Episode 88: It Takes a Board: The Role of Leadership in Community Literacy

In this episode of the Compass PD Podcast, Dr. Carrie Hepburn is joined by Bob Whittenberg, Board of Education President for Spencer Community Schools, to explore a critical—and often overlooked—driver of lasting literacy success: the role of the school board.

Building on the momentum of Spencer Reads, this conversation moves beyond the classroom to examine how literacy becomes a community-wide commitment, not just a school initiative.

Together, they discuss:

•  Why literacy must be treated as mission-critical work
•  How boards can move from oversight to active learning and leadership
•  What it means to protect time, professional learning, and instructional focus
•  How long-term commitment—not short-term programs—changes outcomes for students and communities 

This episode offers a powerful reminder:
 When boards, schools, and communities align around literacy, the impact extends far beyond test scores—it shapes opportunity, independence, and the future of an entire community.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Literacy Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Compass PD podcast where we dive into evidence-based practices and research-driven strategies that empower educators and leaders to make a lasting impact. I'm Dr. Carrie Hepburn, your host, alongside Bob Wittenberg, the Spencer Community School District Board of Education president. Hello, Bob.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Hi, Carrie.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

I'm very well, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

We are really excited about having you here today to talk about the importance and the role and the value of having the Board of Education supporting initiatives such as what you do with Spencer Reads.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Thanks. And I'm happy to be here and excited to have a conversation about something that I'm I feel very strongly about.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

We're going to talk about how Spencer Reads didn't start as a program. It really started as a belief. Everyone needs to know how to read and write. Bob, take us back to the moment when literacy became a community priority in Spencer.

The Wake Up Call On Illiteracy

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah, so I guess for me it was two things that kind of occurred about the same time. So I was at a school board convention in uh late 2019, and uh I was at a delegate meeting, and a board member from Fort Madison, Iowa got up and he said he'd worked at the Iowa penitentiary for 35 years, and that it was his experience that about 75% of the people in there were illiterate and couldn't read, couldn't write, and that just how important our role as school board members and ensuring that all children get that skill, get that ability. And so I was thinking about that, and then I came across Emily Hannafort's American Media documentary. Uh, and I listened to a couple of those. I started reading about the science of reading, and uh just made me realize that as a you know board, if we just did one thing, the most important thing is to ensure all children have the ability, acquire the ability to read and write and be literate. And so that led to a conversation with uh superintendent who I meet with on a weekly basis, and and we just kept having that conversation, and then uh the pandemic shutdowns hit and all that kind of stuff. And so uh anyway, uh by the time we got out of that and we're back on track, then we this was became our focus, and it was uh not as simple as that, but but that was the beginning of it. So, like I'm hearing you say that one if there was one thing that we did, it sounded like you really minimized it down to like So uh schools are asked to do a lot of different things, and we have uh many goals and many things that we need to accomplish. But if we can just focus on what is the most important thing, and it just occurred to me that you know, literacy that just unlocks the world for children and for people. And if they don't have that, you know, to be productive citizens, to contribute to their community, to be economically independent, to um have a uh a vibrant social and cultural life, they need to be able to read and write and think critically. And so if it's the one thing that we can sh ensure that every student has, that that's it. So we need to focus. We have other things to accomplish, but that just seemed to be the most important.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

So if you were thinking about it, was there like something that that helped you think through that this isn't going to be like just a an initiative or a short-term initiative?

Using Data To Drive Change

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Sure, sure. Well, it's so the greatest strategy is improved teaching to uh accomplish that goal, to give everybody that. And so to do that, you have to, I think it's a systematic, it's a system-wide has to embrace that goal, has to see it's important, you have to build consensus that that is the key thing, and that everybody needs to make the effort. They have to be able to see that. Everybody has to agree that that's what we need to do and get behind. And then it uh be it is a change. It's a change in the way we teach, it's a change in the curriculum. And uh so so to build that, it's it's a process. And so we, you know, so the superintendent suggested that we have a uh district-wide um group of teachers from all grade levels, the curriculum director, reading teachers, uh, to meet and look at the data, you know, we uh and see what the data about what we had been doing was revealing and where did we want to go. And that uh group then started meeting, um, I would say in the winter of 21. And um we saw that um yeah, maybe the data wasn't really where we wanted it to be, you know. So if the science of reading says that 60% of kids can just read with just about any instructional method, um, but 80% of kids should read um if you're using the science of reading or 85, then we kept bumping up against these barriers in our data. And you know, you know, I get I think the group came to realize that maybe it was the instructional methods in the curriculum that we were were using wasn't gonna break us through to that high level of 85% of kids learning how to read at with tier one instruction, and that the other 15% of kids would eventually get that um acquisition through uh tier two and three interventions. And so to do to arrive at that kind of change and then identify the curriculum and the instructional methods and then train people on it, that's a big job. That doesn't happen in uh one school year, you know. So it takes time to uh for everybody to get on the same page, to find the right stuff, to train on it. And then um when we arrived at what our goal should be, then we said, well, we need to go a step further, which is to get the community involved, to really let them know this is important, that this is vital to our kids, and that it's important for us as a community to all be aware of this is what our goal is and why, and what we can all do to move towards that goal. And so then that's in May of 22, is when um when we set that moonshot goal, yeah, and we uh recruited uh people to get the community involved to put that Spencer Reeds into action, and they did that. So then in the in that fall, when

Setting The Moonshot Reading Goal

SPEAKER_00 6:55

we rolled this all out, uh we everybody was enthusiastic and um ready to go on that mission.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Oh, I love that the mission, and then thinking about the moonshot goal. Can you um this is going to be a shocker for many people, but do you mind sharing what your moonshot goal is at Spencer Community Schools?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, it's 85% of students will read at grade level by the end of third grade, and 90% of the remaining students will read at grade level by seventh grade, and that all kids will grow through the 12th grade and their reading skills, proficiencies.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

And that's ambitious. That's an ambitious goal.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

It is, it is, and it's not easy, but it's I think uh worthy and doable and realistic according to the science of reading.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

So right, right. What I love is that you're using the data, the science of reading data to help you determine that and not your community and what you think your students are able to do based on their background. I think that's important for people to know.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

It is, and it's and that's based on the belief that all children can learn and all children can do this, and that belief is uh system-wide and community-wide held belief, I think, by now. So that's an important belief.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Yes, it I mean the stickers, the Spencer Reed stickers are everywhere when you're in the community. Like there are books there and we read, like our community, we are readers, is very apparent. That's really great. So, one of the things I think about is when you're describing success, you're not describing success as ISS scores, like your high-stakes assessment scores, but as what success

Measuring Progress Beyond Test Scores

SPEAKER_01 8:48

offers for your students.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah. Uh the the tests are important uh data, but they're not the only data. And they're uh one snapshot in time of uh particular, you know, day, right, basically. And so we have to have lots of data and lots of evidence of uh progress and uh and continuous feedback on uh a continuous improvement process in teaching kids how to read. And so yeah, it's not just about the test data, although those are important, yes, important guidelines and feedback, but they're not the only ones. So we search out as as much feedback and data as we can from a variety of sources and and viewpoints. So yeah. I think you're right. It's what what the opportunity for kids are, what what this avails to them. I mean, it's the way to tap into 6,000 years of human knowledge, right? Reading. It's all there.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

The apple doesn't have to fall just on your head every time. You know, you you can read about it. The uh water doesn't drain from the bathtub and you figure it out. It's all that have gone before us and and and created all sorts of knowledge and insight. We we can tap into that when we can read.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yes, like it opens, it just opens the doors to the world and to knowledge. When you think about a Spencer graduate, a graduate from Spencer Community Schools five years from now, what do you hope is true about their relationship with reading and how has that shaped the vision and your decisions as a board leader?

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Well, I hope that they're reading to learn, you know, so in their economic life, that they use critical thinking skills that they developed by uh learning how to read and write, that they uh read to uh expand their horizons and their work, uh, that even if they're um not in a high education uh field, that they use insight and critical thinking and reading to uh understand their customers, uh communicate with their coworkers, to uh be a better employee, better uh so I see it that way economically. I see it in our civic life that we if you're able to read and uh think that you can participate as an informed citizen in your own self-governance. So I think it's critical to that. And I I think it's critical in our uh social um realm that you can understand other people, that you can put yourself in other shoes, that you can expand the world without needing to go anywhere by accessing uh different books that give you um knowledge of other people's lives and other ways of doing and being. So I I think it's all aspects of our life can be enhanced down the road and as lifelong learners that use reading to do that.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

And and that's what you want for your students. Like everything.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

That's exactly what we want for every everybody.

unknown 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

We want our communities to be successful and and if you're an employer, you want um good employees who are uh informed, who are intelligent, who can grow and uh be learn and change and adapt and no matter what uh field you're in. And so I think that Spencer Reeds um helps all that to produce produce employees, to produce citizens, and produce neighbors that you you know can be a part of a thriving community.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Well, one of the things that people may or may not know is that there's the the Spencer Reeds t-shirt on the back has tell me what you're reading or ask me what I'm reading, right? Like a question. So if somebody has a Spencer Reeds shirt and they're walking around the community on the back, it's like let's talk about reading. That's just who we are in the community, and um that is contagious, right? When our kids see it, they and they see the adults doing that, it's very contagious, though.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

And it affirms that you know that it is a positive thing, and people are curious about what you are reading, and you know, oh that's interesting. Maybe I'll try that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

All right. Here's something that people will take away already.

Board Leadership Through Learning

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Bob, you're not the normal board of education president, uh, because not everyone can speak about the science of reading and learning how to read and the importance of doing this. So my question is what does it look like for someone in the board of education to step into the role of a learner? And how did that shape the way you led and have led and holding your system accountable?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Good question. Uh, well, for me, uh leadership is about relationships. And um, so that is the basis of all good leadership, in my opinion. And so those are things that can be built. And so it starts with the board with the uh admin team and uh having uh communication, have building trust, uh sharing knowledge and information, and then it extends to the teacher leadership teams, to the curriculum leadership teams, to the teachers themselves. That uh, and so the learning at the board table is to me is critical in that. So hearing from teachers, hearing from administrators, hearing from the administration team, the curriculum uh director, a variety of sources, and even uh students, about what they're doing in the uh areas that we're focused on, and how is that moving us towards our goals? And how are we uh what's the feedback about those efforts? And um what what are the barriers, what are the um opportunities, what can the board do to um support those initiatives or reduce those barriers, or you know, so uh it's and it's important that everybody on the board has that same information, not just the board president or um one board member in particular, but that all five of us have the same learning at the uh and access to the same information. So it's important because it informs our decision, it helps us build a consensus about what we should be doing, helps build the will of the system to do hard things. It uh says that we are interested, you know, that we um support it. Also provides um what I call a soft accountability when you have to explain what you're doing and the whys and the what's it just in that in itself is a form of accountability. Well so learning um uh to me plays all those roles in in the lead in in leading the district.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Well, that was going to be one of my follow-up questions was how do you balance accountability with trust and professional expertise?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Well, I think you know it's important to understand when you first when we first started out on this, and and I will give all credit to the Iowa School Board Association and their lighthouse project, and I would encourage districts to get hold of that um study and that information. It's a good model of how how boards can um impact student learning. But so when you when you start on an initiative like this, you uh you have to be careful that you have the trust built, that you have that it's not a blame or a gotcha. You have to show administrators and teachers that this is about um feedback, it's about understanding, it's it's about um not being right, but doing right. And uh so we're investigating that together. And we want to to learn together about um what is right, what what we should be doing right. And so it's it's everybody's working hard, everybody's has the right intentions, so it's it we we're just out to figure it out together, you know, and we want to convey that. And so people feel comfortable in that, hey, if something doesn't work out, that's fine. We're gonna learn from it and we're gonna go and figure out how we do it better or what what we need to do different, and that and that then we just keep moving on. It's it's a it's a process of improvement always, and not a destination or uh all of it's just good feedback on steering the course.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Love it. Thank you for that. I think that's that helps people. I I do think when you get in the trenches and you're learning alongside them and you're grappling with the the information as much as the administrators and the teachers are it and and trying to make sense of it because some of it is very complex. Um, it shows that we're in this together. And it's the action, it's not words, it's action. Like we're in this, we're figuring this out, we've been through this, and we can we can do this as long as we're all in it together. So I like the soft accountability. That's a great way to describe that.

Protecting Time For Great Teaching

SPEAKER_01 18:34

So we know that sustaining literacy work takes more than passion. It really takes protection. What does that look like for the board to protect literacy, like protecting time, learning, and the conditions that your teachers need to do this work well?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yeah, I mean, I think it's uh starts out with the calendar and that you have the maximum amount of instructional time that you can. But with the uh and and then the recognition that you need to have professional development time that um allows for collaboration, it allows for sharing of data, understanding data, it allows for learning uh instructional methods, for uh understanding curriculum, for for selecting curriculum, for improving units or improving lessons, or so that time uh is vital in to the system as well. And so the board recognizes that and helps to um protect that, but also just to explain to the community why that's important. And yeah, um there's those 14 days that your children aren't in school, but it's it's important, and here's why. And it's very beneficial to the other 169 days that they are in school or whatever, you know. Yeah, so it's it's um PD, it's instructional time, it's uh having teacher leadership teams that are important, you know, supporting that and supporting again board learning, you know, it's uh protecting that, it's uh recognition of staff, of accomplishments, of the hard work and efforts, you know. And then I think it's um supporting the staff and the administrators in their in their journey.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

It's the culture, it's become part of your culture.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And you know, too, it it's it's the board being involved in the goal setting. Like so we're not saying what the goal should be, but we're involved in that discussion of what the goal goal setting is, and we're hearing about it from each building, how their sub-building goals uh fit into the district goals, and then we hear on a monthly basis where we're at with those with the results and the uh feedback on those goals. So I think that's part of sustaining as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

And there's like a lot of communication, and that communication that I'm hearing is going out to the community, it's coming to the board, it's going to the staff, it's it's constant. So when you're you're taking the proactive approach of explaining to the community why do we need these, you know, say 14 days? Um, because we value learning, not only learning of your children, but also learning as an organization. And so that's what we're doing here together is we're learning, the teachers are learning, the administrators are learning. We're the board of education. Education learning and all of that is helping us impact student learning. That's really powerful. Really powerful.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

I I think it is. Uh that I think it's important that the board models that learning for the district, for the for the staff, and for for the kids. I mean, I don't know how many of them are watching us or paying attention, but I I still think it's important that um it's there.

unknown 22:28

Yeah.

A Practical Roadmap For Other Boards

SPEAKER_01 22:31

What have you learned about leadership by committing to the literacy work that unfolds over years? Over years, because you've really started thinking about this in 2019, right? And then we had the pandemic, and then you were able to just kind of kick off, launch it how you wanted in 2022-ish. Yeah. Um what would you say to like other board members and school districts who are wanting to start this journey?

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Sure. I would say it's gets back to relationships. Um, I think the board uh superintendent admin relationship is the key. Uh our our superintendent uh really shares the same belief as the board that all kids can learn and that this is important that we give everybody the ability to read and write. So it starts with that. And there's uh trust and respect on both sides. And so then uh we can share, we can uh make efforts, we can continuously improve. Um, I think you have to have that trust built first. Uh so we were lucky we had done that legwork before this initiative. So the Lighthouse initiative uh I think went a long way in us building trust not only with administrators, but with uh this the staff, teachers. They could see that we were genuinely interested in what they were doing in a way that was cure based in curiosity, based in support, based in wanting to do the right thing, which is give kids uh the best opportunity to achieve. So that common uh goal I think was important. Um I think it's also important to realize that this is uh a journey and not a destination, that it's about building a continuous improvement um system, you know, so it's a system that is um moving to improve at all at all the time, you know. That's that's how you go through the school year, that's how you go through the cycles.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

So one I think for those districts who have um received grants around comprehensive literacy and that kind of thing, we continually talk about the importance of um like continuous improvement. And so we're constantly getting feedback, looking at data, having conversations, studying, trying to keep getting better at our craft and the work that we're doing. And that's not bad.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

No, right. I I would I would encourage every district that wants to go down this path to uh have a couple work sessions a year where they invite in their teachers from maybe so what we do is we have uh one for elementary schools, one for middle school, and one for high school. So we do three one month uh monthly meeting, 60 minutes, and we uh pick a topic long in advance, so everybody's knows what we're looking for. And then so if it's about literacy, then we hear about well, what are they doing in elementary schools for literacy? And we hear from teachers, uh, we hear from the uh teacher leadership team, and they present maybe their data, they present their instructional methods, and uh hear about their challenges. So I think when you demonstrate that interest and you do that kind of learning, um we've uh done that long enough now that we've uh in the last two years, we've moved to actually going into the classroom as board members and watching the teaching happening and see what that looks like in in the classroom. So I think all of that helps to inform uh board members and to let teachers know that the work that they're doing is you know the most important work and being done in our community and that we value it and and we celebrate it and we we want to know about it. So I think those are things that any district can start doing.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah, yeah. Whether they decide to start like a Spencer Reeds kind of program or not, it it's important work that the school board can do to partner with their teachers and their staff and let them know that they're interested in the work that they're

Making Literacy Visible Across Town

SPEAKER_01 27:17

doing. So um, something I do want to that we had chatted about earlier was if a district does decide they want to start something similar to Spencer Reed's, so community outreach that this is who we are and what we do, something that you mentioned was having the right people at the table leading that workout. Could you? I know I just kind of threw this on you, but could you take a minute to talk about that?

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Sure. Yeah. So uh when we got to that point that we knew what our curriculum was, what our instructional methods were going to be, what our goal was, and then so we looked around the community and we knew that we had some people who had done uh a lot of work in the district with parents and done work in the with a lot of students and who had uh broad community connections. And uh so then so we asked them if they would want to take this on, and of course they enthusiastically did. And I I think if people are curious, they can look back on your some of your podcasts to really get in-depth on what that then became. But uh those people just had such a broad connection in the community that they could reach out to uh parents, to uh employers, to um, you know, important institutional leaders in the community and connect them with this idea and get enthusiastic support for it and get uh awareness of it, you know, which is important too. And then they're just very creative in all the things they came up with and have a lot of fun and make the events that they do a lot of fun. And I think it it's uh you know, small points of pride for the community. So when you go to a basketball game and there's swarms of kids um doing the book swap, you know, uh at the basketball game, or they're at the baseball field and it's book night at the baseball field, uh, you know, it's I for me anyway, it's it's like, wow, that's kind of cool. You know, we are that's that's that's different. You don't see that everywhere. So or the UPS driver or the fire fireman uh taking a break and and reading a book, you know, and then using that as a message to everybody that hey, Spencer Reads.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the hashtag Spencer Reads, you should you should get on Facebook and look and you'll see all kinds of people. So um what I love is that Spencer Reads and Spencer Community Schools is showing us what's possible when a community treats literacy not as a program, but it's a shared responsibility that all of us are a part of.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Right. Absolutely. And that we all have a role to play and can impact kids by playing them, you know, so everybody can be involved.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

This was so good. I'm so thankful that you're able to join us today, Bob. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Thanks for having me. It was it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yay. Well, I want to say thank you to everyone who joined us on the Compass PD podcast today. Remember at Compass PD, we believe every educator has the power to inspire, change, and transform student learning. Stay focused, stay inspired, and keep making a difference.