Manage the Time of ESSER-Funded Staff in Short Supply Like It’s Precious, Because It Is!
While school districts enjoyed record budgets over the last few years thanks to CARES, ESSER, and ARP dollars, district leaders are now wrestling with the challenge of reduced funding. The reality is that students’ increased needs persist as budgets are decreasing while costs are continually increasing. And, for districts facing declining enrollment, the funding gap is even larger.
Given this, returning to pre-pandemic budgets is not an option. Taking a strategic budgeting approach can help districts navigate and survive the funding cliff while preserving much needed services for students. This following post is part of our series, “Navigating—and Surviving—the Funding Cliff: Strategies for Maintaining ESSER-Funded Services Despite Declining Resources and Increasing Costs,” which shares best practices and actionable strategies for continuing to meet post-pandemic student needs and maximizing the impact of every dollar despite declining resources.
NAVIGATING—AND SURVIVING—THE FUNDING CLIFF
Manage the time of ESSER-funded staff in short supply like it’s precious, because it is!
Proactively managing how reading teachers, interventionists, mental health counselors, and instructional coaches spend their valuable and limited time can extend the reach of budget dollars
Many districts across the country used ESSER funds to add substantial numbers of specialized staff to meet growing and new student and teacher needs. These critical new hires included reading teachers, interventionists, mental health counselors, and instructional coaches. Unfortunately, student skill gaps, increased student support needs, and new teacher support needs remain even though the ESSER funding has ended, and most districts are making decisions about how to cut back on their total FTE of these previously ESSER-funded roles.
Many districts assume if 80% of these folks go away, 80% fewer kids and new teachers will get help, but that is not necessarily the case.
What if—despite an 80% reduction in total FTE of previously ESSER-funded roles—80% of the kids and teachers could still get just as much help as before the cutback?
Managing previously ESSER-funded staff time strategically increases their reach
Here is the key question: How many kids can a reading teacher, interventionist, or mental health counselor, help each week? How many new teachers can an instructional coach support each week? I call this figure “reach”—the number of groups taught per day, times the average number of students (or teachers) in a group. For example, five groups a day with three students per group is a reach of 15 students. While every district sets a class size target for classroom teachers, and all secondary teachers have a set number of periods they teach each day, many other roles in a school lack these basic workload expectations.
After surveying more than 200 districts, I found that few set clear expectations for a full teaching load for reading teachers, interventionists, mental health counselors, or staff in similar roles. This lack of clear expectations for the number of groups taught a day and for how many students in a group can lead to these very talented folks helping fewer students than we need. Similarly, I found that most instructional coaches were not reaching nearly as many teachers as was necessary—and possible.
Do you know the reach of your previously ESSER-funded staff?
Different districts can reasonably set different expectations for what they think is a reasonable reach for all types of staff. Not setting any expectation, however, is a missed opportunity.
How many hours each day should be spent with students?
How much time is spent with students by reading teachers, interventionists, and mental health counselors determines how many groups they can see each day, directly impacting their reach. While the number of groups taught daily often varies by role, the following tips can help districts find their right answer to this question for each role:
Prioritize time with students – Reading teachers, interventionists, and tutors are highly skilled and much in-demand. Given this, how much time in the school day should they spend providing direct instruction? Based on my studies, the average reading teacher has about five groups a day. This equates to 2.5 hours of direct instruction, whereas classroom teachers typically have 5 hours a day of direct instruction. Many schools have set the expectation at 4 or 4.5 hours of direct instruction a day.
Don’t begin your discussion of what’s reasonable by looking at current practice– While it might seem like the place to start, focusing too much on current teaching loads can lock in less-than-optimal past practices. Look to the instructional hours of elementary classroom teachers or secondary core subject teachers to get a sense of what’s reasonable.
Streamline meetings, paperwork, and clerical tasks – How can you help these highly skilled staff spend more time with students without overloading them? Look for ways to improve their work lives by lightening their non-teaching load.
How many students should be in a group?
The other factor directly impacting the reach of staff is group size. While general education class size is managed with specificity in all districts, group size for reading teachers, interventionists, and mental health counselors is rarely managed with precision. In most districts I have studied, there is an opportunity to increase the reach of such staff by slightly increasing their group size, based on best practice research.
A commonly held concern is that increasing group size will water down instruction. Extensive research says that elementary groups sizes of five or six are fine, yet most districts target just three students per group.
These slightly larger groups can be easier to teach by thoughtfully grouping together students with similar areas of need. Teaching a group of five students with near-identical needs can be much easier and more effective than teaching three students with a mix of needs, like phonemics, comprehension, and fluency.
Applying these concepts to instructional coaching
Instructional coaches can raise achievement, are more needed than ever given the number of new teachers entering the classroom, and are in short supply. While trimming these positions has been a historically common approach to tightening the budget, it isn’t strategic. Instead, looking districts should look closely at how instructional coaches can have a greater impact. From our research and experience working with hundreds of schools and districts, we have a good understanding of the typical and optimal impact of these critical staff. Optimally, instructional coaches should be spending about 75% of their day with teachers versus the 25% we typically see (while the other time is spent crunching data, writing, and planning). While the typical approach is 1:1 coaching, districts can extend the reach of their coaches by having them participate in both 1:1 coaching as well as in grade-level or department meetings. Further, coaches that meet with teachers for one hour per week, every week, rather than for longer periods for a shorter cycle, end up reaching more teachers and delivering more much needed support. In sum, changing the approach to managing instructional coaches’ time can position them to make a significantly greater impact.
If you must reduce FTE, schedule strategically to preserve services—without overburdening staff
Facing the funding cliff and sharply tightening budgets, districts will be well-served by taking a strategic approach to managing the time of reading teachers, interventionists, mental health counselors, and instructional coaches. Managing staff time like it is precious will enable districts to reduce the number of FTEs needed while preserving services for most students and supports for teachers.
To learn more, check out this article:
Research Summary: Reading Intervention Group Size
