Jason Radford: They can see that, oh, you’ve asked and so now you’ve taken those actions. And so they see that manifest itself in board meetings, board action, not just raises and salary increases, which are extremely important, but other things that we can do just because we listened, because our employees would say, “we want to be valued. We want to be treated as professionals.” And so we have really tried to raise the bar.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, so you listened, you acted and you continue to follow up. And it’s just part of what you do now. You, I love that. You built it in your DNA.

People ask us, how do we build trust? You’re answering those questions in this episode. You’re intentional about what you do. You engage people, you listen and you act on it, and you do it with the greatest, greatest intention.

Introduction

[Intro music plays in the background.]

Janet Pilcher: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Accelerate Your Performance podcast. I’m your host, Janet Pilcher, and I’m excited to share some news with you.

Starting in January, the Accelerate Your Performance podcast will be renamed to Hardwiring Excellence in Education. This change reflects the core purpose behind both our podcast and my book, Hardwiring Excellence in Education. In fact, it’s the stories on this podcast that motivated me to write the book. So changing the name is a natural fit that really reflects our core purpose.

We’ll still be featuring inspiring stories and insightful interviews, just under a new name starting January 2025. So keep an eye out for the change. And please accept my gratitude for being a dedicated listener of this podcast. Connecting with you each week is certainly a highlight, and I’m honored to be part of your leadership journey.

So today I’m happy to welcome Dr. Jason Radford, Superintendent of Oldham County Schools in Crestwood, Kentucky. Jason’s been a partner with us for a couple of years now. And prior to this, he served as an assistant superintendent in Boone County Schools, where he led the Office of School and System Improvement. He’s also worked for the Kentucky Department of Education and began his career like many of us as a classroom teacher.

Listen as Jason shares about Oldham County’s focus on service excellence, transparent communication, and culture building. You’ll get to hear how they support these priorities, along with the unique spin they put on rounding. Let’s get started.

Interview

Janet Pilcher: It’s with great pleasure that I welcome Dr. Jason Radford. Jason, so glad to have you on our show today.

Jason Radford: Janet, thank you. I’m very honored, very excited to be with you and talk about the journey that we’ve been on in our school district. So thank you for having me.

Janet Pilcher: Absolutely. And we’re going to talk about two of our favorite things, really focused on people and service today. And I get a chance to talk to De De every now and then. And she sings your praises, and we use your results as examples in many instances. So, you know, again, thank you for the good hard work that you all do and the leadership that you have with your team and continue to make a difference in our profession.

So let’s start with that, Jason. Just tell us a little bit about, our listeners, about you and your professional journey and, you know, what got you to Superintendent of Oldham.

Jason Radford: Absolutely. Well, first, thank you again. I’m so, so honored to be with you and develop such a passion for this work.

When we think about service excellence, systems thinking, and the impact and just making a difference for our staff and ultimately for our students. I was, I started my career—this is my 27th year in public education—and I started as a teacher, as a coach and as a principal. And from there, I went on to work for the Department of Education in Kentucky and left that role and had lots of responsibilities, but had met such wonderful talented people, having overseen Title One for our state and all of our low performing schools, our day to day operations and transitioned to a new role as a National Institute for School Leadership with them and the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents and working with principals in a wide range of schools and coaching support role as a National School Leadership Coach and working with schools in Kentucky. And had the opportunity, really wanted to get back to a school district at that time and had the opportunity to work in Boone County Schools in Northern Kentucky, just outside Cincinnati and a Director Assistant Superintendent.

So it is through those experiences that really led me to, I’ve always wanted to, personal professional goal was to be a superintendent and for quite some time and had the just a good fortune to land here in Oldham County. And so this is my fourth year as superintendent in Oldham County and just very proud of our school district and the team that how hard that they are working for students every day.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, so neat, Jason. You know, just the broad array of experiences that you’ve had. You know, I think it’s, it’s important because you’re learning from various perspectives, just people that you’re engaging with, just the different experiences that you had. So really, really neat that you can bring those experiences into now leading a district. You know, one of the things that you’ve done is you’ve taken one of our most popular and highest impact tactics, rounding, and you’ve taken that on the road. Can you share a little bit about your, your rounding road show and how you how you organize that and, you know, what your outcomes are?

Jason Radford: Absolutely. We, we have really, as you mentioned, we developed the phrase with the road shows because we wanted to be that service excellence type of organization. And we really felt like that leaders go first. And as a district, if we’re really going to help engage and empower and elevate our school district, we need, it started with us at the district office.

And so we wanted to go to our people and we wanted to engage with them. We wanted to share the results and talk about the district services survey results, the employee engagement results and, and let them know that we are trying to be very actionable and strategic with their responses as we are developing and building this, such a strong culture of service so we can support students.

So we shared those results with all of our employees. And while we, and about making decisions, we developed a system that helped us solve problems and develop solutions. And we had to do that together. As we all know, the challenges that we faced over the last several years. And so we took questions and opportunity for our employees to give us feedback so that way it could strengthen our district and board actions.

We have about 1500 employees in our school system. And so we conducted about almost 30 road shows, if you will, a year. We wanted to touch every employee. And so we took a big step. We took a little bit of a big step forward. This last year was our second year of doing those road shows, so 2.0, if you will.

Janet Pilcher: [laughs]

Jason Radford: And so at the end of at the end of those meetings, after we had collected, presented and collected feedback from them, we did a poll everywhere, a live poll before we left each meeting and asked them, “are we on the right track or the wrong track?” And so after doing that 30 times with about 1500 employees, our average district score was 96 percent. We were really, really proud. It was such a validation for our entire organization and for all of our leadership teams that, man, we were really trying to row our boat in the same direction.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, you know, and it’s such a great example, Jason, you know, with when you have results that you’re taking those results and you’re sharing them for one thing and then you’re engaging your teams and people in conversations about the results and using that input for action. And so then when you. and I love it that you’re doing that pulse check to see, “well, how’s it going? I mean, we’re doing this work. Is it the right work? Do you have more confidence in us?” And those are the I mean, that’s incredible. Can you feel the culture change, Jason, in your district?

Jason Radford: You can. We have talked a lot about trying to be very authentic. And so then when we and be very connected, as you know, and working with, with Dr. Ashby, with De De, she’s our executive coach. And I mean, she’s been instrumental with having that cascade effect and trying to really live that out.

I’ll be honest, when we did that live pulse check, I was really anxious and nervous when we met with all of our bus drivers, when we met with all of our support staff and our teachers. And so just, you know, you just don’t know, but it made such the impact it made by doing that. We could not really, in some ways, we could measure it. But the authentic, the authenticness of and the impact it had on our culture as an organization, was just tremendous.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, so good. And, you know, just the idea, too, that you’re reaching out to all employees. You know, sometimes we talk a lot about instruction and academics, which is important, but, you know, almost 50 percent of the people who work in our district are on the operational side, just as important to, to the work that we do. So just really nice work about reaching across the system and reinforcing everyone’s important. Everyone makes a difference.

Speaking of that, you have an employee recruitment and retention focus and that you all have created a plan and you’ve really stepped up your game in terms of really focusing on that. Can you talk a little bit about that plan and what you’ve accomplished there?

Jason Radford: Yes. With all of that being said, I talked about really trying to create that system. And so we were trying to be very open and honest and transparent to help us solve problems. We had to create, most organizations do something similar, but we created these work groups, that system that accounted for staff voice, but we also need to look at best practice and how that can meet our needs in Oldham County thinking about our context. And so we just needed to communicate, communicate, and communicate, provide those updates and really illustrate and try to build that authentic momentum, if you will.

Janet Pilcher: Mmmhmm.

Jason Radford: We took a multi-prong approach and being very honest and transparent, using feedback with our entire community, within our within the organization and externally with our parents, with civic groups and all of our leaders across our school district and our county, our community. And so that has really helped us as we think about recruiting others to really be that trusted source about these are the things that we’re doing. This is what we’re trying to build on. And of course, working with Dr. Ashby, with Dr. Ashby, we created that strategic plan. So all that works together to communicate and enhance the experience that everyone has within our school district.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, and such a focus that you keep using the word, which I really like, Jason, you’re using the word “strategic.” You know, this is intentional. It’s strategic. It’s focused. It doesn’t just happen. We’re not just doing a tactic and not thinking deeply about it, but we’re being very strategic about our approach and looking at the interconnections of the roadshow, the retention and recruitment plan. And I’m sure people now not only do they want to stay, but they probably want to come to your district because they’re learning more about the culture that you’re building and the commitment that leaders have to the people who work each and every day.

Jason Radford: Yeah, yes. We have seen, you know, one of the things I’ve just really, through rounding myself with our office staff and with some of our school staff and other departments, that’s one of the things that has come up in just asking them about how to compare, like, our progress. Talk about where we’ve been and where we currently are and tell me about, do you feel like it’s authentic? Do you feel like that we are? And so the resounding answer to that has been, “yes, we see, we feel the difference. We have data to support that.”

One, two quick things. If I could, Janet, I wanted to—

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, please.

Jason Radford: I would love to share is, we did a district services survey for three years now. And certainly that’s one of the great tools that that Studer provides and working with, with De De. So our first year as with our DSS, we as a district, we were at 4.17. And then year two, we took a big jump and jumped to 4.52 as an organization.

Janet Pilcher: Oh my gosh, Jason, it’s incredible.

Jason Radford: And so then last year was year three was our third year of doing DSS. We’ve done that each year. Our overall score is 4.61.

Janet Pilcher: Wow.

Jason Radford: So that put us at about the 85th percentile on that. And so we’re super, super proud of that. I get, as I’m describing that, I get I have chills coming down because I just know when you talk to our district leaders that we’ve tried to really model the way that that we want to go. And so when we ask our principals and our school leaders to respond to their students, their parents, and their employee responses, their surveys, we have really set a, set a nice frame for them to take action. And so that is, I can’t say enough about how proud I am of the district team.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. I mean, that’s it. That’s, you know, usually we say, you know, especially if you’re at 4.0, someone, an 0.05 or 0.10 is a really big jump. But you just knocked it out of the park. In that 4.0-ish to 4.5, Jason. And then, you know, then when you get to that 4.5, it’s really hard to continue to go up.

So tell me a little bit, you know, from the service standpoint, and you’re looking at the support services that your leaders provide to the schools and other departments, you know, what are some of the things that you did that helped you get that improvement?

Jason Radford: We focused really on rounding. And we focused on 30-90 day conversations because we have, when we met with all of our full time staff, we would often say that two, two things we would we would try to communicate or illustrate to them and try to model that have our make sure our actions aligned to what we say is most solutions are, the solutions to most problems are less than six feet of themselves. If we should take power, the power of that of just pausing to ask and to listen.

We tried to be, we tried to create a rhythm. My principals and my district leaders, they know when they see me carry this particular book is my rounding book. They know that that’s what that, that’s the only thing I use that book for. And so it’s been and so we tried to symbolize and try to be create that authentic make it part of our DNA.

And then folks through our system that we’ve created and utilized and built and built upon. They can see that, “oh, you’ve asked. And so now you’ve taken those actions.” And so they see that manifest itself in board meetings, board action, not just raises and salary increases, which are extremely important. But other things that we can do just because we listened because our employees would say, “we want to be valued. We want to be treated as professionals.” And so we have really tried to raise the bar. And that’s what our parents have asked us to do.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. So, you know, and you listened, you acted, and you continue to follow up. And it’s just part of what you do now. You, I love that, you built it in your DNA. People ask us, how do we build trust? You’re answering those questions in this, this episode. You’re intentional about what you do. You engage people, you listen and you act on it, and you do it with the greatest, greatest intention.

You know, Jason, as we close today, you know, thinking about your experiences. So I’ll kind of end with just a general leadership question. And, you know, you’ve had a broad array of experiences. You’ve worked in schools. You’ve worked in the state office. You’ve worked in institutes and provided development opportunities.

You know, as you think about a leader and the most important aspects of what a leader needs to do in order to build great organizations, what are the things that just kind of come to your, come to your mind? What’s really we’re going to be the best that we can be as leaders? You know, what does that mean?

Jason Radford: I think I think you have to touch hearts. You have to, in this, in public education, when we think about it as from an organizational standpoint, you have to touch hearts and in doing so, you have to be very strategic, to be very intentional. You have to think about being a momentum builder and keeping the main thing the main thing. Not getting distracted because systems are all part of having really good habits and routines.

And there’s no, you cannot replace those things. And I think that has really helped us. It’s taken us some time to be able to build momentum with that. It’s really permeated itself, I believe.

And I think the other thing as leaders, we have to always help each other. Human nature is you focus in on the problem, but we also have to reflect and think about how far we’ve come, the steps we’ve taken and done that together, because it’s not about one of us, but it’s about all of us.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, so good, Jason. So Oldham County Schools is lucky to have you as a leader. And when I talk to people and talk to leaders every week, you know, there are just times when I’m like, I ask myself, “would I want people that I connect with to be my leader?” And you are definitely one of those people. Who wouldn’t want to work for you?

I mean, really just the heart, the authentic approach that you take and the intentionality of what you do. So appreciate you and what you do for your district and for our profession.

Jason Radford: Well, Janet, thank you very much. That warms my heart to hear you say that. I’m very honored, very appreciative of that and thank you. It’s just very special to be able to share, talk about our story and the journey that we’ve been on with you today. Thank you.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, absolutely.

Conclusion

[Outro music plays in the background.]

Janet Pilcher: We talk a lot about strategies and tactics on this podcast because you need tools to do the heavy lifting that you do each and every day. But let us always remember, like Jason said, we’re touching the hearts of others every day. So we owe it to the people we lead to be intentional, strategic and focused in our execution.

Thank you for tuning into this episode. As always, I look forward to connecting with you next time as we build upon the Nine Principles Framework to hardwire excellence in education so that we can be our best at work. Have a great week, everyone.