S3 EP7 Kristi Baird on Mental Health and Attendance: Insights from Compass Community Schools

PODCAST Season 3 EPISODE 7

Kristi Baird
Executive Director
Compass Community Schools 

Quote of the Podcast:  

"Each one of us can make a difference. Together we can make change." Barbara Mikulski

Introduction of Guest BIO – 

Kristi Baird has more than 25 years of experience molding young minds in Memphis. She has remained a pillar in the local education community, serving in various roles throughout her career, including teacher, guidance counselor, vice principal, principal, assistant superintendent, superintendent, and executive director. She is now the founder and executive director of Compass Community Schools, a network of charter schools in Memphis, Tennessee. Prior to forming Compass Community Schools, Kristi held several positions within the Catholic Diocese of Memphis. She began her work in Catholic schools in the Jubilee Catholic Schools network, known as the Miracle in Memphis, where she was a teacher and then moved into leadership roles. She was serving as superintendent of Jubilee when then Bishop Martin Holly announced the closing of Jubilee. Kristi went on to found and lead Compass Community Schools, which opened to serve students displaced by the closing of Jubilee. Kristi holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Memphis and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Christian Brothers University. Kristi is a mother and educator and approaches her work in education from both perspectives.

 Interview

Agents of Change: Leaders/Innovators

•  30,000 Ft. View – Why do we, as a society invest in education?
• What drew you to education?
• Compass's work to reduce chronic absenteeism across our network of six schools (reducing our rate from 33% in 22-23 school year to 20% in the 23-24 school year) 
• Compass Community Schools’ service learning model -Compass serves a high Multi Language Learners (MLL) population. About 68% of Compass students have a home language other than English.
• What are the biggest challenges to you?
• What would you like decision-makers to know?

Podcast/book shoutouts

Books I read this summer: The Way of the Shepherd and The Classroom Management Secret: and 45 Other Keys to a Well Behaved Class Currently Rereading: Walk the Walk Currently Reading: Good to Great and The Devil at His Elbow

Transcript

Liza Holland [00:00:02]:
Welcome to education perspectives. I am your host, Liza Holland. This is a podcast that explores the role of education in our society from a variety of lenses. Education needs to evolve to meet the needs of today and the future. Solving such huge issues requires understanding. Join me as we begin to explore the many perspectives of education. Christy Baird has more than 25 years of experience molding young minds in Memphis. She has remained a pillar in the local education community, serving in various roles throughout her career, including teacher, guidance counselor, vice principal, principal, assistant superintendent, superintendent, and executive director.

Liza Holland [00:00:48]:
She is now the founder and executive director of Compass Community Schools, a network of charter schools in Memphis, Tennessee. Prior to forming Compass Community Schools, Christy had several positions with the Catholic Diocese of Memphis. She began her work in Catholic schools in the Jubilee Catholic Schools network known as the Miracle in Memphis, where she was a teacher and then moved into leadership roles. She was serving as superintendent of Jubilee when bishop Martin Holly announced the closing of Jubilee. Christie went on to found and lead Compass Community Schools, which opened to serve students displaced by the closing of Jubilee. Christie holds a bachelor's degree in elementary education from the University of Memphis and a master's degree in educational leadership from Christian Brothers University. Christi is a mother and an educator and approaches her work in education from both perspectives.

Kristy Baird [00:01:44]:
So welcome, Christi Baird, to education perspectives. We're so glad to have you here today.

Kristy Baird [00:01:49]:
Thanks. I appreciate you inviting me to be on your show, Liza.

Liza Holland [00:01:53]:
Absolutely. So I'm gonna kick off with our question, the big one. From a 30,000 foot view, why do you think that we as a society invest in education?

Kristy Baird [00:02:05]:
That is a big question, but a a good one. My answer is that the kids that are in our seats now in our schools are the future of our society, and so it's important that we properly educate them. And so aside from just academics, they deserve a well rounded education that looks at, of course, academics, but looks at other factors too. So at Compass Community Schools, we're a network of 6 charter schools, and we're built around the premise of 3 pillars, academic excellence, values based character development, and service learning in the community. And so as a school, of course, academics is our most important part of the job that we do, but we believe in educating a well rounded child and educating the whole child. And so before I started Compass, what I heard from parents was the importance of just like developing a moral compass in their child and the school partnering with parents to help, you know, help raise and educate their kids, but developing that moral compass, hence that's where the name Compass Community Schools came from. But in addition to giving our kids the academic foundation, moral foundation, We believe in developing them as as caring people and so helping them develop empathy and establishing the ability to look outside of themselves and see the need around them. And so that's where the service learning comes in.

Kristy Baird [00:03:38]:
At Compass, we partner with outside agencies. We have about 22 different outside agencies that we partner with from kindergarten through 12th grade. So each of our students, regardless of their age and grade, partner with a local agency, many of them nonprofits, and they study that agency, they learn about the need that they serve, they have the opportunity to participate in service learning projects. So even as young as kindergarten, and it's so cute, our kindergarten through 2nd grade partner with local nursing homes, And so they're able to see outside of themselves and see that not only do other people have needs, but they as individuals, even as young as 5 years old can make a difference in someone else's life. And so, again, I'll go back to your question. Our students that are sitting in our seats now are gonna be our leaders of tomorrow. And so I believe it's our duty to educate well rounded leaders that not only have the academic knowledge, but have the caring heart and the empathy and are really developing an internal drive to give back and do for others.

Liza Holland [00:04:49]:
I love that piece about being kind of societal partners, that you are a partner with the parents and you are a partner with the agencies and giving them that touch of real life context. What a great foundation to build a school on. Good for you.

Kristy Baird [00:05:04]:
Thank you.

Liza Holland [00:05:05]:
So tell us a little bit about more about you personally. What drew you to education?

Kristy Baird [00:05:11]:
I have always been a caretaker and a nurturer even as a child, you know, I would play school with my stuffed animals and my friends, and, I was also kind of an organized nerdy child. I do a decimal system, the books in my room, you know, had a little library set up, but I'd really didn't think about going into education. You know, I babysat starting in junior high school. In my church, I worked in the nursery and in Vacation Bible School, and so I really didn't think about going into education. And then when I got to college and, you know, you get through your 1st year and then you're like, oh, you need to decide what you wanna do. And so I started looking at what I enjoyed and what my talents led me towards and what I could see myself doing long term. And so I decided to major in education and I started reading different works. Some of my favorite in college were like Marian Wright Edelman and Jonathan Kozel who talked about inequalities in education.

Kristy Baird [00:06:15]:
And when I decided to major in education and I started doing clinical hours, I did most of my clinical hours in inner city schools here in Memphis, which were very different than the private school that I went to for high school. And so I started seeing examples of the inequalities that these authors were talking about, and that really drew me to inner city education. And so that's where I started my career, and I've been there ever since. And I spent about about 20 years in Catholic education, but even in my experience in Catholic education, I worked in inner city schools, where students attended on scholarship. And so looking back, I'm glad I made that decision. It's, I love coming to work every day, and so I think it's important to choose something that you're passionate about, and I feel very fortunate to go to a job that I look forward to every day.

Liza Holland [00:07:09]:
You know, that's the dream, isn't it? To be able to, to get up in the morning and go, yeah. I can't wait to get there. Oh, that's wonderful. So you were telling me a little bit more about your school and the school population that you're serving. You I know you mentioned inner city kids, but, your kids have somewhat of a language barrier as well. Tell us a little bit more about this the makeup of your particular schools.

Kristy Baird [00:07:33]:
Yeah. So we have 6 schools, 1 high school and 5 elementaries, and so those 5 elementaries feed into that high school. And they're, in neighborhoods all across Memphis from North Memphis to South Memphis, from, you know, Midtown to East Memphis. And so most of our schools are in high poverty areas and most of our students come to us from homes where English is not the primary language. So most of our kids, so 68% of our kids come from homes where the primary language is not English. Most of those come from Spanish speaking households, but we have multiple languages, home languages that are spoken at homes of our families. But yeah. So it has been a unique challenge, but a very positive experience as well.

Kristy Baird [00:08:24]:
A unique challenge because a lot of our teachers that come to us aren't trained to work with children who English is a second language. And so not only like, when I wrote the Charter applications, I didn't anticipate as many MLL students and multi language learners, and so that was kind of a budget buster in those 1st few years. So but we're very fortunate to have anywhere from 2 to 5 MLL teachers in our schools. And considering, like, some of our schools are as small as 200 students, So we might have 230 students and 5 ML teachers in addition to the regular classroom teachers to support that learning. So it's been really nice to have that extra support for our schools, but also we provide a lot of training for our general education classroom teachers as well because most of them have at least half of their class or ML students. And so I just find it, I love going into the classrooms. That's my favorite part of my job. I'm in classrooms just about every day, and so I love when I go in a classroom and I see teachers working with students and students working with other students, and we do a lot of turn and talk and students, you know, it's exciting when I go into a classroom and they're talking about the work in Spanish and, you know, to because they feel more comfortable.

Kristy Baird [00:09:50]:
And so our teachers, you know, talk about it in the language that you're more comfortable with. And I saw an example, my MLL director shared an example the other day of a newcomer that's come to 5th grade and they're reading Bud, not Buddy. And so she wrote her whole response in Spanish and the teacher, you know, got it translated so she could grade it, but just the confidence that our kids show when they're able to work in both English and Spanish. And I will tell you, I was in a classroom yesterday, we were doing, we had a principal PLC yesterday, and so we start our monthly principal meetings at a school in classrooms, studying curriculum and looking what teachers are doing and what students are doing. And so we were at Compass Frazier, which is one of our elementary schools, and we were in a 4th grade math class. And what I love about this class is the teacher in there is a former student of mine who has come back to teach for me. So it just like it's just full circle, you know, because it's like your child, you know, and you're seeing your child follow in your footsteps. But she was doing a math small group, and they were doing subtraction with regrouping, and she had a newcomer right there beside her.

Kristy Baird [00:11:03]:
And so Sydney, the teacher, does not speak Spanish, but she's been learning Spanish. And so she was talking to this little girl and walking her through the problem in Spanish, and I could understand, you know, like she was doing the numbers. And then she stopped and she asked one of the other students. She was like, how do you say baro in Spanish? And he told her, and she was like, slow down friend, you know, say it again. But she was like learning real time in order to meet the needs that her student had, and you could just see on the little girl's face beside her, she felt so safe and so valued in that classroom. And so it was just such a beautiful moment for me because I was not only proud of what I've designed Compass to be, but also proud of a student that I taught in 3rd grade who struggled with math that is now a math teacher. So that was just yesterday, but that was probably like my best moment of this school year so far.

Liza Holland [00:12:02]:
Oh, what a great story. Thank you for sharing that because that is I mean, what a full circle moment as you said. That's fantastic.

Kristy Baird [00:12:11]:
Because back to my original answer of why do we educate kids, and so I had no idea when I was Sydney's 3rd grade teacher that I would be able to be in the position that I'm in now or that she would even go into education. And so it's just a beautiful story of how you can pour into others that will come behind you and continue to pour into those behind them.

Kristy Baird [00:12:37]:
That is a story for those teachers who are feeling a little burnt out. Hopefully, not quite this early in the school year, but that's just lovely. That is just lovely. Thank you for sharing it. And the other piece that I'd like to kinda give that shout out to is your student now teacher feels confident enough to be able to learn from her students. You know, kinda making that change from the sage on the stage to being more of a facilitator and a coach of learning. And, I just think that's wonderful, meeting your kids where they are. So I am really interested to hear a little bit about Compass' work to reduce chronic absenteeism.

Liza Holland [00:13:15]:
Obviously, since COVID, it has been a huge problem that lots of people are trying to solve, and you've kind of, developed something that has been successful for you. Can you tell us a little about it?

Kristy Baird [00:13:28]:
Yeah. I'm I'm excited to share about what Compass has done and point people towards resources that we've used that can help them too. I think across the country, we've seen an increase in chronic absenteeism after COVID and looking at, like, our families and some of the conversations with students and families, COVID kinda changed people's perspective of school being mandatory and in person being like even still we have people like, oh, they're gonna be out or we're gonna go on a trip, can we do school virtually? And we're like, no, sorry, we can't do that. So I think because so many schools were virtual for so long during COVID that changed parents' perspectives of how school works, but now we're back to the traditional model of in person learning, which in my opinion is a much better model. But, after COVID, we saw an increase in our numbers around chronic absenteeism. And so not only did we see that encompass, we saw that at other schools within Memphis and of course across the country. And so we had some local funders who put together a collaborative for charters that they support and brought in a company called Attendance Works to do just kind of this cohort where we would meet quarterly. They would meet individually with us monthly, but we would meet as a cohort quarterly and share best practices and look at what people were doing.

Kristy Baird [00:14:56]:
But Attendance Works worked with each of our schools to develop an individualized plan. And say their name and give them a shout out because they have tons of free resources online that you don't have to pay for, you can access, and so anybody can access those for free. But what we did is we did a tiered system just like we tier our students academically, we tier them into tier 1, 2, and 3 with 3 being the most chronically absent, and we put in different supports for different tiers. And so an example of a tier one support might be some type of, like, you know, celebration for, you know, being present and on time. For example, one of our schools had NFL, never found late, NBA, never been absent, and they that same school would do the class that had the highest attendance for the week would get this pair of bedazzled jeans would hang outside and they were called the smarty pants. You know? And so just things like that to encourage kids to be present and on time, some external motivation. But I think the thing that was had the biggest impact was just identifying our families who were either chronically absent or nearing that line of being chronically absent. And we had individual meetings with all of those families just to talk about the difference in truancy and chronic absenteeism and the importance of their child being at school every day.

Kristy Baird [00:16:27]:
And so a lot of families and schools too were looking at like, oh, well, these students aren't truant. They're absent because they're sick or they're absent because of this or because of that. And so because they were excused absences, they didn't have a sense of urgency about them. But when we started, like, pushing it and making it an urgent need to be at school and be at school on time, we saw the school leaders and the families start to react to that. And so explaining to families just because you have an excuse to be absent doesn't mean you should be absent. And what was an excusable absence and what wasn't an excusable absence. I know, like, you know, when my children were in school, they knew if I don't have a fever and I'm not throwing up, I'm going to school. You know, they would say our our mom's a teacher, we have to be here, you know, But just meeting with families and telling them the importance of being at school and present immediately gave us a bump in attendance.

Kristy Baird [00:17:29]:
And then we worked with families as they started to get closer to that that line of being chronically absent. We would have meetings, we would call them in, like what is the reason that you're not getting to school? Is it a transportation issue? Is it a housing issue? If it was an issue that we could help with, then we would step in and help. But I mean, most of our families and I would say families across the country want the best for their child. And so when they realize that the absences are having a negative effect on their child academically, they work to get them there more regularly.

Liza Holland [00:18:05]:
Tell me a little bit about what you did with the high school age folks. And I I know that, you know, there's been a lot of research done as far as the anxiety level around school and that sort of a thing. And so in some cases, it's it's not the parents not wanting to get the child there. They're doing everything in their, everything that they can to be able to get the child there, but you've got a child who's almost, you know, paralyzed with it or whatever. That's just an example of one issue that I knew. Were you able to leverage any kind of mental health resources to be able to help families in those types of situations?

Kristy Baird [00:18:46]:
Yeah, Liza. I'm so glad you brought this up because, I was recently on a panel that one of our funders had to speak about the work. And I would say for Compass, that was one of our biggest challenges was mental health. Another one of the local schools, they named homelessness as like in transportation is their biggest challenge. But for Compass, ours was around mental health, especially with our high schoolers because at that age, it's hard to make a high schooler do something that they don't wanna do. And if a parent has to go to work, there comes a time where you have to stop fighting with your child and go to work. And high schoolers are old enough to stay by themselves. And so so, yes, high schoolers were, I would say the biggest challenge, especially those who had anxiety or reasons that they did not wanna come to school.

Kristy Baird [00:19:39]:
So one of the things that we did is, you know, we have counselors at all 6 of our schools. We hired with our ESSER funds a social emotional learning coordinator to do, like, some small groups and things like that, which we found positive. But even beyond that, we've contracted last year and again this year with an outside agency to provide mental health services. And so if we have a child who is struggling we have 5 small groups that run right now, but they our outside partner who is a licensed clinical social worker and a licensed counselor, there's 2 of them. They come in and they run small groups and then they do individual counseling sessions as well. And, of course, we get parent permission to do that, but that's been helpful. And, I mean, as adults, we know the value of going to therapy and having either a therapist that we rely on or just, like, a close friend or something like that. And so if that's important for us to have access to, I believe that's important for our students to have access to.

Kristy Baird [00:20:43]:
So we made sure that we do that. And, I mean, it is it is just so real because we had one student a couple years ago and sweet as she could be, but just getting her in the building took, like, moving mountains. And she had a positive relationship with our ops manager, so we worked it out with her parent that our ops manager could pick her up every day. And, like, if she got to school every day, then, like, miss Stella brought her lunch one day, and then Stella was having trouble getting her to school. And Stella was like, can you do a home visit with me? So we did a home visit. And I'm like, you know, why, you know, why are you not coming to school? And she was like, well, I failed a math test, and they're not gonna let me make it up. And I'm like, I was like, you can make it up, but she was like, they're not gonna let me make it up. And I was like, do you know what my job is? And she said, yes.

Kristy Baird [00:21:35]:
I said, what is my job? She said, you're the boss of the principals. I said, so if I tell and that's so funny because in her mind, that's my job. And so I was like, if so if I tell your principal to tell your math teacher to let you make up the test, do you think that you can make it up? Yes. I was like, okay. So if I guarantee you can make that math test up, will you come back to school tomorrow? Yes, and I said, okay. But, you know, it was just like like there were so many barriers to getting her to school, and then we would have never guessed it was a math test she failed. And so just like those connections and relationships with students and with families and being able to get to the root cause of a problem is important. And one of the things that we have said at Compass since the very beginning is a phrase, connection before content.

Kristy Baird [00:22:26]:
And so all of our mornings start with a morning meeting or an advisory meeting where our teachers are building relationships with students and helping students build relationship to other students. And so that's one of our first lines of defense against absenteeism is making students feel at home and valued and a part of that classroom community. And so, you know, we work to do that, but there are always students who don't feel that. And so then you have to work individually to get to, like, their why or their root cause and then try to to attack it from there.

Liza Holland [00:23:03]:
That's just lovely. And kudos to you for being willing to go and do a home visit and really ask the right questions. Because kids at that age, they they get things twisted around in their head to where it is a an absolute life ending sort of seriousness that that you failed a test. And so being able to to offer that to that student, that's just a little magical. Because I do think, especially in the populations that you deal with, kids have to be able to somehow deal with all of the obstacles that they are facing in their lives in order to be open to learning. You know, if they're in a defensive posture, they're not gonna be as open to learning and being able to really be curious and explore and all those kinds of things. And so you just solve that problem at least for that day.

Kristy Baird [00:23:54]:
And I'll say that's another thing about I love about our model with the service learning because if you I mean, for adults, but at children too, there is value and you develop an intrinsic pride in giving back to others and helping. So not only do kids get to experience multiple different agencies across our communities and see many different careers and professions that they might be drawn to go into, but they develop at an early age just the joy that you feel of doing something for others. And so I think that that's important for them to experience that. I know when I first started working in Catholic schools, it was an inner city school, and we were about 90% free and reduced lunch rate, And I was a 3rd grade teacher, and I was not raised Catholic and I had not experienced Catholic education. But one of the things I saw in some of the more affluent Catholic schools where they would do a lot of service projects, but in our particular Catholic school, we were the service project, and so I kinda I had some strong feelings about that. And I'm like, it's wonderful that more affluent schools wanna give to kids in my class and send, you know, supplies and things like that. But my students in my class have just as much power to give back to others. And so, like, even that 1st year, we partnered with like a local nursing home and we did food drives and we did different things.

Kristy Baird [00:25:32]:
And so it was really fun to watch them go from other people should help me to I can help other people.

Liza Holland [00:25:42]:
That really helps them not have a victim mentality. You know? I mean, I just think that's very empowering that no matter what you're going through in life, you can do something. You have the power to do something to make somebody else's life just a little bit better, and that makes yourself better. That's just lovely. That's just lovely. So you mentioned a couple of partners. Do the students have any particular favorites that they come back to you with great stories about?

Kristy Baird [00:26:09]:
Yes. They have. So our partners pretty much fall into 4 groups. We have we look at needs of people in the community, and so we look at like, we have several partners that are elder care agencies, like nursing homes or assisted living that help with food and security. The Mid South Food Bank is 1. And, like, we work with Dorothy Day House and Room at the Inn that provides shelter for, people who don't have a house of their own. We partner with environmental agencies to look at, like, nature conservation, city beautification. We have several, like, art agencies, museums that we partner with and then several agencies that serve animals, and so those are always the most exciting ones that they wanna go to.

Kristy Baird [00:26:57]:
We partner with the Memphis Zoo, we partner with the Humane Society. So those are very popular, but I would say the Mid South Food Bank, I think, has been one of the ones that has helped open our students' eyes, and they they partner with our 6th through 8th graders. And so not only do we do different food drives with them, but we also do a program called Period Power that provides feminine products to women and one that provides diapers and formula to to mothers for infants. But our students go through this the full service learning cycle, and so part of that is reflection and demonstration. And so they reflect and they write about and they speak about how this project has affected them. And I remember this was during COVID, and so we were doing a lot of mobile food drives. And one of our students in particular commented on some of the nice vehicles that came through the food line. And her comment was it made me realize anyone can face food insecurity or food scarcity.

Kristy Baird [00:28:12]:
Even someone that we think is well off can go through trouble or go through periods where they need help. And so that was just really it started, like, we used that to start a group conversation on that, but just the fact that, yes, food insecurity hits people at all stages of life and in all places of life.

Liza Holland [00:28:36]:
That's really powerful. What a great story. And that's true, you never know what someone else is going through, that's for sure.

Kristy Baird [00:28:43]:
They were also amazed at how long the lines were. Yeah. Because people would come, you know, 2 hours ahead of time to get in line. And so they were just amazed at how much food insecurity there was in Memphis.

Liza Holland [00:28:58]:
Wow. Wow. So I am personally just really excited to hear about your school system and how you're thriving as a charter school. But I know that, you know, success in that area has been very mixed across the country. Tell me about the challenges that you have faced in in being a charter type of a school and maybe what some of the benefits that you see of the the charter type of a model.

Kristy Baird [00:29:27]:
Yeah. So I have taught, when I first started teaching, I taught in the traditional public schools, then it was Memphis City Schools. It's now Shelby County Schools, but I taught in Memphis City Schools. I taught in a a private special ed school for about 5 years. I taught in Catholic schools for about 20 years, and this is my 6th year in charter. And so I kinda have have been in the different systems. And so Compass opened in the 19 20 school year, so COVID hit spring break of our 1st year, so that added some layers of challenges in. But, yeah, I mean, I've I've found I think any work in education has both its rewards and its challenges, and so charter school is no different, both the rewards and the challenges.

Kristy Baird [00:30:19]:
Compass' story is a little unique in the way we started. The schools that I serve as Compass were once Catholic schools. So within the diocese of Memphis, there were a collection of inner city Catholic schools called Jubilee Schools, also known as the Miracle of in Memphis because our former bishop, J Terry Stibb, started looked in Memphis, and we had a lot of schools who'd that had closed over the years, and so he started reopening these inner city Catholic schools. And when bishop Stobb retired, a new bishop came in who had a different vision for Catholic education, and bishop Holly announced that he was gonna close all of the Jubilee Schools plus one more, which was Saint Michael. And so I had worked started in the Catholic diocese at one of the the Jubilee Schools, Saint John, and worked up. I was teacher, vice principal, principal, assistant superintendent, superintendent, and so I'd worked with those schools for a while and was close to the families and the students in those schools. And so the thought of those schools just ending and our students not having a place to go was heartbreaking, and so we were to close Jubilee but open something for our students to go to. And so simultaneously, that last year of Jubilee, we were also prepping to open Compass, and so I'm very proud of the fact that Jubilee closed June 30th.

Kristy Baird [00:31:57]:
Compass opened July 1st, so none of our kids were displaced, not even for a single day, and so we opened 6 Compass Schools. And so going from Catholic Schools to Charter Schools was definitely a challenge. I'd never worked in Charter Schools. I had to learn a whole lot about Charter Schools and just, you know, so so much bureaucracy around public schools in general, but also Catholics I mean, charter schools because you're hold to even higher standards than the local public schools because you have to prove and prove that you deserve the autonomy to run your own own school system and network, but it has been a beautiful experience. I am a religious person and so I definitely saw the hand of God and and Compass coming to fruition, And it's been really good for our students because I spoke earlier about how many MLL students we have, how many multi language learners we had. And when we were Catholic schools, we didn't have the supports for MLL students or special ed students. I mean, we did what we could to meet their needs, but we didn't have the extra staff and extra support and the extra professional development. So that's been really wonderful to have those resources and be able to serve our students so well.

Kristy Baird [00:33:17]:
As a matter of fact, there was an article written, I think about 2 years ago about Compass should be a model for the state and how to serve ML students. And so there was just a lot of pride around people seeing what we were doing and seeing the fruits of our labors and pride that we can do that for our students.

Liza Holland [00:33:37]:
That's marvelous. So does your model and this is just me being curious because right now we don't have charter schools in Kentucky. Are you able to utilize state funding and then also fundraise for additional supports and that sort of stuff in your model?

Kristy Baird [00:33:54]:
Yes, we are. And so

Kristy Baird [00:33:56]:
We we get both funds, public funds that are funneled to us through the Shelby County Schools here. But it it also takes fundraising on top of that to be able to do all that we do.

Liza Holland [00:34:09]:
We don't invest enough in education.

Kristy Baird [00:34:12]:
No. We don't.

Liza Holland [00:34:14]:
So tell me, what out of all of this and your experiences, because you come to this with multiple different perspectives, having worked in in lots of different systems and models and that sort of a thing. What would you like for decision makers to know? And you can define decision makers however you want to. It can be legislators, could be administrators, whatever you'd like.

Kristy Baird [00:34:36]:
Yeah. I would say the main thing is that schools cannot do it all. I think schools are expected to do it all, but we can't. And so we talked earlier, Liza, about the importance of mental health, but there are so many factors that influence students when they come to school. I mean, you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You know, like basic needs need to be met, like if kids come to school hungry, if they come to school, you know, with anxiety, if they had a fight with their sister in the car that morning, all these things affect our students. I mean, they're just mini humans is what they are. And, you know, we as adults, we are disrupted when we haven't eaten breakfast and when we've had a fight with our spouse or, you know, and we're we're adults that have, you know, fully developed frontal lobes, and, you know, so if we can give ourselves grace, we need to give students grace too about how they show up for school, but not to get get sidetracked.

Kristy Baird [00:35:40]:
But when I say we can't do it all, I think there's so much pressure on schools to perform academically. When I go back to, like, our very first question and conversation around developing the whole child. And so there are so many facets of our students that we can't just expect to put students in the seat at school, do the same thing for every student, and they all turn out with, you know, a 28 on the ACT, you know, and so every child is unique, every child you have to get to know every child, you have to know their background, you have to know what their needs are, but there are things that the school alone cannot do, and I think that goes back to your mental health, your physical health, your nutritional health, just all these different things. And so if it continues that schools are expected to do it all, they need more support and more services. You know, just like you said earlier, like, there's not enough money in education. You know? And so I guess, like, to summarize my answer, it would be that schools can't do it all. And if you want schools to do it all, you need to equip us better.

Liza Holland [00:36:58]:
Excellent. Excellent advice. Christy, thank you so much for being with us on Education Perspectives. This has been a wide ranging and really neat conversation. Thank you so much for taking your time.

Kristy Baird [00:37:09]:
Yeah. Thanks, Liza, for having me. I was excited to join you today.

Liza Holland [00:37:14]:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Education Perspectives. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page. Let us know which Education Perspectives you would like to share your thoughts on our Facebook page.