Lauren Zirpoli became a superintendent for the first time this spring. But she had spent so much of her career at New Jersey’s New Providence School District that she felt she hit the ground running.
Having served as a high school principal and assistant principal during her 14 years in the district brought her into regular contact with families and students. It also allowed her to do a lot of work on technology integration and building out STEM programs that filtered into middle and elementary school.
Upon being promoted, she immediately got to work solidifying relationships with school board members by meeting with them to understand their motivation for serving and their goals for the district, which is less than 30 miles from New York City. At their first group retreat, Zirpoli and her board began mapping out the next strategic plan, which will have equity and inclusion at its center as the district becomes more diverse.
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“Our next strategic plan will carry on creating an environment where all of our students, our staff and our community feel as if they belong and their voice can be heard,” Zirpoli explains.
The district has already launched a “miniseries” of all-staff professional development workshops on equity topics such as self-identity, unconscious bias and community in the classroom.
“You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have bias, and you have to give yourself grace because your bias is going to be completely rooted in your lived experiences and how you were raised and where you were raised,” she attests. “The idea is getting folks to self-reflect so that when their bias does come out, they stop themselves.”
A big goal is to guide staff toward not pre-judging the abilities of certain students, such as English language learners from Central America who arrive in the district having had their educations interrupted significantly.
“We want to be able to put ourselves in their shoes and understand how they may feel coming here,” Zirpoli adds. “We’re truly giving that student the opportunity to grow in our district as we create an inclusive environment for them.”
A shift to skills-based learning
Each year, more than 90% of the high-performing district’s graduates enroll in a four-year college. The new strategic plan will focus on adapting to shifts in higher education, such as the return of the SAT and ACT, as well as the reduced stigma around trade schools and community colleges.
“I always go back to skills-based learning, like problem-solving, collaborating, working on a team, resiliency, adaptability,” she notes. “Those are all things that students will have to be able to do more so than ever before.”
To this end, she and her team have worked to better understand Gen Z students and what skills they need for an unpredictable future that may require different skills than their parents learned. “When you’re in your 40s and 50s, you talk about public speaking and being able to look someone in the eye, and I do think those things are important,” Zirpoli says. “But I also think to myself, ‘Is that going to be important in 15 or 20 years?'” she adds.
As for her own professional development, Zirpoli is heavily involved with the New Jersey Association of School Administrators and a statewide K12 coalition focused on solving teacher shortages and other pressing issues. She also works with a group of female superintendents to provide PD for women educators who aspire to the superintendency.
She believes the climate is improving for female leaders in K12, though there’s more work to do. “For myself, I have a strong personality, and so I have a confidence that I recognize some women don’t have,” she states. “It’s OK to be confident and it’s okay to be assertive, but I think that many times women who are assertive and confident are called some not nice names, whereas men who are confident and assertive are looked at as strong leaders.”
