The Pirate Way
Focus 3: A Pathway To The Pirate Way
Trust. Own. Connect.
Remember those three words. During the coming months and years, they will become ingrained in much of what we do here at Perkins Local School District. They are the beliefs on which we will build our culture.
You may recall in January 2020 we adopted a Strategic Plan with five key goals: Student Learning, Student Development, Facilities, Finances, and Culture. While we work on each of the goals concurrently, it’s the last, Culture, that calls for Perkins Schools to adopt a framework that defines and creates the “Pirate Way.”
To do that, the District is adopting Focus 3, a program that distills the mindset and behaviors of elite performers to build a better culture, better leaders, and better behavior in organizations and their people. Focus 3 is the brainchild of Tim Kight, a former UCLA athlete who studied elite performers and what made them tower above average performers. Mr. Kight has teamed with a familiar name to many of us Buckeye fans, Urban Meyer, to build the program.
Perkins Schools formally rolled out the program during the 2019-2020 school year, when our Focus 3 leaders, Dr. Lonny Rivera, the director of innovation at the North Point Educational Service Center, and Dennis Doughty, an administrative mentor for North Point, introduced the program to the Perkins Schools core team that represents every department in the district.
Dr. Rivera and Mr. Doughty tasked our core team to analyze and reflect on our culture and climate. They did an excellent job of leading our team and providing a framework to discuss, analyze, and brainstorm what our culture playbook will be for Perkins Local Schools when this is deployed district-wide.
From that three-hour session and after much discussion, the core team arrived at the three beliefs – Trust, Own, and Connect – that will define the Pirate Way. We learned that by having a culture and climate where children are genuinely connected, expectations and systems have clarity, and positive relationships are developed and cultivated our children will perform better toward their chosen career goals and achievements.
We thank Dr. Rivera and Mr. Doughty, as well as Doug Crooks and team at North Point, for guiding the Perkins Schools staff, students, and community through this process.
~ Todd Boggs
Superintendent
Perkins Local School District