The Hard Work of Change: School Leadership Lessons with Tresha Ward, Prospect Charter Schools

What does it really take to lead bold organizational change — and make it stick?

On this episode of More Great Seats 4 Kids, Mike Lesczinski, Director of Strategy and Communications at the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, sits down with Tresha Ward, Chief Executive Officer of Prospect Charter Schools, for a conversation about leadership, equity, talent, and school transformation.

Since stepping into the CEO role in 2021, Tresha has led a major effort to redesign systems and structures to create equity for both students and staff. She shares how Prospect Schools rethought staffing models, strengthened leadership development, improved compensation practices, rebuilt culture, and dramatically increased employee retention while reducing disparities by race and role.

This is a practical discussion about making difficult decisions, navigating resistance, staying grounded in values, and building an organization where excellence, diversity, and belonging can thrive together.

Transcript

Equity Values Versus Lived Reality

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 0:01

And then what came to light was that I think some of our stated equity values, and then what was actually happening in terms of people's lived experience, there was tension there and there was dissonance there. And I needed to one, like look at the data, sit with that, and recognize the patterns. And then I also then needed to find ways to actually make that visible to others, which was was part of the first part of change. It was like we say this, but when we actually look, like, are we actually living up to our commitment and our promise?

Welcome And Why This Story Matters

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 0:37

Welcome to More Great Seats for Kids, where we spotlight the leaders' ideas and innovations creating more high-quality educational opportunities for students across New York. I'm your host, Michael Lesczinski, Director of Strategy and Communications at the SUNY Charter Schools Institute. Today's guest is Tresha Ward, CEO of Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools. Tresha joins us for a thoughtful and candid conversation about leading large-scale organizational change, confronting disparities in staff and student outcomes, rebuilding culture after the pandemic, and creating systems that support both excellence and belonging. Whether you lead a school, manage a team, or simply care about effective leadership, I think we get a lot from this conversation. Enjoy the show. Yes, I'm excited to be here, Mike. Thank you for the opportunity. Absolutely. Now, Brooklyn Prospect has done something many have talked about, but but few have achieved, and that's changing your practices to reduce disparities in outcomes for both students and employees while also boosting employee retention at the same time. So there's a chance to learn how you actually pulled that off from an operational standpoint. This is something that I've been looking forward to for quite some time as someone who does ops themselves. So really excited that you're here.

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 1:53

Great. Hopefully I can share some things that are valuable from our both from our lessons learned and our mistakes and some of our wins.

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 2:01

Yeah, let's hear about it

Building An Intentionally Integrated School

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 2:03

all. So let's start with an easy one though. Can you tell us about Brooklyn Prospect and what sets the organization apart?

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 2:09

Yes, uh, I love that question. Um in 1954, there's the Supreme Court landmark case, Brown versus Board of Education, that um outlawed uh segregated schools. Uh and yet, like even today, um New York City and it has the you know largest district in the nation, it's also still the most segregated. Uh, we were founded um about 17 years ago to be an answer to that disparity and and and that kind of injustice. Um we wanted to create a place that um allowed for excellence and diversity and opportunity to sit side by side. Um and so we were founded as the first integrated, intentionally integrated, intentionally diverse by design charter network in New York City. And um we really believed at our core that students and adults learn best by sitting, not just like diversity for diversity's sake, but sitting next to others who don't look like them, don't live like them, and don't pray like them, and that they have an opportunity to build empathy and learning from students who are different from themselves. Um we believe that excellence in diversity and access to high-quality education is not, those aren't competing interests. Those should actually just be the norm for all students. And so um we believe those shouldn't be trade-offs for New York City parents and students. So that's kind of a fundamental core piece that sets us apart. So what that looks like in practice is um we aim to have no socioeconomic and no racial majority in our student body. And so our student body is pretty diverse across those lines. We serve about 44% students who qualify for free and reduced price lunch. And our student demographics are about a third, a third, a third. And then multiracial, um, multi-ethnic uh students make up the kind of last portion of our student body. Those differentiate us, like that philosophy, um, our in diversity, um, that mission. And then we also um offer the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, which is a really prestigious um you know, course of study for students that's typically offered in private schools and andor tracked school programs. We offer that program to all of our students free. So we're one of the few public um open enrollment, uh free IB for all uh program, high school programs in the city. We feel really proud about that. Um, a global education is a door-opening education, not just here, you know, kind of locally um in the US, but also like we want our kids to have a worldly perspective and also have the skills to compete um globally. And so that's kind of built into our core.

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 5:03

I appreciate that. Uh thank you. I'll make sure at the end, too, that to put a link to Brooklyn Prospect's website.

The 350-Person Listening Tour

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 5:09

When you stepped into the leadership position in 2021, though, you described your charge as moving Brooklyn Prospect from its founding phase into its next stage of growth. Uh, and that work began with a new strategic plan. So can you talk, uh, walk us through that process, how you approached it, how you identified priority areas, and how you ensured the final priorities reflected both Brooklyn Prospect's needs as well as the broader school community.

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 5:33

Yeah, I really am privileged to have followed a founder who had led our organization for about 12 years before I took over. And I also took over during a you know a really transformative moment, if you will, like globally, nationally, and also for our organization. So I took over in June of 2021, um, which, you know, if you think back, that was, you know, at the in the midst of the pandemic. And um, you know, a couple things about us. We went into the pandemic as four schools, we came out of the pandemic as six. Um, when I took over, we were in the midst of uh, you know, planning to reopen our schools that fall and like return kids back to you know full in-person instruction. So we were both dealing with kind of what was happening kind of globally, nationally, locally related to the pandemic, but we were also dealing with our own kind of internal growth and growing pains. Um, and I would say, you know, I came in with a lot of humility, recognizing that it was important for me to do a lot of listening and a lot of learning before I made a lot of changes. Um so I actually like that, you know, in within the first like 30, 30, 40 days, I talked to about 350 stakeholders across our campus, across our campuses, our school, and our organization. That included every member of the board, that included every member of a leadership team at the network level and at the school level, uh, a ton of teacher-focused groups, parent-focused groups, and even some student-focused groups. And, you know, I asked a few questions, just like what made prospect schools really special? What do people love about our organization? And then I also asked, like, what were our opportunities? Were opportunities to get better? Um, were opportunities for improvement, where were the pain points? And um, you know, being new to the organization, people were quite comfortable just telling me everything, which was great. And so, you know, I heard a lot and I took a lot of notes, and you know, I then took some time to step back on those notes and like look for the trends, like what was I hearing repeatedly about what made us special at our core, and then what were some of the pain points. And then I actually then played those back for those groups. So I went back in front of the board, I went back in front of our leadership team, and I went back in front of um subsets of our staff members and our employees and said, like, this is what I heard is what makes us special, and this is what I heard, or some of the pain points. Is this accurate? And then took those themes and kind of then worked with our leadership team to say, okay, if these are the things that are, you know, our strengths, how do we preserve them? If these are the things that are our opportunities, how do we actually think about a multi-year roadmap to addressing them? That multi-year roadmap became you know four big priorities that we kind of called Emerge, Connect, Grow, Sustain. And like under Emerge, it was really returning our schools to the academic and operational strength that we had before COVID and working to surpass that. Under Connect, it was about rebuilding our culture and investing in our people. And growth wasn't just about adding more kids in schools, but it was actually getting clear about growth. We had a growth plan going into the pandemic that we were trying to become, you know, 12 schools. That plan needed to change to fit the current reality. So it was like, what is not just how many schools we want to grow to, but what's the impact that we want to have? Um, underneath that was getting clear on like how many schools are we growing to, but it was also, you know, how do we have impact on our alumni who've graduated and what does impact, you know, beyond our current state look like? And then sustain was how do we actually like build sustainable systems so we're here for the long run? Um, and I shared that plan back out with all those stakeholders and tried to build real excitement about where we were building from and where we where we needed to go. And that became the roadmap for a lot of key decisions over the last four or five years.

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 9:32

Well, as someone who's done strategic work before, it's so important to build that strong foundation by reaching out and casting such a wide net.

Seeing Disparities By Looking Deeper

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 9:39

In terms of uh when you started to look at the actual data, uh you identified some disparities when it came to the staff. So can you talk about that? Like what did you find? And then how did you start to you know dive into it to see what was driving those disparities?

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 9:56

Yeah, I mean, through those focus groups, I learned a lot about some potential root causes of some pain points I was seeing in our data. Um, you know, our data revealed that we had real strengths, but we also had real opportunity areas. Um, you know, the way we were looking at data sometimes created an incomplete picture of what was really happening, right? So we also needed to look at data a little differently. So instead of, you know, we were just to give an example, we would look at, you know, BIPOC uh stakeholders, whether that was BIPOC students or whether that was BIPOC staff members. And that's one way of looking at data. Another way is to actually say, how are all the individual groups that fall under that umbrella, how are they actually thriving in our organization? And so we actually started to like look at data differently to try and understand a more complete picture of what was happening and try to diagnose some of the things we were also hearing or that I was also hearing. And then, you know, what came to light was that I think, you know, some of our stated equity values and then what was actually happening in terms of people's lived experience, there was tension there or there was dissidence there. Um and, you know, I needed to one, like look at the data, sit with that, and recognize the patterns. And then I also then needed to find ways to actually make that visible to others, which you know was was part of the first part of change. It was like, you know, we we say this, but when we actually look, like are we actually living up to our commitment and our promise?

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 11:31

Were there were there aspects of the organizational design that were reinforcing some of these uh disparities that you noticed?

How Silos And Roles Created Inequity

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 11:41

Like roles or structures or systems themselves?

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 11:44

Yeah, I believe that sometimes we make decisions and choices that serve us in at a time and in a moment. And and then, you know, if we don't have regular practice of stepping back on those decisions, sometimes we can look up and realize that the those decisions are actually having impact that's further away from our vision. So I will I will name like we we had a staffing structure, we had a staffing philosophy and an approach that you know was interesting in a couple ways. One, again, we were in our founding state, so each school kind of had an opportunity to create whatever roles they needed at the time. Um, you know, that makes sense from a place of saying, okay, you know the context, and so therefore you should create the roles. But as an organization becomes bigger and you actually have schools that are of the same size and scale, to have disparities in staff roles and responsibilities, the number of staff members on a team, like you actually then start to create um misalignment, misalignment and missed opportunities to like train people, to have clarity, to have um shared professional development, shared learning. That was one way that I noticed in the in the data and just kind of what was playing out that we weren't quite, we were creating inequity in our staffing just by not having that, um not having some consistency across our our team models from school to school. I think the other is that we had um, you know, we had sub-teams is the best way to describe it. We had those that were the teachers and they were the instructional team, we had leaders, and then we had a culture team. And uh, you know, on the surface of that, it sounds very clean, right? Like teachers you teach and culture you do culture and leaders you lead. And what that was actually doing was creating silos, it was creating a lack of ownership. Uh, it was creating confusion about, you know, who is supposed to respond when there's a student that's in crisis. And when you actually looked at who made up those groups, I don't think we were living our true commitment around being diverse in all spaces, right? So we had a predominantly um, I would say, white teaching staff, and we had a predominantly black and brown and black and male uh culture team, and we had a leadership team that also didn't mirror the diversity that we ex that we were looking for. And so we had created these silos, and then when you layer on race and gender, we were, you know, through through those practices and those sub-teams, that the intent was right to create clarity probably and to ensure that like instructors could focus on instruction and culture was kind of dealt separately. We were actually not living into a commitment. And then when you step back on the data, unfortunately, the students that we saw, you know, being responded to uh were students who were also predominantly black and brown. So again, like, you know, just through something that might have had good intentions and it just was not playing out that way. And then, you know, that that that contributes to feelings of a lack of belonging, both at the student level and the team level. So we also saw high attrition of team members who were in those operational roles and those culture roles who were to predominantly, you know, black and brown, who also were um paid differently and lower than instructional staff, right? So we were creating um through some structures and systems and some previous decisions, like things that were just misaligned with our equity commitments.

Choosing What To Fix First

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 15:25

So how did you decide where to focus your attention first? Some issues had to be relatively straightforward fixes, while others you know, compensation, career pathways, you know, role design, like these are more complex. So how do we navigate and prioritize?

Speaker 1 15:41

Yeah.

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 15:42

I mean the first priority, first priority was like cleaning up anything that was low-hanging fruit. So, you know, there's just some things that we did that were like, all right, if we say this, then is that mirrored in our policies? Or are we saying one thing and then actually not not executing on it? You know, those were things like, you know, we were using anti-racist in language, but like we have policies that are actually not not that right. So just there were some simple things we did there. I mean, the hardest decision was actually um making the tough decision that this structure was no longer serving us, um, and we needed to actually restructure ourselves. Restructure ourselves um to one better meet our vision of equity, to better support our employees who then support our students, right? So for us, the the the biggest bet and the hardest work is also like the investment in our team. And our team is the biggest lever that we have to serve our students and families. And so if they're not clear, if they're not feeling developed, if they're not feeling connected, a sense of belonging, a sense of value, a sense of investment, uh, then how are they going to transfer that to students? And so that that became the first place that we focused. I mean, the first place and the biggest place. And the hardest work was making change of that scale, especially in an organization that is healthy, like, you know, on the surface, where our our goals are we're meeting, you know, goals and a fairly strong and stable organization and so much potential to do so much better. Um, and so it's hard to disrupt things when people are comfortable with them. It's also hard to say if we actually truly believe in equity, we're actually going to make the hard decision to sunset a team that is made up of predominantly black and brown employees. And then to make that further complex, I identify as a black woman, and so I'm you know the first black female CEO of prospect schools. And so to lead that change with an identity that mirrors the staff members that were impacted, you know, that was it's complex and that's hard and there's a lot there. But I also believe that if you truly believe in diversity and equity, you don't just talk about it. You actually make it so and you make it like ingrained in the practices that you, you know, that you believe in, in the policies and the actions and in everyday decisions. I I'm not just about using the words, I'm actually about like making the change. Um those are some of the some of the things I can talk more about that too.

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 18:17

But I mean, obviously, restructuring it is never easy.

Leading Through Resistance And Hard Questions

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 18:21

So, and obviously you there's going to be resistance to this type of work. There always is. So, how did you uh take on that challenge? How did you address you know the resistance uh within your organization and how you know from a change management perspective? And then also how did you eventually get enough staff to understand the purpose behind this uh and how they not just them, but the total organization would be helped?

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 18:49

I will not sit here and say it wasn't hard and that it wasn't painful. Um again, like there's feelings, there's people's livelihood, there's like their sense of belonging, whether or not it felt good and or not, right? Like there were people who were like, this is the role I play, this is like how I've seen myself. And so, you know, something so disruptive um was definitely not easy. And I think, you know, the hardest part too is that um, you know, while we were making the change, we were also trying to educate people on on why we were making it. So not just what the change we were making, but why we were making it. And um, you know, lots of lessons learned around that. Like, you know, we we both um did some planning and then did some messaging. But I think the most effective thing that we did was actually get in front of every staff member. So we went to every single school and we went with teams in small groups, and then we had whole group forums where we were very much explaining here are the changes we're making, here's why the changes, why we're making each change, here's both the quantitative and qualitative data that we're grounding this in. Here's what happens if we don't make this change for us. And then, you know, and then sitting there and taking all the hard questions, all the hard feedback. Um, you know, I think had if I were to do it again, I would have started probably with those groups, and probably even before a decision was made, helping people understand some of the challenges we were facing. I think we we bundled both like the change, the why, the challenges we were facing, and the fact that we needed to do it all in like a very small period. Some of that was just because we had to. Like the the window to like confront the problem and make the change was was narrow. Um and that made it harder. That made it harder, it made it more emotional, it made it compressed. And I also asked people to trust. Um, and I think, you know, it was both messaging, but it was also time that eventually helped people recognize that this was the right decision. Um, not necessarily time in the moment, right? Of in the midst of the change, but time after. And I think a little bit of like, so are you, you know, questioning? I don't, and no one ever really said this to me, but it's like, are you gonna stick around for this change? Are you gonna see it through? Um, or are you making change that you might not actually stick around for? And and I, you know, I feel really proud. Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be in the storm together and we're just gonna ride ride our way through. And so making sure that I didn't retreat and my team didn't retreat, um, I think was a really important part of um leading us through that change. And so standing in front of our staff um uh during some very heated you know conversations and then keep showing up. Like, right? Like I'm gonna keep showing up. You may not like me right now, but I'm gonna be at the basketball game and I'm gonna be at the event, and I'm gonna be at the end of the year celebration, and I'm gonna ask you. What you're, you know, how you're feeling. I'm going to ask how things are going. I'm going to be back in front of you again at the beginning of the next year, and I'm going to be back in front of you again at the middle of the year. And I think that that matters. And it matters that I ask, How are we doing? And that I truly am like listening. It looks like reading our word health, not just the quantitative numbers, but every every written word that our team members write, and actually like using that to evaluate whether or not we're on the right track. Those were some of the things that I would say were helpful. And then also just like showing the data. So, you know, in that restructuring, we reset what the roles of the leaders were because that was unclear. We were like, this is what it means to be a leader here. We're raising the bar for you. This is what you own, right? Things that might have been owned by others, like this is what you own. Teachers, this is what you own, right? We we don't want culture to be siloed. We expect leaders to own culture and academics. We expect teachers to own uh culture and academics. Um, and so therefore we're also gonna train you for that. So we also paired it with training. We for our leaders, we were like, we're telling you what the bar is now, we're telling you what we need you to own. We've reset your roles and your expectations, and now we're gonna back it up with professional development to make sure that you have the tools to meet the expectation. Um and then narrating for people. All right, here's where we are in terms of our, we said we want to make sure that we have a diverse team across all functions. Here's our hiring stats, here's what this looks like, here are the things that we're doing to make sure that we back up the change with actual action. Here's our data. We're looking at it by these numbers. Here's where we still have room to grow, here's where we're winning. And I think just the constant narration, the constant visibility, um, the steady consistency, um, and the humility to keep listening and asking uh are some of the things that I would say were important to lead the change.

Culture Repair And Compensation Overhaul

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 24:13

So when you do this type of big change management type of work, culture is obviously a big part of that. And you know, you have to have a great culture, a strong culture. You know, obviously that helps when you want to make a change like this. But at the same time, this type of change also tends to change the culture itself. And at the same time, you were Brooklyn Prospect was in the process of rebuilding its culture even before this work began. So can you talk about like just how culture fit into all this and and some of the types of uh initiatives that you put forth and changes you put forward to to you know bolster the culture up while also using the culture to to help with these changes?

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 24:50

Yeah, I mean the the being in schools is hard enough, right? Like it's hard work. Uh it is hard. Like the, you know, um and being in schools coming out of a pandemic, right? Where everybody is already exhausted, tired, and feeling like they don't have much more to give, like compounds it. And then on top of that, you layer on changes that were required. Um, I think what we tried to do is really focus on like how do we keep seeing people, keep rewarding people, keep um creating moments of connection. So, you know, my this this started like my first year, which was August of 2021. We had a big start of the year event where we brought all of our team together. Everybody was wearing masks and was outside, but we we brought people together to kick off the year to celebrate. And we ended that year with an end-of-the-year celebration where we did like a you know network-wide adult field day, right? Um, we always recognize our staff members who've reached the five and 10-year milestones, and we make that a big deal, both like, you know, at that end of the year celebration and also through compensation and saying thank you. Um, we I think trying to find ways to keep those moments of connection and community across the bigger hole going is a is is part of that joy, is part of that culture. And then to be really honest, we also like um in 2023, actually as an organization said, you know, this might seem counterproductive, but we actually took a step back and said we actually need to nurture our culture. And our network-wide priority was culture is everything, which meant we actually needed to go back to connections, people, relationships, the core, things that are all strengths of ours, but you know, in the midst of all of the change, we kind of let go. So, what did that look like? That looked like do we actually have celebrations at our school level for our teams and our adults? Do we have moments of celebration for kids, moments of connection? Um, are we rushing through a lesson or are we actually taking the time to like also build the community and actually address moments of breaches in the community, but also moments of celebration? Um, and how do we do that while we're also very much committed to making sure our kids are academically strong? Like we can do, you know, that was something where we said we were actually making an intentional choice to go back and nurture our culture. And I think that was a really important moment for us to kind of reset and rebuild a foundation that had gotten a little shaky through change, through, you know, some of the challenges. Um I think other things that just make people valued are like, am I compensated for my work? And so, you know, we did a lot around talent, but I would say some of the work that we did was, you know, a two-year kind of step back on revamping our policies around compensation so they were clearer, making sure that we were benchmarking salaries so that they were competitive, sharing out, creating opportunities for the team to be a part of that change process, the policy change, getting input, um, hearing the changes and being a part of some of that decision making as we were doing it, and then also to feel the benefit of it, to say we're increasing compensation, and here is why, and here is how. And I think that matters. And so we were both making some structural changes, some cultural changes, some policy changes. We were also making some changes to say we see our team as the biggest lever of our success, and we want to, that's where our biggest dollars should be, and that's how we think about the value of our people and actually making sure people were being um compensated in a way that was competitive for the work that they were doing on behalf of our kids and our organization.

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 28:47

So you mentioned

The Retention Turnaround To 82%

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 28:48

talents. Have you seen a shift between you know hiring more internally versus external folks? Have you also taken a look at your own professional development? Like what are the type of things that you've made specific changes to that's helped kind of you you mentioned the very start, you've you know helped decrease the disparities in employee uh outcomes as well as uh boost retention. So, what are some of the specific things you've done to help help?

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 29:14

Yeah, yeah. And just like I feel really proud at the end of you know 21-22 school year, we had 56% of our staff retained, and we measure retain like retain um as are you with us on the first day of school and are you with us on the next day of the first day of the next school year? And so we went from 56% staff retention and disparities by race and role. So we were retaining our white staff and our teaching staff, and we were losing our black and brown staff that were in operational or non-instructional roles. Fast forward to this past school year, um, we actually retained 82% of our overall staff across 400 plus uh 430 plus employees with basically eliminating the disparity by race and role. So feel really proud around that. I mean, a few things that we did. So the restructuring was are do we have the right roles? Are the roles and responsibilities clear? Are people in the right roles? And then do we have you know representation across those, you know, all of the roles at every level from leadership all the way um through our instructional staff? So we changed some of our talent practices to make sure that we were eliminating bias in the hiring. That's one. We revamped compensation, like I said. And then we created um really robust development opportunities. One of the levers that we also believe keeps team members is if I have a good manager, I will stay. If I feel like my manager sees me is developing me, and I'm growing in my role, um, and that partnership between my manager and I is strong, uh, then I will stay. So strong leaders actually keep strong, keep employees. And so we poured into our leaders. We were like, this is what it means to be a leader. This is also what it means to be a leader of a team. Um, we did, you know, we started a summer institute, leadership institute for our leaders where we train them on, you know, everything from instruction, but also how to be a strong people manager. Um feel really proud that over the last three years on the our organizational health, we have um, you know, the vast majority of our staff agreeing and strongly agreeing to questions like I have a good relationship with my manager, I'm getting developed by them, I look at data. So just one pouring into our managers so that they were better um leaders of their team, better hiring managers, also contributed to team retention. And then compensation, like I said, and then tending to the culture. So if I were to come up with a recipe, it was like, how do we fix our policy? How do we make sure our roles and responsibilities and ownership are clear? How do we then make sure that our policies and practices and compensation um support? And then how do we align our development structures to make sure that people are being successful in their role? And it's not short, it's not not easy work, but we've just been really methodical about it. And then how are we doing, right? So we, in addition to the organizational health data that we get, once we get it, we look at the places that were low, and then we go back out to the team through focus groups and we say, hey, you rated this low, or or people are rating this low. You know, what does this question mean? And when you see it, like, you know, what's coming up for you and what are the ways that we can improve? And again, like it's always a choice and attention. Some things we can do, some things we can do right now, some things we, you know, are longer term builds and some things we're just not able to do. But I think the practice of saying, we see this, we're reading it, and that's how we continue to tend to get better, makes people feel like they're heard and they're part of an organization where they're seen, they're valued, and their opinion counts.

Humility Lessons And Leader Advice

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 32:57

So I in a previous uh job, I also had to work towards implementing a wide-scale, you know, reorganizational change. And I know it it changed me, not just from you know, uh as an organizational leader, but it changed me as a person. Because this is this is tough, hard emotional work. So, what have you learned personally as a leader throughout through this process?

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 33:20

Mm-hmm. No, it was humbling. Uh it was humbling. I think um, you know, some of the hardest moments was standing in front of our team and trying to help them understand the data that I was seeing from my vantage point and the hard decisions that I was making that impacted either them personally or impacted friends that they had. And recognize that you know, they see me as sometimes my title and not necessarily Trisha. Like, right? Like I'm I always operate with like I'm an educator, I know what it means to have sat in all those seats. I'm also a person, so I understand the pain. I think one of the hardest things and the thing that I tried to do was also like um be really honest, be really um not sugarcoat the pain of it and not and not try to dismiss that either and humanize myself. Um and that's one thing, right? Like, how do you how do you, as you're making some hard decisions on behalf of an organization, also like show up as a human, leading that change? I think the other big thing is, you know, I wish, you know, if I were to do this again, and we have done this with like other big decisions, like presenting the problem earlier to the team so that they actually could be in the context and sometimes a little bit of the mess with us. I think, you know, there's a bit of like uh how do we keep people from it? We need to make the decision and then roll it out. I actually think, you know, recognizing that most team members uh have the ability to just to sit in the problem with you and the uh you know maybe need to shield them from so much of the problem uh until the very end. Like I I actually think being able to say, you know, here's what we're wrestling with, here are the challenges in our data, here's what's not working, how would you solve this problem? Or here's what we you know what we'll be faced with, or like here's some of the the the constraining variables for us. Like, how do you how can you help us see, you know, a potential way path and path forward versus believing that we need to have all the answers and that our answer is right and that uh we need to make it and then push it down, which um is not always easy, and not every decision lends itself to that, but where you can, I think trusting that your team can actually can actually sit in the mess with you a little bit more than you think.

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 36:01

I love that. So we have time for one more question. Last question final advice for any character leader peer that's out there right now, or educator in general, organizational leader who who knows a big change is is probably necessary, but perhaps hesitant or unsure of how to go about this work. What what advice would you would you provide them?

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 36:25

Yeah. Uh I think that piece that I just said around like, you know, is there an opportunity to share the problem with more people, uh, with your stakeholders, and say, here's here's what we're facing, here's the constraining variables, here's the data that I see, here's like something needs to change. Um, you know, what are your thoughts? How could you? Like, it does a couple things, right? At the very least, it makes people know that there's a problem that we need to address. And then two, um, you might actually, it might, you might get things that change your thinking and and or might make the solution stronger. So I think that's one. And like having the trust to do that, that feels scary. It feels scary to like let others into the problem, especially a problem that you believe is yours to solve, especially around things that are like, you know, organizational finance and like you know, some big decisions around restructuring or even sunsetting a school or things like that. Like those decisions sometimes feel like it's hard to let people into them and it's messy and it makes it much harder, and you're gonna get hear a lot of opinions. Um, but I think the benefits actually in retrospect outweigh the cost. And then I think the other advice is like I tend to ground myself in my guiding principles and my values, and that gives me the courage to make really hard change. And if at the core I believe that we're doing a practice that doesn't really actually meet the our stated values or my personal values, then I need to be grounded in that courage to push through, even if that change might be personally um consequential for me. I didn't, I didn't really know how, you know, I had faith that we would be better on the other end. And but in the moment it was very tough. Um you just don't, you know, that I'm putting myself out there and I'm saying this is a change and making a really hard change very early in an organization. Um, but having the confidence to say, like, this is actually the right change. So regardless of what happens to me personally as a leader, like this is actually a change that's needed because you know, it's more in line with our values, setting our organization up for long-term, like sustainability, success, impact. And so that's kind of what I ground myself in.

Final Thanks And Wrap-Up

Mike Lesczinski, SUNY Charter Schools Institute 38:44

Tresha, thank you very much for joining us here today.

Tresha Ward, Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools 38:47

Yes, Mike, this was wonderful. I appreciate you and all those tough, meaty questions. So I uh I hope it's helpful.