Until her retirement, Superintendent Jacqueline Young led the Essex Regional Educational Services Commission, a small regional district serving students who underperformed on state tests and functioned significantly below grade level. Most students in her district received special education services, and many had experienced trauma and had behavioral challenges. One of the district’s schools was located in a juvenile detention center. The students were mostly male, poor, and Black or Latinx.

This student population was quite different from almost all of the other districts whose superintendents were in NJNS. In her reflection, she discusses some of the key features of a learning community explored in this chapter, a shared commitment, relational trust, and professional accountability that connected leaders across diverse district types.

For me, the network was a lot of things. It was a source of inspiration. If I needed to be injected with something to keep going, it was my injection. I looked forward to it every month, just to interact with my colleagues, then to visit their districts. Seeing the different initiatives they were using and how they were addressing their own issues, that gave me inspiration. It gave me the sense that I could do better, because I had seen what was working in other places. If it was working there—it may not look the same for me— but I could take it and modify it for my district.

The network was also a place to share my expertise. This year, by inviting my network colleagues to have an equity visit at Sojourn High School [a high school within a juvenile detention center], they saw that I really am doing the work. After the equity visit, people told me, “Whatever you’re doing that’s successful with the kids, whatever you’re doing that you see that helps them to be focused, maybe you could chronicle that and give us feedback as to what we need to do in our districts to support kids in difficult situations.”

The network was like a think tank. We shared ideas, we visited each other’s districts, and we talked about things that were problematic for us in our own districts and problems across all of our districts. We felt comfortable sharing with each other because of the norms that we had established. We had trust that we could say things in the network, concerns about our districts, and know that what we said wouldn’t be repeated outside. All of us strived to take ideas from the network and implement them. Everyone’s situation is a little bit different, and every district has different equity goals, but we are all superintendents who really feel the importance of doing this work.

The network is a group of leaders with a shared commitment. The fact that we have been together for a period of time says that we’re committed to our purpose. We could relate to each other beyond our meetings, and there was a sense that we were really there to assist each other and all of our kids. I may have waited until the last minute to do an assignment for a network meeting. But I knew that even if I had to stay up late the night before, I would not walk in there on Friday without having done what I was supposed to do.

–Dr. Jacqueline Young, retired superintendent, Essex County Regional Educational Services Commission

“Becoming Part of an “Educational Think Tank””