What does it take to create meaningful, scalable change in education? Not just great ideas, but the leadership structures, collaborative networks, and sustained support to make them stick. In a recent LinkedIn Live conversation, ALP President and Founder Amos Fodchuk sat down with Gaynell Lyman, ALP’s Senior Director of Partnerships, to unpack how school systems across North America are successfully scaling systemic initiatives, especially around complex innovations like Generative AI.
This blog post explores what enables K-12 school districts to lead long-term transformation. Drawing from ALP’s work with communities of practice across the U.S. and Canada, it offers actionable insights for school and district leaders on how to move from isolated efforts to lasting, organization-wide change. Topics include collaborative leadership models, professional learning networks, practical change management strategies, and how real-time data helps districts adapt and sustain progress.
Designing for Scale: Why Strong Structures Matter
To build lasting change, school systems must design from the beginning with scale in mind. That starts with structure, not only within individual districts but across networks of districts navigating similar challenges.
Launching a Community of Practice in Virginia
In Virginia, the urgency around Generative AI created the perfect catalyst. As districts looked for guidance, ALP partnered with the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) and the Virginia Association of School Superintendents (VASS) to support 73 school divisions in developing thoughtful strategies for AI integration. Rather than offering a series of workshops, ALP helped build a statewide community of practice that combined deep professional learning with tangible outcomes.
“We didn’t just bring people together to talk,” said Lyman. “We brought them together to solve.”
The model grouped school divisions by region, allowing teams to collaborate closely, share expertise, and build tailored frameworks, guidelines, and policies that reflected their local needs. This collaborative structure proved critical to designing change that could be scaled and sustained.
Structuring the Experience for Impact
Each district team participated in a four-part learning experience with structured agendas, clear deliverables, and dedicated time for peer feedback and iteration. Sessions were designed to move beyond surface-level learning, incorporating executive consulting and cross-district engagement. The approach emphasized clarity, accountability, and momentum, which proved essential to building trust and driving results.
Lyman emphasized how this design helped overcome a major barrier to scaling change: over-reliance on a single champion. “When work is tied to one person, it risks stalling if that person leaves,” she noted. “But when cross-functional teams are engaged, especially with superintendents in the room, the work has staying power.”
A Model in Motion: Lessons from British Columbia (Canada)
This approach isn’t unique to Virginia or even the United States. In British Columbia, Canada, a longstanding superintendent-led network across the Fraser Valley has created similar conditions for collaboration, co-design, and long-term improvement. The region’s school systems meet regularly to address shared priorities, supported by ALP Canada and other partners that help facilitate the work. A native Canadian and ALP President, Amos Fodchuk reflected, “If we’re not careful, we end up working in silos, recreating the wheel and making avoidable mistakes. These networks allow leaders to problem-solve together and accelerate progress.”
From Planning to Practice: How Districts Build Momentum
Once the structure is in place, a new challenge begins: helping school systems move from thoughtful planning to disciplined execution. ALP’s Virginia partnership illustrates how that transition happens when learning is embedded into systems and when capacity-building becomes part of daily work.
Developing and Owning the Plan
Rather than relying on generic toolkits, participating districts in Virginia co-created their own resources and action plans. These included implementation frameworks, communication plans, and division-wide learning goals for staff at every level. This localized planning helped districts take ownership of the work and adapt it to their context.
Lyman noted, “We created an avenue for the learning to continue. This wasn’t just about building competence, but confidence. And that confidence came from having clear goals and the support to move forward.”
Some districts zeroed in on specific populations or classroom practices. One team focused on how Generative AI could better support students with special needs. Others developed resources for student use of AI tools, with clear guidelines and progressions. As artifacts were shared across the cohort, teams built on each other’s work, improving, reworking, and re-sharing in a cycle of continuous learning.
“Divisions made each other’s ideas better and shared them back again,” Lyman said. “It wasn’t just knowledge transfer—it was knowledge evolution.”
Using Real-Time Data to Guide the Work
A defining feature of ALP’s approach is its focus on data, not only at the end of a project, but throughout. ALP’s systems team worked alongside districts to track changes in perception, understanding, and capacity. This created feedback loops that allowed for real-time course correction.
“Most people don’t realize ALP has the horsepower to measure impact,” said Fodchuk. “We collected data throughout implementation, not just at the end, to guide change in the moment.”
That data helped consultants tailor their facilitation and gave district leaders insight into what was working. It also gave districts something rare and powerful: the ability to show stakeholders a clear return on investment, both in human and resource terms.
Moving from Vision to Execution
With shared language, articulated goals, and a community to rely on, districts were able to carry the work forward after the formal cohort ended. Many created multi-year learning plans for their staff, ensuring continuity and alignment between AI integration and broader instructional goals. The key shift was that the work no longer lived in documents—it lived in daily practice.
Building Real Partnerships, Not Just Projects
What set these efforts apart wasn’t just the structure or the outcomes. It was the trust that formed through real partnership between districts, between leaders, and between organizations like ALP and VASS that share a commitment to long-term improvement.
Why Professional Associations Matter
As Lyman pointed out, professional associations play a vital role in this kind of work. “They’re deeply in tune with their members’ needs,” she said. “When ALP partners with an association like VASS, we’re able to zero in on the root causes, not just the symptoms, of district challenges.”
This level of alignment ensures that external support isn’t seen as an outside initiative but as an extension of the system’s own work. It also helps change efforts endure beyond any one leader or grant cycle. As Lyman put it, “It’s not just a one-off, in-and-out project. It becomes part of a larger process.”
Avoiding Initiative Fatigue
Too many districts experience change fatigue because new initiatives are siloed, disconnected, or poorly timed. ALP’s approach avoids this by building change efforts into the structure of how systems learn and improve. Leaders from curriculum, tech, and leadership teams all have a seat at the table. The result is a shared sense of purpose and a clear understanding of individual and team roles.
“If you know your role in supporting a change initiative, you’re more likely to see yourself in the work and more likely to keep it going,” said Fodchuk.
Advice for Leaders Starting Out
For districts beginning this kind of work, Lyman offered three key pieces of advice: First, don’t do it alone. “Find others who are solving similar problems,” she urged. Second, build a coalition that includes supporters and skeptics. The skeptics will help refine the vision. Third, play the long game. Change that lasts takes time, but it’s worth the investment.
And finally, as Fodchuk added, never confuse communication with dialogue. “When you think you’ve communicated enough, you’ve just started. Real change happens when everyone in the system understands not just the what, but the why.”
Sustainable Change Starts with Systems That Learn
Sustainable change in schools doesn’t come from quick wins or top-down mandates. It comes from a system that is designed to learn, grow, and evolve with leaders who are willing to collaborate, reflect, and act with intention. What ALP’s work in Virginia, British Columbia, and beyond reveals is that real transformation is possible when school systems lead together, grounded in strategy, supported by data, and united by shared purpose.
Follow ALP on LinkedIn to join meaningful conversations with leaders who are changing education for good.
Note: These insights were derived from a LinkedIn Live event hosted on April 24, 2025, featuring Amos Fodchuk, ALP President and Founder, and Gaynell Lyman, ALP’s Senior Director of Partnerships at ALP.
