Let’s be honest: school scheduling is not, typically, at the top of most superintendents’ already jam-packed priority list. However, better schedules can be a major lever for improvement, simultaneously helping raise student achievement and lower costs—which is why taking a strategic approach to scheduling should be on the mind of every superintendent.
Take the example of one district I worked with. A close review of schedules revealed vastly different schedules in each of the 10 elementary schools, resulting in some students receiving 60 minutes of literacy daily and others nearly double. Further, specials staff were assigned to schools on a one-per-school basis despite significant differences in school sizes, leading to wildly different—not to mention unfair—workloads and student opportunities.
Creating more strategic schedules addressed both issues. First, school and district leaders collaborated to create a common set of district-wide scheduling guidelines outlining the required daily minutes by subject. This ensured equitable experiences and time on learning across schools, giving leaders a lens through which to assess schedules, and ultimately contributing to raising student proficiency rates in ELA by 14%.
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Second, schools began to share specials staff to more accurately reflect actual student enrollment, which allowed the district to realize $350,000 in savings via natural attrition.
So, what is a superintendent’s role in strategic scheduling? Superintendents should be involved in select, high-leverage steps of the scheduling process; in other words, present, but not constantly involved. To that end, here are three things every superintendent can do to help their teams create better schedules–and a few things they can ignore.
1. Schedules should come before budgets and staffing–not after
Schedules are not built in a vacuum: they are greatly influenced by staffing and budgeting decisions and affect these decisions in return. While scheduling typically happens last among these three processes, best practices suggest the opposite:
- Instructional and curricular priorities drive your schedule design, including how many minutes per subject (elementary) or periods (secondary) are assigned, how student voice and choice is incorporated, and how intervention is included
- School schedule design drives overall staffing counts, workloads, and grade-level or course assignments
- Staffing decisions then inform and guide overall budget allocations
This approach helps districts staff appropriately to need and helps schools create schedules driven more by student enrollment and choice than past practice or preference. Superintendents have an important role in helping set a clear timeline for scheduling, staffing, and budgeting and supporting school and district leaders to manage the processes well.
2. Scheduling, done well, is a collaboration between schools and central office
Many superintendents see scheduling as a school-based responsibility, especially if school leader autonomy is highly valued.
My experience suggests, however, that central office leaders tend to overestimate how technically skilled school-based schedulers are, especially at the elementary and middle school levels, and underestimate the amount of support schools need to create great schedules that are staffed precisely. This is especially true when schools implement changes to schedules instead of “rolling over” the prior year’s schedule.
The best way to approach scheduling is as a partnership between school-based staff and central office. Here’s how superintendents can help make that happen:
- Establish a cross-functional scheduling team (or three): Every district should have at least one scheduling team responsible for creating a set of district-wide scheduling guidelines, a protocol for how scheduling decisions are made, and a timeline for when schedules should be drafted, reviewed and finalized. This team should include principals, school-based schedulers and district academic staff. While it may not be necessary for the superintendent to be part of this team, the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning should be involved. Very large districts should consider creating three scheduling teams: elementary, middle, and high.
- Communicate a clear set of “must-have” scheduling priorities: At its core, scheduling is a complex series of tradeoffs, but it is impossible for any district or school to “see” all the tradeoffs at the start of the process. Providing clarity on “must-have” priorities and what to schedule inevitably makes it easier for teams to navigate tradeoffs during the scheduling process.
- Dispel myths and misunderstandings: Schedules are sometimes driven by “myths” about what is required or possible. In one district I worked with, one principal swore that PE was required for 50 minutes daily, while another thought it was 50 minutes weekly. The actual state requirement was 150 minutes per week. Superintendents should help dispel myths by pushing central office leaders to share clear guidance with school teams about state- or district-level time on learning requirements and, if relevant, collective bargaining requirements.
3. Know class size targets–and how closely schools are staffed to them
Staffing accounts for 80%-90% of most school budgets. School schedules determine how virtually all school staff use their time. Designing a great school schedule, then, is an incredibly high-value exercise.
One of the best ways for superintendents to add value in the scheduling process is to help decide–and ensure fidelity to–class size minimums, targets and maximums. Any changes to or misalignment of actual staffing assignments to class size targets have enormous implications on budgets and opportunities for students.
For example, in a 5,000-student district, misalignment between class sizes and targets of just two students on average might result in a de facto investment of as much as $1 million in smaller class sizes. Viewed another way, the district under-scheduled by approximately 50 sections, all of which could have been more enrichment or intervention classes for students.
Superintendents should ask the following questions of their teams:
- What are current class size minimums, targets, and maximums, and what is the rationale for them?
- How closely (to the decimal place!) is each school staffed to these targets?
- Where, if at all, are class sizes intentionally lower than targets, and what is the rationale for doing so?
Asking these questions can be the difference between well-staffed schedules and exceptionally staffed schedules that truly maximize opportunities for students. Many districts already carefully manage these figures closely at the elementary level, but struggle to do so at the secondary level.
What superintendents can ignore about schedules
At the end of the day, superintendents should only be involved in scheduling at the strategic level and avoid becoming involved in any granular staffing decisions, such as which teacher is teaching which courses at which times. Individual student schedules should also be left to school teams.
Applying the practices outlined above will help any superintendent approach scheduling more strategically and grow opportunities and outcomes for students.
