About Brass Tacks
Brass Tacks partners with schools and organizations to enhance their creative capacity to reframe and solve challenging problems in the dynamic educational landscape. Our areas of focus are designed to help you target and improve critical issues in your sphere of control as you work to create the healthiest and most sustainable educational environment possible.
When we partner with you to address the topics of teacher retention, workplace cultures, leadership development, organizational growth, and best practices in leveraging AI on your campus, you will feel supported in creating impactful systemic change that allows teachers and students to flourish.
Meet James and Randy
Dr. James Bailey
As a curious investigator of understanding people, how they develop, learn, grow, and find purpose in their life, James is constantly asking, “What is my job on this planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?” This pursuit of purpose led James into many roles in K-12 and higher education including teacher, principal, school turnaround leader, consultant to principals, superintendent, and core faculty roles where he focused on reforming schools to make them work better for all students. All of these endeavors included addressing personalized learning and social-emotional development. His latest “job that needs to be done” appeared when he realized leading well can only be done by becoming more aware of yourself. Today, James is deeply engaged in finding ways to support school and district leaders with their own SEL through such efforts as his latest book The Daily SEL Leader: A Guided Journal. When he’s not busily researching or working with others, James is chasing his four dogs, watching the Red Sox, or cooking for his wife at home.
Randy Weiner
An avid explorer, Randy constantly asks himself and others “Why?” He loves challenging his own assumptions, turning ideas on their head and seeking innovations that actually align to the real world in which educators live. Examples of the fruit of this labor include co-founding Urban Montessori Charter School, Oakland, CA’s only public Montessori school, co-founding BrainQuake, a middle school math technology company and three-time U.S. Department of Education Small Business Innovation Research Award winner, and his first book, “The Daily SEL Leader: A Guided Journal”. When Randy isn’t collaborating with educators around the world, he’s likely sharing taxi service for his two daughters with his wife or honing his photography skills at home or abroad.
