When Tech and Instruction Collaborate

A Maryland district builds and sustains a cohesive relationship, sharing decision making and accountability behind a major initiative
BY RYAN J. IMBRIALE/School Administrator, May 2020

Ryan Imbriale, executive director of innovative learning in Baltimore County, Md., points to effective relationships between information technology and curriculum staff. PHOTO COURTESY OF BALTIMORE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, TOWSON, MD.

I was sitting in the windowless office of my school district’s executive director for information technology at the end of a long day of meetings. We were struggling to find agreement on how to proceed with some key aspects of a major digital conversion that in the first year was going to cost close to $12 million for a school system that serves 115,000 students.

A critical first step in the process was to determine next steps regarding development of a systemic technology solution to handle learner management.

My role, as executive director of innovative learning, was to ensure the voice of the classroom, the curriculum staff and the school administrator was at the center of every conversation. His role in leading information technology was to ensure we could deliver on the security, infrastructure and access seamlessly. We had to complement each other and learn to lead together.

Those early days together in Baltimore County in 2013 were the beginning of a cohesive relationship that has withstood three superintendents, significant changes in central-office leadership, adjustments in system priorities and altered responsibilities. Seven years later, the school system benefits from a model that highlights complementary leadership roles in technology and instruction that ensure the delivery of high-quality support and services to students.

Complementary Expertise

Collectively, we were able to play the various roles to gain trust and support and to guide the system. My background was working as a classroom teacher, instructional technology coach and, most recently, high school principal, while my counterpart had corporate ed-tech experience, had managed a major technology initiative in another school system and had worked with networking and hardware. We meshed well, navigating the nuances of our system-level politics and moving the overall work forward to extend educator capacity to engage students with digital tools and resources that are intuitive to them.

The limitations of our capacity and knowledge made it impossible for one person to know everything and to be able to manage the relationships across a countywide system with 175 schools, centers and programs. Bringing together two leaders with complementary strengths not only compensated for the shortcomings of each of us but also resulted in a highly functioning team in which the total sum is much greater than the individual parts.

Information technology and curriculum offices often struggle to find common ground in K-12 school systems. In Baltimore County, prior to 2013, the divisions had competing priorities. The two offices were physically separated by almost 10 miles, and there was no plan for coordination. For example, schools were buying software and hardware without consulting either of the central-office divisions, which often created problems for servicing and supporting whatever was purchased and in use. By restructuring with a complementary leadership model, we were able to bring consistency and structure to the interplay between technology and curriculum.

Benefits of Sharing

Early on, it became apparent that having a shared approach to leadership was going to pay dividends. The first task, tackling how the system would approach learner management, was daunting. Thanks to shared accountability and shared leadership, we were able to develop a request for proposals for a learning management system that best reflected the needs of teaching and learning and included the voice of teachers and administrators. At the same time, it addressed the intricate technical details to ensure a successful product that functioned well in our unique environment.

Our initial work on the RFP has helped frame our continued collaboration between divisions over the past seven years. From the beginning, we were able to identify the key aspects of an effective shared leadership approach. We developed a common vision, identified both formal and informal approaches to communication and immediately established trust.

Owing to the RFP, the information technology department felt valued, and their expertise was acknowledged. The curriculum offices felt their instructional expertise and deep understanding of content was recognized before decisions were made. This process put students and teachers front and center.

Thanks to early wins such as the learning management system, we’ve continued to jointly address the multiple challenges that impact the entire system. Baltimore County became one of the first school systems in the nation to develop a single sign-on platform (known as BCPSOne). This meant we were able to push our corporate partners to integrate their unique digital platforms so they would be able to interact with other products inside our ecosystem and users would need to enter their credentials only one time. Owing to this architecture, we’ve been able to quickly deploy new products, such as Discovery Education’s streaming media services, and introduce them into our ecosystem seamlessly.

In addition, we are leading the way in data privacy and the expectations we place on our corporate partners to meet high standards to keep student data safe and secure. Shared leadership ensured we could debate internally between divisions regarding needs and expectations and communicate with one voice to our partners.

We’ve also collaborated across divisions to develop clear processes and guidelines regarding software management. We’ve strategically developed a software portfolio management process to eliminate redundancies and fill gaps that exist in the overall ecosystem. The process ensures schools and offices have software reviewed and vetted and it avoids unnecessary purchases. This process creates efficiencies and can save the system from competing products.

Often school systems struggle with balancing the needs of technology with the needs of teaching and learning. By creating clear and open communication channels, a shared responsibility for success and shared ownership, Baltimore County has become a national leader in innovative practices. A robust array of educational options exist in all high schools incorporating self-paced blended learning, one of largest systemic magnet programs in the nation and a solid STEM program. The district’s Mobile Innovation Lab provides weeklong residencies at our elementary schools. The transportable lab would have been impossible without the years of collaboration between divisions and a shared view of leadership.

Expanding Responsibilities

Seven years is a long time. Our roles and responsibilities look different today than when we first started building a relationship. Early on, my role was focused specifically on digital learning and the tools and resources for successful classroom implementation. Over time, the school system’s concept of innovation has expanded to include our work with student options, magnet pro-grams, assistive technology and summer programs, among the changes.

In 2013, our summer programs, evening school and Saturday school looked very traditional. These programs were regionalized, taught in a traditional manner and offered almost no flexibility for students or teachers. Today these programs have been completely revamped and reimagined to take full advantage of technology and our digital ecosystem.

Our extended-day and extended-year programs now are self-paced blended learning programs that allow students to demonstrate mastery of learning. The programs are offered in the schools the participating students attend during the day instead of at a regional site, and they are flexible enough to support almost any credit acceleration or deficiency need students might have.

In the previous version of these programs, if students did not finish a course in the summer, they had no opportunity to continue with the course during the school year. Now students can fluidly move in and out no matter the time of the year, therefore focusing on content mastery instead of seat time.

This enormous transition in the delivery model could not have occurred without a deeply interconnected relationship between curriculum and information technology. These seismic instructional shifts required the communication, collaboration and leadership across both divisions to succeed.

Mobilizing for COVID-19

In the midst of completing this article, our country was hit with the unprecedented public health crisis of the COVID-19 virus. As schools closed their doors and educators were asked to find ways to teach remotely, the work we have done these past seven years became so much more important and timely.

The Baltimore County Public Schools were more prepared than many districts for the unthinkable, implementing the first phase in a matter of hours by standing up an entire website that provided instructional resources for students. In addition, we checked out more than 65,000 library books across 175 school libraries so student could take reading home.

Thousands of teachers across the system were able to ensure their students, before they left school for an unknown length of time, had learning materials (either print or digital). Since that day, staff in our curriculum and instruction division along with the department of information technology have worked tirelessly to provide an equitable, robust and effective plan for the continuity of learning, allowing students to continue their education during this extraordinary time.

We realized connectively as a system what was at stake for our students. We were able to move as fast and hard as I’ve ever seen a team of people work because of the trust created and team mentality. We are going to make some missteps and we will stumble, but we will get more right than wrong. In the end, the story of our school system will be one of coming together.

Laying Foundations

The road is not easy or smooth, but the benefits of shared accountability, leadership and deep-rooted collaboration between in-formation technology and instructional staff lay the foundation for a smooth succession process as personnel have changed over time. There is enormous potential in creating complementary leadership in a school system where technology and curriculum can work side-by-side to accomplish collective goals for students that can’t be accomplished if there are competing goals.

RYAN IMBRIALE is executive director of innovative learning in the Baltimore County Public Schools in Towson, Md. E-mail: rimbriale@bcps.org. Twitter: @Ryan_Imbriale