Before You Fix the Culture, Fix the Systems
Week 7 of 53 · Systems & Ops · by Stephanie Kallis Meek, M.Ed. · Includes: Free School Systems Diagnostic + Priority Action Plan
Let me tell you something that took me longer than it should have to understand.
Culture does not fix first. Systems do. Culture is what grows in the space that systems create.
Most principals in struggling schools spend enormous energy trying to shift culture. They bring in frameworks. They run PD on mindset. They talk about belief systems and high expectations and the power of relationships. And none of it sticks. Because they are trying to grow something in soil that hasn't been prepared.
Systems are the soil.
When a school does not have functioning systems, the people inside it spend all of their energy managing the chaos those missing systems create. There is nothing left over for growth, reflection, or genuine culture work. You cannot ask people to believe differently when surviving is still the primary task.
Most principals try to fix culture before they fix systems. That is why the culture never actually fixes.
What a missing system actually looks like
A missing system rarely announces itself. It hides in the patterns you have stopped questioning because they have always been that way.
Students show up late every day and there is no consistent response, so staff make up their own responses and half of them create more problems than the tardiness did.
A parent calls with a concern and it bounces between four adults before someone takes ownership, and by the time it gets addressed the parent has already lost faith.
A new teacher starts in October and there is no onboarding structure, so they piece together what the job is supposed to look like from whoever is willing to talk to them in the hallway.
Data meetings happen but no one can tell you what changed because of them.
Discipline referrals go to the office but what happens after is inconsistent enough that sending a student feels pointless to half your staff.
None of those are culture problems. They are systems problems that have started to look like culture problems because they have been unaddressed long enough to become normalized.
That is the trap. When a system is broken long enough, the people inside it stop seeing the system. They start seeing each other.
When systems are absent long enough, people stop blaming the system. They start blaming each other. That is when you know the chaos has become the culture.
The systems that matter most in a struggling school
Not every system is equal. In my diagnostic work, I have found that struggling schools share a predictable cluster of absent or broken systems. These are the ones that, when fixed, create the conditions for everything else to start working.
Student arrival and transitions. How students move through the building sets the physical and emotional tone for the entire day. A chaotic arrival is not just an inconvenience. It is the first message every student receives about whether this place is safe and ordered.
Behavior and discipline. Not zero-tolerance versus restorative, that is the wrong debate. The question is whether your response to behavior is consistent, understood by staff, and actually connected to what students need. Inconsistency is not kindness. It is confusion.
Adult communication and information flow. Who knows what, when, and how reliably. In most struggling schools, critical information travels by rumor and hallway conversation. People make decisions based on incomplete pictures. That is not a relationship problem. It is a system problem.
Teacher supervision and feedback. A predictable cycle of observation, feedback, and follow through. Not evaluation season. Ongoing. If teachers are not getting regular, honest feedback on their practice, you do not have an instructional system. You have an instructional lottery.
Special education service delivery. Whether the services listed in IEPs are actually being delivered. I put this one on every list because it is almost always broken and almost always invisible until it isn't.
What to do with this if you are the principal
The temptation when you read a list like this is to start fixing everything simultaneously. Resist that. Overwhelm is how systems reform dies.
Start by naming what you actually have. Not what you think you have, not what your handbook says exists. What is actually operating in your building on a regular Tuesday.
Then pick the system that, if it functioned, would give you the most downstream relief. Fix that one. Build it until it runs without your constant attention. Then move to the next.
This is slow work. It should be. Any system that gets built in a week will fall apart in a month. The ones that last are the ones you built with your people, explained with your people, and adjusted based on what your people actually experienced.
What to do with this if you are a district leader
If you are watching a school struggle and you are wondering why the initiatives are not landing, ask this question before you add another one: does this school have the systems infrastructure to hold what we are asking it to do?
Professional development without systems is a tax on people who are already depleted. A new curriculum without functioning instructional systems will be implemented inconsistently at best and ignored at worst.
The most useful thing a district can do for a struggling school is often not a new program. It is protected time and direct support for a principal to do a real systems audit, understand what is actually broken, and build a sequenced plan for fixing it.
That is less visible than a new initiative. It is more effective than almost anything else you could do.
The most powerful thing you can give a struggling school is not a new program. It is the time and support to understand what is actually broken.
This week's free resource
The School Systems Diagnostic and Priority Action Plan walks you through rating your current systems across the areas that matter most, then helps you identify where to start and what to do in the first 30 days. It is designed to be used with your team, not by yourself in your office.
Download: School Systems Diagnostic + Priority Action Plan at skmeducationalservices.com/resources
Sit with these this week
Name one system in your building that everyone knows is broken but that nobody has formally named yet.
If your most honest teacher described your building's systems to a new hire, what would they say?
What is the one system that, if it worked, would give your staff the most relief immediately?
Culture is what grows in the space systems create. Build the space first.
Next week
Week 8, August 11: Conscious Discipline in practice, what it actually looks like in real schools.
About the author
Stephanie Kallis Meek, M.Ed., is a school turnaround consultant, leadership coach, and founder of SKM Educational Services. She currently serves as a Director of Special Education and has spent more than a decade leading high-needs schools through real transformation.
Book a free consultation: skmeducationalservices.com
Contact: stephanie@skmeducationalservices.com
