Entry Planning for Equity-Focused Leaders: Empowering Schools and Communities

In this practitioner-focused and action-oriented work, Jennifer Perry Cheatham, Rodney Thomas, and Adam Parrott-Sheffer consolidate their extensive experience centering equity in leadership. They affirm that the entry of a new leader, or the pivot of an established one, affords an unparalleled opportunity to garner the insight, trust, and commitment that will establish a basis for positive, equitable transformation within a system.

This essential work provides a flexible framework for leadership entry that is customized to fit the complex social, political, and economic demands of a given organization and the community it serves. It highlights how such an approach prepares leaders to begin addressing one of the most entrenched and persistent issues in education: structural and systemic racism.

Appealing to community and school leadership at all levels—superintendents, principals, project managers, and nonprofit partners, among others—the book presents seven components needed to enact an entry plan, from understanding context, to establishing transparency, to galvanizing partners for action. Through case studies and interviews, the authors explore the key skills necessary for each component. They then offer a wide range of supplementary tools and exercises to help leaders begin or recast their tenures and advance their agendas successfully.

The process outlined here encourages readers to reflect, take calculated risks, and chart new paths. This book gives leaders the means to make necessary, meaningful progress.