Blog Espouses Creativity as District 197 Seeks Answers to Education Challenges

I navigated my way to the new District 197 blog today, "School District 197 ... Focused. Forward." Thus far, it has two posts filed under the subject "Conversations about Redesigning Schools" that link to videos from the Harvard Business Review and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), both discussing the future of creativity, education and the economy.

Another post, filed under "Jay's Reflections," referring to Superintendent Jay Haugen, introduces the concept of the blog in the context of the school district's financial challenges as it works this spring to overcome a .

"Now is the time to be transformational, or at least begin taking steps in that direction," writes Haugen. "We need to be offering educational programs that suit the times – financially, technologically, and appropriately for our increasingly global marketplace."

(Check this webstream for Haugen's participation in an MPR forum on social media and technology in the classrooms.)

This vision is not your grandmother's school room, and it appears that the superintendent is ready to explore new territory in terms of delivering education. Whether that happens remains to be seen, and will also require the participation of the school board, faculty, parents and of course, students.

But now that the board is starting to develop serious budget cutting options for next school year, and preparing for the expiration of an existing levy that will impact 2012-2013, will they follow the creative thinking of people like Daniel Pink, or will they fall back into more traditional ways of meeting the bottom line?