More than 170 schoolteachers, administrators, board members, parents and students gathered Friday in Boise to draw ideas, energy and know-how from experts and from each other.

Add similar gatherings this month in Coeur d’Alene and Sun Valley, and you have nearly 500 Idahoans looking at their schools from all angles and with a shared commitment.

It’s like networking on steroids, Roger Quarles said of the daylong sessions that kicked off Idaho Leads. Quarles, the former Caldwell schools superintendent who took a job at Boise State University last year, came up with the idea that turned into a $3.85 million grant from the Albertson Foundation.

Idaho Leads’ goals, he said, are to increase school effectiveness and student preparedness by building relationships, boosting leadership capacity and creating a shared knowledge base of best practices.

“Districts are doing good things all the time,” said Quarles, one of four co-directors for Idaho Leads at BSU’s Center for School Improvement & Policy Studies. “We want to hear from the people who are doing it — the how and why and what it looks like.”

TEAMS AND ‘JOB-ALIKE’ SESSIONS

Forty-three of Idaho’s 115 school districts and six of the state’s 43 charter schools signed up for Idaho Leads, which covers the schools’ costs of participating, including travel and hiring substitute teachers.

Each district or school was asked to form a 10-member team that includes the superintendent and at least one principal, teacher, school board trustee and student.

Most teams also include parents, said Jennifer Swindell, associate director for communication.

The teams will attend three more regional networking meetings over the 18-month life of the grant, defining priorities, celebrating successes and determining where and how improvements can be made.

In between events, Idaho Leads staff will provide resources and support, including site visits. And participants will continue to learn from each other.

A key feature of the regional meetings is “job-alike” networking: breakout sessions in which participants are grouped by their roles in education — teachers, superintendents, parents, etc.

“There’s a power in that,” Quarles said.

That peer collaboration is one of the most attractive aspects of the Idaho Leads approach, said Boise School District team member Tim Lowe, principal of Grace Jordan Elementary School.

“It’s funny, but as much as we are about education, we rarely have the opportunity, or take the opportunity, to educate each other,” he said.

DIVERSITY AND CHANGE

One feature that sets Idaho Leads apart from many school-improvement programs is that it isn’t limited to schools that are low-income or low-performing, Swindell said.

All Idaho school districts were eligible to apply, and those chosen include some of the state’s largest (Boise, Bonneville, Twin Falls) and smallest (Cambridge, Garden Valley, Melba).

Participating district leaders said that’s one of the things that drew them to Idaho Leads.

Comparing notes and ideas with counterparts in diverse districts is a great opportunity, especially for small, relatively isolated communities, said Garden Valley School District Superintendent Randy Schrader.

“Up here, the smaller schools don’t get much opportunity to network,” he said. “And this is an opportunity for us to get some good professional development on how to facilitate change in schools.”

Change is a major theme for Idaho public schools these days as state schools Superintendent Tom Luna’s education reform package, Students Come First, kicks in with new technology requirements, collective bargaining restrictions and teacher pay for performance.

One advantage of Idaho Leads, Lowe said, is that “we can kind of get out in front of this … certainly to help each other and also inform legislators and others throughout the state about what’s going on in public education.”

“And hopefully we’ll find some ideas on how we can continue to propel ourselves forward in this ever-changing environment.”

The push for change has polarized the education community, Quarles said, and one of Idaho Leads’ goals is to help participants embrace change as a catalyst for innovation rather than fear.

“If we can become mobilized again instead of being paralyzed by fear and pessimism, we can achieve great things,” he said.

“We’re talking about system change, best practices, integration and use of technology in the 21st century classroom.”

Idaho Leads dovetails with the Students Come First plan, but Quarles said the two efforts had separate evolutions.

“Our job is not to handle the state’s implementation of Students Come First,” he said but added, “I have no problem with reform. Why wouldn’t we want to get better?”

Luna said he’s pleased to see Idaho Leads’ emphasis on technology and best practices, which he calls “next practices.”

“Some of the things that need to happen in our schools aren’t necessarily what’s happening now,” Luna said. “Idaho Leads is the kind of program every district would want to duplicate as they try to prepare for the 21st century classroom,” Luna said.

NEW TOOLS

“The 21st century classroom” is the name Luna put on the reform law that encourages enhancing classroom technology and calls for the state to supply every high school student with a laptop over the next four years.

Advances in hardware and educational software are coming fast and furious, Quarles said, and an important component of Idaho Leads is to assess those developments and share them with participating districts. At Friday’s gathering, each participant received a Kindle e-reader loaded with books and other materials.

The project recruited two tech-savvy teachers out of local school districts to serve as technology coordinators. Elementary school coordinator Dan Massimino is a fifth-grade teacher at Nampa’s Iowa Elementary School; secondary school coordinator Andrew Hamilton taught language arts at Meridian Medical Arts Charter School.

The tech coordinators research apps, websites and social media that can help with everything from lesson planning to tracking participation to engaging students in difficult topics.

And becoming adept at smartphone apps and social media is a good way to reach students, Massimino said.

“It’s meeting them where they’re at,” he said. “These kids are in the 21st century. If you have a technology problem, they’ll fix it for you.”

Many teachers already embrace technology in and beyond their classrooms, Quarles said, and it is important to make using technology a boon for teachers rather than a burden.

“It’s highly effective teachers retained in every classroom that drives student achievement,” he said. “We want teachers to feel good about the process, because they’re essential to it.”

“There are a lot of efficiencies built into technology that open a lot of doors if you embrace them,” Quarles said. “But if you take the traditional education system and just put technology on top of it, that’s just one more thing that you expect teachers to do.”

But with creativity, informed choices and shared strategies, he said, technology can make teachers’ efforts easier and more effective.

“This is about more than helping kids,” Massimino said. “This is helping the profession.”

Kristin Rodine: 377-6447