more specifically at the secondary level.
Speaker 2:The school district on Fort Leavenworth is a K-nine school district. It's the only one in the state. And back in the 60s, the state legislature said that school district won't have a high school. And so by default, USC four fifty three, I. E.
Speaker 2:Leavenworth, you will service the needs of any high school students. So we have kids that live on post that maybe are a sophomore, junior, or senior by default this is their home high school even though it's not their home district if that makes sense. Yep. Then of course you've got the other military connected students that maybe aren't necessarily in the high school but they just decide that they're not going to live on post and we certainly see some of that. But the majority of ours are at the high school level.
Speaker 2:One of the best things our district ever did was added a JROTC program. And I hope I get this right, but I believe we are six time national champions. And when I say the trophy room is full, legitimately mean that. But a culture of excellence that has absolutely been woven into that program and into our high school. It is so, I would say successful and otherwise just deeply embedded into that culture of the high school that you would say, at some point, we're gonna have our own building or own section of the high school just specifically for that.
Speaker 2:I just I bring that to your attention because I would say that is something that is our crown jewel and certainly something we're proud of. Yes. The second part that we have done really well, and I can't take any credit for this. This honestly is before my time, but is a good connection with the post and with leaders on post. And I think that is so important because for a lot of the CGSC folks, are here for one year.
Speaker 2:And as you can imagine, that is a large amount of transition in a short amount of time. If you are a child and you're going to be attending school and you're going through this massive amount of transition in your life, the one thing that you probably need more than anything else is consistency. We have been able to provide a good level of transitional services for those students because of, again, the connections with our military. And there's several different offices there. Like, for example, one of the best things that I've seen us do is as new students are transitioning here, we've got folks reaching out to those families before they've even moved to town and helping with a lot of the questions that you may have.
Speaker 2:But you're so far away. You're you're coming through halfway across the The United States. You've got a 100 questions, as you can probably imagine, for your sophomore in high school. Those are getting vetted and answered and otherwise by, again, just the good relationships that we've built. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:It does. That's so cool. So you're able to help students from afar even before they physically show up.
Speaker 2:Yep. And, I cannot take any credit for that. I wanna emphasize that part.
Speaker 1:But you're continuing it, which is really cool. So you deserve some credit, Kellen.
Speaker 2:And then the second part I would say that's been this, I'm gonna say general embracing of the idea that we are military community. And you'd see it almost on any type of logo or branding that we have. In fact, I should have worn it today, but we've got an alternative to this logo. And the alternative is instead of it being blue, it is the American flag embedded in the LV. Right?
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:And you have, during the fall here in Kansas, we play football on Friday nights. You have kind of a a traditional senior night, which is the last home game. You might have a pink out night. You have these other nights. Right?
Speaker 2:Well, I will tell you my favorite night here in the fall is our military appreciation night. This flag that the fire department hoists up on their ladder truck and then you've got traditionally our cannon crew, which is again part of our JROTC that you can hear that cannon from around the city. You've got some dignitary doing the coin flip. It is just I'm telling you, is an amazing night that is so well done that again, I think embodies the culture and appreciation that we have, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, yes. After this, Kellen, I'm gonna need you to send me some links if you happen to have posted this on any of your socials. I'd love to see it. I'm getting the visual of my head. It's just giving me a giant smile on my face.
Speaker 1:That is so, so, so cool. As a very quick aside, I have some family in the military, my uncles and the marines. I have family and friends who are in volunteer fire department, volunteer EMS, EMT. Recognizing those communities in that way, especially when they're physically so close to you, you're fully embracing it. It's amazing to see how you're embedding that for those in those families that are serving the military, but also to expose students who are not in military families, what this military education life looks like.
Speaker 1:It's so, so, so cool. I need to see some visuals. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Happy to.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for walking us through that. I have another topic I'd love to explore, Kellen, and I think it's kind of related. It has to do with well-being of your students and their families and your community at large. I imagine there are really unique well-being needs that your students who are on BASE or coming from BASE bring to the district, and student well-being needs, as you're just growing over the past couple of years, as you hinted at towards the beginning of the episode. Tell us little bit what some of those needs are and how they've changed over the past few years, and maybe some of the supports and the tools in place that you're doing to help meet students where they are, especially as this inverse situation is happening where your population is declining, but the needs of students through IEPs or behavior plans or otherwise are on the rise.
Speaker 1:It sounds like it's becoming more and more diverse. How are you meeting them where they are?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Good question. Again, I think some important background is one in five students in USD $4.53 qualifies for special education. So we're right at that twenty percent.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's high.
Speaker 2:Yep, that is high, I would say. And it transcends everything from they may just need speech language services to someone with significant physical handicap, right? Then you also have two out of three students is living in poverty. So if I go into a classroom of 30, that means 20 students most likely are living a life of less affluence. And again, I trust I don't need to tell you, less resources at home traditionally means more challenges that come to the schoolhouse, right?
Speaker 2:Those two statistics alone are something I share with anybody I get the opportunity to, because it impacts a lot of the decisions that we have made and continue to make regarding what I call the whole child type of mindset. Every single school is equipped with what I would call the wraparound set of services in an office of educators that are not in the classroom every day, but are doing equally important work to support the needs of kids. So we have, for example, a counselor next to a social worker, next to a psychologist. We now have an entire mental health intervention team. I think there's a total of nine of those individuals.
Speaker 2:When you combine all of those folks, what I like to say is there should really not be a need that is unmet. Because we've got a number of highly qualified individuals that don't have a classroom assignment that can and should be focused on removing any barriers and or addressing whatever needs so that kids can get back to the important task of learning. I will also stress this, and I think this part maybe is the one that we forget too often. If we don't have those people, the student needs still remain, and the needs simply fall on the shoulders of someone else. Classroom teacher, secretary, principal, you get the idea.
Speaker 2:And with all due respect to those people I just listed, that is not their primary function, meaning they probably won't do it very well. My third grade teacher will say, my job is to teach third grade and to be the best third grade teacher I can be. Right? And that's what I want him or her to be focused on. If I don't have that school social worker to address some of the other needs for these ten, twelve third graders that have challenges at home, the needs still remain.
Speaker 2:They end up falling on the shoulders of that third grade teacher. That will then mean that third grade teacher doesn't do as well in the primary tasks that they've been assigned.
Speaker 1:And it further rolls downhill as a snowball effect.
Speaker 2:Yep. The second part that is not considered part of our staff, but rather ancillary to the district, is a really good connection to a number of either faith based or perhaps non faith based partners of the district. I am happy that we have these people that have consistently decided they want to be a part of pouring into the children of USC four fifty five. Folks like the Guidance Center, who again is a separate entity, the YMCA, which I'm sure you're familiar with. And I'm listing I'm not gonna list everybody, so I wanna apologize in advance for anybody that didn't get listed, right?
Speaker 2:But you've got a number of agencies that have decided they wanna be absolutely a part of this work. The one I particularly enjoy is what's known as United as One. That is a set of several pastors across our community that have decided they were going to absolutely be a part of this work. And I would say not a week goes by in which I don't have an engagement myself in some form or fashion with them because they've decided they want to be in our schools. Here's a small example to illustrate this.
Speaker 2:I met with them one day. They said, what's one of your biggest challenges? I said, we have a substitute crisis. We don't have enough subs. And so what happens is when I've got too many teachers gone, I don't have enough subs.
Speaker 2:That means I start splitting up classrooms. And so a classroom with 20 becomes a classroom with 27 because I had to split that fourth section. Those pastors all challenged each other. They said, let's have every single church hire or designate, so to speak, one person that can become a substitute once a week. We, after that meeting, added like 10 new people to our substitute pool.
Speaker 2:Again, not their primary task, right? Their primary task, of course, is to be bringing people to Christ, but they decided this is part of our work and I would argue it's very much related to their work, right? But they decided they wanted to be involved and that was the net result of that. So again, another example of it takes a village. These are people that are not necessarily on my payroll, but they are absolutely part of the village.
Speaker 1:Literally and figuratively, it takes a village. I was just going to say, what I'm hearing through all of this, Kellen, is the importance of community here, where you're realizing as much as you have these incredible staff members who are on your payroll to meet the various needs of students and their changes to them over the course of the school year, it may never be enough. And that's okay. That's when you then lean into, Okay, let me look to my left, let me look to my right. Who in my community can I form partnerships with in these really unique ways that help fill those gaps in ways that you might otherwise not be able to in house?
Speaker 1:So I think you're like, hey, we need some help. We're happy to take whatever you got. And I'm glad that swallowing Pride or whatever it is, we will be better when we all come together in unison in support of our students. If we can have ourselves, we want to, of course, but if we need to have somebody seven from the outside in a church or otherwise, let's get creative. Those students will learn best when they're in a classroom of an appropriate size, and they trust who's coming in for them.
Speaker 1:That's awesome that you're getting really creative in those ways. I think it sounds like it's necessary for your community, and I'm glad that they're so receptive to it.
Speaker 2:They have been. Again, I applaud everybody, even if I didn't mention them today, being
Speaker 1:There are lots out there.
Speaker 2:Right. To be willing to step in and be a part of this.
Speaker 1:Kellen, going back to the nine staff members, perhaps even more, that you have to look out for student mental health and well-being, I can't help but ask the question, how does that draw in comparison to a budget crisis that, as you were talking about earlier in this episode, you're facing as a district? And for those listening to this being like, Hey, he's ahead of the curve with Leavenworth, but we're not. How do I get there in light of this fiscal decline from student enrollment changing and all of these other factors that prevent a school from hiring folks in full time positions like this? How do you kind of make both work, and what advice might you have for other districts who are not as ahead of you that need to be?
Speaker 2:Sure. The first thing is, as we look at our entire budget conundrum, and that's probably the best way I can describe it at this moment, it's like any other household budget. You've got to maximize revenue, minimize expenses. I want to hit on that first one because this nine educators that I just mentioned is an example of how do you maximize revenue. We had an absolute, I would say, epiphany, so to speak, when we said there are certain grant funds out there that nobody wants to chase or otherwise, or that are sometimes left alone, but should we decide to put in the extra effort are probably going to be something that we find is achievable and attainable.
Speaker 2:This is an example of that. Some credit absolutely goes to our state here. Thankfully, our state has decided to invest dollars for districts on what's known as the Mental Health Intervention Team. But this again represented a collaborative effort between the guidance center, that third party I mentioned earlier, our state legislature, and then our district, because like any other grant, there's absolutely a district share. But at the end of the day, I would say it was a commitment to if we don't invest into some of the student supports, we will end up probably spending more time with teacher turnover because of burnout and or we'll need to hire more teachers because they need less kids in there because of the demand and the needs coming from those, right?
Speaker 2:Or we can approach this from an investment at the front end type of mindset. And so what we said was, okay, what will that cost? And for context, these are not fully the positions are fully paid, but they're not fully expensed to the district. So there's a large portion that is covered. Our portion, if you will, is about 25% of that salary.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I'm getting nine additional FTE, but at about a 25% type of cost.
Speaker 1:Was For the cost of like two to three. Yeah. That's amazing. Wow. Okay, you need to apply that math everywhere else.
Speaker 1:That's unheard of. That's so awesome.
Speaker 2:Yep. But again, was that mindset that I think we had to shift to, hey, because clearly there's a cost, right? I could take that 25% and apply it to more classroom teachers, more teacher salaries, etc. And I'm not saying those aren't important, but what we decided is there has to be infrastructure for our classrooms or our classrooms will feel the burden of that. So we either wrap around these services so that teachers can focus on teaching or we don't and we'll feel the net result of that when teachers decide.
Speaker 2:I wasn't hired to be a student support person. I was hired to be a third grade teacher. So unless I get a focus on third grade, I'm gonna go somewhere else.
Speaker 1:And you know, Kellen, you're hearing that story, as am I, over and over again of teachers who find themselves being everything but a teacher, only doing a small percent of their time actually teaching them, whether it's the paperwork, whether it's being a mental health counselor, whether it's being a liaison to a parent or a liaison to the district, to the county, to the state. Whatever it is, teachers find themselves doing more on teaching things than ever before. I think the brilliant part of how you're flipping that script is saying, Let's make sure teachers are spending the majority of their time, if not all of their time, doing what they're trained and licensed and passionate about doing, and the upfront investment will pay dividends down the line. We need to put it up now, but let's try this almost as an experiment. And if we think our hypothesis will hold true, which it has for you successfully, these folks are worth their weight in gold.
Speaker 1:The fact that you're getting really creative with grants and community funding resources to keep them around and only paying a portion of what they would otherwise cost is brilliant because it's not as much pressure on your budget when there's pressure coming from every other source.
Speaker 2:Excellent point. And again, a lot of credit goes to people before me, so I want to make sure that credit is indicated But again, I think it is that mindset that is the critical piece here.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Kellen, I'm very sad we're reaching the end of our podcast time today. I have so many more topics I want to explore with you, but alas, I will hold them for another time. I want to wrap up by asking you one more question that we love to ask you from our guests. The question for you, Kellen, is what does being an exceptional educator or being an exceptional leader mean to you?
Speaker 2:I would say that my answer to that is to build the capacity of people around me. Each day as I embrace my work, I have what's called the cabinet here, and those are the folks that are department heads, assistant superintendents, etc. For me to be an exceptional leader, an exceptional district leader, means I am building the absolute best team around me.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you certainly have. You made that definition through and through, unironically, but I think also you make a really good final salient point. That is, if you're too engulfed in the day to day, for lack of a better place, minutiae of your work, you'll never be able to establish that mission, that vision, that five year plan, whatever that is, of your district to grow and lead forward. I think it requires a growth mindset in a lot of capacities, but sometimes the realities of district superintendency jobs require you to be so in the work that you can never move forward. But it sounds like you have separated the forest from the trees and given so many examples today on how you're guiding Leavenworth forward in a growth style capacity, despite all of these realities that your district and others are facing around the country.
Speaker 1:So thank you for inspiring us, Kellen. You are exceptional. Your staff sound exceptional. I hope I get to meet some of them through some of the visuals and the pictures and videos you're gonna send to me. But really, thank you for your time today, and I just I'm I'm left so inspired.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing your your guidance and your resources us.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's been my pleasure. Thanks again for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you for joining us, Kellen, and for all of us listening to today's episode of the Exceptional Educators Podcast. Thank you again for joining us, and we look forward to catching you at the next one.