Mondays with Maria - 10/26/26
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Student Announcers: Hi, my name is Kristen. This is Jamal. We are from Catalina Elementary. Do you know the OCPS values that can lead to student success? Stay tuned.
Announcer: Presented by Addition Financial Credit Union. Here's our OCPS superintendent, Dr. Maria Vazquez.
Dr. Vazquez: Hi, everyone. Much like you see in the corporate world, Orange County Public Schools has a vision and mission for our district. It serves as the foundation for our work. Our vision: every student graduates prepared and inspired for a thriving future. Our mission: together with our families and the community, we empower students with a superior academic experience, essential life skills, and boundless opportunities. These statements describe our purpose and how we serve. Today, I want to talk about action. What are we doing? Tangible evidence of our work. Joining me at the table is the Chief Executive Officer of Strategy and Infrastructure, Dr. Harold Border. Welcome back.
Dr. Harold Border, Chief Executive Officer of Strategy and Infrastructure: Thanks, Dr. Vasquez, for having me back. It's great to be back.
Dr. Vazquez: It Is. It's wonderful to have you here. So let's get right down to it. Let's talk about some real-life examples of our core values. We have safety, people first, integrity, collaboration, and excellence, right? So let's start with safety.
Dr. Harold Border: Yeah, safety first. We need safety so everyone can thrive. It starts whenever you walk into a school. I mean, you see the infrastructure of our buildings is designed for safety. We check in all of our visitors via the Raptor system. Our schools are practicing drills on a regular basis to keep our staff and students safe. If a bus has an issue, there's a recall. We're on top of that. If there's something with the nutrition during food service, lunch, we take care of that immediately. So, safety is always our top priority to ensure that everything that our students and families encounter in our schools and our staff have a safe learning and working environment.
Dr. Vazquez: All right. Next, people first. We regard relationships as a foundation for success. For example, a teacher takes time to understand a student's challenges before addressing a behavior issue they're having in the classroom.
Dr. Harold Border: Absolutely. I mean, relationships are the key before we get to relevance and rigor. It's relationships. Without relationships, I mean, that's the key to success. So, from the bus driver that's picking up our kids, the receptionist who's meeting our parents in the lobby, the registrar who's getting families enrolled in our schools, our incredible teachers, our administrators, and all the district staff that are supporting our schools and making that top priority, we really do have great employees who are committed to the success of all of our students. And so, celebrating their successes is vital, and our schools and district do a great job of that each and every day.
Dr. Vazquez: Yeah. I, I agree 100%. So, next, let's talk about integrity. We act upon evidence-based decisions while we hold ourselves accountable.
Dr. Harold Border: Yeah. Evidence-Based decisions that are transparent for everybody to see. Decisions are not... Right is not always easy. Right. And I think that we see that even more and more in the day and age with the challenges that we have in public education are... We've recently had to make some difficult budget decisions at the district and at the school level. And I know that everyone always makes those decisions with the evidence they have before them and what's going to be best for students. And so, as they're making those decisions and communicating them transparently, they're acting with integrity by making decisions that are going to benefit our kids. PM1 just recently ended, progress monitoring one. Our teachers are using that data now to make instructional decisions for their students. And so, it's doing the right thing always, even when the spotlight's not on you.
Dr. Harold Border: And that's a core value of our organization that we are committed to always doing what is right for our students, which is the essence of a successful school system.
Dr. Vazquez: And I think sometimes the decisions aren't right versus wrong; it's right versus right. And that's really where integrity - Yeah. Needs to shine. All right. Collaboration. We listen to understand all perspectives as we work together towards achieving our vision. Let's talk a little bit about that.
Dr. Harold Border: I mean, we really are one OCPS, team OCPS. And so, working together is vital to our success. It starts with our strategic plan. Our k- key performance indicators all have cross-functional teams from every aspect of the organization working together to figure out what comes next and how we're going to get better. You see it every day in schools with our professional learning communities driving the way. We embrace that model at the district level as well to support our schools. We know that we're stronger together, and collaboration is what that's about.
Dr. Vazquez: Yeah. We know that it's going to take collaboration for us to be able to provide the very best educational experience for our students. All right. The last one is excellence. We deliver the highest standard of service to our students, staff, families, and communities.
Dr. Harold Border: Yeah, excellence. We know we're in a competitive environment, and OCPS is the best choice for our families. I've lived that as a parent twice, and again, with a third one right now, there is no better choice. But that's because this organization is built upon excellence and always getting better, embracing continuous improvement, a growth mindset, taking feedback, and how we can continue to grow while celebrating our successes. We just ended the fall stakeholder survey. Yes. We're taking that information to celebrate our successes and also figure out what comes next. Dr. Vasquez, your engagements in town halls. The student town halls give agency to our student voice in decision making, the town halls with the community members, and take all that into account as we are making decisions is part of excellence and always getting better to ensure we're meeting the time that we're in and providing the best for our kids.
Dr. Harold Border: And when we do that, we know they'll be prepared and inspired and empowered for a thriving future.
Dr. Vazquez: Yeah. And I think it's one of the things that we really do well is that we seek input from various stakeholders so that we can make the very best decisions for the people that we serve. All right. So, the last thing I want to touch on, and you mentioned it, is the survey, right? So, we just recently finished the fall survey that went out to some students. It went out to all families and all of our employees. Let's talk a little bit about what happens when that data comes back to us.
Dr. Harold Border: Yeah, so part of our accreditation process is making sure that we continue that engagement. And so, we have thresholds that we're expected to meet where we get at least 20% of our families, 40% of our students, and 60% of our staff. So we now have that information. All schools have access to that information. District departments have access to that information. We review that as a cabinet to celebrate our successes and then also talk about what comes next. We will also survey again in the spring so that we can see growth over the course of a year. We know that school and district teams change every year; things that are happening across education change every year. So it also gives us a baseline in the fall to be able to see how we can continue to move culture over the course of a school year in the spring.
Dr. Harold Border: We also have opportunities to customize and have deeper surveys after the fall survey. And many of our schools are engaged in that process right now where they're doing a deeper dive into something more important for them to learn more about. And they work with the stakeholder feedback office to do that because those insights help drive the decisions that they're making every day.
Dr. Vazquez: Yeah. So, for parents that may think, oh, or employees, they're not going to look at this. We look at it, and then we develop a plan on the areas where we have opportunities to improve.
Dr. Harold Border: Correct. And a key part of that is closing the loop with all of our stakeholders. And so, it's always making sure we report out - Yes. To our teams on what they provided us so that they understand we've listened and that we are going to take that information and move forward.
Dr. Vazquez: These values are demonstrated each and every day when employees make decisions that put students first, build trust with families, work collaboratively with one another, and remain committed to providing safe, high-quality learning environments where every student can succeed. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for joining me.
Dr. Harold Border: Thanks, Dr. Vasquez.
Dr. Vazquez: Coming up on the podcast, more real-life examples of the work that happens every day in OCPS. Join us wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for watching, and don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe. Have a wonderful week.
Announcer: For an extended conversation on today's topic, listen to the Mondays with Maria Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. Mondays with Maria is presented by Addition Financial Credit Union. Count us in for every step on your financial journey. Learn more at AdditionFi.com. For more OCPS news and information, visit TheSlice.ocps.net. I'm your announcer, Jamir Jones, a student at OCVS. Thanks for watching, and have a great week.