Dr. Coby Fletcher, Superintendent for Escanaba Area Public Schools

David Haynes sits down with Dr. Coby Fletcher, Superintendent of the Escanaba School District. His district–one of the largest in the Upper Peninsula–encompasses a kindergarten center, lower elementary school, upper elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school, which combine for a total enrollment of 2,150 students, a staff of 280, and a $24 million budget.

Dr. Fletcher discusses what led to him eventually becoming Superintendent of a UP school district, shares details on Escanaba’s early middle college program, the initiatives they are taking to prevent high school dropout, initiatives to help improve students’ mental health, and much more!

Transcript

David Haynes:

Good day, everybody. Welcome to another edition, Rural Insights, video, and podcasts. And as usual, we have a wonderful, interesting guest for you today. Coby Fletcher, who is the head of the Escanaba schools, the superintendent, and one of the major school districts in the peninsula. I think one of the three largest, I’m not sure of that. But I think it’s one of the three largest in the peninsula and, and we all know nationally and in our state, the challenges that educators like Superintendent Fletcher are going through. So this will be very intriguing. So welcome. Welcome Coby very much. Glad you’re here. So tell us a little bit about you. Tell us where you’re from and how you got to Escanaba? [crosstalk 00:00:52]-

Coby Fletcher:

Okay. Well, that’s a long story.

David Haynes:

It always os.

Coby Fletcher:

I give you a little information. I made a little bit of a journey to the Upper Peninsula. I am originally from Odessa, Texas.

David Haynes:

Oh, wow.

Coby Fletcher:

Yeah. So if you think Friday Night Lights, that book was actually written while I was in high school.

David Haynes:

Oh wow.

Coby Fletcher:

It was, but I went to the other high school. So I think the only time we appear in the book is when we’re getting beat. I’m not sure. But I grew up in Odessa at that time. I was born and raised there actually, and did college at Brigham Young university and then moved back to Texas to start my teaching career and taught there for about a decade doing mainly French. And then I … Yeah I know it’s a little different.

David Haynes:

I like that. That’s great.

Coby Fletcher:

So I did French and then became an administrator. I started my career there and was a high school principal in Texas, as well in a small community in north Texas, by the Red River. And got a call one day. I had published article on dropout prevention and recovery program that we ran and done some presentations, and a company that was doing an executive search for a high school in Southwest Michigan in Battle Creek said, “Hey, why don’t we fly you up? You can look at a job.” And so my wife and I flew up and liked it and I took job and then started doctoral work at Michigan State University and bumped up to East Lansing High School as the principal there for a few years.

And then when I graduated, we started looking hard for superintendent positions and I had several people tell me when the Escanaba job came open, that I should go take a look. And I applied and got invited for the interview and my wife and I came up and really liked it. And I was fortunate enough that it seems they liked me too. And so I took the job up here and I’ve been here for five years. So we have just continued to migrate north, I guess is one way to-

David Haynes:

Oh, that’s great. When I became president of university, a city manager, friend of mine downstate told me, I used to live in Grand Rapids, and he said to me, “Just be aware of the fact that city managers and county managers and university presidents have sort of the same thing going on.” That is every year you lose 10% of your constituency because you get 10% mad by something you did. “So just watch those 10%”, he said. That’s a tough job. Well, great. That’s interesting. It is fascinating how many superintendents in Michigan went to Michigan State for their doctoral programs. I know it’s not the only one, but it has certainly had a large impact. So tell us about economic score. Everybody in the UP and people who follow your other things, know Escanaba a major part of the peninsula. It’s a beautiful dynamic place and is sort of what we call the manufacturing belt, that iron mountain, Escanaba has more manufacturing than anyone else. I think that’s still true in the UP. So tell us about the school system.

Coby Fletcher:

So we are one of the largest school systems in the Upper Peninsula. We have a little over 2000 students, just about 2150 kids here. And we recently made some changes as far as our campuses go. We run a kindergarten center. So we have begindergartners and kindergartners at that center. So those are kids that are about five or six years in age. We have an elementary school where we serve grades one and two, an upper elementary school where we serve grades three through five, and then a junior high, senior high, where we serve grades six through 12. And that realignment is somewhat new to us, but it helps us operate a little bit more efficiently. There were some benefits to that, that we saw. We operate a very comprehensive program here. So, we start with the kindergarten center and I like to think of the capstone as the early middle college program, that we started a few years back that’s been very successful.

And then in between those grades, we do our best to serve kids in a variety of different ways. We have a strong core program, but we also run, I think I would, pretty confident in saying, the largest fine arts program that you could find in our region. So everything from a nice drama program, all the way through to band orchestra, art, you name it. And then of course, a very strong athletic program as well. A great tradition of that here. So I like to think that we’re rural. We’re a mid-size school district, large for the UP, but we offer it all a lot of things out there for kids.

David Haynes:

Well here at Rural Insights, one of the research pieces we do, and we talk to policy makers say, “Just like that there’s no two urban centers that are the same and no suburban or metropolitan, that’s true of rural areas. And rural areas, there are bigger cities like Escanaba and bigger counties like Delta, with different factors as compared to smaller. And for people to understand it’s okay to be metropolitan and to be rural, but we are like them. There is very clear differences in our regions of what rural is.” So what … Your arts work, is a lot of that done … Is it the benefits center? Is that tied to the schools or at an independent art center?

Coby Fletcher:

Yeah. The Boniface is independent of the schools. Obviously being a smaller community, there’s a lot of crossover and who participates in what. So they run programs for youth and many of our students will participate in that. And then a lot of the individual who are working in fine arts, in our district will also work in the fine arts at the Boniface Center as well. So in a small community like this, where the fine arts community is, it’s tight knit. Yeah. So a lot of connections.

David Haynes:

So the whole concept of middle college is still new to a lot of our listeners and viewers, but is a major part of education these days, as we begin to look at educating people, not just, everyone’s going to get liberal arts, four year baccalaureate. Some people will importantly get a very quality two year education at a community college or other program. And early middle has really worked in. Can you talk about what that is in Escanaba?

Coby Fletcher:

Sure.

David Haynes:

Middle college and what you do?

Coby Fletcher:

Yep. So in general, the overall purpose of an early middle college type program is to start students while they’re still in high school, and develop what you might think of as a five year program. So typically kids go through high school in four years, ninth through 12th grade. With the early middle college we tack on a 13th year. And so when a kid enters the early middle college program, we put together a sequence of courses for that student, that ideally allows them to graduate with an associate’s degree or with a certification that would allow them to go out and work in a variety of different fields, after that 13th year is done. And then the other benefit of that 13th year of course, is that it’s free to the student. And so you could realistically have kids that are coming out of our early middle college program.

And of course we do have kids who come out of our early middle college program, with an associate’s degree or with some sort of professional certificate, or credits that they may want to transfer for a four year program. So there are a lot of opportunities for our students. We are unique I think, in that we tend to target students who come from kind of a first generation college going background. And that segues back into the challenges that we face as a large city in the UP,, but still a rural district. We have kids who don’t take advantage of those opportunities because college seems far away, it seems far off.

And we want to take those students and get them into a program early on, and then get them through a program, with an associate’s degree or professional certificate, so that they can go on and do whatever it is that they would like to do in their post-secondary life. So I think we’re unique in that. We’re a very supportive program. We presented on this program actually at the World Future Forum, it’s a Chicago conference, but a global conference, simply because we offer a pretty unique combination of support, because we know that we’re targeting kids who just historically and their family history, aren’t used to going to college and doing the things that you do to be successful in college. And thus far, we have run a very successful program. We’re very proud of it.

David Haynes:

So it sounds wonderful. Let me just ask you a question about mentoring and advising. So I’m a first generation student after high school. No one … I’m the first member of my family go to college. It’s definition of first generation. I think most of the teachers in my school probably thought I’d wind up in state prison as opposed to being a state university president. But that as it may-

Coby Fletcher:

You’ve done well.

David Haynes:

So the definition always was to me, that the difference between me and a lot of young people at school time, was if they weren’t first year generation, they had somebody to help them think through college. What is it? What do you do? What are your options? I had no ability to do that. And that’s just not rural. I was in Brooklyn, New York. So it’s urban, rural. So the question I have is I’ve talked to a lot of educators in the UP about this, is especially with COVID, how are we helping students, especially first gen, think through going to middle college, going to get a degree at a community college, work for manufacture or getting a four year? How do you do that for young people in your district?

Coby Fletcher:

The first thing we do is we really work to aggressively educate the kids on the opportunity that’s available. And so we start very early on with them, typically, as soon as they enter ninth grade. And usually even before, because it’s convenient for us. We have sixth through 12th grade on a single campus. And so we do literally go in and talk students about the early middle college program and the benefits of the program. And so really what we want to do there is initial interest, draw them in. Once we have that, we’ll start meeting with families as well. And then when a kid makes a commitment to the early middle college program, we really start the support right away. So we knew when we started this program, that we were going to have to have, levels of support beyond which you might normally expect.

So we actually hired somebody to coordinate this program for us, and to serve as the primary support to kids, but also a liaison on to Bay College, which is our partner, so that nobody really could fall through the gaps. So a kid comes into the early middle college program and the very first thing we do is we actually create a five year plan for them. So they’re going to meet with our program coordinator, and they’re going to say, “Hey, these are my interests. This is what I’d like to think about studying.” We’re going to plan out the rest of their high school career and we’re also going to plan out the start of their college career. And we’re going to mesh those two so that they come out after that 13th year with either the associates degree or the professional certification.

But then in addition to that, and in particular, once the kid starts that 13th year, they’re no longer on our campus. We don’t get them full time. And so what this individual does is follow up with all of these students on a regular basis, typically biweekly. And coming into this, we did our research. We looked at which students tended to be able to kind of go through without any issues. What were the characteristics of students who tended to face some challenges? And so we look at every student initially when they come in and we say, “Hey, this student meets the criteria for somebody who needs additional support.” So we don’t wait for something to happen. We just automatically start giving that. And, and so between all of the regular follow up on our end, and then the communication that we have with Bay College on their end, we just don’t have students who fall through the cracks.

If the student is not experiencing success in a class, we find out about it right away, and we start intervening right away. So I can tell you typically, every year, we have students who go through that program who are homeless. And we have never, in the years that we’ve operated the program, lost a homeless student through this program. They’ve all finished out the 13th year. So I think that’s indicative of what we do as a district. I guess what I’d say by that is we really put our money where our mouths are. We said these are the type of kids that we really want to work with, and this is the level of support we want to provide them, and so we built a program that does that from day one.

David Haynes:

That’s very impressive. I think for all of us, of all of us have been young men and women. If you don’t have a family member and you don’t have a mentor, having somebody in the school system, to do that with you, makes a huge difference. It would’ve for me. And I was just lucky I didn’t wind up in the state prison system. So the other thing I’m fascinated by is your article. I also saw the material I got from Scott on your dropout prevention. What do you do to prevent drop out of the Escanaba school? That’s another, you talk about homeless. We talk about severe poverty, mental health issues, these all add to the dropout problem. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Coby Fletcher:

Yeah. When you’re looking at a student who may be a potential dropout, you’re typically looking at a student who does experience poverty. You’re looking at a student who may have a fairly precarious family situation. A lot of those issues just come in a basket, and you can identify who those students are and then build a system of support for those kids. So you’re looking at supporting them in a variety of ways. A lot of people think that being a dropout just means that you failed, that you were unsuccessful grade-wise and that’s not the case. The grades are just kind of the manifestation of all the other things that are going on in a student’s life. And so you’ve got to prepare something that helps those students deal with what’s going on in their lives. And then typically if you can do that, you start working on the academics and the grades follow.

So what we did as a district with several things. We built, I guess, what you in the lingo, would call a multi-tiered system of support. That is to say, we looked that how do we support everybody? And then when something isn’t working with a student, how do we move them up to the next level and give them more individual support based on their needs. And then for students, that doesn’t work with, how do we give them very intensive supports? And so when we did it, we started with a foundational piece. And as a district, we decided that the best way to do that would be to teach the kids some skills that they would need, in order to self-regulate, and then in order to work interpersonally and collaborate. So we actually went with the Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People.

We work with Franklin Covey. So a lot of people that are in the professional world will know where we’re going with that. And all of our kids, starting with our five year old students, receive instruction in the Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People. So it gives us a nice common language, climate culture piece for our students, that helps them build skills that are going to help them not only in school, but also outside of school, and after they get done with their K-12 education. But then in addition to that, we provided some basic training to all of our staff to help with some of the more intensive needs. So all of our staff have received training in what’s called the Handle With Care protocol. So what do you do when you’re dealing with a student who may be having an outburst, or who may be experiencing difficulty because of things that are going on outside of school?

And then along with that, we train all our staff in trauma informed schools, so that they understand better how to deal with students who may have experienced trauma. So that sort of is a foundational piece for us. Those are things that everybody gets. And then in addition to that, I think we may be the only school in the UP that employs our own social workers and provides a social worker to each campus. So every campus we run has a dedicated social worker who works with students. Then in addition to that, we provide behavioral interventionists, or we may call them at-risk coordinators. These are people who work with teachers proactively, and students proactively, those kids that may need a little bit more attention, that may need actually that mentor in their life to help them do school and be successful here.

David Haynes:

And then that would identify other mental health issues for them and direct them for mental health services with the social worker? Would that?

Coby Fletcher:

Yeah. What happens if you find that when you put these resources out, and people start becoming aware that they’re there, everybody just finds ways to begin working together. And so a student may experience challenges in class. It may go to a behavioral interventionists who might say, “You know what? This kid would benefit from some regular visits with a social worker.” And the social worker might say, “Gosh, you know what? There’s this community connection out there that might be good for this kid or good for the kids’ families.” And then everybody just really starts working. And what we end up with is a nice set of what we would call wraparound services. In other words, it’s just a global system of support for our kids. And you put that together and you’ve done I think the majority of the work that you need to do to help you prevent dropouts, because once those services are all in place, and once you start working with kids, all of those people, then you can start focusing on the grade thing and helping kids be successful.

It’s a little bit like saying, “We got to pay attention to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” There are certain things you got to take care of in a kid’s life before you can start talking to them about why is your grade low in algebra two? And we do that and we’ve built that system as a way for us to help and serve kids.

David Haynes:

That’s fascinating. You’ve touched on so many important issues that today’s school, that we all want to pay attention to. It’s very, as unique that I’ve heard in the UP, that having what social worker assigned by building and having advisors for higher ed placement and vocational training. I think it’s fantastic. Before we go, because I’m going to tie you up forever, I got some closing guns, but Scott Spyra, I want to make sure see if he has a question. But Scott is one of our student researchers at Northern Michigan University, works with Rural Insights. Does a fantastic job. He’s also a member of the NMU golf team and he’ll be leading them to a national championship this year, coming up in 2022.

Scott Spyra:

Yeah. The snow team.

That was terrific and I really like what you said about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I’m a psychology major myself here at NMU and that’s really important, and something, as we begin to learn more about mental health and how kids are dealing with their traumas from childhood. And how that really does have an effect on their behavior and how, what they may do, may not be exactly who they are, and their outbursts and such. So I really appreciate the amount of support and dedication that you have down there in Escanaba before that.

David Haynes:

Thanks, Scott. I want to say how, as we close, how lucky Escanaba parents and children are to have Dr. Fletcher and his team in place. It’s an amazing story about what you’ve done in this school district. It’s as you as the leader, there’s a Yiddish expression that says the fish stinks from the heads down. And there’s the opposite in effect, that the head of the fish is also the brains of the whole enterprise, that you’ve done an amazing …. You’re an amazing leader.

Coby Fletcher:

Well then, I have to stop you though. I got to give credit where credit is due. Just because so much of what you do as a leader, I think is just simply allowing other people to do good work.

David Haynes:

Yes.

Coby Fletcher:

And typically if you get good people into a room and you start hashing out ideas, my job gets easier because then all I have to do is figure out how to make it happen. And so the ideas didn’t necessarily come from me. I just happened to be the person that gets to open the door and listen to all the good ideas other people have and then make them happen. So credit really goes to our staff there. And from teachers on up, they’re the ones that came up with the ideas.

David Haynes:

I used to say at Northern, when I was president, I don’t need to be the smartest guy in the room with the smartest guy around, but I need to be the guy that hires the smartest people and listens. So the smartest people that gets out of the way to let those ideas, and clearly you do that. My last thing is I’ve been watching on Twitter, Room Rater is rating everyone’s whether on interviews now, and the Room Rater gives you a nine or a 10. I got to tell you, you get a 10. Nice office. I love the paneling. I know that your home, your office, but it looks great!

Coby Fletcher:

No, I’m in my office. I’m lucky I’m in a building that was built in the early thirties.

David Haynes:

Oh, okay. It’s gorgeous.

Coby Fletcher:

And so, they’ve maintained a lot of the original construction in here and-

David Haynes:

That’s nice!

Coby Fletcher:

Yeah. Blew me away when I first walked in. It’s

David Haynes:

Nice [inaudible 00:25:26]. I’ll take the job.

Coby Fletcher:

Very nice.

David Haynes:

Well, Dr. Fletcher, thank you. We took up a little more time than I promised I would, and this has been a great conversation. So thank you so much for sharing with people in the UP and our readers, listeners outside the up. And I hope we can do this again in a few months and talk about some other educational issues.

Coby Fletcher:

Sure. It’s pleasure to chat with you.

David Haynes:

Thank you. And thank you, Scott for your work.

Scott Spyra:

Absolutely. Thank you.

David Haynes:

Bye-bye, everybody.