Best Practices for Improving K-12 School Business Processes and Workflow

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BEST PRACTICES FOR IMPROVING K-12 SCHOOL BUSINESS PROCESSES AND WORKFLOWS

Transcript of Best Practices for Improving K-12 School Business Processes and Workflow

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BEST PRACTICES FOR IMPROVING K-12 SCHOOL BUSINESS PROCESSES AND WORKFLOWS

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The great paradox of education in the 21st century is that while expectations and enrollments have dramatically increased, public funding for educational institutions has stalled and fragmented. As a result, school leaders have had no choice but teach themselves how to operate like a business. In addition to their educational goals, schools must also apply best practices for securing new sources of funding, tightly controlling their costs and attracting the best talent in a competitive environment.

The independent Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported in 2016 that “most states provide less support per student for elementary and secondary schools -- in some cases, much less -- than before the Great Recession.”

Their investigation revealed that in 31 states, funding for state schools has reached a level lower than it was in 2008. In about half of those states, the cuts went deeper than 10 percent. That has become a huge handicap because 46 percent of K-12 spending comes directly out of state funding. To compensate, the number of public K-12 teachers and other school workers has fallen by 297,000 since 2008. Yet, the number of students over that same period has grown by 804,000.

How are schools achieving better results for more students using fewer resources? For leading districts and schools across the nation, both public and private, the answer has been a combination of applied business management strategies and advanced technology.

This paper presents insights uncovered over the past decade and a half on how to run a school or district more efficiently, with closer parent-teacher-administration collaboration and with greater protections for data privacy.

Introduction pg. 2

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01THE STRUGGLEWITH PAPER

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It’s hard to blame them because adults also hate administrative paperwork that tends to take them off task. It’s ironic that the growing importance of computers to society over the past 60 years has been matched at each advance with a commensurate decrease in productivity at K-12 schools. How is that possible? Two key factors at work.

The first has nothing to do with computers but everything to do with the demands on school administration. A study commissioned by the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University reported that there were only five full-time equivalent (FTE) public school employees on average for every 100 students in 1950. Since then, the number of teachers hired has grown by 252 percent while the number of administrative staff has grown 702 percent. Multiple levels of oversight and reporting responsibilities have brought a greater appetite for statistics, metrics, assessments and communications. In other words, a great deal of paperwork.The second factor has everything to do with computers in that they brought greater data collection and analysis capabilities under administrative control. First with mainframes and then with personal computers, schools and school districts have slowly gained massive processing power.

Beyond the storage and retrieval of paperwork generated by student measurement and teacher management, school administration has been tasked by trustees and school boards to seek out improved process efficiencies, generate budgeting proposals, summarize critical financial statistics and verify compliance. In other words, even more paperwork.

Kids don’t like homework. That’s a fact.

01. The Struggle With Paper pg. 4

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Although a paperless office has often been touted as a goal for many organizations, the reality of public data gathering and collaborative decision-making requires the exchange of a vast amount of paper, both inside the school and in reaching out to the public.

Today, administrative processes built around paper school forms are still the most common form of record-keeping and management for K-12 schools. Clearly, it’s because they are inexpensive and easily portable, and additionally, justifying IT investment can be tricky. The downside is that paper-based processes clog up administrative systems. Working based on paper forms can be slow, boring and impossible to analyze in aggregate.

Processing, filing, relocating, tracking and transferring the information on paper forms is labor intensive. In recent years, digitization of this workflow has grown to be one the biggest areas where schools have found cost and productivity improvements.

01. The Struggle With Paper pg. 5

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New technology allows individual schools or entire districts to automate forms such as those below and reduce paperwork:

ɠ New hire packets and onboarding paperwork

ɠ Personnel action and requisitions

ɠ Travel and conference requests

ɠ Mileage and general reimbursement requests

ɠ Student registration

ɠ Multiple levels of approvals

ɠ Field trip requests

ɠ Acceptable use policies

ɠ Time sheets The second layer of value in automating this data instead is that it makes it far easier to make better strategic decisions based on a wide range of metrics, benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs). Top schools have stayed on top by devoting the necessary time and resources to collecting, maintaining and analyzing this data. However, too many schools must operate with minimal funding and administrative staffing. In the past, there wasn’t an easy way to collate the data and generate reports that administrators needed most to help the school board and trustees solve their most pressing challenges.

In 2016, technology is falling in price and raising its processing power to put these capabilities within reach for schools of all sizes, all across the nation.

The following is a detailed look at what KPIs schools are using right now to course correct and how digitization has impacted strategy.

01. The Struggle With Paper pg. 6

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02HOW SCHOOLS AND DISTRICTSSHOULD DEFINE THEIR KPIs

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The sheer volume of students, the impacts of poverty on student behavior, the stress on city services, heightened media attention, conflicting inputs on security measures and the teacher talent deficit represent only a few pieces of this complicated picture.

For those reasons, the real-world management decisions of city schools can be instructive for all kinds of schools: public, private, independent, magnet, charter and many more. As a public service to educators, the Council of the Great City Schools launched the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project and published their results in 2015.

ɠ The report is a vital piece of intelligence with three goals:

ɠ To establish a common set of key performance indicators (KPIs) in a range of school operations, including business services finances, human resources and technology

ɠ To use these KPIs to benchmark and compare the performance of the nation’s largest urban public school systems

ɠ To improve operational performance in urban public schools

The fourth, unstated goal is to act as a framework for schools in other environments as they begin to face some of the same problems.They have broken down their compendium of data on school performance into 12 categories based on more than 150 KPIs. These metrics are broken down into 12 categories of KPIs inside 3 functional areas:

Urban public school districts face intense challenges that go beyond education.

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1. Accounts Payable2. Financial/Cash Management3. Compensation4. Grants Management5. Procurement6. Risk Management7. Food Services

8. Maintenance and Operations9. Safety and Security10. Transportation11. Human Resources12. Information Technology

Here is an overview of the most important questions answered by each category of KPIs. This can guide each individual school or district in defining which KPIs should be their immediate concern.

A. Budgeting and Finance Control

B. Business Services

C. Resource Development

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A. Budgeting and Finance Control

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These KPIs can also clearly outline budgeting success or failures. Set up a metric for Expenditure efficiency and Revenue efficiency. What is being measured here is how close adopted and final budgets end up compared to posted income minus spending. Districts should aim at a full 1/1 ratio.

In terms of speed of decision-making, look at the total number of days required to prepare and publish the annual report. This trend line tells you how quickly the district can make it’s financial disclosures.

Financially healthy districts are built on strong leadership and governance. Review school board and administrative policies/ procedures that encourage tighter budget development. Management workflow processes should not restrict fund balancing. Make sure there is a clear definition of operating fund use policies.

Cash management may be the most critical task for financial health. Intelligent, well-controlled cash-flow starts with KPIs for the total number of months under target liquidity and the short-term loans / $100K in district revenue.

Measures that look at investment yield include Investment Earnings /$100K Revenue and Investment Earnings as Percent of Cash/Investment Equity.

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Use the following KPIs as flags to indicate spending trends that can be risky for cash management:

ɠ Changes in revenue inflows

ɠ Changes in expenditure outflows

ɠ Difference in projected to actual cash flows

ɠ In addition, do not forget to do the following:

ɠ Review if schools are meeting school board and administrative policies regarding internal controls and transparency

ɠ Have an accountant give a review of adherence to the latest accounting standards

ɠ Keep a running score of borrowing eligibility compared to liquidity

ɠ Audit for compliance state cash flow controls and regulations

ɠ Where cash management and overall financial health meet are:

ɠ Revenue variability and accuracy of forecasts

ɠ Volatility in expenditure trends

ɠ Forecasts compared to capita income

ɠ Real estate valuation for commercial acreage and business property

ɠ Local retail receipts

ɠ Trends in local employment

ɠ Trends in residential development in the community

ɠ Restrictions on legal reserves

ɠ District infrastructure aging reports

ɠ Financial monitoring tools

3. COMPENSATIONPayroll is one of the most sensitive areas for school employees. Relatively small changes or errors can have major ripple effects across the school campus. KPIs for efficiency in payroll processing normally starts with:

ɠ Cost per paycheck

ɠ Cost / $100K in district spending

ɠ A productive payroll function is measured by:

ɠ Paychecks / FTE / month

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This is one of the major drivers of expenses because of the high volume of regular transactions.

Automation in administrative processing often starts here because it can make the biggest impact in the shortest time from implementation. Direct deposit and self-service portals for employees also deliver a large, rapid impact. Look at KPIs for:

ɠ Direct deposit usage

ɠ Portal sign on and usage / district FTE

ɠ Without automation, districts often register sudden changes in:

ɠ Paycheck Errors / 10K payments

ɠ Growth in W-2 corrections

ɠ Excessive overtime / payroll FTE

Also, productivity losses are indicated by variation in:

ɠ Percentage of off-cycle checks

Automation of these routine tasks has been shown to improve accuracy and streamline processing. Along the same lines, timelines policies may need to be addressed if there are frequent bottlenecks in check issuance.In addition to automation, your staff may need more training, and your employees may need more motivation to accept direct deposit. Review the following KPIs:

ɠ Contracts that require compliance reviews

ɠ How often payrolls are issued

ɠ Status of compliance with new state/local reporting controls

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4. GRANTS MANAGEMENTThis is closely related to the financial controls, especially cash flow from awarded grants and access to newly available grant sources.

To discover how much time is devoted to grant writing and the time it takes to process reimbursements, consider the following KPIs:

ɠ Returned grant funds / $100K in revenue

ɠ Receivables aging in grant funds

This programming should be treated as a risk. Review carefully how dependent your district has grown on grant funding / FTE. Many districts decide that they need to build up more reserves to insulate their financial obligations from grant funding programs that may be unexpectedly cut or reduced. You may want to establish that certain full-time positions on staff have terms that coincide with the length of the grant that supports their hiring.

Assign KPIs to gauge improvement in the following areas:

ɠ A spreadsheet for monitoring of grant status

ɠ Award grant reporting

ɠ Policies to flag potential deadline conflicts

ɠ The impact of different leadership styles decision trees and distributed authorizations

ɠ Areas of potential conflict among the school board, administration and business managers

ɠ Essential regulations around procurement policies

ɠ Plans to develop reserve funds to decrease district dependence on funding from grants

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5. PROCUREMENTMost districts report that there are two basic types of procurement KPIs:

ɠ Those related to the procurement savings ratios and cost reduction.

ɠ Those related to containing Cost / purchase order or the total costs of purchasing Department Costs / budget for procurement

Both help make the purchasing department more efficient. Compare your competitive procurements ratio to your strategic sourcing ratio. These are tied to the cooperative purchasing agreements ratio.

Like Payroll, this is one of the first areas where automation is deployed. Savings can be registered quickly with the P-Card transactions ratio or the Paperless procurement transactions ratio.

Service quality perception is tied to the Procurement lead time total. Influential data that you should collect includes:

ɠ The impact of different procurement policies on purchase authority and P-Card usage

ɠ What automated systems can be put in place to handle high-volume, low-dollar transactions for transactions e-Procurement and applications of e-Catalog processes

ɠ How well does the districts ERP software integrate with school level P-Card reconciliation software and databases

ɠ How to align budgeting priorities with goals for purchasing, and audit controls, especially in relation to P-card credit-limit controls

ɠ A regular re-evaluation of all blanket purchase agreements (BPAs)

ɠ How to consolidate and standardize procedures across the district

ɠ When it makes sense to use P-Cards for payment of large-scale construction projects and the most common vendor agreements, such as utility providers, textbook publishers, food service, and technology billing

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6. RISK MANAGEMENTEffective risk avoidance and incident reduction are playing an increasingly critical role in district management. Several KPIs can help administration make it less likely that the district or any individual school will have to deflect resources into responding to claims. This is measured with the cost of risk / student and the more general employee incident rate / work hours.The costs of workers’ compensation and liability protection factor into risk management. Risk avoidance includes:

ɠ Reducing costs through more appropriate medical management

ɠ Intelligent preventative medical care

ɠ Making sure employees have access to benefits

ɠ Analyzing risk factors

ɠ Following through on policies to prevent litigation

ɠ Tracking and fixing hazardous conditions

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7. FOOD SERVICESAlthough this is not normally considered a part of a quality education experience, breakdowns in productivity here have impacts throughout the rest of the institutional performance metrics.

In most industries that involve food service, productivity KPIs include:

ɠ Meals / work hour

ɠ Cost of food services / revenue

ɠ Cost of labor / revenue

In terms of quality and service measures, meal participation rate can be broken down into breakfast vs. lunch participation or further broken down by student grade levels.

8. MAINTENANCE AND OPERATIONSThe top areas to concentrate on to improve KPIs in maintenance and operations (M&O) are:

ɠ Custodial duties and projects

ɠ Regular preventative or emergency maintenance

ɠ Large scale renovations

ɠ Structural construction projects

ɠ More efficient usage of utilities such as water and electricity

ɠ More responsible and sustainable environmental practices

Custodial work is further broken out into Costs / sq. ft. Note that when workloads are small but costs are high, the FTE in custodial appointments can be reduced to generate a substantial impact on efficiency.

C. Business Services

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9. SAFETY AND SECURITYNothing is more important than the safety and security of the students, teachers, and administrative staff. If this area is compromised, none of the other improvements in educational quality or finances will make any difference.

Frequent benchmarking is extremely important in this area, both internally against past performance and with schools in similar communities or with similar goals.

Issuance of ID badges and school campus access control have become common as base-level security. The next step is upgrading the sophistication of alarm systems and considering the security investment as a percentage of the general fund.

You can estimate the emergency preparedness of staff and personnel preparedness by tracking:

ɠ Emergency training hours / district security specialist

ɠ Security incidents / 1K students

ɠ Crime reports in the community

ɠ Better access control planning and layout

ɠ Security systems in place to protect modernization programs

ɠ Automation and other technology to reduce security staffing

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10. TRANSPORTATIONAlthough not all schools have to worry about these issues, the complexity of transportation issues makes them a top priority for some districts, especially in urban settings.

Transportation breakdowns impact educational service levels and operational efficiencies. Common KPIs are:

ɠ Costs / miles covered

ɠ Average transportation cost / student or other rider

Some diagnostic tools to help boost district efficiency are:

ɠ Runs / bus on daily on monthly schedules, with notes on reuse of resources

ɠ On-time runs with notes on causes for delays

Factors that can make it difficult to improve transportation are:

ɠ Alternate transport types

ɠ Routing obstacles

ɠ Spare buses needed and repair times

ɠ Maintenance schedules based on bus fleet age

ɠ Contracts covering responsibilities, benefits and wages for drivers

ɠ Maximum ride times for students

ɠ Pickup / drop-off scheduling issues

ɠ Projected changes in enrollment and their transportation impacts

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11. HUMAN RESOURCESTo establish a program of reliable improvements in student academic performance, schools do better with higher teacher retention rates and lower FTE turnover rates.

Other important KPIs that measure district health include:

ɠ Cost of hiring / District FTE

ɠ HR departmental cost / $100k in district revenue

ɠ Insights from exit interviews

ɠ Substitute placement rate

ɠ Enrollment percentage for health benefits

ɠ Benefit costs / enrolled FTE

Data that could help your schools improve in all of these are areas include:

ɠ More accurate descriptions of open positions

ɠ Greater diversity in talent pools

ɠ Automation in hiring processes

ɠ Hiring on site vs. centralized hiring

ɠ Team members that are available to talk to applicants

ɠ Automation for recruiting marketing

ɠ Benchmarks of salaries and benefits

ɠ More satisfaction surveys of teachers and staff

D. Resource Development

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12. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYThe greatest driver of performance improvements has been advances in information technology (IT) over the past few years. KPIs that matter most for evaluation of your IT effectiveness include:

ɠ The speed and processing capacity of network services

ɠ The age of your district’s computers, servers and mobile devices

ɠ The sophistication of your technical support On the network level, you should establish KPIs for:

ɠ Bandwidth speed and capacity / total students

ɠ Total number of days when the network usage spikes over 75 percent

ɠ Wide area network (WAN) cost / Student.

ɠ Mobile devices (tablets, laptops, etc) / Student

ɠ Cost of technical support / tickets The Council of Great City Schools emphasized in their conclusion that all of the above KPIs should not be seen as scores to compare schools, but as snapshots of school health. Continuous improvement is what matters, so the actual results don’t matter as much as the trend in results on an individual school or district level.

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03THE IMPACT OF AUTOMATIONAND ELIMINATING PAPERWORK

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For any of the above KPIs to be effective, the underlying data needs to be reliable. Digitization has made great strides in establishing better data integrity by improving form completion rates, reducing errors in data entry and more effectively protecting data security.

Form CompletionComplicated processes involving the movement of paper forms can be collapsed from a matter of weeks down to a matter of days. Every time a form is completed online, it eliminates the need to have the same information manually entered from a piece of paper into various administrative systems. These forms can be completed whenever the user has time.

A good example is the expense claim forms used by teachers. The data from these reports are used in many different KPIs for forecasting costs and establishing budgetary constraints. Online forms allow teachers and other stakeholders allow these forms to be filled out with fewer delays and without requiring a special trip to the office to deliver paperwork.

If teachers have any questions about school or district policies, FAQs and other documentation can be linked directly to the online form instead of requiring another interaction with administrators and all the delays that this could involve. This is especially true if forms are filled out during summers or holidays when teachers have time but administrators are often away from their desks.

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With information up front on allowable expenses, there is a reduction in rejected claims or claims sent back for further clarification. This builds more time into everyone’s schedule for budget adjustments and reallocations.

Error ReductionSpeeding up the process of getting data into the system is a big benefit, but accuracy is even more important. Assuming a 99-percent accuracy rate in data entry means accepting one error for every 100 keystrokes. Even the most experienced school administrators are subject to mistakes due to interruptions and higher-priority projects that disrupt the normal workflow.The only way to reduce errors like these is to reduce the amount of data entry. Using automated forms can auto-populate standardized data and put constraints on entry fields to prevent the most common errors from entering the systems in the first place.

Data SecurityOne of the strangest aspects of the conversion from paper to digital records is the reaction of school staff to security issues. Many administrators have no problem leaving paperwork on their desks, handing them off to assistants or filing them in boxes that might be breached at any time. When it comes to putting the same information online, they often express concerns about security.

A big part of this reaction is simply a matter of familiarity. Paper-based records have been used in business for generations while online record-keeping is still new to many K-12 districts. Online records can afford to be held to a higher standard because they can deliver that higher level of security.

Paper records at schools are at risk for inappropriate access by temporary

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staff, parents and visitors. Many schools store records in unlocked areas with no security because protecting the data is not seen as a priority. In fact, anyone in the school might gain access to private data, even if they didn’t intend to do so. Copy machines, desktop inboxes, counters and fax tables are often places where sensitive data collects. In contrast, online forms are encrypted and there is a record any time one is accessed.

Another concern is misrepresentation. Information stored on paper records can be removed, written over or adjusted. Online records are stored in databases that are backed up so the figures can be compared to the original entries. Schools should be able to feel confident that their data has not been altered in any way.

Finally, accidents and natural disasters may be rare, but they do happen. A flood or fire could wipe out the most critical paper records that a school needs for operation. Boxes of paper files are even at risk from the hiring of

a new janitor, to take an extreme example. Online data can be stored in a different location and instantly retrieved so there is no worry about the loss of individual files or entire rooms full of information.

It is essential for schools to assure that they are using timely, accurate and secure data for their foundational KPIs to be meaningful. When school workflow automation replaces paper form submission and manual entry, they can start making improvements based on reliable KPI data.

Here’s a profile examining what digitization of record-keeping meant for a typical public school district.

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Case Study:Banning Unified School District, Riverside County, California. California’s Banning school district is made up of four elementary schools, an Intermediate school, a middle school, two high schools and an independent study school. The district serves more than 5,000 students with a staff of around 570 employees.

Banning used a paper-based process for creating and collecting Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) forms every year. The entire process took weeks and tracking down forms used up a significant portion of administrative time. Banning’s District Secretary would have to create a new list of employees for each school each year and print out paper AUP forms for them to sign. The forms were then placed in employee mailboxes.

After the forms were signed and returned, the Banning District Secretary would manually check names off from a master list. The forms would then be forwarded to the IT department for recording and data storage. The biggest breakdown in the system involved tracking down forms that weren’t signed.

If names weren’t checked off the master list, administration would have to contact the employee, In many cases, the sporadic contact between some employees and the district office meant that the forms would be missing for months. Although this was just one form out of many that passed back and forth from administration to employees, the drain on resources made resolving the issue a priority for Banning. According to Mac Patel, Banning’s Director of IT, “the creation of an online portal where employees could electronically sign these AUP forms, “seemed like a no-brainer. It would

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allow us to go green and eliminate an antiquated, time-consuming process that created extra hours of work and a devastating filing situation for our district.”

It took only two days for Banning’s IT department to automate these forms after the district approved the project. Patel described the impact this upgrade has had on the district’s productivity, “Automating Banning’s Acceptable Use Policy forms has saved our district months - not days.”

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04AUTOMATED WORKFLOWS ANDTHE SPEED OF DECISION-MAKING

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Time is the most precious resource for administrative staff and school business officers. Time can’t be replenished yearly like budgetary funding and it can’t be acquired like teaching skills. The provisioning of time is one of the main reasons driving the adoption of automation at schools across the nation. When school leaders have more time and more reliable data, they can make better decisions faster, giving everyone else more time to meet their goals.

Administrative Time Use StudyStanford conducted a study of “Principal Time-Use and School Effectiveness,” and the results of their investigation have important implications for speeding up decision-making for administrative staff at K-12 schools of all kinds.

The report began with the observation that many studies have demonstrated the critical roles of the principal and the support staff in the development of high-quality schools. This report sought to find out on a granular level where administrators spend their most time and how quality could be improved by collapsing the most unproductive daily time sinks.

To be certain that the data was reliable, the researchers applied methodology using technological advances such as real-time short surveys as well as the more traditional to self-reporting data collection methods like

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end-of-the-day logs and experience sampling methods (ESMs). The report broke down principal tasks into five broad categories:

ɠ Administrative (seeking approvals, filling out paperwork, searching for files, etc.)

ɠ Organizational (planning actions to achieve KPIs, managing budgets, hiring, etc.)

ɠ Instruction and Curriculum (observing classroom instruction, planning curricula, etc.)

ɠ Professional Growth (coaching, studying effective practices, etc)

ɠ Fostering Relationships (interacting socially, etc.)

Time use data was then compared against the perceptions of the school’s educational environment by teachers and parents. The results provided guidance on the correlation (not necessarily specifying causation) between what actions administrators take and how well the school performs.

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Time Study Results: Why Organizational Tasks Should Take Priority Over Administrative Ones The study found that principals were in the school office for the majority of their days. On average, they spent 54 percent of the day at their own desks, plus nine percent more elsewhere in the main office. The rest of the day was spent around the school grounds (in hallways, playgrounds and classrooms) or outside the school. Only around eight percent of the day was spent in classrooms and another four percent outside in the community, working on external relations.

The top tasks in the main office were administrative and organizational. A surprising finding with regards to their time in the classroom was that only half of that time was spent observing or coaching teachers. The other half of their time was multi-tasking to handle other administrative, organizational, instructional or internal relations tasks. No other location in the school saw such a diversity of task management.

The biggest problem they faced was that nearly 30 percent of their day had to be spent on administrative responsibilities. Managing paperwork, seeking approvals and fulfilling compliance requirements were among the top tasks. Only 20 percent of the day was spent on important decision-making activities such as hiring, improving productivity and reviewing budgets.

Administrative tasks took time away from the organizational responsibilities that had the biggest impact on school performance. In schools where principals were able to devote more of their time to organizational issues, they were able to report greater improvements for critical student test performance over three years.

For these schools where the principals had more time to work on their

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organizational issues, the entire school staff was much more likely to rate the professional climate of the school as positive. At the same time, parents and the greater community were far more likely to respond that they perceived the school to be a place that was safe and secure for their children. In schools where principals spent more time on day-to-day instruction activities in the classroom, there was marginal or no impact on student performance and, many times, there was a negative correlation to the teacher and parent assessments of the school improvement.

The study concluded that any additional time that principals and their staff can spend on organizational management will be more consistently associated with positive perceptions of the school. Administrative delays and slow paper-based processes take valuable time away from necessary school improvement projects. The report concluded that principals who devote more time to organizational tasks instead of administrative ones are better able to delegate safety and discipline to the appropriate school employees.

The Environment Impact of AutomationSchool districts should also consider more than just the improvements to their own cost and efficiency. The digitization of paper-based processes is also an imperative for environmentally conscious organizations in every industry.

Consider how many pieces of paper are printed out by schools on a daily basis on average. By some estimates, a typical school might use around 2000 sheets of paper a day, roughly equivalent to 360,000 sheets in a school year. Even a more modest estimate of 250,000 pieces of paper annually

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will end up costing a school around $30,000 to $50,000 for supplies, ink, maintenance, etc.

The cost is much greater to the global environment, though. Here are a few facts about the current rates of deforestation:

ɠ The rate of deforestation equals to loss of 20 football fields every minute.

ɠ Loss of forests contributes between 12 percent and 17 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.

ɠ The United States has less than five percent of the world’s population yet consumes more than 30 percent of the world’s paper.

ɠ If the current rate of deforestation continues, it will take less than 100 years to destroy all the rainforests on the earth.

ɠ Worldwide, more than 1.6 billion people rely on forest products for all or part of their livelihoods.

Now consider that there are at least 100,000 schools in the US using 34 billion sheets of paper annually. Approximately 80 percent of discarded paper ends up in landfills, which are cited by the EPA cites as the largest source of methane emissions.

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Schools should be teaching the next generation to accept better stewardship of their environmental responsibilities. As the Green Schools Initiative has pointed out, “Significantly reducing paper use is probably the most important part of curbing deforestation and the environmental havoc wreaked by paper production. If we want to create healthy learning environments for our kids now and in the future, then we need to acknowledge that our paper choices at school and home have a deep impact on their well-being. Schools can make enormous contributions by becoming super-conscientious about reducing paper use...”

Making the conscious choice to move to a system of reduced waste and greater efficiency is inherently more responsible.

Change can be highly disruptive, though. Although school staff, teachers and other employees tend to agree with all of these concepts and research conclusions in theory, they often resist the transition from paper-based to paperless systems in fact. Here is how the transition to paperless workflows came together for an urban school district near San Jose, CA.

Case Study: Fremont Union High School District, Northern CaliforniaFremont serves more than 10,000 students in the areas around Cupertino, Sunnyvale, San Jose, Los Altos, Saratoga and Santa Clara. Jason Crutchfield, Director of Business Services at Fremont, explained how digitization improved the laborious paper-based workflow that dealt with attendance.

“I helped move to digital attendance several year ago. This was more than painful because of the large number of users involved and the giant gap in

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adults’ use of technology at that point in our history. But, like all successful technology implementations, we look back at bubbling in attendance on Scantron sheets and can’t believe anyone ever thought that was a better way to do it. More recently (5 - 6 yrs. ago), we implemented a basic digital document management system for HR and student records. This allowed us to scan, store and search all employee records digitally. This has made a huge difference. We no longer fill our warehouse with hundreds of boxes, nor lose files to water/mold/fire damage (or simply lose them in the pile). We no longer have microfilm, microfiche or floppy disks readers to purchase, maintain and replace. We can now find all of our files within seconds and not hours. We also have better tracking of when we received them and who has accessed them.

I have also helped implement our own digital forms using .pdf that can auto-calculate. Though not comprehensive, this saved us a ton of time on certain forms. In fact, the person in my department that has to review these forms was able to take on some extra duties due to the time saved recalculating these forms for each one turned in.”

He advised that any school leader looking to sell the staff on specific technological improvements to workflow should start from the goals. That gives the staff the motivation to work through the difficulties involved with any change of this magnitude. Crutchfield advised, “Start simple and get user buy-in first. Do so by selling users on your hopes/needs for what could be done, before you sell a product. When a manager tries to sell a product to employees it never comes off well. What works better is selling them on what you wish/hope could be done to make things easier/better for them and the greater community.”

He approaches each new improvement project by helping administrators reset their expectations and reframe digitization in terms of common time sinks. “I will first talk to them about how great it would be if they could see every form someone has filled out right on their computer and never have to look for it in the mail or wonder when the person turned in the form,” Crutchfield said.

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He proposed, “I would talk about how hard it is get data off of the paper forms and into other systems. I love to use lines like, ‘wouldn’t it be great if you could just press a button and see how many forms people have completed, but not sent to you in the mail yet’ or ‘wouldn’t you save a ton of time if all the data people wrote on the form was automatically entered into the student data system?’ Once I can get them to answer yes to one or more of these questions, I can then start to introduce possible solutions for them.”

The point is not just about convenience, but repurposing the time saved into improvement in the quality of service. That translates into a better reputation in the community, improved potential for fundraising, the ability to attract better teaching talent and more time to focus on strategic decision-making at the highest levels.

Crutchfield expressed this as, “The very first thing I want to do is improve our efficiency and quality of our work. If done correctly, digital forms should be easier to create, edit, complete, track and distribute/collect. The information on the forms should be far easier to access, query and store. These are things I use to show why we need to move in this direction. If a system can do these things and not cost us too much, then we have a solution that will be used and appreciated. Yes, it reduces waste, paper and more, but I use those as secondary benefits or when talking to the larger community. Internally, it is all about efficiency, service and productivity.”

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05ENHANCED COMMUNICATIONSBETWEEN STAFF, TEACHERS AND PARENTS

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Technology for communications has advanced with blinding speed over the past century. The evolution from telegraph to telephone to fax to email to collaboration platforms can’t be compared to development in any other technological field.

While the rest of the world has adopted new communication technology as soon as it has become commercially available, many schools are still evaluating their options with considerably more caution. Education Week cited a significant body of research that indicates why schools have been slow to adopt new technology for greater efficiencies in teaching and communications, both in and out of the classroom.

While both academics and the outside community are concerned about digital distractions for students, they do want schools to offer fair access to the latest tech and to address achievement gaps for students at different economic levels. Most of all, everyone is concerned about the security of big data and how it is being collected and used in institutions.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a list of connectivity targets for schools in 2014. One of those targets was an Internet connection to the district office or another central hub that could handle at least 100 MB/sec for every 1,000 students. That’s just a short-term goal though. In the longer term, the FCC expects schools to secure at least 1 GB/sec for every 1,000 students. Given the demands of streaming HD video and the coming Internet of Things, 1 GB/sec will be an absolute necessity within the next few years.

To fund this and other tech targets, the FCC, in association with the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), created a federal program called “E-Rate.” So far, E-Rate has paid out well over $30 billion to help schools with their modernization and digitization programs.

The next battleground emerging in technological upgrades for schools is the interoperability of software. Schools and their central district offices should establish common standards and protocols so data can be shared easily across their networks. The development of standards for data interoperability are only now being explored on a national level. In the meantime, it is up to district administrators to make sure that the data they collect can be shared easily with all of their many stakeholders.

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Survey on Communications Preferences Ironically, the answer lies in better communications. On one side, there need to be clear channels open from the administrative staff at school districts to stakeholders like the school board. On the other hand, schools recognize that everyone would benefit from closer coordination between teachers, parents and the larger community surrounding the school.

To find some solutions to these breakdowns, the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) conducted a survey of school district representatives at both large and small, urban and rural schools in 22 states. Their questions centered around the communications preferences of parents and school employees. The results of their survey offer insights into how teachers and principals can reach out more effectively to their communities.

It should come as no surprise that parents and community leaders want more advanced technological communications from teachers and school representatives.

When parents were asked for their preferred channel for receiving school news, they answered:

1. E-mail from the district/school2. Online parent portal3. District/school e-newsletters4. District/school website5. Telephone/voice messaging system

“Consumer needs are changing,” explained NSPRA President Ron Koehler. “The backpack folder is no longer the primary source of information for parents. They want and prefer instant electronic information. ... [T]he data demonstrates parents and non-parents alike turn to the web when they need information, and they want it now.”

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In the interest of security and student exposure to negative messaging, though, social media’s main channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, ranked at the very bottom of communication preferences for parents. Social media ranked even below newspapers, TV and school board meetings as sources of information about school developments.

The NSPRA suggested that social media may lack credibility with parents for official communications, but it could soon develop into a more important channel in the future. For events like fund-raisers and extra-curricular activities, a district’s social media accounts could be used to raise awareness quickly.

For the school’s official communications, the information that parents wanted most varied slightly between elementary schools and secondary schools. The communications priorities that were the same for both were:

ɠ Updates on student progress or insights on improvement

ɠ Alerts when a student performance starts to slip

ɠ Yearly learning expectations

ɠ What homework is due and specific grading policies

ɠ Descriptions of the curriculum descriptions

ɠ Information on additional instructional programs

ɠ A calendar of events and meetings

From that point on, the priorities start to diverge. At the elementary level, parents wanted to see:

ɠ How well their child did socially

ɠ Information on student safety

ɠ Teacher evaluations

ɠ Educational program changes

ɠ Comparing school KPIs to other schools

In comparison, parents of students in secondary school were looking for:

ɠ Suggestions on the best way to contact the teacher

ɠ Changes to the curriculum

ɠ Course requirements

ɠ Details on the graduation program

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Preferences on the Frequency of UpdatesAlmost half of parents (47 percent) said they want the district to send out updated information as soon as they come to a decision. A larger percentage of non-parents agree - 59 percent of them want immediate updates instead of a monthly or quarterly newsletter. That’s not practical with paper-based communications, but it can easily be accomplished through email or a parent portal.

4 Strategies for Improving Internal CommunicationsJust as important as the communications channel from schools to the community, however, is the internal coordination and collaboration efforts.

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The speed and integrity of messaging can make all the difference in the school’s quality of decision-making.Again, technology has provided answers, though schools have been cautious to adopt these solutions out of concerns over cost, security and lost productivity in the transitions to new systems.

Here are some original answers to communications issues that have made the biggest impact over the past few years:

1. SCHOOL WIKIS FOR INTERNAL USE - Schools used to print out documents covering proposed changes and wait for the school board to coordinate meetings between all the stakeholders involved. Input would be gathered, summarized and again printed out for everyone to read. Now all that can happen at once with online wikis, which are simply web pages with secured access that are devoted to school business. The word “wiki” is the Hawaiian word for “fast” that was popularized by Wikipedia. Now, private wikis can be created to cover virtually any proposals. After administrators post changes, everyone with read/write privileges can review proposals 24/7 from anywhere and post their thoughts on the matter. The school can then gain consensus and act with unprecedented speed.

2. DEDICATED FACILITATORS - Some schools are now prioritizing information flows by assigning staff to manage internal communications. This role takes on the responsibility of making sure employees are kept up to date on progress toward achievement of KPIs, goals and initiatives. If anyone has a question, they can be directed to the single source of truth within the organization. This eliminates decisions based on speculations, rumors, conflicting data or verbal directives. The best teachers don’t have time to seek out the information they need to do their jobs because they are too busy helping students learn.

3. ONLINE PORTALS OPEN TO EMPLOYEES OR THE PUBLIC - Different stakeholders seek out different kinds of information about what is happening at the school. Instead of sitting in long meetings where each group must wait for their issue to be addressed, people can now go online in certain districts and find the information they need based on their access rights. Just as wikis can speed up policy discussions, portals can serve the same function for private

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parent-teacher communications, employee forms and other types of downloadable data.

4. DIGITAL SIGNATURES - The one advantage that paper has over online documents is the ability to legally approve or acknowledge the information with a physical signature. The latest technologies have finally addressed that with options that comply with the federal ESIGN act, used for online forms like tax returns. Either the school employee can use their secured login and password as their effective signature, or they can use a mouse to draw an online version of it. Forms can include as many spaces as necessary for multiple signatories or to accommodate an approval chain.

Coordination of efforts and the speed of decision-making greatly influence a school’s ability to reach objectives and color how the school is perceived by the community. The last piece of the puzzle is improving the communications channel between administrators and teachers, especially new hires who often get overwhelmed with information on paper forms.

Case Study: Manassas Park City Schools, outside the Washington, D.C. metro areaManassas Park is on the smaller side, operating with only 450 full-time employees. The larger districts surrounding them, especially in the city, tend to attract teacher talent. Their traditional paper-based processes were inefficient and tended to reflect poorly on the school. In on instance, 40 people were hired while several others transferred to different positions.

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Managing all those paper documents and walking new hires through the information was too labor-intensive. Delays in securing approvals and missed deadlines could prevent some employees from accessing the benefits provided by the district.

Megan Mills, HR Generalist, took on the challenge of digitizing her HR department’s teacher hiring workflow. She implemented online video guides because, “people learn in different ways. We also have a lot of employees who do not speak English as their first language, so sometimes hearing instructions is more effective.” Mills emphasized, “If you don’t do a good job of clearly presenting the required paperwork, you can see the employee becoming very overwhelmed.”

In terms of communications improvements from the new automated system that she helped to implement, Mills said it, “eliminates most of the possible situations for human error, allows forms to be accurately tracked while in process, empowers the employee to become educated on their benefit options, allows HR to provide employees with information in a format that is

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conducive to their learning styles and allows [new employees] time to digest all the information and talked to a loved one about their options.” The onboarding process for new teachers makes all the difference in retaining the best teachers for the long run. Students can’t perform without the steady guidance of great educators, who can’t afford to waste their time and energy on inefficient processes. Mills painted a picture of why the hiring process is so important to the entire teaching experience: “A new employee’s first impression is the one that lasts - you never get a second chance to make a great first impression. This onboarding system will make a positive impression on our new employees setting in motion excitement for what else is to come. And I think that’s probably why I’ve done those few extra things to try to show the culture that we have here, from the very beginning.”

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06APPLYING LESSONSFROM HIGH-PERFORMING SCHOOLS

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The National Business Officers Association (NBOA) gathered input from trustees at dozens of independent schools to find out which metrics they found most valuable. Their discussion tended to return to changes in:

ɠ Current Year Operating Budget

ɠ Operating Cash

ɠ Admissions Pipeline

ɠ Net Endowments versus Debt

ɠ Student turnover

However, their report cautioned against trying to adjust too many financial dials simultaneously. Ed DiYanni, CFO at Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, CA, said, “Too much data is almost as bad as no data. There are hundreds of different data and metric points, but you have to know which ones to measure.”

To narrow down the options and zero in on the most critical KPIs for any given school, the project must begin with defined goals. For most schools, goal definition arises from looking at the results of comparing just ten numbers:

1. Enrollment2. Tuition3. Endowment4. Cash liquidity5. Faculty/staff headcount6. Salaries7. Financial aid/fundraising projections8. Upcoming capital expenses9. Current operating income10. Debt service

The next step is to benchmark again the school’s own past performance and peer schools of a similar size with a similar mission. School data for benchmarking can be found at the:

ɠ NBOA research site

ɠ National Center for Education Statistics

ɠ National Principals’ Resource Center

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What Improved School Districts Have In CommonOffice of Superintendent of Public Instruction for Washington State produced a report on “Characteristics of Improved School Districts: Themes from Research,” which analyzed more than 80 academic articles on the field.

This report concentrated on identifying school districts that demonstrated improvements, even if not all of the schools in the districts shared in their performance improvements. High schools, and secondary schools more generally, posed the greatest challenges to meeting and exceeding expectations due to a wide variety of factors.

Another important point made by the research team is that the improvements only represent a snapshot, not a permanent condition of

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reified performance. They may have accomplished substantial changes, but further studies would need to be done to find out how they played out over the long run.

Superintendents like to say that school districts are complex systems and they don’t exist outside the contexts of their own individual communities. As a result, not all these benchmarks and strategies can be useful in different types of settings. The conclusions of this report are meant to be a platform for discussing what comes next, not a prescription for solving all problems present in contemporary schools.

With these caveats in mind, here are the major themes that emerged from their multilateral study. The 13 interrelated themes fell into four broad categories. Each is followed by questions that can help school leaders craft individual KPIs based on current needs.

A. Effective Leadership1. FOCUS ON ALL STUDENTS LEARNING - Top schools reflect shared

beliefs and values, have clear and meaningful goals and a clear vision of change. They focus on student learning KPIs, build consensus and remove distractions. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How does a district develop and share its focus on improving student learning?

ɠ How does a district know that its focus and mission are shared?

2. DYNAMIC AND DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP - Instructional leadership is expanded to encompass the superintendent, principals, teacher leaders and other administrators at district and school levels. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ What is the central focus of senior administrators and other leaders in the district?

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ɠ How do leaders demonstrate their commitment to student learning and improved instruction?

ɠ How do leaders create the political will and moral responsibility in districts and communities to take the actions necessary to provide equity and excellence in learning for all students?

3. SUSTAINED IMPROVEMENT EFFORTS OVER TIME - School business officers at the district level are committed to improvement efforts. They help staff internalize the changes with KPIs and reporting. District stability helps schools “stay the course” of school improvement, to persevere and persist because change is a long-term and multi-stage process QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How does the district communicate its commitment to school improvement?

ɠ How does the district demonstrate persistent and continuous improvement?

ɠ How does the district maintain stability of leadership, vision and concerted improvement efforts in a climate of political and social change?

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B. Quality Teaching and Learning

4. HIGH EXPECTATIONS AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ADULTS - Quality student learning has to begin with higher expectations for the superintendent, senior staff and principals. School districts work from KPIs and apply consistent pressure on schools for improved outcomes for students. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How does the district communicate high expectations for adult performance?

ɠ What processes are used in the district for accountability and to provide feedback to staff?

ɠ How does the district monitor reform and change to maintain pressure for improved learning?

5. COORDINATED AND ALIGNED CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT - Improved schools align the curriculum according to KPIs, benchmarks and standard policies. Districts apply a centralized and coordinated approach. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Are district learning standards aligned with state standards and assessments?

ɠ Are district policies aligned with curriculum and assessment?

ɠ What are district processes for coordinating curriculum district-wide?

6. COORDINATED AND EMBEDDED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT - Districts support professional development based on the teaching and learning needs of the school. Professional learning communities build better teaching skills and drive instructional changes across the system.

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How does the district build capacity in the district and the school to improve instruction and student learning?

ɠ How does the district reflect research-based professional development practices?

ɠ How does the district ensure coherence across professional development, policies, and teaching and learning practices?

7. QUALITY CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION - Improved districts emphasize principles of good instruction. They communicate clear expectations for what to teach. They use benchmarks and KPIs to monitor instruction, curriculum and changes to instructional practices. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ What is the district-wide vision for “good” instruction?

ɠ How do teachers develop the knowledge and skills described by the vision?

ɠ How are principles of learning implemented in classrooms?

ɠ What guidance for instruction does the district provide to schools?

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C. Support for Systemwide Improvement

8. EFFECTIVE USE OF DATA - Improved districts dedicate school HR professionals to provide training on the best use of data. They help schools gather and interpret data. They use technology to monitor school finances, make better decisions and boost professional development. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How does the district make data available for use in schools?

ɠ How are school leaders trained to use multiple measures and analyze data?

ɠ How does the district support classroom teachers’ use of data in making instructional decisions about individual students?

9. STRATEGIC ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES - Improved districts provide and allocate resources to ensure quality instruction. They provide additional financial and HR resources to bring up the lowest performing schools in their districts. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How do resource allocations reflect district policies?

ɠ How are human, social, physical and financial resources developed, managed and allocated across the district?

ɠ How does the district determine the adequacy of resources needed and provided to improve student learning?

ɠ How does the district ensure equity in allocating resources to close the achievement gap?

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10. POLICY AND PROGRAM COHERENCE - Student learning is central to roles, budget, operating procedures and personnel practices. All district systems are brought together to attain common goals established by benchmarking and KPIs. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How does the district ensure coherence in policy across district programs and operations?

ɠ How does district policy reflect the goals of equitable and excellent learning?

ɠ How do operational systems in the district reinforce learning goals?

D. Clear and Collaborative Relationships

11. Professional Culture and Collaborative Relationships - Automated workflows help improved districts build a culture of commitment, mutual respect and stability. Professional norms include collaboration, shared responsibility and continuous learning. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How is the district building a professional culture that supports high standards for students and adults in the system?

ɠ How does the district build trust, mutual respect and competence among stakeholders in the system?

ɠ How does the district provide opportunities for peer support and collaboration and develop professional learning communities?

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12. CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF SCHOOL AND DISTRICT ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES - Improved districts set expectations, decentralize responsibility and serve as change agents in helping schools make improvements. While the central office has responsibility for defining goals and standards, schools have choices in how they use of resources and communicate with school staff. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How does the district balance district authority and school autonomy?

ɠ What are district responsibilities and prerogatives, and how are they determined?

ɠ What are parameters for school-level decision making, and how are they determined?

ɠ How are different roles for central office and schools developed, communicated and monitored?

13. INTERPRETING AND MANAGING THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT - Automated workflows can enhance district-wide communication with staff, teachers and parents. Districts buffer schools against external disturbances and distractions, mobilize and manage community and business support and involve family and community as partners QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

ɠ How does the district interpret state and federal policy to schools and assist with implementation?

ɠ How does the district enlist the involvement and support of all stakeholders including staff members, union leadership, business leaders, families and community in implementing reform initiatives?

ɠ How does the district mobilize community support?

ɠ How does the district involve family and community in school district affairs?

ɠ How does the district balance the need to buffer schools from external distractions while opening schools for family and community involvement?

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Considering all the data, this report concluded that more research would be necessary to fully understand how to replicate school and district-wide improvement. There are unanswered questions about the relationships between technology, strategy and learning outcomes.

Using KPIs and benchmarks from a wide variety of sources, including past performance, districts can carry out their own inquiry into instructional and administrative practices such as the productivity gains from moving from a paper-based to an automated workflow. Districts should analyze data and reports from many sources as they strive to improve student learning and financial performance of all schools within a given district.

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07NEXT STEPS IN INVESTIGATINGAUTOMATION TO REACH KPIS

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The long-term goals of improving school performance begin with improved administrative efficiencies and establishing more reliable data integrity for KPIs. School administrators can progress on both of those fronts through automating their most labor-intensive workflows.

School and district leaders can start that process by contacting the technical experts at Chalk Schools, who can offer guidance and additional information on KPIs, workflow improvements and best practices. The flexible, intuitive online platforms from Chalk Schools can be customized to concentrate on whatever KPIs matter most for any given school, public or private.

Administrators can transform their traditional paper-based workflows into a highly intelligent single source of truth for an entire district. The result is more time, better performance, a sustainable environment for future generations to enjoy and wider access to resources that provide a more meaningful experience for all stakeholders in the education process.

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