Chapter 9: Some “Central” Issues In Creating Professional Learning Communities: A Superintendent’s Perspective

Today’s public schools are faced with many challenges, increased accountability for student scores, changing demographics, including the increase of English Language Learners (ELLs) and competition for resources (Rubin, Abrego, & Sutterby, 2015). In order to address these and other educational issues, school districts and superintendents are implementing a professional learning community (PLC) framework (Abrego & Pankake, 2011; Hipp & Huffman, 2010a; Supovitz, 2006).

How does a superintendent go about implementing a PLC across an entire school district? What are specific challenges that superintendents face during change reform? How does the organization learn how to become a PLC? Whether we begin to examine implementation from the perspective of a small or large school district, may not necessarily be the lens through which we begin our discussion, instead the premise for this chapter involves taking a closer look at specific actions and processes applied by one superintendent (Lopez, 2015) to influence the planning and implementation of a district wide PLC through central office.