A personnel file audit is the periodic and systematic review of your personnel files to assess whether the documents in each employee’s personnel file are accurate, up to date, and complete. The audit helps ensure legal compliance, identifies HR process weaknesses and highlights HR successes.
Read MoreAs a follow-up to last week’s post on strategies for improving attendance, this week we have a short post with suggested roles for everyone involved in the attendance management process. Defining roles is a key step in establishing your school-wide attendance plan.
Read MoreThe pathway to strong school attendance begins at the end of the previous school year and goes through September. Establishing an attendance plan during this time sets the foundation for the school year and is critical in forming positive habits toward meeting your annual attendance goals.
Read MoreThroughout the year OSSE and PCSB ask schools to “validate” a number of student data points – from re-enrollment rates to PARCC achievement subgroup scores. Schools are asked to review and certify certain groups of data in OSSE’s or PCSB’s databases and confirm their accuracy (versus the school’s internal records). While data validation can feel daunting, making a roadmap at the beginning of the school year allows you to streamline validation task management during the school-year when there are so many competing priorities.
Read MoreSchools are taking more assessments than ever before. While the output and data from assessments vary – RIT scores and percentiles from NWEA MAP or a percent score from Achievement Network – common challenges exist for school leaders, regardless of the exam. School leaders are all aiming to create meaning from student scores and put interim scores in context with end-of-year outcomes. This post identifies one method (of many) that will help leaders make sense of current assessment results and what they imply about end-of-year outcomes.
Read MoreData systems are great at making our schools run more efficiently… right up until a grade is missing on a report card or a student can’t log in on test day. As the web of interconnected systems grows in size and complexity, keeping your data clean and orderly is just as important as any software upgrade.
Read MoreWhen thinking about financial compensation, most employees only consider salary. As an employer, however, you know that your financial contribution to staff is much greater than that. If you can better communicate the full value of staff compensation, you can improve both employee engagement and retention.
Read MoreThe benefits offered by your school can directly affect employee retention. In an earlier post, we covered flexibility benefit options, which account for four of the top valued benefits according to research from Harvard Business Review. Today, we are moving down the list to student loan assistance and tuition assistance.
Read MoreEffectively analyzing school financial statements across multiple years can be challenging. Changes in facilities, organizational structure, fundraising strategies, or student population (including opening or closing campuses, adding new grade levels, or experiencing demographic shifts) complicate the comparability of financials.
Read MoreLenders want to know if you will pay them back. Whether you are considering traditional bank loans, taxable or tax-exempt bonds, or even special forms of financing created by state or federal government programs, the underlying question is the same. To find the answer, lenders look for assurances that your project and school will generate enough cash flow to service the debt (and that your school will stay open long enough to pay).
Read MoreA well-conceived budget will serve as a “map” when making financial decisions throughout the year. It will reflect what you value as an organization, communicate your priorities to key stakeholders (board, staff, authorizer, families, funders), and highlight any new or changed priorities. Before the more technical work of the budgeting process begins, there are a number of broad concepts that we recommend every school focus on.
Read MoreAssessment data comes in fast throughout the year and provides multiple opportunities for all stakeholders to learn about the performance of a school. With so many ways to slice the data, it can be difficult to identify the most important stories.
Read MoreWe have conducted several compensation studies helping schools develop a compensation philosophy and strategy that is best for staff and financially sustainable. Compensation, after all, is the most important factor candidates consider when evaluating multiple offers. However, we always push school leadership to remember that salary is just one factor and should be considered alongside many others.
Read MoreWe often begin our school budget training for charter applicants by asking the group to identify the major levers that impact total teacher salary expenses. Almost without fail, the two answers given are 1) teacher salary levels and 2) average class size. What most people overlook is that there is a third, equally important lever: 3) schedule configuration.
Read MoreThe Student Information System (SIS) serves as a school’s database of enrolled students, their attendance, class schedules, parents and emergency contacts, and often much, much more. The SIS is like a school’s brain – critical to its ongoing functioning – and so adopting or switching to a new one is no small decision. Although needs vary between schools, some basic considerations apply across the board. This post aims to familiarize you with some of the main questions to ask yourself (and prospective vendors) before making a decision
Read MoreAs many school administrators and staff already know, approximately 90% of funding received by schools is driven by enrollment. Student recruitment can drive enrollment, and thus has a significant impact on the financial stability of your school.
Read MoreOperating with a low supply of cash reserves can be an extremely stressful situation for any business. This can be a particularly daunting challenge for public charter and independent schools as cash inflows do not always align well with required cash outflows.
Read MoreAttracting and retaining high-quality employees is critical to school success. One of the ways school leadership can show its staff, both new and returning, that they are valued is by offering benefits that they truly value.
Read MoreBuilding on our data experience with schools, we have compiled best practices for managing the communication and wider dissemination of state test results across critical internal stakeholders.
Read MoreAttendance and absenteeism are continuous educational challenges. However, before schools can effectively address absenteeism and improve their attendance rate, it is critical to understand common factors that can impact the students they serve.
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