Oglala Lakota County School District
Report date
June 2021
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
The greatest component for success was pre-planning. The Bush Foundation Grant allowed for us to bring on a principal a year before the school opening so that multitudes of planning and preparation could be done ahead of staff and students joining the team. The Oglala Lakota County School Board and Superintendent had a vision for the high school, and the work of the principal allowed for many of the dreams to become reality. As we conclude the first year of school, we are able to appreciate the power of the first-year planning that enabled many of the successes to happen when the school opened. Some examples of the planning work included visits to other state high schools for ideas and strategies for success. The principal also attended Career Technical Education conferences to help gain ideas that would work in our area. The pre-planning year allowed for research of best practices and thorough planning to ensure a great start.
A second valuable component of having a principal on board a year before school began was the luxury of hosting interviews near the end of the first year. The principal sought teachers who understood the vision of the district and the goals of the high school. As the first year ended and preparations were underway for school to begin in the fall, the principal had assembled nearly all of the core staff and CTE staff to start the official first year for the school. The year of planning enabled the district to set the stage for success by gaining the right people for the positions.
The final component that helped in the success of the school starting was the time. In the first year, the principal was able to present the vision to local eighth-grade and high school students advertising the opportunities for the new high school. Through the meeting with the potential students, a name and mascot were chosen. The Oglala Lakota County High School had an official name, Lakota Tech High School. The school logo and mascot by student vote was the buffalo, and thus the name The Lakota Tatanka was born. The gift of time, a full year of time, allowed for many details to get completed.
Key lessons learned
The single largest lesson learned this past year was flexibility. COVID19 happened in March of 2020 and as we continued to plan for the doors opening at Lakota Tech, we knew the first day of school would not be the one we had envisioned. Lakota Tech and all surrounding schools began remotely. A Shelter in Place Ordinance in our area was passed that prevented schools from opening their doors. While this allowed construction to continue for the final pieces, it meant that staff and students were not in the building. The Lakota Tech staff set up offices at one of our elementary schools and used Zoom to teach students. By Christmas, the staff was able to move into the new school, and by April, Lakota Tech opened the doors for students to come and have their first day of onsite school. As we finish this year and move into summer sessions, Lakota Tech and all our schools continue to protect staff and students from COVID19 by ensuring masks, hand sanitizer, distance, and hybrid options. We learned that being flexible in light of unforeseen circumstances allowed us to come up with alternate plans when our vision was delayed.
Another lesson we learned is how important staff development is for the success of any program or project. Lakota Tech was all new. We had a new building, new students, and new staff. We needed to provide more staff development for each position. Each employee needed to understand the policies and procedures of the school district as well as specific details of their position. We needed to set expectations and we needed to provide more oversight from the beginning. While we finished the year successfully in many components, we have room for increased staff development moving forward. A new school is different than a school that has been in existence for years in that the new school staff has to learn everything about the new school and set the first protocols. Our year was a succession of new protocols for every activity and event. In addition, COVID19 precautions added another level of protocols onto every aspect of the school planning. Sports, conferences, prom, and graduation had to be planned for the first time ever and with COVID19 precautions. It was indeed a year of learning and development.
A final lesson learned is realizing the project is greater than any one individual. People come and go, but the goal of a successful public high school on the Pine Ridge Reservation continues to be realized and improved. During the course of the grant, we have had staffing changes in many positions related directly and indirectly to the grant and as people have left the district, yet the goal remains. We started the grant with different people in the federal programs office and the business office, and yet the goal and grant continued to be successful with the new staff. At the high school specifically, some staff have been added as the student numbers grew while other staff have moved on, and still Lakota Tech High School remains. When all people in an organization can get behind a goal, the goal becomes the focus and as people change, the goal remains. Lakota Tech High School has many years of students ahead of it and as the people change, the reality that this project was the vision of many will be forever established.
Reflections on the community innovation process
For us, the biggest hurdle was proving the need existed to the stakeholders and then presenting the vision to help area students make improvements. We spent over a year in the pre-planning stages both financially on the construction site and communicating with the community about what a high school could offer students who had not been successful in the area high schools. We conducted a feasibility study while working on potential cost savings for the district for construction sites for over a year before we had the approval to begin the project.
Progress toward an innovation
We are closer to achieving our goal but we have work yet to do. COVID19 played a part in our original vision, but it won't stop us as we continue to innovate and plan for the next school year. Our goal of getting and keeping freshman students in school will remain and we will continue to work towards this goal. We believe we are closer because even though we were battling against the rules and regulations of COVID19, we more than doubled our student enrollment from what we planned. We had to add teachers as the students continued to join our school. When the doors officially opened in April, students flocked to the school to experience a normal high school setting, something that COVID19 had taken from them. As we strive to have more and more people vaccinated in our area, our hope is that we will be able to open our doors for all students in the fall of 2021. We also plan to have the freshman academy with the idea of making them a family that helps each other through the years of the high school career. We seek to help the greater community by helping students learn trades and skills for employment.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
I believe we feel our new, public CTE high school on an Indian reservation is an innovation. We will continue to improve Lakota Tech High School each year.
What's next?
We hope to have this high school in operation for decades to come. We also hope it will grow and allow us to add additional strands of CTE learning to eventually include construction, auto mechanics, and others that meet the needs in the local communities.
If you could do it all over again...
If we could go back to the beginning, we would have worked on staff development related to district policies, goals, and position requirements. While we had job descriptions in place, we needed to have gone over the details more fully in order for staff to have a better understanding of their roles in the schools. Lakota Tech High School was developed to be a different kind of high school, one that set the bar high and strived to help students achieve. It is essential that each staff member understand that they are role models and ultimately help guide the lives of the students in the school. Embedding the core values into staff development would have been something we would have invested more time in.
One last thought
The Bush Foundation Grant enabled our district the ability to hire a principal before the school was completed and to support us through the first year of school. Our successes are a result of many visions of people over decades of time. The Bush Foundation enabled the visions to become reality for the planning portion of the high school. It is with great appreciation we acknowledge the efforts from the Bush Foundation to help us realize this dream. May the successes of Lakota Tech High School go on for decades into the future.