Barr Updates

This newsletter provides staff members with updates on the work being accomplished with the Barr Foundation. We hope this will give you a sense of where we are in the process and keep you up to date on our recent developments.

Thank you students, staff, and families for all your participation in our Barr Learn Phase! Out of all the districts participating, Gateway had the highest survey and focus group participation and we met and exceeded our goal of 80%+ survey participation!

Members of the Barr Core Team attended the Barr November Convening, and with all of your participation in these focus groups and surveys your voices were with us all along. There, our Learn Phase peaked with a deep dive into data from surveys, walkthroughs, shadows, focus groups (Elementary and MS/HS), and the springpoint site visit report, disaggregating the data into subgroups and triangulating data to identify common themes and patterns. We collaborated with other districts for new perspectives that pushed our thinking. We used four lenses– equity, design, systems, and data– to prioritize and distill our insights into actionable, adaptive changes that have true design energy behind them. The work was messy and complex, yet always collaborative and inclusive to all stakeholders. From it, three themes emerged for Gateway:

1. Collective Identity
2. Feeling Valued and Respected
3. Authentic and Relevant Learning

Throughout the Learn phase, the Barr Core Team has been gathering information about our schools in a variety of ways, including focus groups, walkthroughs, student shadowing experiences, data from the Department of Education, and the YouthTruth surveys. We have spent weeks analyzing the quotes, insights, and data that we’ve received. Now that we are moving out of the Learn phase, we’d like to share some of the trends we noticed with all of you. However, we recognize that you will need time to absorb this information. To give you this time, we’re going to be sending periodic Barr Data emails over the next few weeks. Each email will focus on a few pieces of information relating to the trends that we’ve uncovered.

Before the Barr Foundation facilitators guided us through the data collection process, they invited us to acknowledge the “4Ds” and try to move beyond those feelings quickly. As you read these emails, we invite you to do the same! The “4Ds” that prevent us from getting the most out of the data are:

• Defensive (“Students were just really grumpy that day.”)

• Dismissive (“What do 9th graders know about school culture anyway?”)

• Dejected (“This is worse than I thought and impossible to fix.”)

• Downplay the negative (“There are much worse places out there.”)

If you find yourself feeling defensive, dismissive, dejected, or downplaying the negative, I encourage you to think about why you reacted that way. Only by seeing past our own biases, opinions, and feelings can we truly understand the data. Before our November convening, the Barr team was tasked to read this chapter from Margaret J. Wheatley’s Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, and we found it useful in framing this data work.

In the next edition we’ll be sharing some more specific insights, but here are a couple of general trends to think about:

• Since the 2009-10 school year, district enrollment has declined by 36%. High school enrollment has declined the fastest, from 243 students in 2009 to 163 students in 2023.
• Meanwhile, our percentage of students with high needs (which includes low-income students, students with disabilities, and English language learners) has increased by 45%.

Question to think about:

How are we meeting the needs of this changing demographic? What work still needs to be done?

The Core Barr Team is currently working on turning these three themes into action-based insights. As we move into the “Dream” phase, we invite everyone to dream of all the possibilities for Gateway. Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing information highlighting some of the data from our YouthTruth surveys to help us better understand our district and how to dream. There are opportunities for staff to shadow students, visit other schools, and share your dreams keeping in mind our three themes– your castles in the air– for transformative changes to our teaching and learning experiences here at Gateway. It’s time to dream big!

Link to October Newletter