[00:00:00] Dr. Jim: Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim, every K through 12 district leader wants to create a high performing district that delivers excellence in learning outcomes. The journey to that end can take many forms, but one thing that I think we can all agree on is that if your students are in some version of survival mode, learning outcomes can take a backseat to that outcome that everybody's driving towards. So in those situations it becomes critical to build commitment and to a unifying Cause across the district. So you're laying the proper foundation for success. Today's conversation will focus on how one district Tackled the student mental health crisis within their district and built deep commitment in the process So who's going to be guiding us through that conversation?

Today we have michael cornell who is currently the superintendent of the hamburg central school district in western new york He's also the president of the erie niagara school superintendents association where he and [00:01:00] his team Represents and supports 40 school districts in a wide array of policy and advocacy initiatives Mike is one of the most respected educators in the region His advocacy work earned him the 2024 western new york educational services council robert heller award For leadership vision and determination that's made a positive impact on education within the eight county regional Region of Western New York.

He's been a fierce advocate for students and a leader in promoting social, emotional learning and wellness programs for students. And he was the first superintendent in Western New York to require all school based adults to receive a full day. Youth mental health first aid training in 2018 is also the co founder of a regional mental health collaborative that convenes four times a year.

It involves hundreds of school based mental health professionals, agency, and clinical practitioners and inpatient providers from across Erie County four times each year. Mike regularly consults with school districts across the state on all [00:02:00] issues related to education and education leadership and planning around both.

Mike has appeared hundreds of times locally, statewide, and nationally in print television, radio, and podcasts to provide insight and analysis on topics related to education and policy. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:15] Mike Cornell: Happy to have happy to be here, Jim. I appreciate you having me on and looking forward to our conversation today

[00:02:20] Dr. Jim: yeah, it should be a really good one, and I'm looking forward to it as well. I think this is one of the f First, if not the only topic that we've done on mental health and student mental health. So I'm looking forward to that discussion. But before we dive into all of that we covered a lot of ground in your bio, but I think what's missing in that bio is a discussion about some of those defining moments in your career that kind of helped shape who you are.

As a leader and how you show up. So why don't you share with us and the audience a little bit more about some of those defining moments and how that impacted you as a leader.

[00:02:57] Mike Cornell: One of the things that I think about first is, and I was [00:03:00] not a kid who liked school. A lot of people get into school work, get into school work because they were good at school when they were kids and they had great experiences when they were kids. And I went to three high schools growing up.

I was always the new kid. Sometimes Left out or not noticed as the new kid. I played sports that helped a little bit, but there isn't a lot that I can tell you outside of my school experiences beyond high school sports. And some of that was good. And some of that was bad. But that's what I recall.

And I think that colors the way that I approach my school work. And one of the first indications I got of that was when I got hired to come or West High School. In 1995, in the summer, Jim Dunnigan, who was the assistant principal at the time, says, your interview wasn't the most dazzling interview, I don't know that you're the most highly skilled person who walked through the door, and there were a couple hundred applicants at the time, but he said, the one thing you said to me and, resonated with me and the committee is that you basically said you're going to just [00:04:00] bust your ear around every single day to do great stuff for kids.

And, that was because I think through my school experience I really needed somebody to do that for me. And it didn't always happen. So I was committed to be that teacher who was just going to work really hard every single day and try to do great stuff for kids. And, I'm not going to say I made the mark every day, but I worked really hard to hit that mark every day.

[00:04:19] Dr. Jim: There's something that's really interesting about what you described about your experience as a student.

And you said, you're always the new kid. And there are some instances where, you know, getting involved in things in school helped that transition process. But there are also instances where, you know you were still felt that you were still feeling left out. So I want you to think back to that and also fast forward to now, when you're talking to other district leaders or other educators who might have those sort of students that are transient in their districts, what are the things that they can do?

To be intentional about making those students who come in and [00:05:00] out feel more welcome in the school and get their bearings about them

[00:05:03] Mike Cornell: Yeah, it's really about a sense of belonging, you know We talk in Hamburg about joy value and connection. We want every child to have a experience a significant measure of joy value and connection every single day as a feature of the day not just as a a collateral benefit of some fun lesson on one particular Tuesday.

And every kid deserves that. And not only are those really worthy educational outcomes for all the reasons that the research would point to it, but they're also basic human emotions. And every child who experiences joy, value, and connection at least has a chance at having a great day of school, going home, do a little bit of homework, enjoy some time with friends who want to come back and do it the next day.

[00:05:39] Dr. Jim: I like connecting it to those three Sort of emotions or values that you've embedded in the district I think one of the things that i'm thinking about and we'll get into the details on this a little bit later Is that those concepts joy value and connection? Those are higher level ideals.

I think are aspirational And it's oftentimes difficult [00:06:00] to bridge the gap to get there. When you're dealing with a student population that might be in some version of survival mode. So what's your advice to educators and leaders when you're looking at bridging that gap a little bit and getting people out of that survival mode mentality so that they can aspire to reach, joy, value, and connection as the goal.

[00:06:21] Mike Cornell: I think one of the things is the adults, we have to notice it when they're not experiencing joy, when they're not feeling valued and when they're not acting in a way that demonstrates that they're connected to what's happening at school or to their friends or to the other adults. And one of the things that we did in the Hamburg schools in 2017, 18, before COVID we decided that we wanted to embark down the path of training every one of our school based adults in youth mental health first aid.

So we have 640. Employees, we have about another hundred bus drivers that are private contractor employees. And in that one year 2018 19 was the first year we did the training. We trained every single one of them in a full [00:07:00] day fully accredited youth mental health first aid program with 10 of our own certified trainers.

And what that did was it explicitly sent the message to every adult in our school that it is all of our jobs to look out for the mental and emotional well being of our kids. It's our job to notice. It's not just the job of four or five school counselors, a couple of administrators, and some of those people who are typically tasked with that.

And, that's a way for us to bridge that kind of knowing, doing gap. We knew we needed to do something different. Not everybody does something about it. We did

[00:07:32] Dr. Jim: I appreciate you sharing that. I want to switch gears a little bit and get line of sight into the district landscape.

Share with us some of the details about the district that you're in and how that painted a picture of what you needed to do as a leader within that district.

[00:07:46] Mike Cornell: well, when I took over the district, it was a district that had been in significant distress board controversies and leadership controversies for 4 or 5 years before I got there. There's an enormous amount of healing that had to happen. And then [00:08:00] very quickly after that, and we're a district of four elementary schools, middle school and a high school, about 3400 students generally middle class, second ring suburb of Buffalo right near where the Buffalo Bills play, I think gives you a geographic landmark and, ordinary by almost every Measure not very racially diverse, but socioeconomically diverse.

And one of the things that we started to notice was that students were coming to us with all kinds of challenges and let's face the facts here in public schools. Every one of society's challenges works, but walks through the schoolhouse door every single day, and we are the ones in one institution.

They can't just set any of them aside. We have to deal with all those challenges if we're going to educate kids. So the question became, how are we going to do that? And. That's where Youth Mental Health First Aid was one of the things that entered the picture and the fact that we need to do something decisive that we knew because it was a research based program [00:09:00] would allow our adults to address those challenges.

Because if you're a social studies teacher who is trained to be a teacher in the 1990s, early 2000s, this was not on the radar then, but it is now. And in fact, it's right smack in the middle of our radar screen when it comes to the work we do with kids and we needed to do something about it.

[00:09:16] Dr. Jim: When you're talking about youth mental health, this wasn't something on the radar.

For somebody that went through their educational training in the year 2000, and now it's an emerging thing that every district has to deal with when you think about bridging the gap of, okay how do we solve for this? Or how do we address this? What were the things that you did from a district perspective to get?

Your team up to speed on recognizing the issues that are going on and being able to triage it appropriately.

[00:09:49] Mike Cornell: The heart of it is born out of commitment. That's the reality. You, we hear all the time we want buy in from people, and to me when people say they'll buy into that, it means, I'll [00:10:00] stand aside, I'll let you do what it is you want to do, and I'm not going to get in your way. That's not going to get it done, but you need commitment.

Commitment means, you know what, Mike, I totally get where you're coming from. You and your team, I get where you're coming from. We've been given all the information we need to make this thing work. We understand the why, you know why this is important. I'm going to roll up my sleeves.

I'm going to do it with you. That's commitment. And if you're going to make anything happen in an organization of any size, you have to have commitment, not buy in. So what do you do to get commitment? You invest in relationships with your people upfront. You dig wells before you're thirsty. You don't show up on day one and say, we're going to do youth mental health first aid.

I started in the very beginning of 2015 and we started down this path in the fall of 2017. So I'd been there for two and a half years and had invested with my team and relationships, I don't spend any time in my office. I'm out there doing my retail work. I'm talking to people all the time and earning people's commitment to the stuff that we're doing.

You invest in mission, vision, core values. You invest in a [00:11:00] strategic plan that has, everybody's voices at the table. And that's what allows you to invest in you. The people and the things that are going to make a difference for kids.

[00:11:10] Dr. Jim: So I like the distinction that you drew when you're talking about the difference between buy in and commitment requires a whole different layer, a whole different sort of mindset in order for it to be effective. The thing that I'm thinking about is that when you're introducing an unfamiliar topic to somebody.

You explain, why it's necessary and you get their commitment. There's still a pretty big gap from commitment to action and understanding what action needs to be taken. So how did you bridge that gap so that people are armed with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities to put things into action so you're getting to the end goal?

[00:11:47] Mike Cornell: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked it, and it really comes down from the nature of the program we decided to use. It's a full day, eight hour in person training where we [00:12:00] literally give people the ability to recognize the signs and symptoms of emotional and mental distress, and then we give them the words to use when they engage with a young person about it.

And, and it's about noticing things differently. 20, in 2020 if Michael didn't do his homework for three nights in a row, he just must not be motivated to do well in school. I don't know what's wrong with him. Now it's maybe I'm going to ask Michael to stick around after class and say, you know what?

You've missed your homework a couple of days. And I noticed you had an unpleasant conversation with John after class yesterday. Is everything all right? Is there anything that I can help you with? And, see if that opens up a line of communication. And of course, you're doing that away from other kids in a way that preserves the dignity of the child.

But we walk people all the way through that conversation, right up to the conversation where if you think somebody's really possibly lethal to themselves in a moment, actually say the words, Michael, are you thinking of killing yourself? And those are the words you're supposed to use. That's what the training says.

That's what the research [00:13:00] says. It runs the gamut from the somewhat benign circumstance where somebody's not doing their homework to a more acute circumstance. You might just show up on and see a child who might be in a very difficult state and ask the question. Because the research says you ask the question.

You're not going to put the idea in their head if they're already thinking of hurting themselves, they've already thought of it. So what you want to do is get them to verbalize, yes, that's like a very quick gun check threat assessment. And then you know what you're dealing with and then you know who to call.

[00:13:28] Dr. Jim: So I like how that's mapped out, and I'm thinking about it from the perspective of a student that's sitting in class. And it doesn't really matter like what age group you're targeting this at. I, I think when you're at that age, you can't really verbalize or process what's going on between your ears to any great degree.

And because you're still trying to figure out what it is that you're thinking, you're less likely to even open up or share with anybody about what's going on unless they're within a tight circle. So when I look at that and maybe I'm overthinking [00:14:00] and I look at the role of a teacher. Or an educator or anybody that interacts with that student.

That's a tough bridge too, to get a student to the point where they're actually sharing this with you. It's one thing to have the clinical training aspect of it, but the other thing is how do you set the stage where students are actually willing to have these conversations with you? What was the work that you put in with the district and at the educator level that created the space for those sort of conversations to occur?

[00:14:24] Mike Cornell: So there's two things. The first is, more than one occasion, I've stood in front of our entire 650 person staff and said, I don't care about a test score ever. I just don't care. Those will take care of themselves. We're going to take care of kids first. Our strategic plan, which is something that has guided our work for many years since 2016, does not have goals.

We don't do SMART goals where it says, we're going to increase this, our three, our third grade math assessment score, proficiency scores by six points or eight points over any period of time. We track those [00:15:00] things, we look at those things they're mileposts they're a way to measure our progress, but not the only way, we don't really talk about them, they just take care of themselves, we focus on the individual interactions that we want to happen between our adults and our children every single day, pre K through 12.

If we get those things right then the rest of this stuff takes care of itself. So we've given the teachers permission to care about the human element of the work we do first, our children, our humans, they need, love and support and then we'll get to the academic stuff and by the way.

When I was very public about not caring about graduation rates or test scores in 19, or I'm sorry, in 2019, 2020 right before COVID, we had the highest graduation rate in Western New York. And we are not the most affluent. School in Western New York and graduation rates are often a socioeconomic status are, obviously tightly correlated to graduation rates.

We are performed a lot of much wealthier and selective [00:16:00] schools. To do that, not because we ever talk about it, but we focus on the stuff that really matters, which is the day to day interactions that happen between students and teachers because our teachers are focused on them as humans, not as, a test score, having to reach some artificial externally determined metric.

[00:16:17] Dr. Jim: Now, I really like that perspective. And actually, when you distill it down, it goes into sort of the fundamental principles of anything that you're trying to build. If you're trying to build anything, you need to make sure that you're building on solid foundation and the stuff that you're doing in terms of supporting everybody within the district and especially students as humans, people first And making sure that they're on a solid footing that actually creates the conditions for success.

So I really like that. But I want to wind this back a little bit and. Understand how you got here in the first place, because one of the things that you mentioned is that you started in the district in roughly 2015 or started the idea about launching this as [00:17:00] a, as an initiative in 2015, but it didn't formally launch until 2017, and you were going through sort of an exercise of listening to what's going on within the district to help formulate what you wanted to do.

So how did this become the top thing on your radar to tackle as a new leader in the district versus I'm sure you had 1015 other things that popped up as critical items to

[00:17:24] Mike Cornell: So when I got there in March of 2015, there were some operational and structural things that we need to get in place. We needed to install just some systems thinking things fairly common things you want in place for a well functioning school district. It took a little while for us to get that squared away.

Right around the spring of 2017. We started to realize that. Our children were struggling society around us was experiencing challenges that were coming into our schools every day in the form of our children, and we needed to do something about it. So we looked into youth mental [00:18:00] health First aid thought it had value.

We ran it by our youth or our school-based mental health professionals. So we brought them all together, presented it to them, and asked them if they thought it held value, and they said it did. So once, and then, ten of them raised their hand and said, sure, I'll, I'd love to volunteer to be a trainer.

So they did, each of them did a five day intensive training to be a certified Youth Mental Health First Aid trainer. And then they trained the rest of the staff in 2018 19. It took a little while to get all the way there, but we invested the time, everything takes time and you've got to be patient and play the long game.

[00:18:35] Dr. Jim: I want to spin this forward into something that you said. I think one of the big things internally that probably helped you get the level of commitment that you needed was your point about, I don't care about test scores. And that's a good message internally, but if you're looking at building community wide commitment to this initiative, I could imagine. Parents not resonating with [00:19:00] that sort of conversation. And maybe even the business sector being like I don't know how that fits in terms of the school and when you're looking at, having a district wide commitment or a community wide commitment to this initiative, what was your conversation with community members, with families, with the private sector when it came to getting them on board with with this initiative as well?

[00:19:23] Mike Cornell: The conversation, Jim, didn't sound a whole lot different externally than it did internally.

What we told people is we care about our kids first as humans. We need to take care of the social emotional aspect of their lives in school. Many of them come to us with all kinds of challenges that we need to help them work through. And then We'll get to the learning part of it, because if a kid is not mentally and emotionally well, they're not going to be available for learning no matter how good the math lesson is or how important the social studies test is.

It's not that I, I care about test scores. I just don't care about them first. I care about kids first, and I wanted all of our people who work with [00:20:00] our kids to care about the kids first. And when I talk to parents about that, when I talk to business owners who are also parents when I talk to our regional political leaders they understand it because they're parents or they're aunts or they're uncles, and they want us to care about kids as people.

And that's what we do. And, we'll take care of all the learning stuff thereafter. But first things has to be first. And for us it's, are the kids well, and if they are well, then we can go on and go about the rest of our work. But if they're not well, we need to deal with that.

[00:20:30] Dr. Jim: Now that's a, that's good perspective. And I think when you frame it that way, I can understand why people were less likely to push back or people were on board when you when you mentioned it when you think about this initiative that you launched, were there any big obstacles that you ran into?

And if so, how did you overcome them?

[00:20:49] Mike Cornell: Time was the big obstacle. And so you're taking all of your people in one year away from their work for a whole day. And. I have amazing people that work with [00:21:00] us, Colleen Katie, my assistant superintendent director of curriculum, Caitlin Sylvester the clerical folks, like I'm surrounded by great people and they found a way to make that work.

And then beyond that, now we're on a 3 year cycle. So we do 1 3rd of the staff every year because they have to be recertified every year. But that's the big obstacle is time. We bit it off the first year and it was just a ton of work for those folks. And we've lightened the load a little bit by doing it on a three year rotation.

One third of the staff each year over a three year period. But that was really the biggest one. And there was, I'll be honest with you, there were some folks who, when we said we're going to do this training, walked in feeling it was going to be a complete waste of time, the perception among some was not super positive.

And I got to tell you, a lot of people walked out of there saying, Oh my God, I was. I walked in here, not happy to be here. I walked out of here feeling like I'm better able to help the students who we serve. But a lot of them said, you know what? I got some of this stuff going on at home with a loved [00:22:00] one, and this is going to help me at home too.

And that was a real selling point. This is not about schoolwork. It's about people work. If you ask people, what business are we in? We are in the blank business. I don't know what people fill in the blank with, but we're in the relationship business. And this kind of understanding about the wellness of our kids helps us deepen that relationship in a really meaningful way.

[00:22:21] Dr. Jim: Really great stuff, and I like how you've mapped out what you did and how you did it.

What I'm curious about is now that you look back on this program that is fully functional, what's been the impact that you've seen across the district?

[00:22:34] Mike Cornell: Not to directly answer your question, but the thing I think about is how grateful I am that we have so many people who have embraced it. Like without the great people who we have working in the Hamburg schools past and present, none of this would happen. Leaders can have all the great ideas in the world, but without well meaning people who are willing to really roll up their sleeves and commit to it because it's the right thing.

You're nowhere. So the first thing I think about is how [00:23:00] grateful I am for the great people we have working for us. In terms of impact locally for us, I don't think there's any question on anybody's part. That when you send your kid to the Hamburg Central School District, you're going to be have schools that are filled with adults who really do loving care for your children and who will look out for the mental health of your child.

Now that we're going to treat, like we don't treat as the social distancing doesn't treat the mental illness but we do the warm handoff to somebody who can really help. And I think that's the thing that a parent wants to know. Will someone notice if my child needs help and then connect them to the help?

So I think that is. An unequivocal non negotiable that people can expect when they come to our schools. The other thing that I think is an important impact is it's grown across the region. So one of the things that I'm really proud of is we took the focus on mental health in our school district and I started to talk to Erie County about it.

The Erie County County executive and his team in particular, Mark O'Brien, who is the Erie County. [00:24:00] Commissioner of Mental Health Services, we struck up a relationship a few years ago and just asked ourselves, this question, what would happen if we put all the people in the region who provide mental health services for kids, regardless of site?

So schools, agencies, clinical settings, inpatient settings people who have a county perspective, a state perspective in terms of how that care is provided, put them all in a room and see what happens. Let's see what kind of connective tissue we can grow together, because I think we are, there's an awareness of what everybody did, but not even anything close to the understanding of how it all happened and why in each particular setting.

So what that's grown into is really a community impact model or a collective impact model where we're trying to collect data and create some common agendas and better ways of working together that we think is going to result in some type of underlying infrastructure that supports families and kids when they're moving through that process of getting care without it being a bureaucracy.

Which is a [00:25:00] very difficult needle to thread. We need to give people help, but not have it be a burdensome layer of bureaucracy that just makes it harder to navigate that whole system in the first place.

[00:25:10] Dr. Jim: When you think back Through this entire conversation that we've had and you're advising another superintendent who might be listening to this conversation and they want to do something similar. What are the key things that they need to keep in mind to build the level of commitment within their district when it comes to student mental health and driving student mental health outcomes?

[00:25:31] Mike Cornell: You got to start with the why. You've got to start with helping people understand why it's important too often. We start with the how and the what. So start with the why and build commitment about around the why. And then you've just got to invest in relationships, do your retail, invest in lean into your vision, mission and core values of your school district.

Invest in the time that it takes to build out a strategic plan and then make sure that your work around the mental and emotional wellness of kids is going to fit into that [00:26:00] structure. Cause you've got to have a sense of coherence about it. Otherwise, it feels like just one more thing that we're asking people to do.

But if you build the context and take your time and build the long game and then build inside of that the components of Youth Mental Health First Aid or whatever else you want to do, at least you've got a shot to build that sense of commitment that's that allows people to say or encourages them to say, inspires them to say, you know what, Mike, I get it.

I'm in, I'm gonna roll up my sleeves, do everything I can to help.

[00:26:29] Dr. Jim: Great stuff. If folks want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

[00:26:33] Mike Cornell: You can reach me at, I'll give you two. M cornell@hcsduhk12.org or M cornell304@gmail.com.

[00:26:43] Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us mike and sharing your story I think it's a an important one that many districts should probably take a look at when I think back Through the discussion that we had one of the things that stands out to me when I'm thinking back about this conversation is one of the early points [00:27:00] that you mentioned, which is there's a difference between buy in and commitment. And the reason why that's important is that when you're looking at. Transforming a region or transforming a district with any initiative that you want to push forward getting commitment with all members of that district is going to be important in the way that you get that level of commitment and the willingness for everybody to pull alongside of you is to connect, like you said the reason behind why you're actually doing this in the first place.

When we're looking at the issue of student mental health, I referenced this in the beginning of the conversation. If students are in a constant state of survival mode, they're never really going to drive those educational outcomes that you need. So you need to focus on those first things first, and make sure that they're on secure footing so that they're in a position to learn and position To accept the learning that's coming at them.

If you don't focus on those first principles or those foundational elements, you're going to lead, you're going to run into a lot of problems and you're going to [00:28:00] focus on the wrong thing. So I appreciate you tying all of that together in the conversation. For those of you who've been listening to this discussion, we appreciate you hanging out.

If you liked the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so, make sure you join. Our K through 12 leadership community and then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team