In the life of a school administrator there are leadership tasks and there are managerial tasks. Pause for a moment and develop your own opinion of a leadership task and a managerial task. What comes to mind? Which is more favorable in your eyes? What type of principal do you have, a leader or a manager?
Odds are your opinion of a principal as a school leader is more favorable than that of a school manager. Leaders innovate, mentor, model and encourage. Managers control routines, evaluate, divide resources and dictate schedules. It’s easy to see why teachers would rather have a principal who is a leader rather than a manager, but unless your principal can do both, chances are your school will experience significant shortcomings. In some instances, a seemingly mundane managerial task can make all the difference in the leadership and effective flow of the school. I’ve recently had the opportunity to participate in such a task: building the master schedule.
While relatively few people are involved in writing the master schedule (focusing on the process for building a high school master schedule), it has a huge impact on the upcoming school year. When people teach. Where people teach. What they teach. Who they teach with. These are all determined by the master schedule. So how can the effective school manager develop a master schedule that will lead the school?
Master scheduling should always begin with a review and reflection of the current year. What seems to be working this year? What areas need to be improved? Are test scores down in a particular department? If so is there anything in our schedule that is affecting those scores? In this stage no changes are actually being made to the schedule but notes are being made for the later stages. Take notes and ask your staff what they think is working or what they would like to see changed. Teachers like it when you ask for their opinion. Use this opportunity to build good will amongst your staff.
Writing the master schedule really begins with your counseling department and collecting student requests. As early as January, counselors should begin distributing course selection material to the students. Students should be given a few weeks to look over these materials and to ask questions about core and elective courses. During this time you may even encourage departments to hold elective fairs or pass out information about the courses in their departments. At the end of the informational window, counselors must sit down with each student and enter their course requests. Given the size of your school the collection process can last a few days to a few weeks.
Once you have collected all course requests, you’ll want to do a simply tally of requests by course/department. You’ll be able to compare this data to your enrollment numbers from the current year to see if any major shifts took place. A current enrollment of 400 English 1 students compared to a request for 409 next year may not have a significant impact on your school but a request for 425 may signal the need to increase FTE in your English department. Then again a shift in the other direction may mean a reduction in force. That is why it is so important that your request numbers are accurate. Make sure your counseling department understands the weight of their work and what it means for the school.
Once you’ve collected your enrollment numbers and course request simple tallies for the next year, its time to determine staffing. Typically individual schools do not have control over this process, but principals work with central office administrators to determine the total FTE per building that will be allotted. This is where having a strong leader comes in handy. While central office may be looking at the bottom line and numbers, a building principal must be able to argue for the human side of the equation. Principals must be effective negotiators to fight for the maximum FTE for their buildings. Not only does FTE represent a teacher’s job but also it represents being able to run more classes or smaller classes, which has a direct impact on student learning.
With FTE in hand the principal can return to their school and begin to actually build the master schedule. Up to this point the process has been largely managerial and data driven, but part two of master scheduling will require decisive leadership and difficult decision-making.
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