Alumni Profile: Don Leisey, Ed. D. '73
from The Magazine of the USC Rossier School of Education,
page 43
For most of his professional life as a teacher,
superintendent, owner of private schools and as an educational
entrepreneur, Donald Leisey tried to improve education. He continues
to pursue that goal, but in perhaps the most unusual way yet. Leisey
(Ed.D ’73) is developing a project called “educational
intrapreneurship” which calls upon public school systems to
help all employees advance creative ideas that aid learning.
“We have developed a process for prospective educational
‘intrapreneurs’ within the schools,” Leisey says,
“that is similar to what entrepreneurs do in the private sector
to get ideas off the ground.” More...
Dr. Don Leisey's Speech To University of Southern California
School Business Management Students
May 5, 2006
It is a real pleasure for me to be able to address you this
evening. I am impressed with the size of these two cohorts and the
distance many of you have traveled to attend the School Business
Management Program. I would like to talk with you this evening about
how the school business management certificate program influenced my
career, the book I co-authored about educational entrepreneurism, and
educational intrapreneurism which can be used as a tool for change in
schools.
It seems like yesterday that I was taking courses toward a school
business management certificate at USC. I treasure the School
Business Management Certificate that I received at USC, and consider
it the corner stone of my career. I believe I was in the first group
to receive a School Business Management Certificate from USC. I
commend Dean Karen Gallagher for making this valuable program
available again for prospective business officials in the State; Dr.
Carol Wilson for organizing and putting the program together; and Ken
Hall for his leadership in implementing the program and making it
work. One of my closest friends, Dr. Bill Cunningham, former
executive director of ACSA, Educational Secretary under George
Deukmejian and Superintendent of the Sacramento County Schools
states, " Ken Hall is the most knowledgeable person in the state on
school finance, and USC is certainly fortunate to have his
leadership, expertise and talent leading this program." The School
Business Management Certificate Program in which you are enrolled is
much richer than the certificate program I completed in the 70s
because it is more comprehensive and is taught by highly successful
business officials.
The business division is the "life line" of the school district
and the people working in it are usually the "unsung heroes" of the
district. Whether you are in accounting, maintenance and operations,
food service, transportation, or any other department, you are
playing a major role in the operation of the school district. How
well the finances and the support programs of the district are
managed determines how well the district can achieve its goals. Look
around the state and you will see that those districts that have
managed their funds well are usually very successful districts
academically. Those districts that have not managed their funds well
usually do not perform well academically, and frequently have poorly
trained and weak business managers.
We need well-trained business managers who will make the tough
decisions and are willing to put their jobs on the line. We need
business managers who can effectively communicate the fiscal
conditions of the district, can ask the tough questions, can say no
when funds are not available, and who have the courage to blow the
whistle on people who are abusing the system. You know as well as I
that it is not the amount of money spent per student that guarantees
academic success, but how well the money is prioritized, allocated
and managed that assures the opportunity for success.
I believe that I was a better superintendent because I had
experience as a business manager. Many superintendents get into
trouble because they have limited or no training and experience in
the business side of a school district. More districts should be
looking at elevating successful business managers to the position of
superintendent, and superintendents should be required to have a more
extensive background in school business management.
I question where my career would have gone without the School
Business Management Certificate Program. From the day I started my
career in education, my goal was to become a school superintendent. I
thought my path for advancement was via curriculum or personnel, and
that was the way I was preparing myself prior to learning about the
USC School Business Management Certificate program. Up until that
time I had been fortunate to have assignments as a school principal
in Pennsylvania, Japan with the Department of Defense Dependent
Schools, and in the Lennox Elementary School District in southern
California.
Shortly after I began the Certificate program at USC, the position
of assistant superintendent for business opened in the Lennox
Elementary School District and my superintendent encouraged me to
apply for the position. I was selected for the position at age 30,
and continued the course work in the Certificate program while
working on an Ed.D at USC. In effect, the School Business Management
program helped me become an "instant business manager." I was
fortunate to have as my mentor, Dr. Wes Colby, Superintendent of the
Lennox Elementary School District, who served as business manager for
the district prior to becoming superintendent.
After three years in Lennox, USC encouraged me to gain experience
in a K-12 district as a business manager. With the help of the USC
Placement Office, I was appointed business manager of San Rafael City
Schools in Marin County. San Rafael is a common administration
district with a single board of education overseeing the San Rafael
Elementary School District and San Rafael High School District. At
that time the enrollment was approximately 10,000 students. After a
year and a half as business manager of San Rafael, my superintendent
resigned to take a position with the Singapore American School. After
a nationwide search, I was appointed superintendent at age 35. I
believe I was appointed superintendent because of my business
management background. San Rafael was projecting a serious downturn
in its student population due to the decline in birth rate and the
high cost of living in Marin County which precluded young families
from moving into the area. During my six years as superintendent we
closed seven elementary schools and a middle school. In 1978, on top
of the declining enrollment problem, Proposition 13 was passed by the
electorate of California. I guided the district through the
additional cutbacks which were necessary to implement Proposition 13,
and then took a long look at where my career was going.
I had just turned 41 years old and was suffering through a
"mid-life crisis" wondering what I wanted to do for the rest of my
life. I decided to try my luck in the private sector. After looking
at a variety of opportunities in insurance, banking, real estate, and
sales, I took a job as vice president, northern regional manager, for
American Learning Corporation which specialized in publishing
educational materials, operating tutorial centers, and conducting
private summer school programs throughout the state to fill the
summer school void created by Prop. 13.
After a year with American Learning Corporation I was invited to
move to Orange County to the corporate office which I declined, and
became an educational consultant for a year prior to establishing an
educational company specializing in private schools. Initially I
joined up with a friend, Chuck Lavaroni, who at the time was the Dean
of Education at Dominican College, to purchase Kittredge School, a
small, grades 1 through 8 private, for profit school in San
Francisco.
The following year, January 1981, Chuck and I purchased Merryhill
School, a 200 student, kindergarten through sixth grade, for profit
school on Eastern Avenue in Sacramento, which we renamed Merryhill
Country School. Through the acquisition of adjacent properties, the
campus was expanded to 600 students within two years by adding a
preschool and a middle school. We knew we were doing something
special for children when many of the employees at the state
department of education, politicians, and public school teachers and
administrators began sending their children to Merryhill Country
School.
We began expanding the Merryhill program to other areas in
northern California. Merryhill Country Schools' niche was to cater to
children of working parents by being open from 6:30 am to 6:00 pm and
operating year round. From 9:00 am to 3:30 pm, we offered an
outstanding academic program, along with a wide selection of creative
arts. Before and after school we provided programs on campus which
the working parent might have difficulty getting their children to
including: tutoring, supervised study halls, ballet and tap dancing,
instrumental music lessons, piano lessons, acting, athletic programs
including soccer, basketball, and baseball, computers, art programs,
and all levels of Boy and Girl Scouting. We took the guilt out of
working parents by providing programs on campus in which their
children could participate.
We did something that is unheard of in private schools. Parents
were only obligated to a month-to-month tuition, and did not contract
for the entire year. We had to do a good job because if we didn't,
parents could withdraw their child(ren) thus putting extreme
financial pressure on the program.
At the time Merryhill Country Schools were sold to a public
company from the East Coast in 1989, we had 22 locations in northern
California. I believe the training I received in the School Business
Management Certificate program at USC assisted me greatly in my
success as an educational entrepreneur.
I would like to switch gears and discuss the book, The Educational
Entrepreneur: Making a Difference, which Chuck Lavaroni, a friend for
over 30 years, and I wrote a few years ago. The book has USC ties in
that Dr. Gib Hentschke, who was the Dean of Education at the time,
wrote the Foreword and features Drs. Barbara and Roger Rossier, for
whom the USC School of Education is named.
Chuck and I have had similar careers. We were both classroom
teachers, became school principals at a very young age, were
assistant superintendents and superintendents in the public school
system, owners of private schools and share a strong passion for
education. Over the years we became business partners in numerous
educational and real estate ventures.
One day we were having lunch and reviewing our careers, especially
our entrepreneurial activities in education. We discussed how we
could encourage other educators who had worthwhile ideas for
improving education to become entrepreneurs. We decided to establish
the International Academy for Educational Entrepreneurship to
identify, encourage and support educators in the entrepreneurial
process.
As a first step in the process we thought we should identify some
successful educational entrepreneurs throughout the country to serve
as models for others interested in testing the water of
entrepreneurship. We wanted a broad representation of educational
entrepreneurs involved in a variety of educational businesses. We
define an educational entrepreneur as an educator who has invested
time, energy, and capital to create, develop, and market educational
programs, products, services and technologies.
Our book includes 22 educational entrepreneurs from 18 states. We
either knew these people or they were recommended to us by friends.
We feature a variety of educational businesses in our book including
private schools, tutoring programs, academic and sports camps,
educational software development, educational travel, preschool
programs, educational publishing, home and charter schooling,
educational retail stores and educational consultants. I would like
to highlight a few of the individuals in our book:
In 1980, Barbara and Roger Rossier, both of whom received their
doctorates from USC, and were very successful in public education,
purchased a small private school in southern California with 40
students having significant academic, social and emotional delays.
Over the years their school's enrollment grew to 200, and became the
focus of Rossier Educational Enterprises, Inc. By the time the
Rossiers sold the school in 1998, it was one of the largest
therapeutic schools of its kind in the country and was noted for its
high academic standards and top-flight vocational program. Their
first step into entrepreneurship led to others. Over the years, the
Rossiers also established a profitable real estate and leasing
business, became involved in educational publishing, and operated an
educational travel agency. In addition, the Rossiers committed an
impressive amount of time, energy, and financial resources to
educational, civic, and philanthropic causes. Their $20 million gift
to USC was the largest ever made to a school of education in an
American college or university.
Dr. Jan Davidson, a former English teacher and known in the
software industry as the pioneer of educational software, started
Davidson and Associates with the $6,000 she and her husband, Bob were
saving for their children's education. Early on Jan almost sold her
educational software ideas and programs to a publisher, but when she
was due to meet with the publisher, he mistakenly went to a
restaurant with the same name on the other side of San Clemente. This
gave Bob, an executive of an engineering company, the opportunity to
encourage Jan to publish her software ideas herself, including the
ever popular "Math Blaster." In 1996, the Davidsons sold their share
of Davidson and Associates for more than a billion dollars with a
"B".
Today Dr. Davidson is dividing her time between philanthropy and
helping new education-related businesses. She and Bob have formed the
Davidson Institute for Talent Development to provide individualized
educational and developmental programs for profoundly gifted young
people.
Kay Fredericks, a Minnesota kindergarten teacher developed life
size cutouts for her classroom bulletin boards which were greatly
admired by her fellow teachers, especially at back to school nights.
While in the hospital, recuperating from an auto injury and worried
that she might not be able to continue teaching, Kay began planning
how she could make money producing her bulletin board ideas. Starting
in a friend's garage and withdrawing $700 from the family savings
account, today her company, Trend Enterprises has more than 200
employees producing more than 1,000 products, sold in more than 40
countries, and generating sales of over $40 million.
Frank Schaffer, needed to get a second job to supplement his
elementary school teaching salary. He took a part-time instructor's
position at Pepperdine University which planted the seed for Frank
Schaffer Publications. In 1994, he sold Frank Schaffer Publications
for $54 million.
I could go on and on, but time does not allow. Let me summarize
the book by stating that all the educational entrepreneurs featured
are unique individuals from different age groups, backgrounds and
socioeconomic situations. Some of their businesses have been in
existence for 25 years and some for as little as 5 years. Many had
some false starts and most have watched their businesses transform to
meet changing needs. All of the educational entrepreneurs in the book
enjoy and appreciate the freedom and autonomy which comes from their
own initiative. While in all cases, the monetary rewards have been
enough to keep the businesses profitable, money has never been the
major motivator for any of them.
As we focused on the lives of these educational entrepreneurs, we
found two important common threads. First these educational
entrepreneurs did not ask, "How can I improve schools?" which makes
the question of education too limiting. Instead they asked, "How can
I improve education and learning?" which focuses on processes, opens
up many new ideas, new possibilities, concepts, applications of human
resources, and structures for organizing educational delivery
systems.
Second, none of these educational entrepreneurs changed their
goals: they merely altered their strategies in achieving those goals.
Without exception, these entrepreneurs chose education as their
profession, and their goal was to improve the lives of children and
society. They did that as educators and they are continuing to do
that as educational entrepreneurs. They still make a difference, but
today they are doing it in more innovative ways and for more people.
How does entrepreneurship apply to public education? You have
probably heard the terms intrapreneurship and social
entrepreneurship. These terms generally apply to using
entrepreneurial processes within an organization - usually in public
and non-profit structures. Chuck and I are currently developing a
model for educational intrapreneurship for use in schools and school
districts.
According to Gifford Pinchot, who has written extensively on this
subject, "an intelligent organization develops and engages the
intelligence, business judgment, and wide system responsibility of
all its members. By using the intelligence of every employee, an
organization can respond far more effectively to customers, partners,
and competitors."
We know there is a large turnover in education, especially
teachers. We believe that encouraging and allowing teachers and other
employees to engage in educational intrapreneurship, much needed
changes in education can be achieved. Chuck has developed a process
which involves the prospective educational intrapreneur to go through
a similar process as entrepreneurs do in order to get their ideas off
the ground and into the marketplace.
We are organizing a process to be approved by boards of education
and administrators, and for school employees to follow in submitting
programs for approval. The process is similar to a business plan in
that it addresses the key questions: where, why, how, when, who, and
what. It will provide the opportunity for interested individuals to
translate their ideas and thoughts into writing, to research their
ideas, to develop goals and objectives, determine how much their idea
will cost, determine personnel requirements, facility requirements,
legal requirements, evaluation plan, marketing plan to students,
parental involvement, impact on the school, etc.
I would like to close with a quote from Mary Kay Ash, founder of
Mary Kay, Inc.:
"When you reach an obstacle, turn it into an opportunity. You have a
choice. You can overcome and be a winner, or you can allow it to
overcome you and become a loser. The choice is yours and yours alone.
Refuse to throw in the towel. Go that extra mile that failures refuse
to travel. It is far better to be exhausted from success than to be
rested from failure."
Thank you and good luck. I invite your questions.
West Chester University's Institute for
Educational Excellence and Entrepreneurship
The Academy is proud to have had some influence in the formulation
of West Chester University of Pennsylvania's Institute for
Educational Excellence and Entrepreneurship (3E Institute) which
became operational last fall. According to Pat Roberts, Executive
Director, "The 3E Institute will serve as a global center for
identifying, supporting and mentoring entrepreneurial educators." Dr.
Don Leisey, represents the International Academy for Educational
Entrepreneurship on the advisory board for the 3E Institute.
Leisey Serves on University Boards
IAEE Director, Dr. Don Leisey is a member of the Board of
Councilors for the University of Southern California Rossier School
of Education, and the Foundation Board of West Chester University of
Pennsylvania.
How To Make Money From Your Teaching Ideas
Don and Chuck have been presenting workshops on "How to Make Money
on Your Teaching Ideas" at A+ The Report Card stores and the
Sacramento County Schools Office's Beginning Teachers Support and
Assistance Program. Anyone interested in having Don and Chuck present
this workshop should contact them at 415-459-6019.
A+ The Report Card
IAEE Director, Dr. Don Leisey continues to own A+ The Report Card, an
educational resource store located in Citrus Heights, California.
Leisey began the business in 1991.
A+ The Report Card carries a wide selection of high quality
learning materials for students in preschool through high school
including: classroom and student supplies; reading, language arts,
mathematics, social studies, science, and foreign language products;
test preparation materials; children's literature; developmental
toys, arts and crafts products; videos, tapes and CDs; professional
resource material; educational games and puzzles; gifts for children
and teachers.
Go to www.reportcard.net to shop for
educational materials or to gain more information about A+ The Report
Card.
Assessing Teaching And Learning
INNOVATIVE ASSESSMENT, Inc., a company organized to create new and
exciting ways to collect behavioral data about teaching and learning,
has "closed its doors". Chuck was one of the nine teachers and
administrators who formed the company in the early 1990s. IA
developed a very successful computer program that created a series of
observation forms which made it possible to collect, organize and
report data on such diverse and important behavioral skills such as
CRITICAL THINKING, SOCIAL PARTICIPATION, VALUING, and
TEACHER-LEARNING INTERACTION.
The last one, "The Teacher Learning Matrix" is still in use in the
El Dorado Office of Education, Charter Community School, in
Placerville, California. The TEACHER LEARNING MATRIX has been
developed over the past 10 years under the direction of Ms. Marta
Reyes. It has been her constant belief that the most important way to
bring both change and stability to a specific educational mission is
through the self-evaluation of the staff in relation to that mission.
The IA program provided the template on which Reyes and her staff,
along with the help of Chuck Lavaroni and another former IA Director,
Peter Beldon, have built their Assessment and Evaluation Program.
Chuck and Pete are currently working with Reyes and her staff to
complete a Television CD that can be used for the continued training
of new staff members as well as to disseminate the workings of the
program to others.
At a time when so much money and energy is being spent on
Standardized Testing, this completely different emphasis on
assessment and self evaluation is seen as great import to Reyes and
the staff. Obviously, Chuck and Pete agree whole-heartedly.
Intrapreneurism In Kentfield
Directors Leisey and Lavaroni are agreed that for entrepreneurism
to really occur within the schools and protect the teacher or
administrator who test their entrepreneurial wings, there must be a
recognizable organizational support system in place. Without that
system it is very easy for the entrepreneur to become a target for
jealousy, frustration, and distrust. This is especially true on those
occasions where the efforts of the entrepreneur are in conflict with
the mission and expectations of the school or district. We call that
support environment an INTRAPRENEURIAL one. People who develop a
product, program, technology, or service to improve learning within
that system are INTRAPRENEURS. The intrapreneur in Kentfield is
Superintendent Bob Caine. Working with the Board and his staff for
the past 5 years Bob has developed a total school district Character
Education Program. This program includes the use of a
self-evaluation, assessment rubric developed to insure student
participation in awareness and reflection of their own character
behaviors. This rubric has been presented at two California School
Boards Association conferences as well at other local workshops and
seminars. Chuck Lavaroni has been an active participant in this
project since its inception. He along with two former Tamalpais High
School School Board Members, Sue Loar and Ellen Rosen, have been
instrumental in the continued development and improvement of the
rubric. Bob Caine can be reached at 415-925-2233 for further
information and copies of the rubric.
