Dear Team DPS,
Everything we do at DPS matters to each of our students, and our context is ever-changing. Declining enrollment resulting in budgetary constraints, coupled with voices from team and community members, have created the need for greater coherence. The stories we’ve heard from the Listening and Learning Tour and through the development of the Transition Team Priority Statements has demonstrated the urgency to chart a new course with our new strategic plan while making thoughtful organizational changes. Incremental change will not get us to where our students need us to be.
A couple weeks ago, we shared information on the Educational Resource Strategies (ERS) organizational effectiveness study, the plans for restructuring the Central Support, and the strategic plan development. In the spirit of transparency, we are providing an update on recent progress.
ERS Study
Last fall, we partnered with ERS, a national organization known for its expertise in managing public funds in school districts, to assess our organization and identify how we can more efficiently utilize resources in a way that improves educational excellence. We invite you to read the full ERS findings here. These findings will inform our next steps around restructuring and parallel strategic planning. Several of the key findings follow:
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Revisit and revise the theory of action that guides DPS decisions and action. Identify clearer pathways to student success. Broaden opportunities available to our most marginalized students. Direct more resources and better support to students who face the steepest climb.
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Strengthen Central Support to school linkage. Increase coherence within the school district by improving communication between leaders at the Central Office and leaders at school sites. Clearer guidance will enable schools to unleash creativity and continuous improvement.
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Tighten Central Support to schools by ensuring resources align to highest priority. Narrow our priorities. If everything is of equal importance, there are no priorities.
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Go farther to distribute funds equitably to drive greater equity in student experience. Seek (and monitor) equity in distribution of resources between and within schools.
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Set the expectation that school-level improvement plans will address and support district-level goals. Taking this approach can advance collaboration and promote continuous improvement system-wide.
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Re-organize the Central Support staff so functions are more tightly linked to Board of Education policy aims. Form should follow function.
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Align school and Central spending more intentionally to Board-adopted district priorities. Ensure Board-approved Ends Statements are the focal point for school and Central Support expenditures.
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More systematically engage the community in budget formation and budget forecasting. Doing so can lead to more widespread understanding of – and support for – tough decisions.
Restructure
The decline in student enrollment translates into fewer funds for the coming school year. Each school receives funds based on the number of students who attend. If a school’s enrollment grows, so too does the school budget. Likewise, if a school’s enrollment declines, so does the school budget. However, the budgetary expenditures for Central Support are not self-correcting the way they are at a school level. So, action is being taken to contain and reduce Central Support costs while increasing efficiency of Central investments.
Two weeks ago we unveiled an organizational structure that reduced the number of cabinet-level leaders and altered the arrangement of senior leaders. Last week, the application window closed for these positions. Interviews are underway and will continue until positions are filled. Attention now shifts to the next layer of Central leadership. Changes to these positions will be announced shortly.
Strategic Plan
Since assuming the office of Superintendent in Denver Public Schools, my efforts have been organized into three phases. We just entered Phase 3, the development of the strategic plan, which you can learn more about here. Two teams are working in tandem to draft a next generation strategic plan. One team, the Core Design Team, will take input from Phases 1 and 2 and will develop a draft of the next generation strategic plan. That team is composed of seven people (four members of the Senior Leadership Team and three members of the Strategy Office). The other team, the Strategic Planning Steering Team, is composed of nine individuals. That team combines community members with expertise in strategic planning and staff members at the senior leadership level.
The ERS study provides clear evidence that a fresh approach is needed, not incremental changes to the former strategic plan. The rationale is straightforward. For two decades, the approach DPS has taken has not delivered the equity improvements our students and families deserve. Opportunity gaps remain. While it is true that overall district performance has inched up over the last 20 years, there has been only modest reduction over the same period in the disparity of academic opportunity and performance among different racial and ethnic groups.
Performance gaps are an artifact of opportunity gaps. DPS has not yet overcome opportunity gaps that separate racial and ethnic groups. Doing “more of the same” is not the answer. What DPS requires is a re-thinking of the district’s theory of action, and a revised vision and mission statement, which reaffirms our commitment to our students and families. The heart of this fresh approach must position us to truly be an organization that strives for continuous improvement.
In collaboration,
Dr. Alex Marrero
Superintendent
