In 2009, when the Hartford Board of Education called for the creation of school governance councils throughout the city — to give more control and accountability to individual Hartford schools — the plan included bringing all the key players together: principals, parents, students, school staff and community members. But, like any great team, each council needed the right coach — a job entrusted to Leadership Greater Hartford and Nat Brown, a senior program consultant.
Given the stakeholders that would comprise each council, Brown knew his volunteer coaching recruits would need a diverse set of skills including process management, meeting facilitation and conflict resolution. To find those individuals, Brown, who also runs his own employment law and labor relations practice, turned — in large part — to the business community.
In fact, of the 26 coaches Brown recruited, more than one-third of them work in executive leadership training and consulting — including Lynn Desormeaux, a consulting psychologist who has worked with Fortune 500 companies, and Jim Grigsby, a former Cigna executive and an executive coach at the Harvard Business School. That’s like having a major league manager coaching your company softball team.
For Desormeaux, the attraction to coaching a governance council was one-part community service, one-part learning experience. She was matched with Hartford’s Adult Education Center, which provides GED and English proficiency classes.
“Coaching was an opportunity to have a positive impact on a community, but I also wanted in work in a model of participatory leadership,” she said, noting that the council approach of giving multiple stakeholders an equal voice illustrated the value of diverse opinions. “I remember one student made a comment [in a meeting] that shifted the entire focus of the project we were discussing,” Desormeaux recalled. “It really drove home the richness and value of different opinion and the sense of accountability.”
Accountability has been a central component of the Hartford Public School’s efforts to decentralize authority and empower decision-makers. In fact, each new council during the 2009 — 2010 school year, was expected to review and approve the school budget and develop a school-specific strategic plan. Through his coaching role with Hartford’s Law & Government Academy, Jim Grigsby sees parallels between turnaround management he’s overseen professionally and what’s happening with Hartford Public Schools. “It’s about emphasizing things that are working while immediately addressing those that are not working and either eliminating them or fixing them,” he said.
The governance councils seem to be among the things working. During the 2010-2011 school year, five additional governance councils trained by Leadership Greater Hartford will begin operating. Brown sees the commitment of the councils and the coaches, many of whom are returning for a second tour of duty, as positive signs about Hartford Public School’s progress.
He notes that similar councils — ones that have been successful in Boston, Cincinnati, and Chicago — typically take about five years to become self-sustaining. “I think Hartford’s ahead of that timeframe,” Brown said, “and has the potential to serve as a national model.” And if Hartford reaches that pinnacle, part of the credit at least will be owed to some great councils — and great coaches.
Auxiliary Completes Record Year
The auxiliary of St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center contributed $500,582 to St. Francis for the year ended Sept. 30, the largest annual gift given to the hospital in the auxiliary’s history.
The auxiliary made the final installment of $310,000 toward its $1.5 million pledge to the “New Beginnings Family Birth Care Center.” In addition, the auxiliary donated $190,582 toward its new unrestricted pledge of $5 million, one year before the planned commencement of the new pledge in 2011.
The auxiliary, founded in 1926, derives its income from the gift shops on both St. Francis and Mount Sinai campuses, Blossoms Flower Shop, Butterfly Boutique, Repetitions Thrift Shop, the Christmas Walk, Remembrance Way, membership dues and other special fund raising events. They have donated over $11 million to the Hospital over the past 84 years.
Fidelco Receives $1M Gift
The Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation Inc. of Bloomfield has received an additional $1 million gift from the Norma F. Pfriem Foundation Inc. of Bridgeport in support of its successor guide dog program. Fidelco successor guide dogs take over when clients’ current guide dogs retire or can no longer serve. Approximately half of the Fidelco placements each year are successor guide dogs. Pfriem and her foundation have donated more than $6 million to Fidelco since 1992 for projects that include the Norma F. Pfriem Pup House, an endowment for our apprentice trainer program and, as part of the Fidelco capital campaign, the building of the Norma F. Pfriem Pavilion.
