Rob Bisceglie: Healthier kids and healthier partnerships with families

Daniel: One thing that I know you are constantly wanting to build better, would be family school partnerships. Today my guest is Rob Bisceglie and he is great at that. He has a track record of forming incredible partnerships between schools and families. We start off with a story of how he got a tax referendum, first one that was introduced in 25 years to pass on the first go. The reason it worked is because of that family school partnership. If you're interested in that topic, keep listening. I think there's also a lot of value to listen to this show too, because at the core of student achievement and really opening doors, right to the potential of these young people's lives is having healthy kids at the core. The kids need to be healthy. Rob's, non-profit Action For Healthy Kids is all about that.

Daniel: I hope you hear a bit about what he does and you reach out to his organization as well to partner with him in your school. The last thing too, we really dig deeply into why it's important to surround yourself with excellence with other leaders that can push you and help you be better. Hey, it's Daniel and welcome to theBetter Leaders, Better Schools Podcast, a show for Ruckus Makers, those out of the box leaders making change happen in education. Quick shout out to my puppy, Alba, who did not bark. She slept like a little babe during this whole podcast. So that was super cool. We'll be right back after these messages from our show sponsors

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Daniel: Hey there, Ruckus Maker today, I am joined by Rob Bisceglie, who is a nonprofit CEO who is first and foremost, a husband and father of three. Rob cares deeply about promoting justice and equitable opportunities for all kids to be able to fulfill their dreams. After earning his grad degree he focused on US human rights foreign policy. Rob, worked on US Agency for International Development Programs and at other nonprofits that shaped his belief that health is a human right. Rob believes that we have under-invested in kids' health and wellbeing, and that healthy kids make a better world. Under his leadership as CEO of Action For Healthy Kids, since 2008, the organization has grown to become the largest family and school health network of more than 150,000 volunteers and champions serving the health and wellbeing of 20 million children in 55,000 schools nationwide. Rob, welcome to the show. Absolutely. So, Rob is a board president. You successfully passed a tax referendem on the first go. From what I understand, this was the first tax referendeum in 25 years in the Chicago suburbs. A key component of that success was the family school partnership which was formed. Ruckus Makers that listen are always wanting to build better partnerships. Tell us a bit of that story and from your view, what goes into a successful family school partnership?

Rob: Yeah. Great. Thanks for asking. I really appreciate it. I've been serving on my school board for eight years. I was president, and I'm no longer president right now. As a school board member I was president, uh, during that referendum that you just mentioned which was the first time in 25 years. We were facing a couple of different issues in our school district. The first one is an obvious one, financial challenges. We had about a million dollar structural deficit and just to put it into perspective, it was in the Northwestern suburbs of Chicago. Our little district is just a couple of schools. It's a tiny little district, like a lot of the districts in the suburbs of Chicago. A million dollar structural deficit is a big deal. When we found it, we knew that we needed to take action.

Rob: We didn't know exactly what we needed to do. The second challenge we were facing was that our facilities, our curriculum, the way we're working with our kids, and our entire approach had began to fall a little bit. We had a group of us who were on the board. We knew that we needed to do something and although tax referendendum hadn't been conducted in our community for a long time, we decided to give it a go. Making a decision at the board meeting, which was a big decision for us because it's a risky proposition. If you don't get it the first time it oftentimes becomes harder the second. We knew that it was a big decision for our little district. There were even talk at that time of a state takeover of our district.

Rob: It was becoming pretty serious for us that, that's the path we were on. It was not a good one for our community so we decided to go for it. I remember the board meeting, but more vivid in my mind is the first time I got together. It happened to be in my living room with that group. It wasn't with board members who can set all kinds of restrictions in terms of what board members could do together. Once the tax referend propositions passed like that. I remember getting together with a group of volunteers, parents, and caregivers, and other community members in my living room and started to talk about how we were going to go about engaging our community, to make sure that this proposition this tax referend passed. We started to get to work and created what I'll call a true partnership between the administration of our district and the community members of our district, including parents and others.

Rob: Long story short, eventually passed that tax referendeum on our first try and it passed pretty easily and ours is not a community that passes these kinds of things too readily. It was a big accomplishment and I really remember things like walking from door to door with my kids and my wife and my fellow community members knocking on doors. We didn't go just the parents' houses, of course, because you need the whole community to get behind an effort like that. I remember going out with my kids. It was one of those things. I'll never forget how people ever forget either. It's something that I wish more people could experience. I remember walking from door to door with my kids along with other community members and talking to people about the importance of education in our community and how it's a cornerstone of a little community like ours in the Northwestern suburbs of Chicago.

Rob: It was truly a wonderful experience. The final thing I'll say about that experience, which is, uh, it says in blazing that in my mind is that I remember two and a half years later when we had completely finished or when we finished the complete and total rehabilitation of both of our school buildings from top to bottom, including all of the systems and all of the classrooms, painting every single wall, new flooring. They were like new buildings and the satisfaction by me, but I'm just a little part of the equation, but by the entire community who could now really, again, be proud of what we accomplished and really investing in our kids' future, it was, it was something,

Daniel: Yeah, I appreciate that story. It started in the living room there, and then you walk door to door with the kids, knocking on doors, having important discussions about, education being the cornerstone of the community. You brought up a term called a true partnership, and I'm curious if there's anything else to unpack there, at least as a listener? During this conversation, I'm hearing the personal touch. I'm feeling the connection in the warmth of the living room or the fact that you're bringing your kids along with you and that kind of thing. Is there anything that I'm missing when it comes to true partnerships or anything else you want to add?

Rob: Yeah, I think I'll add a couple of things. Some of this will relate, especially to my organization now, we have a parent program and for many years we have been working to engage parents. When I say parents, by the way, I mean, parents and caregivers as shorthand for those people who care for kids. We recently surveyed them and a lot of interesting points came out that I think are relevant to this time station. Number one, when you talk to parents, 92% of the people that we survey and it's other caregivers say that kids are facing more challenges than they have in the last 10 years. The level of concern and awareness by parents and other caregivers is off the charts. 80% of parents that we surveyed say, they're interested in getting input. In our case then is like the health and wellbeing. 51%, so more than half of those parents reported that they don't feel included and their school community and 72% decided against raising concerns when they had that in their school community. I just thought those nubers are remarkable. The reason I'm bringing it up is from my perspective, that true partnership that we were mentioning a moment ago is all about engagement and really trying to listen and hear the other side. If you don't have a group of parents and we worked with, and for all the kids for all these years, 13, I've been, I've been with the organization for 13 years and having served on my school board for eight years. One of the things that has become really obvious to me is that parents care and they sometimes don't know how to get engaged. There's that small group of parents who, , are really vocal and they'll be there at every step.

Rob: A lot of parents just don't know how to engage in the communities and they don't think it's their place to jump in and "quote unquote" tell the school or the school district or the leaders what they think or what to do. It's a big barrier for us. The willingness of the sole stakeholders to engage parents and then parents also come to understand how schools work, how can you be a positive and constructive, a member of the community and help make progress. It's a major issue for us.

Daniel: The key points. I want to highlight that for the Ruckus Maker listening, we can't assume, it's a false, it's a negative assumption to make, it's incorrect, I guess, is what I should say to believe that parents don't want to engage. What you're saying, Rob, which I think is the correct view is, they just need to be shown how to partner with the school, what works. And I think it's really easy to put the blame on somebody else instead of we're really bad at honest self-reporting. If you have low parent engagement, what are you doing? That's wrong, right. How are you going above and beyond as a school leader to connect with families and to communicate clearly and consistently, and until the time that your board saying it, here's how to help. Here's how to help and doing the hard work to understand like Rob's appearance and over here is Miriam and so on and so forth. What are their talents and gifts and how can I tap into that to enrich the school environment? I appreciate us digging in a bit to this discussion around partnership. I want to move though, to a bit of what you do work-wise and you call yourself a holistic health organization. What does that mean?

Rob: Yeah. I'll tell you a little bit about the origins of Action For Healthy Kids. Our organization started about 19 years ago and it was started by the former surgeon general of the United States. His name is Dr. David Satcher. If you don't know Dr. Satcher or you haven't seen him talk and you want to be inspired, I would say, grab his book or check him out. He is just one of my heroes, honestly and he started, he was in both the Bush and Clinton administrations. He's literally the surgeon general who released the report calling obesity an epidemic in our country for the first time and it was a big deal back in that day. As it sounds 20 years ago. When he left office, he's a talk is cheap kind of person, he decided that something really needed to be done about it. Again, long story short, Action For Healthy Kids was created with a group of other people actually brought the kids to take that topic and to address this issue that everyone knew. It was really becoming an important one for our country and put it in on the front burner.

Rob: For many years we were an organization that was really about fighting childhood obesity about the physical health of kids, proper nutrition and nutrition, education, and physical education and physical activity outside of school time. All of those things that we know from the physical health of kids are really important, but several years ago, it started to become much more obvious that our definition of health physical wellbeing was not going to be submission and so we transitioned to what you just mentioned as a holistic health organization really about a whole child, making sure that we counsel the whole child. The model that is underpinning, everything that we do and ask from the kids is how the whole school, whole community, whole child model. If folks don't know about it, it was created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in conjunction with ASCD. I'm sure your audience knows who ASCD is a big organization in school administrator world. It is just what we think is like a bedrock for kids in terms of how they can be healthy, safe, challenged, supported, and engaged. We've really adapted, including mental health issues, like social, emotional health and passive youth decision-making. We are now looking at the whole child rather than just their physical health, but their health and body.

Daniel: Thank you. Dr. Satcher said, "That a talk is cheap. Action is where everything is" and that's something Ruckus Makers that listen believe in too. They are definitely leaders who want to take action quickly and put the steps in for success. Let's talk about some concrete things that you believe schools can do to build healthier kids.

Rob: Yeah, that's great. This is my passion. This is what we do at Action For Healthy Kids. I just mentioned the WSCC model, the whole school, whole community, whole child. Now, first and foremost, become familiar with that. Your community should be looking at this model because it is truly important, but there are other things that can be done. What I really love about our work, Danny, it's not a money issue necessarily. Yeah, everything takes some money, but I don't see the barriers per se, being a financial resources. Things like forming a school health team at your school that includes parents and families and caregivers. One thing is really important about doing that is make sure it is not just the usual suspects. I mentioned a couple of moments ago, those parents who seem to be involved in everything, but what about the parents who don't get involved in every activity?

Rob: Those are the ones you really want to hear from. What that school health team can do is a group of people who can help organize and execute on a school health plan. We had actually found and have a free tool on our website if you want to check it out. We work with the Centers For Disease Control, managing partners and we've incorporated into our program design what's called the school health index. It's a self assessment tool. What you can do is you take it yourself. You fill out this index, it's a series of questions about what you're doing right now, what your policies are, all different kinds of school health issues and what happens is you'll get a report that tells you where you have strengths and where are there areas where you can improve upon your school health practices.

Rob: You can create an action plan around that report and here are the things that you are doing well. We really want to optimize here the things that we're not there on and we need to take some additional steps in order to get to there. The final thing I'll say again, a few concrete steps. I think it's really important especially as a school board member for these years is to make sure that your district's policies also reflect the healthy practices that you're trying to encourage in your schools because your policy is where sustainability lies. You can move from principal to principal, unfortunately from my perspective, it happens too often, but every few years or so when your average school these days, which is a shame, but just part of our reality. Teachers can move around and parents and kids can change all the time, but your policies are what stand the test of time. If you embed in your policies, really good practices around the health of the kids then you can move your whole community and all the kids and future generations, the biggest service over many years to come.

Daniel: Great. You mentioned a number of resources there, so I'll work with you and your team and Ruckus Maker, we'll link them up for you in the show notes so that you can check that out. You can also obviously go to the Action For Healthy Kids and use the very helpful, search search box there and find everything you're looking for as well. Rob, I want to go back to Dr. Satcher. You mentioned how the former surgeon general has started Action For Healthy Kids, and I know that you've interviewed them before and you learned that he was the first in his family to graduate, not from college, not from high school, but from grade school. I'd love to link up the podcast interview for a Ruckus Makers listening. I want to point that piece out because that's quite an achievement to be the first to graduate from grade school.

Daniel: How often do we look at kids from a certain type of family that maybe hasn't experienced the scholarly success that some of us may be used to, and we count that family and that kid out and absolutely think that maybe their potential is not there. Don't count out those students obviously. I'd love to hear from you real quick before we take a break for a sponsor slide, is what did you, what did Dr. Satcher teach you in terms of leadership? What are some lessons that would be a gift to the Ruckus Maker listening?

Rob: Yeah, Dr Satcher, like I said, he's just wonderful. My personal heroes. He wrote a book recently where he talks about a lot of these things. It's quite interesting to check out. He's a board member of Meritus actions about the kids now so he's still on our board of directors. He is an active board in every meeting for a number of years when I started Action Fopr Healthy Kids. One of the things that became really obvious and you'll hear it from Dr. Satcher too, if you listen to him for a little while, is that leadership is a team sport. He says it and his actions, he proves it. Now, no one person can make the kinds of societal change happen that we need to make happen. You can't do it in your own organization.

Rob: You can't do it in your own school or in your own district yourself. One person is not going to make change and so the idea of really collaborating with others as a group of leaders, that's where real change happens. Dr. Satcher, that's one of the things that will always get that from me with Dr. Satcher. Second thing, really applicable in these times is how unpredictable life is. We're going through it these days the pandemic and systemic race racism, and all of these events that we've been experiencing over the last couple of years are really coming to a head and everyone now knows it. Planning as a leader for the unpredictable and being as ready as you possibly can be now, planetary urbanization, for example, fossil free plan for yourself. How do you react when the tough things come along? I will share another thing I learned from Dr Satcher is actually again, really being ready, preparing yourself.

Daniel: Yeah, brilliant stuff. I love that quote, that "leadership is a team sport" and that's so important. We'll talk about this after the break, why we need to fight isolation as leaders. The number one enemy of excellence is isolation. Rob, I'm loving this conversation. We're going to pause here just for a second for a message from our sponsors. When we get back, let's talk about, executive leadership and why it's important to do it in a group setting.

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Daniel: Ruckus Maker, I want to tell you about a remote blended learning tool. Your school needs right now, SMART Learning Suite. Online as a teacher, you can create store and deliver lessons from anywhere, no smart board required, and your students can access and engage with your content from any web browser on any device, no matter what your classroom looks like right now, SMART learning suite online offers many options for flexible learning, engaging students via collaborative workspaces in game based activities, smart learning suite on nine integrates with tools like Google classroom and Microsoft teams making it an easy to use way to create engaging content and connect with students. Learn more and get started at smarttech.com/learningsuite. That's smarttech.com/learningsuite. Today's show is brought to you by Organized Binder. Organized Binder develops the skills and habits all students need for success. During these uncertain times of distance learning and hybrid education settings, organized binder, equips educators with a resource to provide stable and consistent learning routines so that all students have an opportunity to succeed, whether at home or in the classroom. Learn more at organizedbinder.com. Alright, and we're back with Rob Bisceglie, the CEO of Action For Healthy Kids. We just ended on an idea that leadership in isolation is the number one enemy of excellence. The antidote is to lead with a community. Rob, I know you've been a part of an executive leadership group called Vistage for a number of years. Can you tell us a bit about that experience?

Rob: I just love it, actually. I think there's a little bit of a backstory to it too, if you'd like on my board of directors. I have been with Action For Healthy Kids for eight or nine, maybe even getting close to 10 years at the time. I was perfectly happy. I am perfectly happy here. I love this work. It's my passion. My board of directors came to me and said, "Hey, Rob, we know we need to keep you engaged as our CEOs, our leader of our organization. What can we do for you in order to make sure that you stay engaged with this work and we want you to be in for the long haul?" I took a couple of months to say, "okay, I gotta think about it. This is an opportunity."

Rob: We don't have endless resources and of course, like most nonprofit organizations, but, uh, they were giving me an opportunity. I took a step back, I guess I could have asked for almost anything, but what I determined, I really wanted, at times being a CEO of a nonprofit or maybe any organization or company that as far as I can tell is, can be an isolating experience. There are things you can and can't talk about with other people in your organization and those kinds of things. I went back to them, but I was determined after I did my own reflecting is what I really wanted to have was a group of peers who I could stand in front of and talk to about issues that matter to me personally, to my organization and then also professionally.

Rob: I found Vistage. I'm the only non-profit a CEO in my group. It's all for profit CEO. So lots of different companies. I think that's an interesting thing too. As you may imagine, a good network of nonprofit folks. I love the nonprofit side. That's my excitement. These are my people. I love it. I love them. I have a good network of them but , what I really found that this group is a group of people who aren't in my normal, my usual network, as it so happened, it's nonprofits and for-profits, they experience a lot of the same issues. In fact, almost all the same issues. There's just a couple of differences. Really. One of the thing I've discovered over the years of learning with this group, but it's been life changing from a professional standpoint.

Rob: I mentioned before, I used to kind of feel isolated. I've now realized that it's a legitimate feeling, but I'm not alone anymore. Assigning a group of people who can really be honest and really care about you care about your, does he come to know me cause I'm in it for years now. We meet once a month, all day for that day and we come to our meetings with issues to process and it's been a cathartic experience. I can't recommend it highly enough for anyone who is looking to be a leader and nonprofit world and the school world education sector at anything. If you're looking to be a leader and leaders can be any a CEO and to be a leader, you can be in both, I think you need to find your peer group that it can really be like a sounding board.

Daniel: Partly why I bring that up is obviously I facilitate Mastermind for school leaders and the interesting thing that they say a lot of what you said, and what's interesting about our community, literally leaders from around the world. Sophia. Sophia, if you're listening, hola, because she's from Argentina and I love you. She said, when I joined the group, I realized what I experienced here in Argentina is the same as these guys in the United States, in Canada, in various countries that are represented and that just normalized it for her. Like you said, you used the word cathartic. There is value in connecting and being a nonprofit leader, surrounded by for-profit leaders is interesting and that's why in our Mastermind, we don't read any books from education, not one so that we can be exposed to ideas that are outside our industry to hopefully bring it in and make it better. I love that you've had such a great experience within that. Highly encouraged Ruckus Maker, listening to check out what we're doing and apply if it makes sense, but more about you and your development, Rob, can you share maybe a couple of ways that you think your leadership has actually changed and maybe improved as a result of surrounding yourself in that type of community?

Rob: Yeah, it's changed. It has changed me in a number of ways. It's not about a couple of them here because I need on for awhile because I changed quite a bit over the last handful of years. I've been in the nonprofit space for about 25 years now. Now because of this experience, I rely on other people a lot more than I used to both internally inside my organization and externally outside of my organization. It really has changed the way I view things. I used to, I guess I used to think too much while I did not all the time, but too often that I needed to do so many things myself, whenever issues would come up. I probably too often, knee jerked that kind of reaction where I've got to get this done or a nonprofit especially a medium sized one, like Action For Healthy Kxxids, especially earlier on, they didn't have the research that we did today.

Rob: It's becomes your passion and just think you have to do it. You got to keep going, keep going, keep going and do it all yourself. I realize that really what my work is in my professional life is really around helping others around me succeeding .It's less about me. I like to think anyway, hope that's the case and more about the people around me and their success clearly becomes my success and our collective success as an organization. I think that's really important. The other thing I mentioned is I really believe I have become more focused and I think that's because I don't sweat the little things as much as I used to. When looking in hindsight, looking back at the least minute details that in grand scheme were pretty unimportant.

Rob: When you sit in a room of leaders some of them who are running businesses way bigger than my nonprofit organization. Actually Healthy Kids, It's quite a complex organization. They're running really kind of complex businesses too. Knowing "Oh, they're, they're experiencing the same things that I'm experiencing, without their resources," I guess it puts things in perspective. Instead of sweating the little things you can kind of let them go and focused on the stuff that really matters.

Daniel: It's so good. I wrote recently a blog posts about what it takes to be a great leader. One of my points is getting the right stuff done. I think we can get so swept up in the minutia and these little details that when you zoom out, it's like, who cares? Nobody cares about this little thing and you obsessing over. It really slows down the progress of the entire organization. Get the right stuff done, have better focus. I Thank you for sharing that. I want to ask you a question I ask everybody about school marquees. What message, if you could put a message on all school marquees around the world for a day, what would it say on your marquee?

Rob: Not an easy one Danny, I wouldn say healthy kids make a better world. I think that's it. As we've been talking about it, it doesn't mean physically healthy, able to run and jump. Yeah. That's part of it. Able to run and jump and play and all of those things that can be a neat deal too, but also healthy in mind. When you and I have seen it, I'm one of the first, uh, volunteers of the new sort of Action of Healthy Kids. I literally was a dad. I'm a dad, but I joined Action because I have three kids now by the way, elementary school, middle school and high school. I'm really on the hot seat when it comes to these kinds things. When I first started out with Action For Healthy Kids, I took action, brought the kids information, walked into principal's office, found out that he was passionate runner and really cared about fitness and off we went to make a school health team and improve upon the health practices of our school. I can tell you, I have seen the difference it makes for kids. I'm also online. Danny, I may have mentioned to you, I'm a basketball coach and when I'm that I'm actually helping kids. I coach my daughter's and my son's basketball team for many years now, and the idea of just seeing these kids grow and develop both physically and emotionally, and that's where it's at for me.

Daniel: That's good. Well, you're building a school from the ground up, Rob. You're not limited by any resources. You're only limitations your imagination. How would you build your dream school and what would be your top three priorities?

Rob: So even before I had gone into my top three priorities, I'll repeat what I said before, it would be built upon the whole school, whole community, whole child. It's got to be holistic and that would be my assumption. It's not in my top two priorities, but it's super important. My top two priorities first and foremost is Action for Healthy Kids looked at its strategic plan for the decade of the 2020s. We sat back and really looked at child development literature, and the research is conclusive for about the last 50 years and there is no arguing with what I'm about to say. There are three foundations for lifelong health for kids. So the first part would be for me in my dream school would be to make sure that the foundations of lifelong health, which are in a proper diet and physical activity, number one, so the physical health of kids. It's a foundation. Number two, having a healthy environment where kids can grow and develop that doesn't just mean where they can have meals that's really important, where they can go out on the playground and interact with other kids and become the individual that they are meant to resolve their own problems, learn to deal with kids and adults alike, all those kinds of things for a healthy environment.

Rob: Three, have a nurturing relationship with adults. Every child needs at least one, hopefully many more, at least one nurturing relationship with an adult. I'm sure you're hoping that those relationships around kids are with their parents or a caregiver. The fact of the matter, unfortunately, sadly really, there are too many kids in this country who don't have that kind of relationship with their parents. We know that teachers are the second, most likely it's been researched. Teachers are the second most likely person to build that role. That's why they're so important. Number one priority, make sure that it's buit on the three foundations for life long health. Number two for me a little bit off my professional life, but what I seen in my work in my school district, I think schools experiential, and especially now, we're all secluded in this pandemic and kids who are learning remotely.

Rob: My kids have been lucky. We have been remote at times, but they were back full-time five days a week. My two younger ones. I feel just blessed that they're back there because they can experience things, but really making the school experiential in the sense of science projects that include experiments that are actual live in-person experiences, not virtual experiments. All of those kinds of things that really brings school to life. think it really is so important in my ideal school. The last one is really even making sure this ideal school is a community hub and really open to the community and all members of the community so that it's engaging for all parents, all caregivers. I really genuinely believe that when you create an environment like that, that's what really helps kids thrive. When the school becomes the center of the community and or a center of the community and everyone can get involved. I just loved to see it and families really engaged, but if I could create a school from scratch. Those are the concepts that I certainly believe in.

Daniel: Well, Rob, thank you so much for being a part of the better leaders, better schools podcasts. Of all the things we talked about today, what's one thing you want the Ruckus Maker listening to remember?

Rob: I guess I'm (inaudible) by ourtimes Danny, like the ones that we're living through right now, and these times require that people step up and get engaged and get involved. You can do it and some individuals and other famous quotes about these things. So some individuals that can make a huge difference in the lives of kids. I just think that's super important. The willingness to step up.

Daniel: Thanks for listening to the Better Leaders, Better Schools Podcast for Ruckus Makers. If you have a question or would like to connect my email, Daniel@betterleadersbetterschools.com or hit me up on Twitter @alienearbud. If Better Leaders, Better Schools Podcast is helping you grow as a school leader, then please help us serve more Ruckus Makers like you. You can subscribe, leave an honest rating and review or share on social media with your biggest takeaway from the episode, extra credit for tagging me on Twitter @alienearbud and using the #BLBS. Level up your leadership at betterleadersbetterschools.com and talk to you next time until then class dismissed.

Rob: ,