Welcome to the School Perceptions podcast!
We created this podcast to share real, practical solutions that schools across the country are using to tackle their biggest challenges. Our goal? To give you the inside scoop of what’s working and ideas that you can bring home.
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For the latest episode:
22. From Chaos to Consistency in Hastings Middle School
Tammy Champa sits down with Derek to talk about her experience with transforming school climate in Hastings, Minnesota.
21. Getting Pay Scales Right after Act 10
Here we revisit the impact of Wisconsin's landmark Act 10 legislation, which gave Wisconsin district leaders unprecedented flexibility to experiment with teacher compensation. Dr. Steve Kimball, from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, talks about WCER's recent follow-up study, tracking what districts have done with that flexibility. And our own Daren Sievers recounts his process of developing a new compensation system in Slinger -- a model that remains in place all these years later.
20. Responsive Leadership and Response Rates
Superintendent Liz Freeman joins us from the Cedar Grove-Belgium School District to talk about using survey data to build trust, engage the community, and drive improvement.
Visit our website to see the various survey tools available for you to use!
19. Data Detective Work
Dr. Stephen Plum, superintendent of the Kettle Moraine School District, joins us to talk about the task of triangulating staff, student, and parent survey information -- and putting it all together with attendance and achievement data -- in order to improve parent engagement, staff compensation, and student experiences.
For more information about our staff, student, and parent surveys, visit our website!
18. Discipline Is a Lesson
Roy de la Garza, veteran school leader with experience in the Houston Independent School District and Carlsbad Municipal Schools, joins us to share what he's learned about how to improve student behavior, staff buy-in, and school climate all at once.
For our suite of tools to help district and school leaders do their work well, visit our website!
17. Build Trust Before You Need It: How School Boards Can Help New Superintendents Set the Tone
Steve Schroeder, of the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators, and Kelly Thompson, of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, join Derek to talk about what makes for great board/superintendent relationships and how those can go awry.
Use our leadership tools to help get or to help keep your administration and your school board aligned!
16. Don’t Do Math in Public: How to Talk School Finance with Your Communities
Elise Murn and Kevin Mullen, of Baird’s Wisconsin School Financing team, join us to share their experiences and advice when it comes to informing concerned citizens about districts' financial situations. Hear about:
- Topics, questions, and responses that can derail community conversations
- The nuts and bolts of estimating tax impacts
- How property reassessments interact with school referendums.
- How to educate the public on the fundamentals of school finance
For our own community and pre-referendum survey tools, visit our website or reach out to us!
15. Decoding the 2025-2027 Wisconsin Budget, with Anne Chapman
In which Anne tells us all about what's new and different in Wisconsin's new biennial budget, what it means for schools and taxpayers, and what kinds of topics of conversation we can expect to hear popping up in communities around the state. For more on WASBO, where Anne is the Research Director, see their website. You can also see our own data on the history of Wisconsin school referendums here.
As always, you can see all the products and services we offer at our website -- and we look forward to hearing from you!
14. You Can't Improve Discipline in Isolation
Wendell Quesinberry, Administrator of Tomahawk School District, sits down with Derek to talk details about how Tomahawk improved staff and student perceptions of school discipline policies over the past few years. It involves strategic planning, cascading leadership, and of course lots and lots of listening.
To keep up with the patterns we're seeing as we survey schools and districts around the country, visit our resource center and subscribe to our newsletter (at the bottom of any page on our website)! To use our survey tools themselves, visit our website and reach out!
13. How Community Engagement Built a Welding Academy, a Health Program, and Trust
Wade McKittrick, of Montevideo Public Schools and BetterU Solutions, shares how his Minnesota district flipped the script on school improvement. From student-led healthcare pathways and a thriving welding academy to community mental health initiatives that changed lives, Wade walks us through how authentic listening and small-town collaboration can lead to big-league innovation.
Visit our website to see our suite of Iistening tools, if you will, and check out our resource center for more patterns and trends that we're finding in our data.
12. On the Uses of Summer (for Planning), with Aaron Tarnutzer
McFarland’s Aaron Tarnutzer joins us to discuss how, why, and with whom to take the summer months to analyze and plan for the future.
Find more of our, well, findings at our Resource Center, and see our website for more information on the survey tools we offer.
11. Deep Diving into Our Data, with Rob DeMeuse
Our VP of Research joins us once again, this time to talk about what we've learned from analyzing ALL of the staff, student, and parent surveys we conducted over the 2024-2025 academic year. There's good news, there's a little bad news, and there's some weird news, too.
Subscribe to our Resource Center to stay on top of future analyses, visit our website to see all of our survey tools, and use our contact form to reach out with any questions you might have!
10. We're in the Buffet Business: Strategic Planning amid Multiple Goals and Stakeholders
In this second half of my conversation with Ted Neitzke, we talk about the educator career ladder, managing conflict within systems, avoiding the dynamics of "reform churn," and so much more.
You can hear more of Ted on his Smart Thinking podcast, you can subscribe to our own newsletter for our the latest research we put out, and you can check out our leadership survey tools to help you in your own strategic planning process.
9. From Binders to Bylaws: The Evolution of Strategic Planning, with Ted Neitzke
In part one of this two-part episode, leadership expert Ted Neitzke sits down with us to talk about the Baldrige Excellence Framework, the human need for structure and status, and how to draw upon "legacy experts" in the developing a strategic plan.
Give Ted's Smart Thinking podcast a listen, if you haven't already; subscribe to our newsletter to stay on top of the resources we have to share; and take a look at our leadership surveys to help you in your own planning processes.
8. It's All Relationships: How to Build Career Academies, with Eric Burke and Lexi Allen
The School District of Rhinelander's Eric Burke and Lexi Allen join us to talk about how they're expanding postsecondary pathways.
Learn more at their Academic and Career Planning website, and find additional information about their Partners in Education program here, too.
To stay on top of what we at School Perceptions are discovering through our survey work, sign up for our newsletter!
7. School Stores and Life Skills, with Kim Smessaert and Phil Ourada
Under Kim Smessaert's guidance, Slinger's school store, the Rookery, has become so much more than an extension of DECA. Hear how Slinger is opening doors for its students, equipping them with the skills and experiences they'll need in their early jobs--and building community cohesion all the while!
For our next live recording, join us here at this link TOMORROW, May 21st, 11:00am central time, to hear Eric Burke and Lexi Allen talk about building career academies and establishing community partnerships in Rhinelander!
6. Strategic Planning Is a Win-Win, with Gail Gilman and Chris Thompson
Gail Gilman of the Minnesota School Boards Association and Chris Thompson of the Unified School District of De Pere sit down with us to talk about how and why to do strategic planning right.
Subscribe to the School Perceptions blog for information on upcoming live recordings. And visit our website to see what our community planning surveys can do for you!
5. Retention is the New Recruitment, with Tonya Olson
Lake Mills Area schools received five times the expected number of applications for an open teaching position. What is going on there that makes the district one that staff want to join and stay in?
Subscribe to the School Perceptions blog for information on upcoming live recordings. And visit our website to see what our staff surveys can do for you.
LINKS to cited sources in early going:
Tuan Nguyen, et al. (2019), "Factors of Teacher Attrition and Retention"
Wisconsin Policy Forum (2023), "Revolving Classroom Doors."
Tuan Nguyen (2022), "Burned Out and Dissatisfied?"
Michael Hartney (2022), How Policies Make Interest Groups
Matt Kraft, et al. (2020), "Teacher Accountability Reforms and the Supply and Quality of New Teachers."
Jon Shelton (2017), Teacher Strike! Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order
Barbara Biasi and Wayne Sandholtz (2025), "The Political Consequences of Controversial Education Reforms: Lessons from Wisconsin's Act 10"
4. April Referendum Recap
Our own Scott Girard and Rob DeMeuse help us think through the Wisconsin school referendum results from April 1st. It's a wide-ranging conversation
1.) How did April 1st fit into historical trends in the state, and what is driving those trends?
2.) How does community conversation -- the information school districts share with their constituents and the way districts listen to voters -- affect the final vote?
3.) What can schools and communities do to make sure that they're asking voters for the right things in the right amount?
For more, see Scott and Rob's blog post analyzing these trends; and to contact us, use our website!
3. Opening Doors for Students, with Bill Foster
School Perceptions is in the business of helping schools do their jobs well. Every school wants to help kids plan for and access opportunities after graduation. Our founder, Bill Foster, joins us today to talk about our new "Opening Doors" project, which shares concrete examples of schools and communities doing innovative and successful things in this space.
Visit our Opening Doors page for more information!
2. What's Going On With Superintendent Turnover? with Rachel White and Rob DeMeuse
Dr. Rachel White, founder of the Superintendent Lab, joins Derek and Dr. Rob DeMeuse to talk about what's driving superintendent transitions, who's filling those openings, and whether it's even a good idea for a new superintendent to try to "hit the ground running."
Rob mentions our "pulse-check" tool for superintendents and boards, as well as our staff surveys, so I'm linking to them here, as well. And for more of our internal analyses, using data from the thousands and thousands of surveys we've done, see our Resource Center.
1. Superintendent Transitions, with Dennis Pauli and Anna Young
What does it take to step out of or into the superintendency well?
Edgerton's Dennis Pauli and Glendale River Hills's Anna Young sit down to talk about how they prepared to exit and to enter the superintendent position.
LINKS:
Our Resource Center
The School Perceptions suite of leadership tools
0. Introducing the show
Visit our website (SchoolPerceptions.com) to learn more about our work!
For an entire generation, the overall theory behind education reform has said that we need to figure out what works in general and then use policy and regulation to make schools do those things.
But if you’re leading a district, you know that no two schools are exactly alike – and what works in one place doesn’t always translate to another.
That’s where we come in.
For the past two decades, we’ve conducted a lot of surveys… More than3 million, in fact, for thousands of schools and districts, asking students, staff, parents, and community members what matters most. We’ve had a front-row seat, seeing where districts struggle, but also where innovative ideas are actually working.
So, instead of trying to figure out the thing that works everywhere, we simply share examples that we have seen work somewhere.
Each month, our podcast will dive into two areas.
First, we will highlight some of the most effective leadership strategies we’ve encountered. From improving staff retention to fiscal management, we’ll be talking with those leaders who have made it happen. We’ll ask them:
- What did you do to turn things around?
- What obstacles did you face in the process?
- What advice would you give someone facing a similar challenge?
Second, each month we will feature districts who are successfully helping students explore career opportunities, discover their passions, connect with local businesses, and prepare for life after high school. We call this Opening Doors.
Nothing works everywhere. But if you’re a school leader, if you’re a parent, if you’re a taxpayer, if you’re a student – and the story you’re hearing sounds similar to yours – then there’s a good chance that what they did might work for you, too.
At School Perceptions, our mission is to measure what matters and help schools thrive. This podcast is one more way we’re working to support schools like as you navigate the complexities of education today.
Thanks for listening – we hope you find it useful and inspiring!
