Carmel High School principal Tim Phares is eager to share ideas with all schools in Indiana.
However, as leader of the most populous school campus in the state, he embraces being part of the large school consortium, which provides regular opportunities to connect with administrators from some of the biggest schools in the nation to discuss their unique challenges.
The consortium first met in 2019 with CHS and Fishers High School serving as hosts. The five high schools to start it were Carmel, Fishers, two schools from Minnesota and Cherry Creek in Denver. It has added schools in the Dallas and the Chicago area. There are now 10 schools, and more are looking to join, including two from the Ft. Lauderdale area.
The two-day consortium returned to Indiana this year with CHS hosting Oct. 2 and FHS hosting Oct. 3.
“It’s an opportunity for successful large high schools to be able to collaborate and learn from each other,” said Phares, who became principal of CHS in 2022.
Phares said some daily issues and logistics are unique to large schools and that the consortium allows the member schools to learn from each other and improve.
Phares said the average enrollment of schools in the consortium is approximately 4,000. CHS enrollment for this school year is nearly 5,300.
“We look at facilities, programs, curriculum and learning,” Phares said. “It’s not necessarily instructional things. It’s programming, career technical education offerings. It’s looking at how we get students in and out of the building every day being a large school.”
Phares said he picked up some school safety ideas on a visit to Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
The consortium idea developed when Scott Gengler, the principal at Wayzata High School in Plymouth, was speaking with principal Jeff Erickson from Minnetonka High School and discussing ways to connect with other schools in other states. Both schools are in the suburbs of Minneapolis.
“There are not a lot of high performing affluent high schools in our state of similar sizes,” Gengler said. “I was having trouble finding other colleagues that were going through similar things that I was going through. We came up with the idea to look for colleagues throughout the country that are in similar situations and see if they want to meet twice a year and talk through the challenges. We just get together and learn from each other.”
For example, Erickson said in hearing from CHS student government members, he made a list of ideas to present to his students.
“It’s been one of the most beneficial professional learning experiences that I’ve had, because it’s tailored to what we want to talk about,” Erickson said. “It’s our own network of people that you can talk about how you’ve handled (certain issues).”
Gengler said it was especially helpful during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 and into 2021. Gengler said being able to get together with the other principals once a month on Zoom was important.
“We all came from different states with different political agendas, so to be able to hear how some schools are navigating some of these topics was really helpful,” Gengler said.
FHS principal Jason Urban agreed it was a tremendous resource when going through COVID-19.
He said the schools try to spotlight the things that are unique to the cultures of their campuses.
“Then we share best ideas with best practices with the different principals,” Urban said. “That is where I think it becomes really enriching.”
