Timely-WP-Unlocking+Resources+Through+Scheduling

        Unlocking Resources
        Through Scheduling

How Lubbock Independent School District used scheduling
  to enable instructional, staffing, and budget priorities
Executive Summary

As Superintendent Kathy Rollo and the team                                            Total Enrollment
at Lubbock Independent School District (LISD)
prepared for the 2023-24 school year, they
                                                                          2018-2019             27,759
faced a host of complex challenges, shared by
many districts around the country. The pandemic                           2019-2020             27,348
had taken its toll academically and emotionally,
exacerbating achievement gaps. Enrollment has                             2020-2021             26,451
declined, falling approximately 9% in the last five
years. And the financial pressure of that enrollment                      2021-2022             25,659
decline has been compounded by the ESSER
fiscal cliff. The LISD team knew they needed                              2022-2023             25,247
to simultaneously ‘right-size’ the district while
enabling investment in new programs to enhance                             Source: National Center for Education Statistics
academic outcomes and the student experience.


LISD took a unique approach to building these plans: they began working with Timely, a new scheduling
organization, and utilized school scheduling as a vehicle to enable priorities for the 2023-24 school year. As a
result, Lubbock was able to make significant progress towards its objectives:

    Address the need for improved middle school academic performance: the district invested in new double
    blocks of ELA and math which required hiring additional teachers.
    Increase capacity to better serve students with disabilities, a subgroup that has been steadily increasing
    even as overall enrollment has been decreasing: the district hired 18 more staff members across grades 6 to
    12 and dedicated additional funding for professional development.
    Efficiently allocate resources across all schools to address budget pressures from declining enrollment:
    by scheduling more consistent class sizes and teacher loads, LISD reduced staffing by 37 positions across
    9 middle schools and 5 high schools, representing ~$2.2 million of savings which were then reallocated to
    the above priorities. Critically, these savings were realized through attrition, and thus didn’t require layoffs or
    program cuts.

Altogether, scheduling uncovered misalignments and inefficiencies of over $2 million, which were then
reallocated to critical new investments in middle school academics and supports for special populations
to address the district’s evolving needs, centered on the urgency to enhance student learning. And the
district took the first step of a multi-year plan to more efficiently allocate resources to schools given budget
pressures while strengthening transparency and partnership between schools and the central office.

               “We can’t ignore the fact our district has gotten smaller over the years. As a result,
               we are carefully and proactively addressing this reality by adjusting in ways that are
               respectful and supportive of our hard-working staff and, most of all, strengthens the
               student experience. And that requires diving into scheduling and staffing.”
               - Rick Rodriguez, Chief Operating Officer, Lubbock Independent School District



                                        Unlocking Resources Through Scheduling | 2
Why Scheduling Matters




In districts across the country, school leaders                and dedicated support to sub-groups begins with the
routinely struggle with the development of their               development of a school schedule. And perhaps the
schedules. And their counterparts within central               most overlooked aspect of scheduling is the ability to
offices are often not equipped to support them                 develop innovative staffing and budgeting solutions.
nor have visibility into the staffing and scheduling
decisions made by school sites.                                There are often significant inefficiencies within a
                                                               school schedule, particularly in middle and high
                                                               schools. For example, a common practice is to simply
              “It’s honestly one of the hardest                roll over the prior year’s schedule with the teachers
              things we have to do every year.”                who are returning the following year. This may seem
              - District Chief Academic Officer                like the safest approach given the complexities of
                                                               a secondary schedule, but over time it can calcify
                                                               inefficiencies and inequities.
Yet, as evidenced by the Lubbock Independent
School District, scheduling shouldn’t be a process             Often, student course offerings don’t align to
district and school leaders suffer through and endure,         the needs and requests of students, there is an
but rather one that enables academic, staffing, and            overall mismatch of resources across schools,
budget priorities. And most importantly, strategic             certain classes are under-enrolled while others are
scheduling ensures students get the courses they               over-subscribed, and students from historically
want and need to be on track to graduate, remain               marginalized backgrounds can be disproportionately
inspired to attend and excel in school, and pursue a           impacted. As a result, schools may find themselves
postsecondary pathway.                                         unintentionally allocating resources in a manner that
                                                               goes against their own goals and objectives, with the
The school schedule reflects values and priorities.            lowest class sizes in advanced classes, electives and/
With 70 to 85% of a district budget dedicated to               or upper grades.
personnel, there are few questions more paramount
than how your staff and students spend their time              When scheduling is approached strategically, which
every day, what positions you’ll hire for, how many            requires the right tools and support, there is an
teachers you will hire, and how students will interact         immense opportunity to address critical priorities
with them. Equitable resource allocation across                with district staffing, budgets, and academic goals.
schools, proper access to core courses and electives,



                                        Unlocking Resources Through Scheduling | 3
How Lubbock Unlocked Resources

  STEP 1:

Assess, align on goals, and initiate
a planning process with school
leadership

Lubbock’s district leadership, led by Misty Rieber,
Chief Academic Officer, Rick Rodriguez, Chief
Operating Officer, and Max Flores, Executive Director
of Human Resources, articulated district-wide goals,
which included:

1. Improve academic outcomes across the district’s
   nine middle schools
2. Increase capacity to better serve students with
   disabilities, driven in part by referrals from nearby,
   rural districts
3. Efficiently allocate resources to align to the
   realities of declining enrollment

For the second consecutive year, the district
maintained an overall average class size target of 24,
a figure still below the Texas state average. But initial
analysis reflected significant variation of class sizes
and teacher loads across schools, and often within
individual schools driven by inefficient staffing and
scheduling, an unintentional reality. What’s more, the
smaller classes were not generally found in priority
areas – schools, subjects, and students in need of
additional support; instead, they were in areas where
staffing levels simply weren’t adjusted to match
enrollment.

District leadership then established a regular meeting
cadence with school leaders – principals, assistant
principals, and counselors, including directors of
athletics, career and technical education, and fine
arts when relevant. These meetings centered around
student needs, course requests (for middle and high
school students) and the commensurate allocation of
staff.


                                      Unlocking Resources Through Scheduling | 4
  STEP 2:                                                         STEP 3:

Analyze trade-offs and make                                     Finalize staffing allocation
deliberate choices to meet goals                                and build schedules

The district team then took a careful look at                   Once staffing allocations were confirmed, school
every teacher’s teaching load, as well as class                 leaders built their schedules and loaded students
sizes by school, subject and grade. This visibility             into classes. As one Lubbock school leader
created an important degree of transparency                     reported, “The real-time feedback with numbers
amongst all parties, allowing school-based staff                and class sizes… allowed us to make data-informed
to understand how and why decisions were                        decisions” which led to significantly more students
ultimately made to address district priorities.                 getting full schedules than in previous years,
                                                                reducing the time-consuming task of hand-
During this step in the process, the Lubbock                    scheduling, and requiring fewer adjustments to
district team and school-based staff assessed                   staffing plans and student course requests.
benefits and trade-offs of various scenarios
to enable their goals. For instance, in order to                “We aren’t sitting here in August trying to hand-
elevate middle school performance, the district                 schedule kids,” said one school leader. Another
team assessed a number of options, such as                      noted, “Having this process really helped to take a
increasing planning time for ELA and math                       ton of stress and anxiety off of our team.”
teachers in addition to lower group sizes and
increasing the number of periods teachers teach
relative to the number of periods students have.




                                      Unlocking Resources Through Scheduling | 5
Resources Unlocked

Ultimately, Lubbock’s scheduling process moved the              and resources needed to best serve its student
district closer to its overall average class size target        population which has been in decline.
by addressing the unintentional variation of class
                                                             As described earlier, their initial analysis reflected
sizes and teacher loads, which unlocked significant
                                                             significant variation in class size and teacher load
resources to enable the district’s key priorities:
                                                             across schools in the district, and, in many cases,
                                                             across teachers within the same school and even
1. To address the need to improve middle school
                                                             department. By moving towards more consistent
   academic achievement, Lubbock invested in
                                                             class sizes and teacher loads, schools and district
   double-blocks of ELA and math across all nine
                                                             staff identified 37 teaching positions across the
   middle schools which required hiring additional
                                                             district’s 9 middle and 5 high schools that could be
   teachers due to a higher number of periods
                                                             reduced for the 23-24 school year - a savings of over
   teachers teach relative to the number of periods
                                                             $2 million, without having to increase overall class size
   students take.
                                                             targets or cut in-demand programs. This reduction in
2. To address an increasing population of students
                                                             staffing was achieved almost entirely through attrition
   with disabilities, Lubbock dedicated additional
                                                             or, in limited cases, staff reassignment across schools,
   funding and resources to hire more special
                                                             avoiding the need for layoffs that might have been
   education teachers and increase professional
                                                             required without a strategic approach to staffing.
   learning.
3. To address budget pressures, Lubbock took a
                                                             The expansion of double-blocks of ELA and math
   critical, first step by identifying significant savings
                                                             across all nine middle schools led to an additional
   which (a) allowed for investments in the academic
                                                             allocation of ELA and math teachers, amounting to
   and staffing priorities noted above, (b) mitigated
                                                             nearly a $1 million investment of resources into core
   a reliance on the district’s reserves for one-time
                                                             instruction. Also, additional special education staff
   funds to plug recurring expenses, (c) avoided the
                                                             were allocated to better serve LISD’s increasing
   need for teacher layoffs, and (d) established the
                                                             population of students with disabilities, in response
   foundation for a multi-year process of flexing
                                                             to input from school-based staff about the need for
   resources to address changes in enrollment
                                                             additional support to serve their students well.




                                      Unlocking Resources Through Scheduling | 6
Conclusion

Through the use of scheduling – a process that             faced unwelcome alternatives such as an across-the-
is rarely used to enable strategic planning – the          board reduction-in-force or, if unable to balance their
Lubbock Independent School District achieved               budget, a potential review by the Texas Education
$2.2 million of savings across a total of 14 schools       Agency.
which was re-allocated to its academic and staffing
priorities in middle school ELA and math and special       This report aims to showcase the adroit leadership of
education staffing across all schools.                     Lubbock Independent School District and sheds light
                                                           on the importance of scheduling as a vehicle to align
Perhaps most importantly, LISD will be able to build on    resources to the needs of students. Lubbock is hardly
this progress by enhancing their timelines, systems,       alone in the challenges it has inherited: many districts
processes, and tools so that the annual scheduling         and charter management organizations nationwide
process will be an ongoing opportunity to ensure           are facing some combination of decades-old
efficient and strategic use of resources.                  achievement gaps, pandemic-related learning loss,
                                                           declining enrollment, and expiration of ESSER funds.
Critically, had LISD not undertaken this initiative to     There is a unique opportunity for many of these
find budget efficiencies and use scheduling as a lever     organizations to leverage school scheduling to enable
to drive strategic planning, the district would have       their 2024-25 priorities.




                                    Unlocking Resources Through Scheduling | 7
About LISD                       About Timely                     About ERS

Lubbock Independent School       Timely is your home for middle   Education Resource Strategies
District is located in Texas,    and high school scheduling       is a consulting nonprofit that
serves over 25,000 students      featuring modern optimization    partners directly with district
across 43 schools, and is led    technology and support from      and state leaders to improve
by Superintendent Kathy Rollo.   a team of educators to help      education systems. For nearly
LISD’s mission is to nurture,    schools build better schedules   20 years, ERS has worked to
develop, and inspire every       in a fraction of the time.       expand leaders’ skill sets, share
child, every day.                                                 insights, and equip teams with
                                                                  actionable resources.




                 For any questions about this report, you can contact:




     Lubbock Independent                      Timely:             Education Resource Strategies:
        School District:

          Misty Rieber,                Paymon Rouhanifard,                  Kristen Ferris,
     Chief Academic Officer             Co-founder & CEO                        Partner
  misty.rieber@lubbockisd.org      paymon@timelyschools.com            kferris@erstrategies.org