District and school teams from across California came to USC Rossier’s Breakthrough Leadership Institute (BLI) with problems of practice. Held on campus from July 12 to 15, this year’s theme was Teaching and Learning in the age of AI. Group topics ranged from chronic absenteeism to how to bring AI into the classroom without losing sight of equity. Participating schools included two teams from Fullerton Joint Union High School District, Montebello Unified School District, Englewood Unified School District, Buena Park School District and Salina City Elementary School District.
BLI also featured guest speakers who included USC Rossier Dean Pedro Noguera; Shon Hiatt, associate professor with USC Marshall; USC Rossier professors Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Jenifer Crawford, and Rob Filback; Celina Santiago, chief philanthropy officer at the California Community Foundation; Christian Jackson, AI education strategist; and Conrad Hughes, head of school, International School of Los Angeles. In its fourth year, the latest BLI cohort paired superintendents, principals and their teams with USC researchers and veteran practitioners to work through a single, self-identified challenge.
Since 2023, BLI’s format has brought together teams addressing current issues within their schools with key speakers who encouraged participants to view alternative ways to approach their particular problem of practice. In 2026, themes were introduced with speakers related to a central theme. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that this training has to address the problem of practice, but it’s something that all educators need,” said Darline Robles, USC Rossier Associate Dean with the Office of Equity and Community Engagement, whose office hosts BLI, reflecting on program evolution since its launch in 2023. Looking back on the past cohorts, culture has been a common and recurring thread. “How do you build a culture that believes deeply in the capacity of the students they serve? And how do you build the capacity of the school leaders with their faculty to build a culture of caring and support for them as well?” she said. “Without culture, you can’t do it for students.”
For some attendees, this year marked a first visit. For returning districts, they joined with different problems of practice; BLI has become part of how they prepare for the school year ahead.
A brand-new team, five days on the job
Maggie Crail arrived at the institute just 43 days into her tenure as principal of Sonora High School in La Habra with a leadership team that was almost entirely new to the site.
“We wanted the opportunity to have some guidance on solidifying our problem of practice and helping us develop an action plan to resolve it,” Crail said. She learned about the institute from a fellow principal in the district, who previously attended the conference, and said her superintendent offered the same opportunity to her team.
With the intention to get 100% of Sonora students college- and career-ready, Crail said the work started with her own five-person admin team. “We wanted to really apply systems thinking and develop our staff to be this learning culture, so that if we’re learning, our students are learning,” she said. “That really starts with our admin team.”
Returning teams, sharper focus
For the Inglewood Unified School District, this was the second year at the institute, and Assistant Superintendent Bernadette Lucas, who earned her EdD in USC Rossier’s Educational Leadership and Administration program in 2019, said the return trip was intentional. About half of the district’s leadership team attended last year; the rest are new.
“We thought that was important because we need different perspectives while still having the historical context of the team that joined us last year,” Lucas said. She credited last year’s cohort of researchers and facilitators, including support from group facilitator Carl Cohn, with giving her team “a framework and grounding” that shaped how they approached their problem of practice throughout the school year. “I cannot emphasize enough how relevant and aligned the speakers were,” she said.
From a 33% drop in absenteeism to disrupting the status quo
Buena Park School District Superintendent Julienne Lee, who earned her EdD in USC Rossier’s Organizational Change and Leadership program in 2020, is attending Breakthrough Leadership for the third consecutive year, each time bringing a different configuration of the team to dig into a different layer of the same underlying problem.
The first year, Lee brought a single principal; the past two years, she brought her entire executive cabinet. That all-hands-on-deck approach helped the team to examine four systemic barriers preventing students from being fully served, and to focus on one: chronic absenteeism. “I am happy to report that our chronic absenteeism has gone down by 33%,” Lee said. This year, the team returned to work on implementation strategies after identifying decision paralysis and a pull toward the status quo as barriers to follow-through. “The magic of this conference” isn’t a one-time thing, Lee said. “That real magic is when the experience becomes lasting practice.”
Expanding the table to include AI and classroom voices
To prepare for a deeper focus on AI, Dr. Rebeca Andrade, superintendent of Salinas City Elementary School District, took a different approach in determining who from her district should attend the conference. Andrade earned her bachelor’s degree from USC in 1997 and her EdD in Educational Leadership from USC Rossier in 2016.
Last year, Andrade brought central-office leaders. This year, she expanded the team to 12 participants, including classroom teachers, instructional coaches, site administrators, and district leaders. “I wanted to include the voices of our teachers, who are closest to our students,” Andrade said.
Building on the district’s established “5-3-5 Promise”—students proficient in mathematics by fifth grade, proficient in reading by third grade and multilingual learners reclassified as fluent English proficient no later than their fifth year in U.S. schools—this year’s team brought a renewed sense of urgency and commitment to the work. Together, team members focused on strengthening coherence, consistency and belonging while thoughtfully integrating AI into classrooms.
Andrade noted that educators bring a wide range of experiences with technology. “Some of us might be the last generation to have experienced three distinct eras: the analog world, the digital revolution and now the emergence of AI,” she said. “Some of our teachers, however, never experienced the analog world,” which required such tasks as manually adjusting a television antenna or dialing a rotary phone. That range of experience, Andrade said, is precisely why bringing varied voices to the table matters as districts develop solutions for students who have never known a world without AI at their fingertips.
A common thread emerged for the participating team: the value of engaging directly with researchers. As Andrade explained, the opportunity to “ask them questions directly” and help translate research into what is relevant and applicable “at the practitioner level” is what allows the lessons from BLI to endure long after the summer event.
