MARCH 2017 School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools The Shelby County Schools Opportunity Shelby County Schools is undertaking a major transition to a student-based budgeting system in order to increase equity and flexibility for its schools. The shift is crucial in light of the district’s new Destination 2025 strategic plan, which aims for 80 percent of seniors to be on track to learn in a postsecondary classroom or enter the workforce straight out of high school; 90 percent of students to earn their high school diploma on time; and every student to enroll in a postsecondary opportunity college or careerready by the year 2025. It also represents an opportunity to create transparency, simplicity and equity across both district and charter schools in Shelby County, potentially even including a single system for equitably distributing funding across district and charter schools. SCS’ plan to move to Student-Based Budgeting uniquely positions the district to redesign its schools and ensure every student has the opportunity learn and excel. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, school and district leaders must identify the big strategic shifts that need to be supported through allocation of resources, the concrete changes in how schools are organized that are necessary to achieve these strategic shifts, and tactically how SCS can accomplish them. By addressing these issues, we can collaboratively design high-performing schools that are responding to the changing context in education by using people, time, technology, and money in ways that look significantly different than the status quo. Project summary Over the next three school planning cycles, Education Resource Strategies proposes a partnership with Shelby County Schools to: 1. Create a school funding strategy to provide greater equity across schools, including charter schools, while ensuring viable funding levels. 2. Create a school flexibility strategy for school resource use to allow them to create meaningfully different school designs based on their unique needs and instructional models. To achieve these goals, we have outlined five workstrands that would take place during the first two years of a proposed partnership, from fall 2016 through spring 2018: 1. Project Management & Stakeholder Engagement  Define internal roles, responsibilities and structures for accomplishing the work School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools   March 2017… page 2 Facilitate communication with stakeholders, including coordinating/planning change management engagements Clarify and facilitate communication and roles with charter school community and other stakeholders 2. Readiness, Planning & Analysis  Analysis to frame strategic challenge of moving to Student-Based Budgeting (SBB), considering district-level, school-level, and countywide issues that include the charter school sector  Assessment of, and actions to achieve, district readiness for SBB  Development of School-Level Resource Use Reports, to be piloted with a cohort of schools and ultimately integrated into SCS’ systems for ongoing impact in traditional and charter schools 3. Leading Edge School Design Cohorts  Pilot plans for school flexibility through a school design cohort of 5-8 leading edge schools  Strategic School Design coaching and implementation support  Co-facilitate second cohort of schools in partnership with SCS, leveraging School-Level Resource Use Reports to inform strategic resource decisions 4. School Design Capacity-Building/professional learning:  Ongoing professional learning for all principals, school supervisors and other key central office stakeholders who support principals (Academics, Finance, Human Capital, etc.). 5. Student-Based Budgeting Design and Rollout  Facilitation of district SBB design team, potentially including representatives from the charter school community, through the design process  Internal production of School Budget Allocation Reports  Revision of district’s academic planning structures & timeline to align with resource planning  Ongoing SBB Readiness implementation Transforming Schools through Strategic School Design In 2008, Ashley Park Elementary in Charlotte, North Carolina, was staring failure in the eye. Fewer than 35 percent of students scored proficient in math and ELA. Teacher turnover was high and morale was low. Relationships among teachers were poor—in many cases, they didn’t even know each other’s names. Like in many Palm Beach schools, the leadership urgently wanted to demonstrate success while building a long-term improvement strategy. By 2010, Ashley Park was a school transformed. Proficiency levels had doubled in math, reaching 66 percent, and reading proficiency scores increased to 49 percent. Student behavior and teacher morale had also improved profoundly. What happened? Principal Tonya Kales embraced a highly personalized approach to teaching and learning, enabling teachers to work closely in teams and pro-actively address individual student needs, while bringing new expertise into the school. In this new model, groups of teachers shared responsibility for all students in School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 3 a grade level; teachers met twice a week in facilitated meetings to analyze student data, group students according to their needs, and plan instruction for each group; and the master schedule was made radically more flexible. Teachers and students were grouped and regrouped throughout the day based on student progress, and time allocated to a subject varied based on what students needed at any given moment. Because special education services were integrated into the broader grouping of students, struggling general education students had access to more specialized support when they needed it. Principal Kales’ strategy started with a clear vision of what it would take for Ashley Park’s students and teachers to be successful, then reorganized resources—people, time, technology, and money— around that vision. We call this Strategic School Design. ERS’ School Design Approach Today, despite significant changes in what it means to be “college or career-ready,” resource use in schools – including those in Shelby County – looks very much the same as it did 50 years ago. Students are divided into classrooms of 20 to 30 students, and they study a particular subject for a set period of time — usually about 50 minutes per day for 180 days — instructed by one teacher. Teachers have roughly the same set of responsibilities on day one of their job as they will have on the last day of their career. And they usually work alone to plan and deliver instruction, rather than as part of a highly functioning team. As a field, we are learning how organize schools in new ways for high performance. We see it happening in isolated cases like Ashley Park, but are now figuring out how to bring those learnings to scale. At ERS, we are passionate about clarifying the most urgent student needs in a school building and then – based on a deep understanding of current resource practices – supporting schools and systems to make the step-function changes in how people, time, and money are used to support high-quality, personalized and creative approaches to educating all children. We are both visionaries and pragmatists. We understand that many schools need break-the-mold school designs to achieve the impact they desire. But we also know that those kinds of designs often won’t work in the first year of a change effort at a school with low teacher expertise, for example. We help school and district leaders move sequentially toward change without losing sight of their ultimate vision. In doing so, we don’t focus on a specific input such as blended learning, teacher leader roles, or extended learning time. Instead, we support school leaders in developing a research-backed school design vision that deliberately matches the needs of their specific students. And then we roll up our sleeves and provide technical support to think through every possible scheduling or budgeting configuration that will help get them there. Our ultimate objective is not a handful of excellent school designs, but rather a system that supports excellent school design at scale, with the leadership capacity to sustain and amplify the changes required to fundamentally shift outcomes for students. School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 4 About ERS Education Resource Strategies (ERS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to transforming how urban school systems organize resources—people, time, and money—so that every school succeeds for every student. Since 2004, we have worked hand-in-hand with the leaders of over 30 school systems and several states to redesign systems by focusing on key structures: funding, central office structure, human capital, and strategic school design. We also share research and practical tools based on our extensive dataset, and we collaborate with others to create the conditions for change in education. In all of our work, we focus on the larger picture—how resources work together to create highperforming systems. Our non-profit status enables a different kind of partnership with districts and states: one where we participate in the transformation struggle, create insights together, and share lessons with others. Case study: Supporting Radical District Transformation in Cleveland “Our work with ERS has empowered us to truly own our strategy as district leaders and become better partners to the schools we serve.” - John Scanlan, Chief Financial Officer, CMSD In 2013, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District was a district in crisis. Enrollment had dropped by more than 40% in the last 10 years (from 72,000 to 43,000), mostly due to population drain and pressure from charter schools, and the district was also facing financial insolvency in the form of a $63 million budget deficit. Even worse, Cleveland had just been ranked the second-worst district in the country for large districts based on its scores on the Nation’s Report Card, with more than 50% of schools under academic watch or academic emergency. To address these mounting challenges, the district – with the support of local and national philanthropists, including the Cleveland Foundation, the George Gund Foundation and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation – embarked on The Cleveland Plan, a radical, comprehensive district transformation toward a “portfolio model” in which schools are empowered and given more autonomy over their staffing, budgets, scheduling and curriculum, in exchange for high accountability for performance. ERS partnered with Cleveland starting in 2012 to help the district leadership team fully understand the long-term financial risks and challenges associated with the significant changes and investments they were proposing and to help with implementation of the plan. Key Deliverables  Resource Mapping: ERS thoroughly analyzed district data (including expenditures, budget, course schedule, payroll, student achievement, teaching effectiveness, and more) to build a transparent fact base around how resources are actually distributed and used across the district.  Student-Based Budgeting: ERS worked closely with Cleveland to design and implement a new SBB funding system where dollars are allocated to schools based on their student enrollment School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools  March 2017… page 5 and student need. ERS also supported the redesign of the district’s Central Office to better support the district’s new “portfolio model.” Strategic School Design: ERS provided training and intensive coaching to nine schools called the Transformation Schools Pilot, which were given greater resource flexibility and training in Strategic School Design. Each school leader received between 5 and 15 hours of 1:1 coaching, in addition to school design templates, resource data, and workshops. A second cohort of 10 schools was added the following year. Key Outcomes  Our Strategic Resource Map highlighted that too many of the district’s resources were being tied up in inflexible structures: teacher compensation and career path, special education, and small schools.  Under the new Student-Based-Budgeting system: ‒ School leaders control 71% of their school budgets, vs. 2% previously, and had significantly more flexibility in terms of how they could use their resources. In total, principals now control 48% of the total district operating budget. ‒ The budgeting and strategic school planning was integrated so that the school planning process began before schools received their budgets, giving principals time to identify needs, goals, and resource priorities, and budgets were finalized early so the district could also begin the recruiting process earlier (in March, vs. May/June in the past). ‒ Central Office Departments were reorganized into cross-functional Network Support Teams and were shifted from a compliance monitor role to a strategic partner role. After the redesign, 90% of school leaders reported that meetings with their Network Teams were helpful. ‒ A new enrollment projection process was implemented that projected enrollment for multiple student types and incorporated principal feedback. The improved accuracy of the enrollment projections in 1415 led to a 300% reduction in the number of staff that had to be moved between schools during fall adjustments. ‒ Increased engagement with the local community, with at least 60% of families reporting being told about their school’s budget during the Fall Open Houses.  When Cleveland CEO Eric Gordon gave his “2015 State of the Schools” speech, 5 of the 16 schools (100 total schools in the district) that he cited as exemplars of progress were from the Transformation Schools Pilot (9 schools in the first year cohort). ‒ The nine “Transformation” schools developed innovative School Designs that featured new instructional leadership roles for teachers, intervention/enrichment blocks, staff to support social-emotional learning, and more. ‒ 91% of participants said ERS support gave them a much deeper understanding of strategic school design. Quotes from principals include:  “My school’s schedule is now centered on what students need instead of adults”  “This process is empowering and it’s good to know someone is listening to us”  “Now I don’t have to call Central to beg for money; I can just make decisions”  “This process has been richer and deeper than any [planning document] I have ever written” Cleveland has experienced a complete district transformation since 2012. In 2015, district enrollment increased for the first time in 30 years. That same year, Cleveland was also one of only three urban School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 6 districts to improve on all four sections of the 2015 Nation’s Report Card. Michael Casserly of the Council of the Great City Schools called Cleveland’s gains “uniformly larger and better than any other school district in the country.” Project description SCS is poised to move towards strategic school design in the context of a student-based budgeting system for the district that has the potential to break new ground by incorporating both traditional and charter schools. ERS support for SCS in this endeavor would unfold over three years, the first two of which are outlined in detail here. We would start by working to understand the current state with respect to both system- and schoollevel resource use, identifying potential pathways for design and implementation of SBB and new school designs. This would be coupled with system-level support to create the enabling conditions at the district-level for strategic school design, with SBB as the centerpiece, and build capacity at all levels around what strategic resource use looks like and how school and district leaders can facilitate the types of resource shifts that are most likely to support student learning and system transformation. Armed with analysis and an even more fertile environment for change, we would provide a set of supports – moving from advisory support within existing structures (e.g. Innovation or Empowerment Zone) to deep hands-on support beginning in 2017 for a cohort of schools granted increased resource flexibilities., We would supplement that deep support with training and do-it-yourself tools to build ongoing capacity within SCS, and follow it up with implementation support to ensure that the school designs come to fruition as imagined and are scalable across the entire district. The nature and scope of year 3 support would be determined collaboratively by SCS and ERS during year 2 of our partnership, and ideally would be focused on implementation support at a level that is likely to be significantly less than in year 1 or 2, as SCS will have developed the capacity to lead much of the work internally. Workstrand 1: Project Management & Stakeholder Engagement Timeline: Ongoing, with greater emphasis at project inception A district redesign effort of this scale that includes the charter school sector in addition to traditional public schools requires ongoing project management and stakeholder engagement. Initially, the work in this strand will focus on:  Identifying the right governance structures, stakeholder groups and reporting processes through which stakeholders can learn about and provide input into this work.  Mapping out the specific design and implementation responsibilities across SCS and the charter school community, including the formation of an SBB design team, SSD advisory group, overall project steering committee, etc.  Socializing the notion of student-based budgeting and strategic school design with district and charter leaders and other stakeholders, including coordinating/planning change management engagements. School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 7 Moving forward, ERS will work with SCS project leadership to help define the work ongoing, resolve conflicts/obstacles and conduct periodic project reviews to ensure the project is moving forward appropriately. Project planning should evolve strategically based on feedback and project needs, so we anticipate supporting a structured process to use the feedback from the periodic project reviews to adapt the work ongoing and then to provide updates to stakeholders as appropriate. The depth of the ERS role in this workstrand would be a function of the project management expertise of the SCS project leaders – whether working mostly as an advisor and content expert to support the SCS project leads’ execution of project management functions or working with the project leads on execution directly, with a focus on capacity-building and transition to full autonomy over the course of the project. Workstrand 2: Readiness, Planning & Analysis Timeline: December 2016 – August 2017 Analysis would be used to frame strategic challenge SCS is facing in contemplating a move to SBB and would focus on resource equity and school design flexibility: Landscape and Readiness Assessments1 Essential Questions: How do student need and overall spending patterns compare to other in-state and out-of-state peer systems? How do SCS’ policies and current practices support its strategy of increasing school-level flexibility as a lever for impact on students across the system? How well-positioned to begin design and rollout of SBB is SCS? What will it take for SCS to create the critical enabling conditions for success with SBB in the district and across the charter school sector? ERS would facilitate a cross-functional SCS central team through a set of planning assessments and activities to frame the current challenge and the work that lies ahead, and to shape mindsets about what it takes to enable and facilitate strategic resource use across the system. These assessments and activities could include:  System 20/20 diagnostic, focused on how current policies and practices compare to ERSidentified best practices for strategic resource use. System 20/20 is grounded in both quantitative and qualitative measures across seven key strategies, and could include feedback from a principal survey with SCS’ support;  Student-Based Budgeting readiness assessment, enabling SCS to pro-actively identify gaps and priorities it needs to address to maximize chances for success with SBB;  Flexibilities audit, documenting resource flexibilities that exist today in some or all SCS schools, as well as areas where they may be the greatest desire for change and potential for impact;  School Budget Hold ’Em workshops, which give district and school leaders the opportunity to model the types of tradeoffs that school teams commonly consider when they have increased resource flexibility. Workshops could be conducted in a “train-the-trainer” model, cascading from district leaders to area superintendents/instructional directors to school leaders throughout the 2017-18 school planning and budgeting process.2 1 Scope in this section is covered by an earlier contract with SCS. Although schools will not have significant new flexibilities for 2017-18, introducing Hold ’Em at this point enables participants to make connections between the options modeled in the game and the real-life changes they might make in their schools when given the opportunity to do so. 2 School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 8 ERS would then work with SCS team members to create readiness plans to help them prepare for pilot implementation in the SY1718 planning cycle and full implementation in the SY1819 planning cycle. This work will be subsumed into the other workstreams as the project unfolds. In parallel, ERS would work with a subset of district and school leaders in an advisory capacity to identify near-term strategic school design opportunities that could be implemented for the 2017-18 school year. This work would take place in the context of the current budget cycle, with some capacity building in the fall-winter period and more direct advisory support as the cycle progresses through the spring. This work could cover the following topics: - Professional development around strategic school design for area superintendents and any others who will play a key role in supporting principals through school planning. - Align on the big shifts that SCS wants to see in schools. - Align on the right core questions to ask schools during their school planning process that could enable some “quick wins” aligned with the desired big shifts going into the 17-18 school year. - Align also on the ideal timing for those conversations with principals. - Tactical planning for the 17-18 school design cohort, and alignment on its connection with the SBB efforts. ERS also would use this phase of work to gather as much of the relevant district and CMO data as possible to speed the path for additional analyses described below. Financial and Equity Analyses, including Identification of Gaps/Challenges3 Essential Questions: How much per pupil is SCS investing in different types of activities, students and schools? How much are charter schools investing? What drives differences among and between sectors? Do differences align with deliberate and effective strategy? What opportunities does SCS (and charters) have to re-allocate resources more strategically to support goals for student achievement?  $/pupil and total dollar spending on various functions within each system, with comparison across systems operating in Shelby County and with similar ERS-studied systems operating in other parts of the country  $/pupil for subgroups of students in district schools and in charter schools with identified needs relative to cohort of national comparison districts (ELL, poverty/FRL, Special Ed by placement type) o Identification of drivers of variation among systems operating in Shelby County and relative to comparison systems o Identification of action implications:  “quick-win” adjustments for SY1718 planning process  “do-now” changes needed to realize long term resource alignments and set foundation for SBB implementation  $/pupil and need-weighted $/pupil by school level and by school w/in level o Identification of drivers of variation relative to comparison districts o Identification of action implications:  “quick-win” adjustments for SY1718 planning process 3 The depth of analysis for charter schools and CMOs is highly dependent on availability and quality of data that can be provided. For example, in systems that lack detailed tracking of service models for students with special needs or English language learners, equity analysis will likely leverage SCS, national and/or research-based benchmarks from the ERS database. School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 9   “do-now” changes needed to realize long term resource alignments and set foundation for SBB implementation o Specific focus on identifying equity implications of school closures in terms of overall $/pupil freed for reinvestment and cost impact of reduction in number of small and/or under-utilized schools Distribution of teacher effectiveness (or best available proxy depending on eval system implementation) School Resource Use Analysis and Identification of Priorities for SY1718 planning process Essential Questions: How are resources in the district organized to meet the unique needs of each school’s students? What choices are schools making with discretionary resources? What are obstacles to more effective school designs?  Analysis of school-based people, time & money against national best practice in school design by school level  Analysis would use school year data consistent with financial (either SY1516 or SY1617)  SCS leadership would use analysis to: o Identify potential “quick wins” that could be applied in schools during SY1718 o Establish priorities for school design profiles & capacity-building  Could be combined with school funding/equity analysis to help make the case for school consolidations on both a programmatic & financial basis School-level resource analysis also could be developed for a subset of local CMOs, for comparison to SCS and to lay the groundwork for potential school-level resource shifts in charter schools.4 School Resource Use Reports Based on analysis of school level resource use, ERS would work with SCS to develop data reports to inform individual school planning. ERS will create a deep look at the most recent school staffing plans and master schedules to document how schools across the district are using and prioritizing resources. This analysis examines deployment of staff and time as well as program offerings, size and grade configurations, and the distribution of race, poverty and proficiency, as well as magnet and charter school students by school. ERS leverages the collection of school resource use data to create School Level Resource Use Reports, which provide each school leader with transparency into how aligned use of time and staff is with student need at their respective schools. These reports are designed to be a critical support to decision-making in budget season, allowing school teams and their central support providers to review and discuss metrics such as class size by grade and proficiency level and teacher effectiveness by team and course to analyze equity, excellence, and efficiency of current resource distribution. School supervisors would also receive network summaries. ERS works with district leaders to customize the reports and create power metrics tied to key decisions and levers for change, and to support SCS leaders to create these reports on their own after the first year. 4 Extending school-level resource analysis to CMOs is not envisioned in the project cost estimates outlined below; ERS would work with SCS and philanthropic partners to determine if and how it is feasible to pursue this additional analysis. School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 10 After piloting the school-level resource reports during the initial school design cohort (see workstrand #3 below), ERS would work with SCS to make it possible for the district to publish similar reports electronically and make them accessible to school and district leaders through SCS. Systems-integrated reports could be created for all schools or for a subset (i.e. future leading edge cohorts), depending on district strategy around stakeholder engagement. Workstrand #3: Leading Edge School Design Cohorts Timeline: July 2017 – December 2019 ERS coaches a pilot cohort of 5-8 leading edge school leadership teams with flexibility created through SBB that SCS thinks would be best positioned to use the flexibility provided through SBB. Our coaching would help these schools plan and implement transformative school designs: the optimal organization of people, time, money, and technology to fully meet students’ unique needs. Direct school support will be organized around three core objectives: 1) To create transformational designs that better organize resources to improve student learning; 2) To create proof-points of strategic school design that can serve as leading edge examples for other SDPBC schools; 3) To help the system build capacity and conditions to support strategic designs are scale, by: a. Building capacity of key central support providers to support strategic resource use decision-making; b. Identifying and prioritizing changes to enabling conditions necessary to support more transformational designs at scale. Through collaborative working sessions with a design team of school and district leaders, paired with one-on-one coaching, ERS works with key district leadership to support the strategic planning process for a new and break-the-mold school design, as well as the communication plan to the broader school community and the plan for implementation. ERS provides access to the tools and templates we have developed to help identify needs and encourage experimentation with alternate school design configurations, as well as the opportunity to collaborate with a community of peers to bring to bear the system’s best thinking on specific challenges. ERS then supports cohort schools through implementation, progress monitoring, and adjustment of design in first two years after the completion of their design process. Over many years of doing this work, we’ve never seen a design implemented in exactly the way it was planned in the previous year. Things change – a key teacher or administrator decides to leave, budgets change during enrollment adjustments, and so on. It’s critical that there are systems to allow the school team to learn about what works and what doesn’t and evolve quickly. ERS continues to partner with schools through the first year of design implementation to support this ongoing learning and evolution in the context of data on what works, as well as ongoing changes in the conditions for implementation that might be introduced by budget, staffing, or enrollment changes. Implementation support tends to be organized around 3-4 school visits over the course of the year. During each visit, we observe the structures being implemented, interview teachers, leaders, and School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 11 students, and then debrief with the school leadership team to share observations and action plan around next steps.      Process would begin summer 2017 and would set up schools to use the SY1819 planning cycle to implement new designs during the first year of SBB implementation Cohort schools would receive monetized allocations (vs. positions and central services) from which to implement their designs Flexibilities offered to participating schools would effectively pilot flexibilities offered to all schools in full implementation of SBB ERS would provide follow-up implementation support to the pilot cohort through SY1819 A second set of schools would be supported through a similar design process for SY1920. This cohort would be co-facilitated with SCS, to maximize capacity-building and potential for highquality ongoing support, with a specific focus on school supervisors ERS will facilitate the school design and implementation process with the use of our online School Designer tool, which is a way to access and use our school design curriculum, following the steps of our design process. It facilitates coaching by creating an efficient way for schools and school supervisors to:  Interact with school design content and multi-media  Complete assignments that support their school plans, receiving notifications when work is complete or reviewed  Collaborate with each other through comments and feedback  Access additional resources that support the school design process  Store and share documents and other files To ensure the success of the school design cohorts, we would look to SCS to:  Designate a specific point person to be project manager;  Form a design team for each school, including principal and at least one lead teacher who will work through the entire process  Prepare for and participate in working sessions plus individual sessions with your school design facilitator  Design and implement models that meet principles of strategic school design  Regular engagement and partnership with school supervisors  School supervisor commitment to attend/participate in all design sessions  District and ERS collaboratively select cohort of schools who meet set readiness criteria  Ensure cohort schools have increased resource flexibilities vs. status quo (ideally, these will mirror resource flexibility plans under SBB) Another key tool that we often develop to augment this support is staffing and schedule prototypes. It can be difficult for school leaders and leadership teams to develop “green field” innovative school designs. We have found that school design prototypes can jumpstart thinking about new designs. School design prototypes describe a few alternative ways to organize time, people money, and technology for common school profiles in a district. They include descriptions of key building blocks (e.g. intervention enrichment block, multi-classroom leader role, advisory), as well as key design artifacts (schedule, staffing model, role descriptions). We believe that prototypes are not a “plug and play” menu of options for school design, but they are a key support to jump-start the design thinking of school leadership School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 12 teams. Prototypes will translate what major district initiatives mean for school level resource structures and tradeoffs in order to facilitate school leaders’ learning and adaptation. ESR will co-develop with the district the Design Prototypes, focused on a single school level, that will identify common school profiles in the district and high impact design features in each context. They serve as another critical resource planning support for principals, illustrating specific strategic resource choices linked to student and school need as well as system strategy and organized within a coherent design. Building off the experience of the cohort, these prototypes will be used as a key tool to support resource use decision-making as flexibility is rolled out to all schools during the following year. Workstrand #4: School Design Capacity Building Timeline: January 2017-December 2019 To build lasting capacity within the system to make strategic resource use decisions, ERS will provide professional development to school leaders and key central support providers around the curriculum, materials and tools we have developed to support school leaders in strategic school design, aligned with the district’s academic planning structures and timeline Support will fall into the following categories:  Teaching key hallmarks of strategic school design process and decision-making  Diagnosing current resource use and establishing priorities for change in the context of student needs and academic goals  Support around key resource decisions within the SY18-19 planning cycle: scheduling, staffing/budgeting, teacher assignment, hiring, implementation planning. o This support would integrate decision support data from school level resource use reports.  Targeted professional learning and support around a small number of design building blocks targeted for district-wide improvement based on analysis of current trends of school-level resource use. This workstrand will be closely coordinated with readiness and planning work to build school design capacity within the district, as described in workstrand #1. Workstrand #5: SBB Design & Rollout Timeline: July 2017 – June 2018 SBB Design Team. ERS will facilitate the SBB design team through the design process, gradually shifting responsibility for facilitation and team leadership to SCS project leadership. Year one for the design team will include:  Exploration of analysis and SBB design & implementation in other districts  Exploration of scenarios and implications of inclusions of charter schools within SBB funding system  Facilitated site visit to another district already implementing SBB to observe, capture lessons learned, etc. School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools     March 2017… page 13 Make recommendations to Superintendent (or Steering Committee?) on major aspects of SBB design and rollout. This includes structuring the district’s academic planning structures & timeline to align with SBB and informed by the Leading Edge cohort experience Monitoring of SBB readiness preparations Participation in broader stakeholder engagement around SBB Review of Year 1 design results & stakeholder feedback to inform prioritization of changes & improvements for Year 2 Internal Production of School Budget Allocation Reports. ERS supports SCS in building the internal capacity to produce school level budget allocation reports. Reports continue to serve as transparency vehicle and readiness indicator for financial reporting. To create transparency and lay the groundwork for design and rollout of SBB, ERS would work with SCS to build pilot budget reports for all schools in the 2017-18 planning cycle. Reports would use our methodology that tracks all school spending down the school level (even if the district’s financial system tracks it to a central department). Report development would then be taken over by SCS in preparation for SBB implementation for the 2018-19 budget cycle.  Reports would be either SY1617 actual expenses and actual enrollment or SY1718 budget using enrollment projections, depending on the data used in the analysis described above (ERS preference would be to use most recent year available, but final decision would need to be informed by data integrity and timing of availability relative to deliverables).  Resources would be reported on a per pupil basis and could be adjusted for differences in need of student population across schools  Reports would use actual salaries, and could include a feature that calculated the amount the district was subsidizing (or taking from) each school if its average salary was above (or below) district average  Reporting of centrally-managed resources would align with SBB design structure so in many ways would serve as a primer/readiness mechanism for the design discussions that would occur the following summer. Ongoing SBB Readiness. District teams build out & execute on project plans as appropriate to support SBB implementation Preliminary Timeline and Budget As noted earlier, this proposal presumes a three-year partnership between SCS and ERS, based on SCS deep commitment to a resource strategy focused on equity, flexibility and transparency and an approach to transformation that fully leverages strategic school design as a central component of district strategy. A full three-year partnership would enable ERS to bring SCS into our School Design Innovation Project, which would enable ERS to contribute $600,000 over three years to the work, due to philanthropic support from the Schusterman Foundation targeted specifically to helping systems deploy and build capacity around strategic school design as a lever for change. (Current scope, timeline and budget envision a $400,000 contribution from ERS/Schusterman, with adjustments to be determined depending on final scope and timeline). School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 14 As a non-profit, we are very proud of our relatively low daily blended rate, which our analysis suggests are less than a third the cost of for-profit consulting firms who provide consultation to school districts. Actual costs are dependent on a number of factors such as the number of schools in a cohort or number of prototypes developed. To the extent that ERS and SCS deem it appropriate based on evolutions to scope, ERS would work with SCS to assess progress against goals as well as actual costs to ensure the sustainability of the project and delivery of the highest-value results for SCS. Preliminary timeline Workstrand 1. Project Mgmt & Stakeholder Engagement 2. Readiness, Planning & Analysis Landscape & Readiness Financial & Equity Analysis School-Level Resource Use: Analysis Reports – Yr 1 pilot Reports – Integrate 3. School Design Cohort Yr 1 design (ERS-led, w School Designer) Yr 1 implementation support Yr 2 design (ERS/SCS) Yr 2 implementation support Prototype Development 4. Capability Building 5. SBB Design & Implementation Design Implementation 2017 2018 2019 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 15 Preliminary budget Workstrand 1. Project Mgmt & Stakeholder Engagement 2. Readiness, Planning & Analysis Landscape & Readiness Assessments5 Financial & Equity Analysis6 School-Level Resource Analysis School-Level Resource Reports 2016-17 Projected costs 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 $50,000 $50,000 $20,000 $150,000 $99,000 $99,000 $500,000 $250,000 $50,000 $500,000 $250,000 $175,000 $125,000 3. School Design Cohorts Year 1 design (ERS-led) Year 1 implementation support Year 2 design (co-led by ERS and SCS) Year 2 implementation support School Design Prototypes $50,000 $100,000 4. Capability Building $50,000 $100,000 5. SBB Design and Implementation7 Design Implementation $50,000 $135,000 $170,000 Total ERS subsidy8 Philanthropic partners SCS $30,000 Total $375,000 $125,000 $225,000 $50,000 $50,000 $1,099,000 $1,055,000 $430,000 $200,000 $200,000 $800,000 $760,000 $335,000 $99,000 $95,000 $95,000 $25,000 $375,000 $125,000 $225,000 $50,000 $150,000 $225,000 $185,000 $170,000 $95,000 $95,000 $2,679,000 $400,000 $1,895,000 $384,000 Preliminary budget includes $50,000 CAPS database fee and projected ERS travel to and from Memphis 5 Covered in previous contract with SCS. Includes core analyses for a subset of CMOs serving Shelby County students. Projected costs to be finalized based on participation of CMOs and availability and accessibility of relevant datasets. 7 Assumes SBB design and implementation for SCS schools only. ERS would revisit scope and projected costs with SCS leaders and other project partners if SBB would include Shelby County CMOs. 8 ERS may be able to contribute philanthropic resources to support this work, dependent on SCS’ ability to ensure specific enabling conditions for district success that qualify our partnership for ERS School Design Innovation Project, funded in part by the Schusterman Foundation. These enabling conditions include buy-in to SBB and strategic school design from key central office leaders, including Academics, and a commitment to continuing to scale strategic school designs across the district as a core component of the district’s transformation strategy. Participation in the School Design Innovation Project also presumes a three-year partnership with ERS. 6 School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 16 Project team ERS is staffed by more than 30 district and state technical assistance providers and 15 members of our core services team, which includes communications, technology, finance and human resources. Our team has a unique blend of strengths: we look for talented, motivated individuals with both analytic expertise and a deep understanding of public education. Many of our team members have been public school teachers or held positions in district leadership, such as the budget director of DC Public Schools or the Director of Accountability for Chicago Public Schools. Several of our leadership team members also have masters or doctorate degrees in education. Most of our staff come to us with MBA degrees or long years of experience in some of the top-ranked consulting firms in the country. They are drawn to us for our mission and core values: impact, service, teamwork, learning, candor, and work-life balance. Kristen Ferris, Partner & Strategic School Design Practice Head Kristen leads ERS’ strategic school design practice area, working directly with schools and districts to organize school budgets, staffing plans, and schedules to support student achievement. She also leads ERS’ development of curriculum and tools that support strategic school design. Kristen’s work at ERS has also focused on broader resource mapping—analyzing district data to determine key levers for transforming resource use—at both the state and the district level. Kristen worked with the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools to support the transition to student-based budgeting, as well as school redesign in a cohort of five middle schools. She also worked with New York State to support a cohort of eight districts to take action to use existing resources more strategically, and to support the state department of education to consider potential policy, data, and reporting changes to better support districts’ strategic resource use. Kristen’s work with partner districts has focused on broader resource mapping, analyzing district data to determine key levers for transforming resource use. Kristen managed our project with DC Public Schools, and led analyses of Cleveland, OH, and Austin, TX. Prior to joining ERS in August of 2010, Kristen worked in Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Research, Evaluation, and Accountability, first as a Project Manager and later as the Director of Accountability. In these roles, she managed the District’s implementation of NCLB’s school accountability provisions and led the development of a new School Performance Policy, and Student and Parent Surveys. Kristen also taught seventh grade in Chicago Public Schools as a Teach for America Corps Member. While in graduate school she worked for Lighthouse Academies, a Charter Management Organization, designing an organizational strategy to support strong data practices in schools. Jonathan Travers, Partner & Consulting Practice Area Head Jonathan leads the consulting practice area at ERS and works with districts to analyze and improve resource use across systems. Jonathan currently leads the ERS teams working with Oakland and Cleveland, and he most recently led the work in Charlotte, Boston, Denver and Washington, DC. This work includes examining each district’s funding strategy, mapping current resource use, and advising on how to reallocate to support specific district goals. In Denver and Charlotte, it’s also meant building capacity around school design and the effective use of resources at the school level. Prior work includes a partnership with Atlanta Public Schools to build an innovative Teacher Effectiveness Dashboard now in School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 17 use across the system, and the support of Charlotte’s Strategic Staffing Initiative that is turning around many of its lowest performing schools. He has also managed or supported projects in Jacksonville, Sacramento, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Rochester. Previously, Jonathan was Vice-President of Finance and Administration at Teach For America (TFA), where he was responsible for the organization’s overall financial health and all resource allocation processes. He helped TFA more than double in size over five years while simultaneously strengthening its financial position and making substantial programmatic improvements. As budget director of the D.C. Public Schools, Jonathan oversaw a $1 billion operating budget and led the development and implementation of the Weighted Student Formula, a school-based budgeting system designed to equitably and strategically allocate resources to schools. He was also an analyst at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget where he had responsibility for the budget development and management of a portfolio of federal education programs. Jonathan began his career as an elementary school teacher in Compton, CA through TFA. David Rosenberg, Partner & Human Capital Practice Area Head David provides daily strategic and project leadership on ERS studies with large urban school districts, including most recently with the School District of Palm Beach County and Indianapolis Public Schools. He has also led work in Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, New Haven and Aldine, TX and is currently leading an investigation of promising Professional Growth practices funded by the Gates Foundation. In addition to leading strategic resource mapping and other projects, David leads ERS’ Human Capital Practice Area, which is dedicated to building organizational knowledge around how to ensure school systems support excellent teaching and learning while aligning spending on talent to system priorities and needs. Prior to ERS, David served as Vice President, Insights & Digital at Teach For America. In this role, David led the development and management of the organization’s market research efforts and sector-leading online presence, including websites, social media, video and mobile. Previously, David served as a consultant with McKinsey & Company; created and executed marketing campaigns for a range of corporations, non-profits, political candidates and policy groups; and co-founded the annual work-athon, Hands On DC. David is a graduate of Cornell University and Columbia Business School, where he created the now decade-old service organization I-PREP. Illustrative project managers and consultants: Samantha Ensslin, Manager Sam guides district leadership teams through the process of maximizing resources to improve student outcomes. Since joining ERS in 2010, she has worked with over a dozen partner districts. As a leader of ERS’ Strategic School Design practice area, Sam works closely with district leadership to create the conditions for flexible resource use at the school level and to implement necessary changes in school budgets, schedules, and staffing plans. She then works with principals, school leadership teams, and principal supervisors to create customized school designs and support the implementation of those designs. Sam managed ERS’ work with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, where she supported the district to align their resources with their new Strategic Plan and on managing a partnership with Public Impact that School funding and flexibility in Shelby County Schools March 2017… page 18 focused on creating and implementing new school designs for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that extend the reach of excellent teachers. Through her prior work in a variety of unique districts, Sam has gained an expertise in the areas of Weighted Student Funding, teacher compensation, and school autonomy. She managed or supported projects in Austin, Baltimore,Boston, Cleveland, Georgia, Indianapolis, Lawrence, Newark, Prince George’s County, and Rochester. Prior to joining ERS, Sam spent several years in the private sector focused on finance and analytics. Genevieve Quist Green, Manager Genevieve served on the Cleveland Team to support the district’s efforts to dramatically improve student achievement through increased school autonomy over resources. Her experience on the team includes resource mapping as well as direct support for principals on strategic school design. Genevieve previously managed ERS’ cross-district study of spending on educators’ professional growth and support, which included data collection and analysis across Duval County, Washington D.C., and the Achievement First charter school network. Prior to ERS she was the Massachusetts Policy Director at the advocacy organization Stand for Children, where she led the affiliate’s policy analysis and served as a registered state lobbyist. Genevieve is also a former middle school English teacher. During her time as a teacher in Los Angeles, Genevieve wrote guided curriculum and provided training to novice corps members in Teach For America. She later attended the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a Doctorate in Social Policy. Her doctoral research focused on urban redevelopment, school choice, and children’s outcomes under the federal HOPE VI housing program. Nisha Garg, Principal Associate Nisha initially joined ERS through the Education Pioneers Analyst Fellowship in 2012 and is now a core member of the Strategic School Design Team, which trains and supports principals with the deliberate organization of their school’s resources—talent, time, money, and technology—to optimize student outcomes. During her tenure, Nisha has worked in Oakland, Nashville, Charlotte, Boston, and with the State DOE of Georgia and the State DOE of Tennessee. Prior to ERS, Nisha taught English as a Second Language and math to upper elementary students in Charlotte, NC. She also served as the Limited English Proficiency Chair for 3rd-5th grade, where she saw firsthand the need for a more data-driven approach in education and the impact that a strong school design can have on student achievement.