"Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete."
That's the morning inbox routine Dr. James Whitfield hears about from fellow school leaders.
Honestly, fair. Most of those emails open with "Hope this finds you well" and close with a calendar link. (Consider this email number seven.)
James, a former basketball coach, is superintendent of Treetops School International, a North Texas charter that runs from pre-K to senior year. Last year his board made the tough decision to cut seventh through twelfth grade.
This fall, those grades came back as a virtual and hybrid program with a longer elective list than before.
This week, he’s sharing the four numbers that got him there.
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: Moneyball for your elective list
What We’re Tracking: Tupperware campuses + 9,000 cashiers
From Our Desk: Subject’s big move
Watch of the Week: Reacher's protégé runs your next PD
Moneyball for your elective list
In Moneyball, the Oakland A's stopped trying to outspend the Yankees and started counting different things. Jonah Hill made a spreadsheet look cool, which remains the least believable part of the movie.
James runs Treetops with a similar eye. His upper grades were running a deficit north of $250,000 a year, and families kept leaving for schools with more offerings. A new Texas law and a virtual partner (cough cough, Subject) let him rebuild those grades with electives he never could have hired for.
We call his framework “the Catalog Math,” and the scouting report fits on an index card.
The wish list. Every elective you'd launch next semester if hiring were easy.
The leak. Your enrollment drop between sixth grade and freshman year.
The hole. The funding gap you started the year with.
The finisher. The number that ties them together. It stays in the locker room for now.
"You've got a tool at your disposal that you can use,” James says, “if you just get out of your own way.”
In our full playbook, he walks through how to run each number and where he plans to spend what's left over.
Grab the finisher. It's waiting in the full playbook.
Half the students, all the buildings: LAUSD has gone from more than 700,000 students in 2002-03 to 373,538 this fall while keeping nearly the same number of campuses, the district equivalent of owning 40 Tupperware lids and three containers. Every 1% enrollment dip now costs about $60 million, and Superintendent Andrés Chait says high schoolers feel it first, in the form of fewer electives and advanced classes.
9,000 cashiers, three registers: About 9,000 Ohio high schoolers earned a retail sales credential last year while employers statewide were hiring for exactly three jobs that required it, according to a new op-ed. That's 3,000 certified applicants per register, a ratio normally reserved for Taylor Swift tickets, and Ohio has since cut its approved credential list from over 700 to 126.
Recess files an appeal: Elementary recess has shrunk from about 37 minutes a day in 2001-02 to 20-30 minutes, per the CDC, even though research keeps linking playtime to better focus and behavior. Oklahoma and Tennessee now require 40 minutes, thanks in part to parent advocates who got tired of hearing their second graders explain "study hall."
Michigan aces one subject: A new Kids Count report found 73.4% of Michigan 11th graders missed college-readiness benchmarks in reading and writing plus math, and 7.3% of 16- to 19-year-olds are neither in school nor working. Youth voter turnout, meanwhile, jumped 84% since 2016, proving young people will show up for anything that doesn't come with a bubble sheet.
Monday marked World Teachers’ Day, but we celebrate that every day around here. Shout out your favorite teacher (or five) in the comments on this post.
We’re obsessed with our new Austin office. Check it out here.
Our CEO shared his personal top 5 MBA programs on LinkedIn. See his picks (and make a case for your own) here.
Watch of the Week: Neagley
Why we’re obsessed: Reacher's former Army protégé finally gets her own show and flat-out refuses to accept the official "accident" ruling on a friend's death. Then she goes after a charismatic farm boss who tells followers he's their "own personal Jesus," a pitch that would fit right in with the average vendor email.
Recommended integrations for staff PD and district meetings:
Spinoff energy: Neagley spent seasons as the sidekick before anyone handed her a lead role. Ask your cabinet which "supporting" program, like credit recovery or that lone online Spanish section, has been carrying the district the way Neagley carries Reacher's plot. Give it the spinoff before it takes an offer from the charter down the street.
Reopen the accident report: Neagley reads the official ruling and opens her own investigation anyway. Pull the last program your district shelved with a "we tried that" and check the date on the verdict. If the entire case file is one Zoom from spring 2020 and a Chromebook that froze during attendance, declare a mistrial.
The charisma audit: The farm boss in Neagley could sell sand at a beach, and your inbox is full of his cousins. Before the next pitch meeting, write down every claim the vendor made, then ask for one district willing to repeat those claims on a reference call. (Yes, a vendor wrote this. We're aware. We brought references.)
Who has your back: Reacher drops in, throws a few punches on her behalf and heads out, which is still more in-person support than most software contracts include. List every partner who has shown up when something broke, then book the ones who sent a ticket number and a five-question survey into a meeting room with no chairs.
Thank you for joining us for another edition of On the Subject. Want to learn more about how a virtual school partner can help you retain students and increase your offerings?