Lawrence Ellis, Spiritual Teacher and Spiritual Activist
Stupski Foundation -- Paterson Public Schools Project in New Jersey
Laura Moran, Chief Services Officer, Oakland Unified School District (former Director of Organizational Development, The Stupski Foundation) has this to share about Lawrence's work with Paterson Public Schools and community:
"Lawrence is top-tier in so many regards. An example from our work at the Stupski Foundation is illustrative. I assigned Lawrence to be the consulting lead on one of our most challenging of about twenty large, urban school districts throughout the US: Paterson Public Schools in Paterson, NJ.
Paterson is a fairly poor community resting on a local economy that tanked after the demise of its manufacturing base. Its population is comprised of a mix of African American, Bengali, Latino, Middle Eastern and Turkish populations. Its school district was extremely low-performing – so much so that it had been in state take-over for eleven years when Lawrence arrived.
One of the Foundation’s main approaches involved having our school districts adopt rigorous organizational disciplines and business practices, while also embracing the best research-based pedagogical practices. In most of our districts, all of these strands of educational reform got aligned and coordinated through a comprehensive strategic planning process.
As consulting lead, Lawrence was in charge of coordinating the efforts of ten Stupski professionals and the District administration to produce the strategic plan. In this capacity, he advocated for a highly participatory community planning process to generate greater community involvement in and ownership of educational outcomes.
His approach involved community participation in ways far greater than the Foundation had seen in any of its other districts. In a meeting that became legendary in the culture of the Foundation, Lawrence had to convince his team of the value of his approach over the more District-centralized, quicker approaches that we typically used. His main opposition was the overall team leader, a nationally renowned former superintendent who, himself, had led his once low-performing, urban school district to outstanding academic achievement. The two forceful personalities went to the mat, and Lawrence managed to convince the overall team leader and the rest of the team to adopt his more involved approach.
Over the course of a year he led them, and seventy people on five task forces representing the District and the community (including several local officials and prominent civic leaders), through a highly engaged process of shared District-community ownership. In the second year he worked directly with the District’s newly formed Community Liaison Office to deepen community ownership, since research shows that educational reforms are best sustained with high degrees of community involvement.
The overall engagement/intervention was a huge success. Three to four years later, the District realized significant gains in educational outcomes. Many of the more innovative community processes that Lawrence used were adopted as part of the larger community culture in places such as meetings in housing projects, gatherings in churches and the like.
Finally, I maintain contact with a few key District Administration members. I can assure you that to this day, Lawrence remains beloved by dozens of people throughout the community and District who admire the consummate skill, educational reform advocacy, and caring and compassion that he consistently brought to reforming their schools.
As Paterson Public Schools consulting lead, Lawrence constantly interacted with elected and appointed local and state officials – from superintendents and State Department of Education officers, to Board of Education representatives and grassroots community leaders.
One story best illustrates the depth of his influence on leadership throughout the entire city. A few months into the strategic planning process, in a meeting of the seventy community and District members comprising the five task forces, the overall team lead announced that the Foundation was considering withdrawing from the District. The local politics were often characterized by discord and drama.
In particular, the recently-elected head of the Board of Education and key members of the larger community were often in direct and vocal opposition to key members of the Administration, including the Superintendent (who later resigned amidst corruption charges.) The Foundation was interested in investing its limited resources in school districts where conditions would allow for at least the possibility of success. The disintegrating political climate in Paterson made us question whether success could be possible.
A serious dialogue ensued after the team lead announced the Foundation’s skepticism. At the start of this dialogue, the head of the local interfaith council, who was on a task force, excused himself momentarily. Unbeknownst to anyone, he made a phone call to his Assistant, whom he asked to contact several key community leaders.
Within thirty minutes, eighteen prominent leaders including the Mayor, City Councilwoman, representatives from prominent businesses and other civic leaders arrived at the meeting. Over the course of the next ninety minutes, they made speeches about the importance of the educational reform work that we were leading, and made commitments of time and resources to ensure us that they would do whatever was necessary to improve the political climate and whatever else was necessary for the Foundation to remain.
Based on this unparalleled display of civic commitment, the overall team lead called the Founder and the E.D. of the Foundation, and recommended that we adopt Paterson as a multi-year project, which recommendation they approved. In subsequent days, the overall team lead made it clear throughout the Foundation that he was convinced that this unprecedented display of civic commitment would not have come about had it not been for the highly involved strategic planning process that Lawrence had designed and led."