TUSD staffers to get Disney training

Just weeks after assuming leadership of the district in July, Fagen started introducing her executive team to the Walt Disney management model, which she holds up as a model of excellence in encouraging creativity, staff loyalty and strong customer service.

Starting next month, she will send what she hopes to be the first of five staffers to the Disney Institute for training.

Fagen said she's going about it with an eye on the budget.

Staff members who attend the 3 1/2-day training won't merely issue platitudes when they come back about how much they learned. They will have to re-create the learning experience for their peers, with the help of the district's professional development team.

And Fagen has asked the district's lawyer to draft an agreement ensuring that even if the trainees leave the district, they will nevertheless teach classes for two years to principals and other TUSD leaders who request the training.

Chief operations officer Rudy Flores will go first, learning how Disney manages its people — otherwise known as "cast members." The training will touch on how the company imparts its culture to its vast work force, how it makes workers feel valued, and how it communicates its vision to everyone from the guy who picks up the trash to the ride attendants.

The seminar, which includes lodging, will run roughly $3,500. Fagen said the money is coming out of her own office budget.

Flores, who quipped that he didn't have to win the Super Bowl to go to Disney, said he'd heard of the company's organizational acumen in passing, but is now learning more about it.

"When you're talking about world-class customer service — the kind you might see at a Ritz-Carlton or a Nordstrom — you can't get that kind of customer service without really effective people management."

Fagen understands there will be skeptics who question what kind of serious learning can go on in a place where people wear hats with mouse ears, or who will ask about whether it's worth the money.

Disney is well-known in corporate circles for its management work, she said, noting its Web site lists several Fortune 500 companies as clients. There are some universities, as well as the U.S. Department of Education, listed on the client list. Fagen said school districts typically can't afford the workshops, but, she added, change isn't going to come through drive-by staff training.

"We have to move this district forward and change the culture in fundamentally deep ways. We can't do it for free and we can't do it by doing what's already been done," she said.

Fagen, who hopes the business community will come through with money for additional training because her office budget is limited, said she's convinced that "if the district had the Disney values and lived them, we would attract and retain higher-quality staff, and that will impact the classroom in very clear ways."

If Flores comes back with a positive report — that not only was the experience valuable, but it can be replicated — budget director Beatriz Rendon in January will be immersed in Disney training on how to deliver quality service. TUSD's head of the public-relations division will be trained in creativity, with other members of the executive team taking on leadership and loyalty.

Rendon, who borrowed a copy of "The Disney Way" from Fagen, said she's already been struck by a statistic she gleaned from the book, in which the authors cite research showing for every one complaint, there are 26 other customers who remain silent — and each of them will complain to up to 16 others.

"Sometimes, one customer complaint — whether it's a teacher or an employee or a parent or a student — might not get the right amount of attention because it's seen as just one complaint, when really that translates into a more deeply seated problem," Rendon said.

Casey DeLorme, a product of TUSD who spent 12 years working in public relations in Tucson before relocating to San Diego a year ago, spent a year in college immersed in the management model. In the two-week training, he not only learned to recite the names of the seven dwarves, but absorbed the importance of imparting Disney magic in the smallest detail, from never pointing with fewer than two fingers to wearing sunglasses only if park guests can still see your eyes.

Even now, all these years later, the 37-year-old said former cast members still treat each other like long-lost fraternity members. "Once you get into Disney, you never get out," he joked.

Recent media reports peg the number of employees at Disney World at roughly 60,000 people.

"Getting all those employees in that immense organization to sing from the same song sheet is a monumental task of leadership," said DeLorme, who remains friends with several of his former teachers in the district. "And what's really powerful is that not only do you see yourself as part of a team, but also as an individual who brings your own insight and independence to the mix."

Jack Camper, head of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, said the training makes "perfect sense" to him and increases his confidence in the new administration.

"The Disney Institute is one of the best. Historically, it's got a really good reputation for management development," he said. "The district is trying now to hire more qualified teachers. If it's going to upgrade the quality of its teachers, it certainly needs to upgrade the quality of its administrators as well."

Fagen, who hasn't had any of the training herself, is familiar enough with the model that she can talk about Imagineers with the best Mousketeer. She even used some Disney parallels in staff-development training in her former district in Des Moines when she challenged teachers to create their own educational version of the EPCOT center, to provide greater choice to students. Reports from her former peers who attended the training added to her desire to share it with her own staff.

Jim Verlengia, Des Moines' director of academic support services, participated in Institute training in August. He said officials turned to Disney in large part because of its track record of leadership and customer satisfaction.

Verlengia said the training already has triggered discussions about new visions and ways of approaching education more creatively. What most struck him, he said, was how the employees at the Orlando complex all worked with a single vision — making the best experience possible for their guests.

"The real guests are our children," he sad. "And we need to get to a place where we react to them as guests, instead of clients or test scores."

"We have to move this district forward and change the culture in fundamentally deep ways. We can't do it for free and we can't do it by doing what's already been done."

Elizabeth Celania-Fagen, TUSD superintendent

DID YOU KNOW

Pixie dust would have been preferable to the special-effects dust that sparked a fire on the set of a Stephen King movie at the Tucson Convention Center in December 2004.

The fire, which damaged about 20 percent of the Exhibition Hall, occurred during the filming of the ABC-TV miniseries "Desperation." ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Company.

The blaze caused an estimated $2 million in damage to the Convention Center and the movie set. The damage to the Convention Center was paid for by a movie insurance policy.

The memory is only too clear for Tucson Film Office Director Shelli Hall, who nonetheless has tried repeatedly to lure Disney productions to film here.

Alas, she said, most recently Tucson lost out to Utah for the "High School Musical" productions.