School Improvement Through Planning and Operations

Gather input from teachers, students, and families to identify key needs and areas for improvement. Implement peer feedback mechanisms for increased participation.

“An effective leadership team works together to build a common understanding of their school's needs and they get input from teachers from students and families all in service of creating an action plan to address those needs”

Analyze staff survey data to identify trends, concerns, and areas where support is needed. Anonymize survey data to ensure confidentiality.

“Then the schedule group will be looking at the staff survey results that happened last Wednesday PD taking feedback and continuing to evolve what next year's schedule looks like based on both staff and student feedback”

Regularly update the data wall to track student progress and identify areas needing intervention. Use visual aids to enhance understanding.

“Every morning there is morning collaborative in which the teachers can bring student work to their teams this is when we update our data wall and there's a huge wall um that has every student on there with pieces of all their assessments”

Track how time is currently being used in the school to identify potential inefficiencies and lost instructional time. "I will conduct a time audit every [week] at [Monday 9:00 AM] in [my office]".

“The tlf can help leaders and their teams assess how time is currently being used to identify any lost instructional time how is time being used in your building where are you spending your time as the leader how much time are you able to spend on instructional leadership”

Implement regular, mandatory professional development sessions for all staff to improve teaching and learning. Highlight successful examples of previous PD sessions.

“One of the first changes that I made was to the schedule prior to me being here they did not have um schoolwide professional development but because of the change the new standards and new assessments the only way to learn that is to do it cohesively as a staff and in team in professional uh learning communities and so I changed the schedule to implement team meetings for all grade levels and this professional development throughout the year was mandatory”

Examine and redesign the school schedule to optimize time and space utilization for improved student outcomes. Leverage decision architecture for optimal results.

“We are currently going through a redesign process where we're examining how we use time and space at our school site and how can we be using it differently to continue to meet our student achievement goals and outcomes for our students we will be going from a five period Day to a six period day we'll be going from a pretty traditional schedule to a block schedule”

Allocate budget resources to prioritize human capital and professional development. Communicate potential consequences of not prioritizing these areas.

“Our budget has afforded us to put particular emphasis on human capital I think that's important as a school leader to make sure most of our money is spent on um teachers because they're the ones that make the real difference every day with the students they have the most contact with the students the rest of the money and large portion of it goes to professional development and is used in order to do the curriculum development Institute work also to run the after school retreats to also provide teachers with recognition um renumeration for doing extra planning work such as for parent meetings”

Establish partnerships with central office, law firms, and community organizations to enhance school resources and services. Provide immediate rewards for securing new partnerships.

“I also think Leverage in Partnerships is critical especially if you have a tight budget another thing as a leader I think is important is developing Partnerships that extend outside the school walls whether that's with central office or with Partners such as law firms or Community organizations that donate food or provide Mental Health Services”

Regularly inspect and update school facilities to ensure a conducive learning environment. Consider creating a visual progress tracker for each project.

“One simple way to identify building needs is just walk it get out of the office and walk it be present it was very clear the way some of the space was used needed to be altered and updated”

Seek support from local legislators to fund school improvements and new building projects. Target audience is legislators.

“Principal bird and her leadership team sought support from staff families and community members to approach their local legislators about funding a new building for done”

Advocate for funding to transition the school into a STEM pilot school. Includes visuals.

“Principal bird also used the opportunity to advocate for and ultimately receive the funding to transition done into one of Chicago Public Schools stem pilot schools”

Form a new building community composed of parents and community members to support school initiatives. Implement gamification elements.

“We had a new building community that was actually formed by parents and by community members and they would go and visit um the board meetings go downtown and rally and ask that dun be giving a new building to our local government and our older woman was extremely supportive in this effort”