Craig Hockenberry: The First Strategic plan at Three Rivers

By Craig Hockenberry

After settling in as Superintendent of Three Rivers Local Schools and focusing on the development of the core values it was clearly time to start the process of developing the first strategic plan at Three Rivers. This was not going to be an easy task as change comes slow at Three Rivers. We realized we were going to have to reach out for support. There are many companies that help with this work and push you through the process. We chose someone who had an impeccable reputation for getting results and working with the entire communities. That person was Dr. Bobby Moore the CEO of Epic Impact.

Dr. Moore taught us that setting high expectations for each of the strategic goals and not reaching them was way better than setting the bar low an achieving the goal. That made us all uncomfortable because we felt the board would go after us all if we did not reach the goals. We expressed our feelings to Dr. Moore and continued to remind us that it was about the students and setting high expectations for them.

We spent more than 40 hours with Dr. Moore collaborating, developing surveys, setting goals, presenting to the board, conducting small groups, large groups, and breaking down the data. Once we had a rough idea of the strategic plan I took the first version on a complete tour of Miami Township and to every corner of our district. I went to community council meetings in Addyston, Cleves, Miami Township, and North Bend.

I went to civic clubs meetings such as the Cleves-Three Rivers Kiwanis Club, Western Hills Community Service Club, The WEC, the Three Rivers Women’s Club, and many others. I also spent considerable time having breakfast, coffees, lunches, and dinners with all of our key stakeholders, staff, and alumni. The objective was to gather feedback for our first strategic plan. We got much feedback and adjusted the plan based on their feedback. This was a process of high level transparency and top level collaboration.

Once we were finished, two board members wished to take over the process from the leadership team of the district. They did this in December 2019 and thirteen months later the district anxiously awaits the final product…

By Craig Hockenberry

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Craig Hockenberry: Launching Board Development

Convincing your bosses that they need professional development is never an easy task, but as a superintendent it is clearly part of your job. It is easy when a newly elected board member joins the team to let them know that they need to attend an OSBA sponsored new board member orientation, but letting them know that we need a yearlong professional development structure in the evenings off campus is a challenge.

It was not a difficult decision to start the board development as two board members were spending their time focusing on things that were outside of their role as a board members. The trainings occurred off campus at places such as Cincinnati State, Western Hills Country Club, the Three Rivers Campus, Forward Edge, and other places around Cincinnati. I understood that regardless of the training the two board members had the right to act however they wanted, but might does not make right so the plan was to give them another perspective through a yearlong training session.

Everyone did great and the training was done by one of the most professional leaders in Board Development in the entire region. I personally learned a lot and was thankful to go through the experience. Each session was built around setting goals and supporting the leadership of the district to accomplish the goals. This idea was to make Three Rivers a better district. After each session, I saw several board members get better and I saw a much different board.

I did similar development at Manchester Local, but most of the training was done in the form of retreats that last several hours and we always focused on a single topic we wanted to improve on such as; school law, community engagement, dealing with complaints, and other pressing issues.

In 2018-2019 school year we spent almost $600,000 in professional development for our staff to improve practices and develop our workforce, but I found it interesting that leading up to 2018-2019 we spent $0.00 (not a single cent) on developing board members.

The money we spent on board development was worth it as board members are critical in the success of local school districts. Like teachers and other staff board members should also get top quality training and professional development.

By Craig Hockenberry

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Craig Hockenberry: Parent Advisory to the Superintendent

When you want to hear the truth about decision being made at the District level create a Parent Advisory to the Superintendent. Allow me to explain…

I was sick and tired of constantly hearing about Facebook posts regarding decisions we made at Three Rivers. I had one board member who every time a post was made by one person she would screen shot it and send it to all the other board members and that became discuss. This behavior constantly took the conversation away from student achievement which is place we did not want to be.

One person, one post, no likes, and in some cases the person was even a convicted felon, but I took the high road and led through issues such as these by creating the Parent Advisory to the Superintendent.

We had each principal, key staff member, and community leaders give me the names of the most outspoken both positive and those that challenged us people. I took those names and personally reached out to all of them and ask them to serve on an advisory group where they would be advising me and other top administrators on several key decisions for the district. The first meeting was held on January of 2018 and the committee was packed with over 30 parents. I created an agenda for the first one, but after that the agendas were created by the parents.

We got authentic feedback from every topic you could image including snow days, open houses, parent teacher conferences, and instructional topics. The advisory group also became strong supporters and we used them to drive many decisions and help us advocate for our district. Every time Mr. Conflicted felon or our special board member would screen shot or post something we would hand it over to our parent advisory and in many cases they provided us the much needed support so we could to the important work of the district.

By Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry: Who selling what? Real Estate Forum

I found it strange that real estate agents who sold homes in the Three Rivers Local School District where I was Superintendent for over five years had very little knowledge about the local school district where they were selling homes. I can image that clients had many questions about Three Rivers as they toured homes throughout our school district. Who was answering them? What were they saying? Was it true?

These questions led to action. I formed series of what we called Real Estate Forums at Three Rivers specifically targeting real estate agents that were selling homes in our school district. These were in the form of luncheons where I was able to communicate to over 60 plus real estate agents. I gave them accurate facts about enrollment, sports, curriculum, instruction, school report card data, class sizes, and future plans for the district. The agents always left with updated information, photos, and factsheets that they were able to reproduce and have available if and when their clients ask questions as they were trying to sell them homes inside our school district. The other important outcome from these forums included a service I provided which was a commitment from me to offer tours of potential home owners. Each real estate agent was given my business card that included my name: Craig Hockenberry my cell and my email address to set up personal tours of their potential new school district. This idea was popular because it came down to me selling the district while the agent sold the home. This was truly a win for both of us.

By Craig Hockenberry

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Craig Hockenberry: First Rural School Based Health Center

I was named Superintendent of Manchester Local in 2012-13 school year. It was my first Superintendent Job and I was excited to get to work. My fifteen years at Oyler School in Lower Price Hill prepared me for the job and there were many projects I had to take on during my first six months. The first project at Manchester was the creation of one of the state’s first rural School Based Health Center where kids and families could access top quality medical care without driving seventy miles away from their community.

The concept came out of the Community Learning Center Model where schools put top quality services inside of their schools such as medical, dental, mental health, daycare, food services, tutoring, and vision. This concept took off in Cincinnati Public Schools, however I had no experience with this model in a rural community such as Manchester. This was one of those, time to get to work Craig Hockenberry moments! I immediately reached out to some other providers in close by rural counties who might be interested in partnering with us to provide services. After many meetings we came across Pike County Community Action who were very interested right from the start. We met with them several times and took them on a few visits to Cincinnati and other areas were school based health centers were operating at a high level.

From there we met several times in Pike County, Portsmouth, Cincinnati, and Huntington (WVA) and at the Manchester campus. Each week we continued to remove barriers, cut through red tape, and find ways to make it happen. It made so much sense in a rural community. In April of 2014 it all came together and we cut the ribbon launching one of the more successful School Based Health Centers rural Ohio.

By Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry: Top Five Effective Ways to communicate with your Board

After almost eight years of being a Superintendent in two different districts I wanted to take a minute to share the top five ways that I found have been the most effective. So, here we go! These are in no particular order.

Number One: Weekly newsletter. I would send an email newsletter that highlighted several very important points for the week. The points included; people I met with, instructional topics, challenging conversations I had with employees, sports, and upcoming announcements. I also put a very important section called HEADS-UPS. (I think this was the only section they read!)

Number Two: Board Text Alerts. Some things can wait, some things cannot. The things that could not wait such as a huge fight, someone passed away, a teacher walked off the job, a principal got arrested they need to know those right away. This is when I created an emergency text alert that just went to the members of the board. This avoided them from hearing about serious situations in isle 12 at the grocery store or at the local post office. Text alerts were among my favorite ways to reach board members and keep them in the loop.

Number Three: Boardwalks. This was a unique way to meet with and communicate with 1-2 board members at a time by giving them tours of schools. We would announce these visits so that everyone knew it was just a visit with no specific purpose other than visibility and relationship building. During these boardwalks I would take board members to places they had never been and introduce them to many of the behind the scenes employees such as cooks, bus drivers, and custodians. During these boardwalks I would get many opportunities to communicate with board members and visually show them projects we were working on that they may have only have heard of in writing.

Number Four: In person meetings. I would invite members of the board to catch-up monthly through one-on-one coffees at a local restaurant or grab breakfast, lunch, or even dinner. This was challenging and I had to be careful not to leave one out. If you show too much attention to one others get very upset. So, I would keep a schedule and make sure to hit all five board members before the end of a two week rotation. In person meetings give board members a chance to open up in a different forum and you can get some authentic feedback.

Number Five: A phone call. I kept a log to make sure I reached out to each board member two times on the phone call during each month this gave us a chance to be free of public records and could just have a conversation about how things were going. We did not discuss decisions and we stayed away from the important work it was just more of a check in and touch base.

So there you have it; a weekly newsletter, phone calls, text messages, boardwalks, and in person meetings. Doing this throughout each month and being very deliberate and strategic will mean you will have at least twelve times in a month where you have communicated with all five of your board members.

By Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry: Partnership 20/20

I had the most incredible opportunity to be a part of the creation of the first vision center inside of a public school. It started with a tour of Oyler School with John Pepper who was the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble and it ended with the nation’s first ever vision center inside of a public school. After a tour of Oyler with John Pepper we sat in my office and discussed what was next for helping the children of Cincinnati. I spoke about the medical obstacles that still remained including dental, medical, mental health, daycare, and vision. I got to the vision issues we were having and I could tell he wanted more details. I explained to him that several hundred kids annually go without proper eye care in Lower Price. It was clear that Mr. Pepper did not like hearing this. It was clear at that very moment that we were going to do something about it. (I remember saying, Craig Hockenberry he is not going to allow this to go on so get prepared)

When Mr. Pepper left I returned to my office and met with my team to debrief the tour. After our meeting I took a quick look at my emails and not even two hours after Mr. Pepper had left I had an email from the CEO of Luxottica. This email led to connections with Onesight and before you knew it eye folks were all over the Oyler campus.

The next steps were to identify a place inside Oyler and get permission from Cincinnati Public Schools to allow Onesight to develop an eye clinic inside Oyler School. When called CPS I remember the words from then Superintendent Mary Ronan, “Craig Hockenberry, it better work!”

The answer was yes! We immediately started developing the designs, talked about procedures, naming rights, and how it would serve not only Oyler kids, but kids across the city. Everything fell into place.

In 2012 we opened and became the pioneers of eye care and the first to open in the U.S. Entering now its ninth school year, the vision center has provided eye exams to over 8,600 students in Cincinnati and dispensed over 6,200 pairs of glasses.

By Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry Superintendent Three Rivers

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Craig Hockenberry: The Ultimate Partnership, Adopt-A-Class

A call from Bill Burwinkel to discuss a holiday partnership with his company ended up impacting the lives of thousands of children in Cincinnati.

It was a fall afternoon and the school day had just ended at Oyler. I got a call from Bill Burwinkel who was a longtime supporter of Oyler and a good friend. He was interested in starting a program that included adopting a class for the holidays, however it was much different than your ordinary Christmas party.

His idea included reading, writing, building relationships, mentors, expanding parterships with schools and companies, and yes a huge Christmas party at school during the last week before winter break. I remember the official first class back in 2004 was a sixth grade class on the third floor at Oyler School. When I walked into the room to say thank you to National Marketshare I was completely overwhelmed by the incredible giving spirit.

The volunteers were opening gifts with kids, eating pizza, and having conversations with some happy children. It looked like a Christmas morning in an affluent home somewhere in the suburbs. For many of the kids this was their only Christmas and one of their only chances to see professionals and build relationships with people outside of their community.

Following the first Adopt-A-Class Bill and I met several times to talk about expansion. He got more people to buy into the philosophy of a yearlong partnership that included a timeline of events, programs, letter writing, field trips and much more. He then spoke to companies close to Oyler or companies who already had a partnerships such as Kemba Credit, the Consult Inc., Consolidated Metal, Postal Employees Credit Union, Paycor, Jackson & Lewis, and many more. Then the following Christmas we added several new classrooms and eventually the entire school Preschool thru eighth grade were adopted. These partnerships turned into much more. They included Reds games, field trips, spring letter writing, tours of their companies, job shadowing, and of course they culminated with Christmas party in December.

Although Oyler School is the iconic ground zero for Adopt-A-Class after those early days Mr. Burwinkel expanded the program into more than 30 schools and over 300 business throughout the region severing over 6,000 kids. This program has left an amazing impact on these children.

By Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry Finding Our Values

Craig Hockenberry: Identifies Core Values

By Craig Hockenberry

The Three Rivers School District is a unique animal. It sprawls through the hilly southwestern Ohio terrain along the Ohio River. Parts of it feel rural, and yet a significant number of the residents of this area depend on urban Cincinnati for their income … and their education.

Most school districts are housed entirely in one municipality. However, the Three Rivers District, despite not being much larger than many similar districts, includes four different municipalities with their own elected leadership.

The villages of Addyston, Cleves, and North Bend each have their own council and mayor. And Miami Township, which encompasses those three villages, has a Board of Trustees.

This means that responsible decision-making in the school district necessarily involved a gauntlet of officials and official bodies. In order to create a district that was responsive to the needs of the community, an effort had to be made to identify common values and concerns.

Naming our core values would help focus a district that could otherwise be torn by competing interests and ambitions.

Why identify core values?

If you have worked for a corporation, attended a large church, or assisted with a nonprofit, you have likely encountered core values. You have likely also come across the group’s mission and vision statements.

It would be easy to dismiss these ubiquitous statements as unnecessary timewasters - corporate exercises that are meaningless to people doing the real work of the organization.

But the opposite is true.

The reality is that core values are a valuable investment of time and energy. When created with authenticity and implemented with integrity, these statements help every individual confidently represent the whole group in every situation.

They align custodians and executives, front line experts with behind-the-scenes professionals, and help create a cohesive unit.

This doesn’t mean everyone is hugging each other and singing “Kumbaya.” It means that when there is a conflict or a concern that falls outside the policy and process manuals, everyone has the same guidelines for how to move forward without waiting for an answer from a principal or a superintendent.

And in the business of education, where the experts are on the front lines working with kids in classrooms every day, getting rid of timewasters and obstacles is a crucial part of a leader’s work.

That doesn’t mean work can’t happen without core values and mission and vision statements. It can. But conflict resolution then falls more heavily on elected or hired leadership, and might not always represent the values of the whole group.

Filling the gap

When I arrived at Three Rivers, there were no identified core values. My predecessor was a beloved and effective administrator, and in a small rural district like this one, significant issues pop up less frequently than in larger and more diverse districts.

Choosing to take these steps to identify our values was not a way to say previous leaders had been less effective. But what it did do was give me a chance to learn from the community that was a neighbor to my own community, but was very different. I lived in Price Hill, on the west side of Cincinnati, just a few minutes’ drive from Three Rivers. But my urban neighborhood and this rural township were very different from each other.

This process also gave members of the community a chance to talk with each other and identify common strengths and beliefs. I had been warmly welcomed into a school district that was successful on the state report card, but that was losing a battle to keep some of their children in their own district.

Being so close to the urban core of Cincinnati meant that some families, especially Catholic families and those families that could afford it, sent their children to Catholic high schools like Elder and Seton.

I felt that one of my responsibilities was to build a school system that tempted more of those families to make the shorter drive to Taylor High School rather than the longer, and more expensive, trip to LaSalle.

I knew that if we came together as a community to talk about our values, we could build a bridge. And I believed that if we set appropriately ambitious and inclusive goals, we could create an even stronger school district. One that met the needs of the entire community.

So I started the process to identify our core values, as detailed over several following posts.

Craig Hockenberry Finding Our Values

Craig Hockenberry: A Leader Finds Ways to Have Important Conversations

By Craig Hockenberry

When I was selected as the Superintendent of Three Rivers School District in Southwestern Ohio, I knew I was facing some new and interesting challenges.

First, the district spread across multiple municipalities and governing structures, which meant that it was difficult to get the community to rally behind the schools. This was not because they didn’t like the schools, they did. However, each village was its own entity with its own mayor, and the larger township had its own elected leadership. There were multiple layers of authority and thus multiple opinions about the best way forward in most matters.

The second challenge is our proximity to Cincinnati and highly-regarded Catholic school system. This meant that some families of means opted out of our public system and were not invested in our success.

Third, the district had never taken the time and energy to identify their core values.

As an experienced leader, I knew that tackling this third problem could help address the first two.

I set out to do that early in my tenure.

Getting the right partner

Though I lived in nearby Price Hill, I was not familiar with the Three Rivers community. I set about meeting with as many people who would meet with me to learn about the community.

This work led to the surprising finding that the community wanted a swimming pool. I wrote about this previously in a different series of posts.

As I met with members of the community to learn what they valued and wanted from the school system, I kept in mind my understanding that we needed core values to create a unified sense of what made Three Rivers unique. I also knew that as a relative outsider, I needed to find trusted brokers in the community to help gather people together to identify our core values.

Pretty quickly I met Tim Urmston. He was active in the community and also happened to be the founder of a Cincinnati company called SEEK. They are world-class community-builders. Most interesting is their willingness to see empathy not as merely an emotion, but as a tool for problem-solving.

Importantly, he had done core value work with several Fortune 500 companies.

Perhaps more importantly, though he could afford to send his kids up the hill to the Catholic schools, he loved and sent his children to Three Rivers Schools.

I had found the perfect ally to help us have a conversation about our core values.

Scheduling the conversation

Tim was clear from the beginning that the core values work could not be piecemeal. That is, we couldn’t do it in a series of meetings with different people over many weeks or months. Sure, doing that would yield core values, but no one would feel passionate about them, because no one would feel real ownership of them.

He insisted that the work needed to be done in one day.

This was important work, and I wanted to capture a paid day for my staff without losing a day of instruction, so I got creative.

Saturdays are busy, especially for educators and parents, so I knew this would have to happen on a Sunday. Additionally, it required 8 hours, so I proposed a time after church.

Sunday 12:00 - 8:00pm.

This, of course, caused some Three Rivers staff to balk.

So I offered a day of personal leave to central office staff who attended.

Personal leave is a paid day off to handle personal matters. It is essentially a “no questions asked” day off, though there are some negotiated rules about how it can and can’t be used.

Tim also insisted that we work in a beautiful, comfortable, and unique location. For that, I booked the Cincinnati Observatory.

He also required that we be able to work without stopping, even through meals. I hired caterers for lunch and dinner.

One by one we tackled the obstacles to setting up a concentration day to hammer out our core values.

I believe it was my flexibility in meeting the needs of the individuals involved that helped our process go so smoothly. Instead of asking people to donate their time and energy to the district, I used the district’s resources to answer their questions and meet their needs.

No one was there because I bought lunch and dinner. But the people who needed to be there got lunch and dinner, and a beautiful location, as a measure of our gratitude for their service and time.

Then we had to do the hard work of actually identifying our core values.

Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry Finding Our Values

Craig Hockenberry Superintendent: A Leader Seeks and Incorporates Feedback

By Craig Hockenberry

Three Rivers School District is a welcoming and nurturing small-town school district, even though it encompasses three villages. When I arrived as Superintendent, I was not totally surprised to find they had not done the work of identifying their core values and creating a strategic plan for the future.

I had this in mind as I started my listening tour. Speaking in churches and meeting on the occasional dining room table, I learned that residents were fiercely proud of the district. When they identified a community swimming pool as a need - something they lost when the old high school was recently rebuilt - we found a way to combine resources and put one in a new recreation center.

So we started the core value work by creating space and time to write. On a Sunday, with time compensated in personal leave, my full administrative team and others met at the Cincinnati Observatory for a full day of brainstorming, writing, and wordsmithing ... and catered meals.

At the end of the day we had summed up our past, present, and hope for the future in these three identified values. We would …

- Cultivate Excellence

- Inspire Innovation

- Nurture Inclusion

Hockenberry: Getting authentic feedback

We were working with a parent of Three Rivers students, Tim Urmston, who was the founder and CEO of SEEK. He had helped lead Fortune 500 companies through visioning and crafting core values, and his expertise had led us to identify values that resonated with our team.

He cautioned me that finding these statements was not the real work.

We had a room full of people who believed in them because they wrote them, and because they were from the community. We knew they captured the spirit of who we were and who we wanted to be.

But for core values to really resonate, there had to be buy-in from the larger community.

We needed to elicit authentic feedback from our constituencies.

Our building administrators agreed to go back and speak to their Parent Teacher Organizations, to attend community meetings, and to vet these core value statements at their staff meetings. The goal was to get meaningful community feedback.

Craig Hockenberry Putting that feedback into the mix

The administrators diligently took these statements to the community. They got valuable feedback that provided powerful insight to the spirit of Three Rivers schools.

Perhaps my favorite part of working with this core values process was learning how deeply the Three Rivers community valued diversity.

As a rural community, Three Rivers was almost entirely white. However, because we were public schools, we knew the importance of valuing every child as they arrived at our doorstep. We had a large population of students with special education needs, and they were our children.

When I hired the district’s first ever black administrator, Ceair Baggett, he was welcomed.

In the listening and feedback process, we learned that the members of the Three Rivers Community truly value diversity. We learned that they were eager to give their students diverse experiences.

We were urged to hire black and immigrant employees whenever possible. Our parents knew that many of their children would work in Cincinnati or other cities, and experience with a diverse set of people would prepare them for the reality of working in the larger world.

It’s possible that I expected something different. I could not have hoped for more. Three Rivers was really committed to being diverse and welcoming to all.

This feedback was carefully collected and funneled back to SEEK. They incorporated the feedback into the descriptors that accompanied each phrase. In this way, the voice of the larger community was included in the core values statements.

They truly represented our values and our voices.

Superintendent Hockenberry: Communicating the core values

We knew that we still had hard work ahead. We needed to present the information in an unbiased way to the community.

Sure, the Board and I could roll them out at a Board meeting, but we needed a trusted member of the community.

Again, Tim was the right person for the task. He had worked the process from the beginning, and represented an important voice in the community - he was not just a facilitator, after all, he was a parent communicating our values.

Once you have identified what drives you, this must be shared with everyone in the district. One reason these values are important is because they give everyone a sense of what is important to the organization as a whole.

We put banners in the villages, featuring the core values and pictures of our students. We placed similar banners in our school hallways. We incorporated these values into our lessons, so we could grapple with what they meant to us as individuals.

And the core values served a larger purpose. Now every person had something to point to if there was a dispute about how something should be handled, or how to move forward in a conflict.

We would …

- Cultivate Excellence

- Inspire Innovation

- Nurture Inclusion

And this could now happen in every corner of the district. From a student’s desk to the central office receptionist’s waiting room, these values could help guide our decisions and unify us like never before.

And they would also lay the path to creating our first ever district strategic plan.

Craig Hockenberry Finding Our Values

Craig Hockenberry: A Leader Sharpens a District’s Focus

By Craig Hockenberry Superintendent

As the new Superintendent of Three Rivers School District, I engaged in a series of conversations with the community. I used this time to learn the community’s expectations for the district.

I was also using these meetings to lay the groundwork for addressing a gap in the Three Rivers culture. The district had never identified its core values nor, in recent memory, created a strategic plan.

The work of identifying our values included four clear steps

- Gathering the community for visioning and drafting

- Writing the goals

- Getting authentic feedback

- Communicating the core values

First, I recruited a trusted and experienced community member to lead the conversations. Then I created the space and time for discussion, as described in a previous post. The main emphasis was that the district compensated people for their time and energy, providing meals and a beautiful space for doing the work.

Craig Hockenberry: Drafting our core values

I recruited Tim Urmston to guide us in the process. He had led Fortune 500 companies through this work and - just as importantly - his children attended Three Rivers schools. I couldn’t say no when he told me I would need to co-facilitate the process.

My initial groundwork to eliminate barriers to participation was rewarded. On this Sunday, when we gathered to draft our core values, every Three Rivers administrator was present. This dramatically increased the chances that our results would be not only fully representative of our district, but would be widely supported and implemented.

The process of discerning core values includes working to lower our social barriers and creating an environment of trust. As residents of several small towns tied together by our schools, there was already a strong sense of community.

Then Tim prompted us for specific statements describing what we hoped our schools would be, or what they would reveal about and add to our community.

The statements we came up with helped capture the true spirit of the schools as I saw them.

When I arrived, we had a vacancy for the High School Principal position. We hired Ceair Baggett, who had been principal of a Cincinnati Public elementary school. While his work in the community, fighting for every student’s right to a chance at success, was remarkable, it was also worth noting that he was the first Black administrator ever hired in Three Rivers.

The Three Rivers community was exceptionally welcoming. The lack of Black administrators was more a factor of being a rural district with almost no Black students or families, and not a measure of any sort of discrimination.

Our community was also incredibly supportive of students with disabilities. Ohio law allows those Catholic and private schools to choose their students, and they often lack resources to meet the needs of students with individualized education plans and extraordinary needs. So those students attended our schools.

I was happy to see that the descriptions we came up with in our drafts all spoke to our love of diversity and our concern that every person felt welcomed and challenged to be their best selves at our schools.

Craig Hockenberry: Turning drafts into core values

What we were hearing from the small groups and seeing shared out in pictures was a common pattern, and it formed one of our values.

I felt the community really captured their heart when one of the values we identified was “Nurture inclusion.”

Many schools and districts claim to be inclusive, but it is done as an afterthought. I was proud that we had adopted it as an intentional practice on our part.

Some would see our school system as compromised in some fundamental way. After all, some saw us as a mix of students who couldn’t afford to attend Catholic school and students prevented from attending those schools because of their disabilities.

But we chose to understand that these characteristics made us strong. It made us a community.

And, in fact, some parents who could afford to send their kids to Cincinnati chose to keep their students in their community school. This made us strong.

And this increased our commitment to excellence - expecting the best from every child and adult in the system. Our next identified value was “Cultivate excellence.”

Craig Hockenberry: Looking to the future

In the drafting phase, then, we had identified and taken pride in who we were. We would nurture inclusion.

We had also proudly embraced who we wanted to be - the best versions of ourselves. We agreed we would “Cultivate excellence.”

We had also identified a vision for who we could be in the future. A core value that spoke to our bright future that met our needs and that drew others to our community. A future that perhaps kept a few more families right here at home, while opening new vistas for our existing students.

We knew that we could try new things, with the freedom of having a cohesive, successful community school system. So we created a space to invent with our third core value.

We would “Inspire innovation.”

At the end of a long Sunday together, we knew we had taken an important first step. However, identifying our three core values was the start of a larger process of truly inculcating those values into our school system.

That was the work of the next few months - getting meaningful feedback and then widely spreading and applying these values.

Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry Superintendent

SAMPLE: 90 Day Transition Plan

DAY ZERO (Craig Hockenberry)

ReINTRODUCTION

Release a letter to all Mount Healthy staff introducing myself;

Release a video to parents, community members, and Mount Healthy stakeholders;

Frequent local businesses, churches, restaurants to personally introduce myself and begin the engagement process.

By Craig Hockenberry

view my 90 Day Plan with the Board of EsORGANIZE,DEVELOP, AND LEAD A “LEADERSHIP RETREAT”

include all district administrative staff, principals, deans, directors, treasurer, and others.

Build an agenda around team building, relationships, roles and responsibilities, challenges, hopes for the future, and needed support.

Gain an understanding of the team and their leadership styles and begin to build relationships.

ed on the feedback;

Establish an agreed-upon method to immediately begin weekly communications with the Board of Education.

Authentic Feedback

Craig Hockenberry Superintendent: Authentic Feedback, Student Advisory to the Superintendent

By Craig Hockenberry Superintendent

When I was the Superintendent of Schools at Three Rivers Local in Hamilton County we were able to receive a tremendous amount of feedback from our Faith Advisory, Parent Advisory, real estate forum, teachers, administrators, business advisory, Kiwanis Club, and many others. They would give us advice on everything from school start times to how we should handle daily operations. These groups had answers to everything we did. While some of the feedback was really good and we were able to implement it other ideas they had were not possible.

After reflecting on all the meetings, groups, and forums that I facilitated over the years I had an idea to start a monthly Student Advisory Group. I asked each principal to identify seven kids from their school to serve on our districts first student advisory group. After they identified the kids we planned for them to come to central office. We set the room up and prepared to have lunch brought in for them while they participated in the group. When arrived at first they were quiet and fairly reserved, however as soon as we broke them into groups of 5-6 and spread them throughout central office the work began and you could just feel the engagement.

We gave them twenty minutes to discuss a specific topic that we needed feedback around from a student’s point of view and then broke them into groups of 5-6. Then we brought them together and asked them to report out on the topic. The conversation was incredible! The feedback was exactly what we were looking for as everything they said had meaning because they were living it every day on campus. We took perfect notes, shared the feedback with the principals, key leaders, and the board of education. We implemented many of their ideas. The group met once a month and we changed the theme each time. They continued to give us incredible feedback. If you are looking for authentic feedback ask your students!

Craig Hockenberry

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY SUPERINTENDENT

WRITTEN RESPONSES

By Craig Hockenberry

What is the role of the superintendent and the board of education in curriculum development and/or innovation?

Since school boards have the ultimate accountability for curriculum they do need to have firsthand knowledge of the scope of curriculum and the overall programs in all the schools, however their responsibilities narrows down to some very important roles. I have listed below just some of the roles of the board in curriculum.

§ To be updated regularly on the content and scope of the curriculum.

§ To be informed of state guidelines involving curriculum and instruction.

§ To be familiar with textbook adoption policies and procedures.

§ To be aware of sensitive community values regarding curricular issues.

§ Work with the superintendent to keep community updated and involved with curriculum.

§ Develop Board level committee work around student achievement and curriculum.

§ Allocate funding to support best practices in curriculum and instruction.

§ Honor and celebrate student achievement at board meetings.

The superintendent works closely with the board of education to update them on important changes at the local, state, and national level so that they are informed and can make important decisions regarding curriculum development. The updates should include achievement data at all levels and best practices both locally and regionally.

The superintendent must work closely with the board to hire, develop, train and retain highly effective curriculum directors, principals, and teachers and provide them support to implement the curriculum. The superintendent should be working with community leaders at all levels to seek out resources that will be innovative and resources that can be used to reduce barriers to student achievement.

Describe how you would design orientation for administrative staff members, teachers, and board members new to their positions.

Orientations are critically important at all levels in a school district. Each one is different and requires designs that are on-going and focus on growth as well as orientation.

Board Members

§ Reach out to board members running for office and invite them to start attending monthly board meetings. This will help orient them before they are elected and will give them an idea of work flow at a board meeting.

§ Arrange a meeting after election results are final to discuss with them the basic roles and responsibilities, board policies manual and direct them to OSBA handbook for board members Board Handbooks | Ohio School Boards Association and information regarding new board members For New Board Members | Ohio School Boards Association

§ During the time of November through January before they are sworn into office, include them on important communications and updates to ensure they get a clear understanding of how communication flows through the team. Also, I would use this time to discuss the importance of CONFIDENTIALITY.

§ Set up weekly meetings with new board members and include tours and other opportunities to meet teachers, cooks, instructional aides, bus drivers, principals and support staff.

Teachers and administrative staff members

§ Set up a social gathering off campus with all new staff in the spring for the purpose of relationship building. Invite principals, key members of their teaching team, and other staff that will be important to their support. Plan ice breaker activities and give time for new staff to meet veteran staff and others familiar with the district. I would use this day to assign mentors for each of our new hires.

§ Set up a spring meeting with each new staff before the end of the school year to give them a chance to see the school in full operation.

§ Bring all new hires to work one day before all staff reports and prepare a day long agenda that includes; time in their rooms, additional meet and greets, tours, logistics, reports and updates from all departments, and much more.

§ Set-up a yearlong monthly meeting with all new hires using key district leaders to develop a supportive agenda and opportunities for new hires to talk about what is going well and what challenges they are facing and opportunities they see during their first year with us.

What criteria would you use to assess the district’s operation in maintenance, transportation, and food service programs?

There are many options to assess the district operations in maintenance, transportation, and food service programs. Some of these would include multiple measures of financial impact, safety data, customer satisfaction and staffing. Having quality leadership overseeing each of these departments and meeting with them weekly to discuss opportunities and strategies for efficiency is critical in assessing each department. Weekly visits to each department and operational updates at district leaderships meetings and to the board of education could also aide in assessing these departments and making adjustments.

When dealing with each of these departments, there are many opportunities to create customer satisfaction surveys. These surveys could follow a work order with maintenance or quarterly surveys for transportation and food service. Reviewing these results and presenting them to the district leadership and board of education can help us all make improvements and support these different departments.

Developing board level committees such as the building and grounds committee and operations committee could help with oversight and these committees could reach out to experts in the community to join and give us feedback and support.

Finally, it could be beneficial to do a professional external audit of each department and get the necessary feedback from professionals outside the organization. These audits could be used to put together some objectives in long range planning and forecasting.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY SUPERINTENDENT

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY: SMILE, we are getting a Dental Clinic.

By Craig Hockenberry

As I entered my last year as the Principal of Oyler School our great team had much to be proud of we had created the nation’s most exciting community learning center that included mental health, tutoring, daycare, medical services, food services, after school programing, college access, and much more. Unfortunately, I was not satisfied. There was a major missing component inside of Oyler. We had about 800 student’s grades PRE-K-12 and more than 80% of them had NEVER been to the dentist. When the kids smile you could clearly tell that tooth decay, cavity and gum disease were apart of who they were. It was sad situation and had a huge negative impact on student achievement.

In early August of 2012 I walked by the staff lounge and placed a sheet of paper on the outside of the door that said Oyler Dental Clinic coming soon! Every day I walked by it gave me motivation to start the work to create the regions first dental clinic inside a public school. I made several calls to several dentists and worked closely with Darlene Kamine and others involved with the community learning center model. Each day we would hold tours and meetings with local politicians, potential funders, dentist, health care professionals, and key district leaders.

The days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and within ten months of putting up that sign we had carpenters at Oyler drilling and constructing a small dental clinic that would serve our entire student body. The model included students getting regular check-ups, cleaning, and preventive work to avoid serious health conditions related to dental issues. We scheduled them into the clinic around their core academics and had top quality resource coordination (Jami Luggen) supporting the clinic and their needs. It is operating a high level of efficiency and the entire concept was a huge win for the students and families of Lower Price Hill.

Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry: The Robert and Adele Schiff Early Learning Center

I remember taking Mr. Schiff on a tour of Oyler School in December of 2010. We started with all the different services throughout the building that included; Mental Health, medical, college access, tutoring, parent center, vision center, social services, and I showed him the future plans for dental services. I then took him through the high school, middle school, and elementary. He was very engaging and interested in the concept of the Community Learning Center and with our partnership with Darlene Kamine. Mr. Schiff had many questions about student achievement, social work, and other systems we have put in place to remove barriers for kids growing up in poverty. He asked all the right questions and I could tell right away that he wanted to be a part of the success at Oyler.

We continued our tour of the school and talked in great detail about breaking the cycle of poverty. As we moved through the conversation and through the tour I could almost feel the question coming from him that I knew was going to change Oyler School forever. We went back to my office and within a few minutes the question came and I was READY!

Mr. Schiff asked me if there was one thing that Oyler needed more than anything else to help continue with the great success what would it be? I started my answer before he even got all of his question out. I looked him right in the eyes, and told him we needed to capture the students from Lower Price Hill when they are infants and develop them as toddlers, preschool, and then seamlessly transition them into Kindergarten. In short, I told him we needed them inside this facility 3-4 years before they hit a Kindergarten seat and while they were here we needed them involved in top quality early learning activities as part of their development.

Days after the tour, I was told that the Schiff Family would be donating funds to create the Robert and Adele Schiff Early Learning Center at Oyler School which would allow us to operate one of the most innovative early learning centers in the entire region. Their impact has been tremendous and the partnership has been truly one of a kind. Children age 6 months to 4 years of age have access to top quality childcare giving them opportunities to prepare for Kindergarten.

By Craig Hockenberry

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY: Mental Health Services in Schools

By Craig D. Hockenberry

The early days of my career as a school leader in Cincinnati Public were filled with some extreme behaviors of students that pretty much took over my entire day and in many cases my evenings. When I was principal at Oyler School in Lower Price Hill from the time we turned the lights on until the time we turned them off, most of the time we were handling behaviors that were totally out of our control. We had situations that called for hours of physical restrain, attempted suicides, bizarre sexual behaviors, schizophrenia, and many others.

As you can imagine we spent countless hours away from instruction trying to solve these behaviors and protecting other kids. The amount of loss instructional times was overwhelming and it played a critical role in our early days of poor student performance, however after many sleepless nights we came up with a way to treat these mental health issues and became one of the first schools in the region to develop a mental health partnership that had a huge positive impact on our school.

I was introduced to several people at St. Al’s Orphanage who has a 190 plus year history of working with students in the Cincinnati area. The introduction quickly turned into a tour of Oyler and then almost immediately turned into them placing a mental health therapist inside our school. His name was Bob Ryan and within weeks he had a FULL case load. I remember him coming to me and saying, “Craig Hockenberry, we need another therapist and you are going to need additional office space”.

The weeks that followed turned into St. Al’s putting yet another full time therapist inside our school. The two of them worked together shared some office space, worked out a schedule, and were very flexible in supporting our mental health needs. (CRAIG HOCKENBERRY)

After six months are caseloads at Oyler continue to grow and grow and within two years of our partnership with St. Al’s we had added four full time therapist. Before I left to become superintendent of Manchester Local in Adams County we had added a psychiatrist and a doctor 3 days a week. We had many amazing partnerships at Oyler and St. Al’s was right up there as being one of the most impactful. They had a very efficient way of dealing with mental health issues that our students were experiencing by using therapy, medical, and adjusting placements.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY: Parental Involvement Christ Church Cathedral

By CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

For several decades Oyler School and Christ Church Cathedral has had a remarkable partnership that focused on involving parents with their child’s education. The partnership started many years before I became the principal of Oyler, but I certainly kept the long standing partnership together and carried out their mission through a large grant we received every year. We had many great friends from Christ Church Cathedral that served as mentors to our kids, donors, and contributed to our social needs through all types of donations.

We also had very important people such as Al Hampton, Cathy Crain, Pat Doyle, and Bob Lashell who did amazing things to support Oyler. Mr. Lashell served on the outreach committee and he made sure our application for $20,000.00 always made it to the top of the list. Pat Doyle served for many years on our LSDMC as a member representing school partnerships and Al Hampton was one of the most influential mentors to ever work with our children. After Al passed away we named the mentoring program after him. Christ Church had a very strong focus on involving urban parents into the fabric of the schools. They gave us money to accomplish this every year. We spent the funds to enhance open houses, parent conferences, theme nights, plays, and more to make these events filled with food, fun and games. This connected the parents and the community to the school and the result was a huge opportunity to build remarkable relationship through an amazing partnership with Christ Church Cathedral.

I look back at this partnership and always enjoyed fostering it and making it stronger so that we could continue to serve the students of our city at the highest level. Partnerships are equally as important as academics in an urban school.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

Saturday, May 14^th

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

Good Evening everyone- (By Craig Hockenberry)

I’m so honored to have an opportunity to say a few words tonight in support of such an incredible organization like Crayons to Computers.

I would to thank Susan Frankel for her leadership and the remarkable people on your team and for the incredible work that comes out of Crayons to Computers.

Also, I would like to take a moment to thank a few organizations that are important to Crayons to Computers: CRAIG D. HOCKENBERRY

RiverPoint Financial Management (Presenting sponsor this evening)

Messer Construction-A longtime partner of Crayons to Computers

TriVersity Construction

Mitsubishi Electric

Krogers

LPK

Pro Bono

And these are just to name a few. CRAIG D. HOCKENBERRY

This organization gets it right on so many levels. They have clearly agreed upon a common North Star and they are following it.

This weekend is really challenging for me. My wife is out of town. I have three kids that have to be in 3 different locations all at the same. CRAIG D HOCKENBERRY

So, when Susan asked me to say a few words, I could have easily given her 10 reasons why I could not make it.

It would have been easy to do so. CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

But, instead I would like to focus on the 10 reasons why I had to be here tonight.

So here they are…(CRAIG HOCKENBERRY)

The 10 reasons why I have to be here and why I’m glad you are as well.

Although in no particular order… CRAIG D. HOCKENBERRY

10. When I was the principal at Oyler School my staff made hundreds of visits to Crayons to Computers. They brought back close to a million dollars’ worth of school supplies over the 15 years I was there… (I’ll say that again…almost a million dollars) CRAIG D. HOCKENBERRY

9. When I was the Superintendent of Manchester Local Schools we were 80 miles from Crayons to Computers, located in Ohio’s most rural school district. The distance made it impossible to send staff here. So, Crayons to Computers drove a mobile unit to us and made it possible for all of our teachers to shop. (Talk about service)

8. Crayons to Computers is a poverty interrupter. Every minute counts in poverty and Crayons to Computers buys us time and saves us money.

7. Crayons to Computers has a dynamic system and process to deliver on their mission. Schedules, procedures, and rules allow thousands of people to be impacted by this organization. CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

6. Sustainability: Everybody has an idea on how to impact students in poverty and some of them are great. However, more than a few of them fail because they are not able to sustain themselves. When they fail it hurts the kids. With Crayons to Computers the sustainability has been amazingly strong since it started in 1997. This means that the program has been successfully helping teachers and students for 19 years!

5. You will never beat their prices! CRAIG D. HOCKENBERRY

4. If you have ever had to balance public school budgets you would know all to well that in times of deficits the first thing to go are typically instructional supplies.

3. Not having proper supplies in high poverty areas is extremely disruptive to instruction. It alters planning, limits creativity, and can reduce engagement.

2. Impacts student achievement. Preparing and being prepared for instruction go together. You cannot separate the two.

1. If you look at 100 studies about how to pull kids out of poverty I would guess that all of them would lead you back to the importance of a great education. So if we do not prepare kids with the basic supplies they need to be successful for the #1 way we can pull them out of poverty I’m not too sure how we will ever stop the cycle?

In closing, on behalf of all the staff, children and communities that have used Crayons to Computers please accept our thank you for everything you do.

This was never about a Crayon nor was it about a computer, but more about good than anything else…

I leave you with a quote from Larry Miller- that reminds me of Crayons to Computers….

“Go out into the world and do good until there is too much good in the world”

Thank you all again for allowing me to say a few words. Enjoy your evening.

CRAIG D. HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI OHIO

A-F Report Card (CRAIG HOCKENBERRY)

I write this as a concerned career educator.

As one who has taught and served as an assistant principal, principal and now superintendent and one who worked in urban, rural, and suburban school settings for the past 25 years, I continue to be stunned. Our use of the wrongheaded A-F report card system to “grade” Ohio Public Schools is baffling.

We are killing true education for the sake of a high stakes testing culture. The creative and individual gifts teachers bring to their classrooms are being stunted. The vast majority of parents do not understand the complexities figured into the equations of these school report cards and the majority of our taxpaying public does not either.

I have set high standards for academics in each junction of my career. I still get excited about innovation, excellence, and doing the right things for kids and families as we prepare them for college, the military, and their careers. However, we have gone overboard with testing, and it is killing our profession. (Craig Hockenbery Three Rivers)

I should be able to tell anyone who asks how many different mandated tests we administer in our schools, but I can’t. The number has changed every year in every leadership role I’ve held and in every district I’ve worked.

Education will always be an imperfect endeavor, as we perpetually attempt to find the best ways to teach what our students need to thrive in today’s world. However, it should be obvious that this extensive testing has not contributed to that goal; it sucks the life out of teachers, staff, and administrators and, more importantly, our students.

The A-F report card presents a convoluted, confusing message about the details of what actually happens in our schools each day. It cheapens the stellar work our teachers and principals are doing. I have the privilege of watching some of the most engaging teachers in the State deliver some of the most rigorous lessons to students whose attention they manage to successfully captured. Unfortunately, I observe these teachers, knowing full-well these students—ultimately—had better get ready for the next, upcoming test, and that the teacher had soon better put away the creative and authentic lesson plan.

Why?

Because there are various lists, dates, equations, and trivial factoids that need to be remembered for a single day—Test Day.

I am not promoting an entire pivot from all testing. There need to be ways in which academic growth and knowledge are measured. I have no problem with tests being a piece of the measuring equation; however, it must be that—a piece.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

We have created a culture of students who are overwhelmed with high stakes testing. The entire month of April and May are consumed with altered class schedules, small group testing, canceled specials, and there are signs on virtually every classroom door:

“QUIET: TESTING.”

Anxiety rates and mental health issues are climbing. Suicide rates are reaching all-time highs for junior high and high school-aged students. Saying that testing is the cause of this particular tragedy would be both wrong and irresponsible, but I will ask this: Should schools—to the degree that we are capable—be seeking ways to lessen stress, or should we continue adding to the unnecessary stress of our students?

The sheer volume of testing creates unnecessary stress for both students and teachers.

The A-F report card system is a bad one. It creates a punitive culture, one that has some of our most talented teachers leaving the profession. Like any line of work we need to be held to high standards, but it’s time we get it right.

Getting rid of the A-F system is an excellent starting point.

Craig D. Hockenberry

Former Superintendent Three Rivers Local Schools

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY SUPERINTENDENT THREE RIVERS

Economic Center

Talking Points -April 15^th 7:30am (CRAIG HOCKENBERRY)

I would like to thank the Western Economic Council for asking me to say a few words about education this morning.

Also, how great is to be with Principal Otten? Congratulations, on a remarkable career.

I have had an exciting journey in public education over the last 23 years. I have worked in 3 different school districts urban, rural, and now suburban.

I have worked as a teacher, an asst. principal, a principal, and a superintendent. CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

Aside from the great kids, families and staff I have worked with over the years I found it incredibility rewarding to work with partnerships both public and private to help impact the lives of children. CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

I started my career in CPS where I was involved in a national movement called Community Learning Centers. (CLC) CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

The idea was based on a concept that would make schools the hub for services and the focus would be on “the whole child”. It was a very multi-dimensional approach to education. CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

Health Clinic –Cincinnati Health Department /Growing Well

Dental Clinic- Delta Dental

Vision Center-One sight-Luxottica

Early Learning Center- Cincinnati Early Learning Center

Mental Health Services-St. Aloysius

All of these services were based on a sustainable business model with strong public and private-partnerships. The big picture was that each of these partnerships provided a service that would impact academics.

As the services and partnerships increased we saw a dramatic climb in student achievement.

Oyler gained national attention as we developed this super model for public and private partnerships and we caught the attention of NPR-Marketplace and American Public Media. From this came an awarded winning documentary titled, Oyler, One School, One Year.

The documentary has been screened across the nation and has won several national awards. CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

I was honored to be a part of this effort to transform a community.

After 15 years, I left Oyler and I was fortunate enough to work in Adams County for 2 years as Superintendent of Manchester Local. Manchester was located 71 miles east of Cincinnati along the Ohio River.

Manchester was the opposite of Oyler. It is one of Ohio’s most rural school districts. CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

-1000 kids

-131 square miles

-High poverty (working poor)

-Majority of the families were farmers-tobacco, corn, cattle

-Agricultural & vocational education top priorities

-Very religious (10 commandments)

-Extremely high achieving school district

During my 2 years in Adams County one of the most interesting observations was that the children were as poor as kids in the urban centers and poverty was still at a high level, but the family unit was still intact. Unlike Oyler where there was a complete deterioration of the family unit.

Now, I’m the Superintendent of 3Rivers which also has been a different experience.

We have an economically diverse school district with families in poverty, middle class, and very wealthy. CRAIG HOCKENBERRY

Recently, 3Rivers closed 5 of it schools and consolidated into one campus.

-63 million dollars

-7 acres under roof

-3 Schools (3Rivers Elementary, Taylor MS, Taylor HS)

-State of the art auditorium (Best HS auditorium in state of Ohio)

-400 GEO thermal wells to heat and cool the building

-We transport students 1,600 miles every single day

-We the have the 2^nd largest parochial school population in the state.

-22 million dollar operating budget

-242 employees

-2400 students (increase 20-30 per year)

-38% of our student are on free and reduce lunch

-We serve 322 SWD

Again, I’d like to thank the Western Economic Council for the invitation to come and talk with you. I’d also like to extend the always open invitation to tour our great school.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI OHIO

James N. Jacobs Award for Outstanding Administration in Cincinnati Public Schools

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI OHIO

2020: Stacey Hill-Simons, Evanston Academy

2019 – Angel Roddy, Mt. Airy School

2018 – Amy Randolph, Oyler Community Learning Center

2017 – Ceair Bagget, Ethel M. Taylor Academy

2016 – Susan Bunte, Cincinnati Public Schools

2015 – Tianay Amat, Hyde Park School

2014 – Jacquelyn Rowedder, Academy for World Languages

2013: Cheryl Broadnax

2012: Christina Russo

2011: Jessica Shelly

2010: Craig Hockenberry

2009: Mary Ronan & Eric Thomas

2008: Anthony Smith

2007: Marvin O. Koenig

2006: Michael Geoghegan

2005: NA

2004: Robert Seuss

2003: NA

2002: Michael Burson & Kent Cashell

2001: Sharon Johnson

2000: Steve Adamowski

1999: Bev Eby

1998: Greg Hookl

1997: Dennis Matthews

1996: Jack Schroder

1995: Lionel Brown

1994: Kathleen Ware

1993: Theresa Henderson

1992: Michael Brandt

1991: William Dickinson

1990: Frank Fields

1989: Sandra Sommer

1988: John Knoeghel

1987: Ray Finke

1986: Jennifer Cottingham

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI OHIO

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY NAMED William Henry Harrison Boys Scout Award

The William Henry Harrison District of the Dan Beard Council, Boy Scouts of America will hold its 31st annual West Side Sports Breakfast at 7:30 a.m. In May at the Willow Event Center in Colerain Township.

The West Side Sports Breakfast is an event that recognizes community leaders that exemplify servant leadership, scouting values and serve as role models to young people.

This year’s honorees included Craig Hockenberry, superintendent of the Three Rivers Local Schools Local School District. The Boy Scouts of America selects its esteemed honorees for their community service past and present, including leadership roles that support youth initiatives throughout local neighborhoods.

Proceeds from the event benefit the 2,300 youth in the Boy Scouts program in western Hamilton County. Craig Hockenberry was also the superintendent of Manchester Local in Adams County and was the longtime principal at Oyler School in Cincinnati Public.

This is the premier fundraising event in the William Henry Harrison District, increasing awareness and support of scouting in local communities on the West Side. Donations support local programming and outreach services for youth of Dan Beard Council, Boy Scouts of America. Hockenberry is a longtime supporter of the Boys scouts and has partnered with the William Henry Harrison Division for several years.

Craig Hockenberry

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY WINS DREAM MAKERS AWARD

CINCINNATI YOUTH COLLABORATIVE (CYC)

CYC makes a significant difference in the lives of vulnerable young people in 2nd grade through college by providing a range of services designed to keep kids in school, prepared for college and career, and on the pathway to success.

Bringing together over 1,500 volunteers and over 100 corporate partners, CYC strives for dropout prevention by offering mentoring, college readiness and success, and career preparation. Over the the year we have awarded many outstanding people the annual Dream Maker award. In 2009, CYC was proud to name Craig Hockenberry for his work in education. He was the longtime principal of Oyler School and saw it through a totally transformation. Craig Hockenberry has been in education for almost 27 years and has had an amazing impact across the region at Oyler, Manchester Local, and Three Rivers.

Craig Hockenberry grew up in Northeastern Ohio in the small town of Malvern. After graduating from high school in 1990, he was recruited to play football at the College of Mount St. Joseph. He was part of the school’s first football team and played for legendary Coach, John Pont. After graduating from Mount St. Joseph in 1995 with an undergraduate degree in Elementary Education, Craig immediately began teaching at Roosevelt School in the Cincinnati Public School system. During his short time at Roosevelt, he attended night school at Xavier University, receiving a graduate degree in Educational Administration. He then enrolled at the University of Cincinnati where he began work on his Ph.D. in Urban Education.

In 2009, Craig was named the Cincinnati Public School Administrator of the Year and received the James N. Jacobs Award for Outstanding Administration. Also in 2009, he was the recipient of the 2009 Dream Makers Award from the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative (CYC) for his school's work in building partnerships. Additionally, he was named Lower Price Hill Man-of-the-Year for his work in the community of Lower Price Hill and went on to later be named The King of Price Hill.

On Saturday, May 11, 2013, Craig received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the College of Mount St. Joseph and delivered the 2013 commencement address.

His 15 years of work and dedication at Oyler School was nationally recognized for an entire year on Marketplace/National Public Radio (NPR) in a series titled “One School, One Year…” Craig has had the opportunities to speak across the nation about leadership, education, and community leader centers.

After 19 years working in Cincinnati Public Schools, Craig was named the Superintendent of Manchester Local Schools in Adams County. Adams County is the 2^nd poorest county in the State of Ohio and one of Ohio’s most rural school districts. After 2 years, Craig returned to Hamilton County and was named Superintendent of The Three Rivers Local School District.

When serving as the District’s Superintendent, Mr. Hockenberry continues to ensure student achievement. In 2016, Three Rivers Local School District received the Momentum Award under his leadership. This award recognizes schools that have received A’s on every value-added measure included on the State Report Card. Three Rivers was one of only five districts to be awarded in 2016. Mr. Craig Hockenberry also led the administrative team to identify the District’s first ever Core Values as well as an extensive process to develop the district’s first strategic plan.

Mr. Hockenberry led the district to a finalized agreement with Miami Township, the YMCA, and the Cincinnati Library System to develop a 14 million dollar Aquatic Center and recreation complex on the Three Rivers Campus. Under his leadership at Three Rivers he developed the Taylor High School Career Academies which included partnerships with Cincinnati State (Aviation), the University of Cincinnati (Informational Technology), and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). He secured over one million dollars in scholarships for those who wanted to pursue careers in the trades after graduation.

Craig Hockenberry has been working with and leading youth in the greater Cincinnati area and we are proud to award Craig D. Hockenberry the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative DREAM MAKERS AWARD.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI, OHIO

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY NAMED 2013 HEALTH CARE HERO

The Business Courier hosted its 2013 Health Care Heroes awards dinner on Tuesday night, where finalists were honored and winners received recognition. This award ranks very high on the list of public service throughout the City and all the finalists had incredible backgrounds.

The winner of the Community Outreach category was OneSight Vision Center at Oyler School. The award was accepted by Oyler Principal Craig Hockenberry.

Craig Hockenberry pathed the way for many services at Oyler School throughout his 15 years as the principal of the inner-city school. His partnerships with the Cincinnati Health Department, Growing Well, the Community Learning Center Institute, Delta Dental, The Cincinnati Early Learning Center, St. Al, and many other helped forge a path to public-private partnership across Cincinnati Public.

Mr. Hockenberry took the concept to rural Adams County as well as Three Rivers where he was the superintendent for six years. The vision center at Oyler was the first vision center located in a public school in the United States. Craig Hockenberry leadership and experience with partnerships helped jump start the concept in the region and across the nation. CLICK HERE

Even before it publicly opened at Oyler School, doctors at the nation’s first school-based, self-sustaining vision center discovered a fifth-grade boy who has been living virtually blind. Doctors detected the boy’s acute vision problem while testing equipment to prepare for the public opening and dedication of the OneSight Vision Center inside the Lower Price Hill school last week. The self-sustaining vision center also outfitted the boy with glasses, as it is expected to do for hundreds more children.

“If you grow up in a world where you don’t know any different, you think this is the way it is,’’ says Craig Hockenberry, Oyler's principal. “You can imagine the impact on learning when a child cannot see the board or a read a book. The vision center will help us get these kids the vision care they so desperately need.”

The full-service vision center will provide comprehensive eye exams, glasses, fittings, adjustments, medical eye care and vision therapy with an onsite optometrist, ophthalmic technician and optician. It is expected to serve about 2,000 students per year.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI, OHIO

Craig Hockenberry Can Facilitate Strategic Planning

When Craig Hockenberry arrived at the Three Rivers School District in Southwest Ohio, he found a district with big dreams, active students and parents, and a proud history of academic and athletic achievements. He also found that some of the wealthier residents of the multiple villages that created the district together chose to send their children to private Catholic schools in nearby Cincinnati.

He was determined to make sure that the local public schools presented a compelling alternative to these families, in the hopes that more of them would choose to send their children to Three Rivers. More importantly, he wanted the district to offer the strongest possible education to students, preparing them for a rich and productive life.

So Craig Hockenberry started filling some gaps.

First, he went on his own listening tour of the district, where he learned of their pride in their past swimming glory - including an olympic swimmer. From this, the district partnered to create a new public indoor swimming pool, at no additional cost to the school system itself.

Then he partnered with a local parent and businessperson to create a Core Values statement that captured the community’s hopes and dreams for their children and their schools.

Then, with a values statement in place, he contracted with Dr. Bobby Moore and his company EPIC Impact Education Group to develop a strategic plan.

This strategic plan would help them better utilize their resources and take steps to live into their values over the following 3 to 5 years. It would bring accountability, clarity, and increased achievement if done correctly. And Craig was committed to doing it correctly.

CRAIG HOCEKNBERRY A strategic plan requires strategic meetings

As detailed in two previous articles, Dr. Moore met with every conceivable constituent group in the district, usually on multiple occasions and at times that were convenient for them. For employees and students, including the Board of Education, these meetings happened “on the clock” so that there was no barrier to their participation. For parents, meetings happened at multiple times, so parents with different daily routines and needs could find a convenient time to participate.

The rules for engaging the community were intentionally strict and cast a wide net. Building principals were tasked with communicating meeting dates and times and recruiting all parents - not just the most outspoken or supportive ones. Community meetings intentionally involved people in leadership positions, including the police and fire chiefs.

Further, these meetings were run by Dr. Moore in a systematic way. There was always an agenda published in advance, and a scribe was present to capture ideas in the moment instead of relegating them to memory.

The goal was clear: to hear from EVERYONE in the Three Rivers School District.

And to meaningfully involve them in developing a strategic plan.

Dr. Moore conducted these meetings in a formal, comfortable, but business-like way. When people challenged the data, he directed them back to the source. When one person claimed to have read the whole report and challenged a part of it, Dr. Moore pushed back with specific information that showed the data was correct as presented.

This sent the important message that the strategic plan was not an effort to please everyone, or to give every person with a complaint a platform to broadcast that complaint.

Instead it was a serious effort to look at the most accurate, up-to-the-minute data and determine the best way forward in alignment with Core Values as determined by the community.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY Leadership must implement the strategic plan

Of course, after all of the intentional listening and review, after more than a year and a half of the two-year process is completed, the data all comes together in a thorough and comprehensive report.

And the district leadership set aside time to dive into that data to set the new course.

They first looked at the information - performance data and community feedback - in each area of the state report card.

At this time, the district did not yet have a score in the Career and College Readiness category, but Craig and other leaders looked at this category too, because they would receive a score in it starting the following year.

Then the leaders looked at the resources they had available to bring to bear on solving these problems.

They looked closely at budget sources and amounts, as well as expenditures. They worked to improve transparency with spending, so they could tell whether money was really being spent in alignment with goals, or if that money was being wasted.

With this plan, the leadership team went back to the Board of Education, who approved it.

Craig Hockenberry is a leader who knows how to create a strategic plan and get it passed and into full effect.

CRAIG HOCKENBERRY CINCINNATI OHIO

Craig Hockenberry Can Implement A Strategic Plan

As Superintendent, Craig Hockenberry worked to listen to the community of the Three Rivers School District, develop core values, and champion an effort to pass the district’s first strategic plan.

As explained in prior posts, this was a two year process that involved a great deal of scheduling, planning, and preparation that was in addition to the daily work of a school district. This is time and effort that a lot of Superintendents are not willing to spend, because the work of a superintendent in a small school district is challenging, and because a strategic plan means accountability to clear, agreed-upon standards of academic achievement.

This did not phase Craig, because he believes in hard work and personal and professional accountability.

But what does accountability look like?

Craig Hockenberry Accountability under a strategic plan

So what, exactly does accountability look like under a strategic plan?

It means you have the authority to take the steps necessary to achieve the goals you have agreed upon, and spend money in the way you agreed.

In one example, soon after the plan passed, there was a request for a small athletic facility to serve as a restroom and locker room for athletes. The fields were a fair distance from the school itself, and a facility like that would have saved precious time for students and coaches as they prepared for events and cleaned up after them.

Everyone agreed that it would be a worthwhile expense.

However, accountability under a strategic plan often means not doing something. In this case, there was no academic imperative for the facility. It didn’t align with the goals set forth in the Board-approved plan, so the answer had to be no.

So did this mean that no new structures could be built outside the school itself?

Not at all.

Shortly after the athletics request came a request for a “pole barn” - a similar kind of structure in a location outside the building. But this request came from the career academy and it was different in one important way.

Their plan was for an exterior building where students could safely practice welding, and assemble internet technology. The building would allow them to safely store the equipment and allow ready access to the needed electricity and fuel, without taking up additional room inside the growing school.

In this case, the difference was, request aligned with the strategic plan.

The plan had a goal for strengthening student skills in alignment with career objectives. The district’s career plans included welding and IT in pathways to work.

There was a goal clearly attached to this request, and it was approved.

Craig Hockenberry Strategic plans should align academic goals with values

The Three Rivers School District strategic plan put the district on a clear pathway to achieving significant academic gains over the following three to five years. Importantly, it all happened without sacrificing the district’s dedication to the core values they had co-developed just a year earlier.

In fact, the core values helped create an important filter for the work being done by the strategic planning leadership team.

This allowed the plan to be focused on academic goals as set forth by the state and federal education governing bodies, while allowing the unique character of the Three Rivers schools and villages to shine through.

These core values were apparent on every page of the strategic plan, where everyone in the district was empowered to

● Cultivate excellence

● Inspire innovation

● Nurture inclusion

This meant that the conversations Craig Hockenberry started the day he was announced as the new Superintendent were part of the plan the guided the district into the future.

Threading these conversations together, instead of creating multiple different, isolated conversations, helped create a unique sense of trust and confidence in the schools throughout the community. Many large and mid-sized corporations seem to lurch from new initiative to new initiative, with leaders simply chasing the latest fad or buzzword or - perhaps worse - doing the exact same gameplan at each new Superintendent post.

Building a coherent, in-depth conversation that lead to meaningful and substantive change was a refreshing variation from the norm.

By aligning all the conversations into meaningful action, and building them into core values, then a strategic plan, Craig Hockenberry allowed the community to shape their school district into what they wanted for their children.

By implementing the plan with fidelity, Craig lived up to the accountability measures. This kind of accountability can be scary for some. In some cases, people feel threatened by accountability, and grow angry when they can’t get what they want.

But good leadership welcomes accountability, and seeks to thrive under rigorous expectations. This is especially true when those expectations are centered around students meeting academic achievement and career goals that will prepare them for life after high school.

Craig Hockenberry

Home - Poland Local Schools (polandbulldogs.com)

Craig Hockenberry Named New Superintendent for the Poland Local Schools

Mr. Craig Hockenberry has been selected as the new Superintendent of the Poland Local Schools. The Board of Education has called a Special Meeting at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, May 10th, to officially hire Mr. Hockenberry.

Mr. Hockenberry was born and raised in Northeast Ohio and has several connections to the Poland area. He brings more than two decades of educational experience to the Poland Local Schools. He has served in different leadership roles from teacher, assistant principal, principal and superintendent through various settings-rural, suburban and urban school districts throughout Ohio.

Mr. Gregg Riddle, President of the Board of Education stated, “Mr. Hockenberry is inheriting a school district of excellence. His leadership and experience will help advance the Poland Local Schools to continued academic success.”

Mr. Hockenberry served as the Superintendent of Three Rivers Local School District in Hamilton County, Ohio, a district with close to 2,500 students. He was the superintendent at Three Rivers for six years. Before that he was the Superintendent of Manchester Local Schools in Adams County, Ohio, a district with 1,000 students from 2013-2015. He began his administrative career in Cincinnati Public Schools as an assistant principal and principal of an elementary, middle and high school. During his tenure at the Oyler School, he was instrumental in an academic turnaround for the school, emerging from academic emergency to continuous improvement.

Mr. Hockenberry has experience in creating career academies, opening and developing models for community learning centers, expanding community partnerships, district strategic planning, overseeing multi-million dollar construction projects and bringing essential services to students.

Throughout his tenure at Cincinnati Public Schools, Mr. Hockenberry has been named Administrator and Principal of the year. He was also part of a National Public Radio award-winning documentary, Oyler One School, One Year.

Mr. Hockenberry graduated from Mount St. Joseph in 1995 with an undergraduate degree in Elementary Education. He received his graduate degree in Educational Administration from Xavier University. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the College of Mount St. Joseph and delivered the 2013 commencement address. Before starting his career in administration he was an elementary school teacher. Craig and his wife Erin have three children: Rocco, Gino and Vivian.

Community engagement, transparency and due diligence were three of the main components guiding the Poland Board of Education in naming a new superintendent. Finding a leader with superintendent experience who will honor the district’s traditions, while preparing students for the future were key attributes the board sought in its search for a new superintendent. The Poland Local School District is at a critical juncture with building realignment, Covid-19 mandates and future planning.

THE SEARCH PROCESS

· Working with Finding Leaders, the Board of Education started a National Search in March of 2021 to find a new superintendent.

· Finding Leaders engaged the community and district staff through community forums to find out what Poland wanted to see in its next superintendent-this feedback helped Finding Leaders develop its district profile.

· A field of twenty four candidates applied for the job and Finding Leaders narrowed the pool of candidates.

· Seven candidates were interviewed by the Board of Education.

· From the seven candidates the Board of Education narrowed the selection to two finalists-Craig Hockenberry and Jude Meyers.

PROCESS FOR FINALIST

Maintaining transparency with the community in the search for a new superintendent has been paramount for the Board of Education. A stakeholders group was formed to ensure the Poland community was represented in the search and their input was greatly valued. The stakeholders group was made up of the following: teachers, support staff members, community members, students and district administration. The stakeholders group interviewed the two finalists for superintendent and provided their feedback. The Board of Education also conducted a third interview with the two finalists.

DUE DILIGENCE

The Board of Education conducted its own due diligence in finding the district’s new superintendent. Board members contacted both previous and current employers, specifically inquiring about leadership. Educational Service Center Superintendents were also contacted.