This series shares what central office leaders need to know to build on the strengths of the traditional middle school model to rethink how schools can better support a new generation of young adolescents. Across seven articles, we share actionable, research-backed, system-level strategies school and district leaders can implement to strengthen core instruction, broaden opportunities for students, and use time and resources more strategically to boost learning and engagement over the long term.
Middle schools are uniquely complex organizations to staff and operate. They sit at the intersection of elementary and high school models, often combining departmentalized instruction with small learning communities, exploratory courses, and layered student supports. This complexity makes them among the most challenging and costly schools to run.
In today’s context of declining enrollment, tighter budgets, and rising expectations, many districts are taking a closer look at how middle schools are staffed, not because something is “broken,” but because staffing models designed for a different era may no longer be as flexible or sustainable as they need to be.
The question facing many central office leaders is not whether to support the core principles of the middle school model, but how to preserve those principles while making staffing more adaptable to current realities.
Why Middle School Staffing Is Especially Challenging
Traditional middle school staffing models are built around interdisciplinary teaming, where core teachers teach one subject and one grade level and work closely with a small group of colleagues and students. This structure has clear benefits for teacher collaboration and supporting students.
At the same time, a traditional teaming model does not fit all middle schools equally. For example, a middle school with 100 students in 6th grade can efficiently staff four core teachers and create classes of 25 students. If a school has 85 students in 6th grade, however, the traditional teaming model—which typically restricts teachers to a single subject and grade level—offers few easy adjustments. To maintain traditional teaming models when enrollment does not neatly match teaching workloads, it is common for middle schools to either lower class sizes or hire more staff. Both practices are costly.
Many middle schools effectively spend $200,000 (and sometimes up to $800,000) more in staffing than they would under a more flexible model that still preserves the benefits of teaming. Those resources, in turn, are then not available to support electives, academic intervention, or student services.
Preserving Teaming While Increasing Flexibility
Middle schools do not need to abandon teaming to gain greater staffing flexibility. In many cases, relatively modest changes can preserve the benefits of teams while allowing schools to respond more precisely to enrollment, improve adaptability, and lower costs.
Three creative teaming approaches are particularly effective:
Multi-Grade Teaming allows some teachers to teach the same subject across more than one grade. For example, in a school with 150 students per grade, this would allow one ELA teacher to teach four sections of only 7th grade ELA, and a second ELA teacher to teach two sections of 7th grade ELA and two sections of 8th grade ELA.
Multi-Subject Teaming allows some teachers to teach more than one core subject within a grade level. This model is more commonly applied in the 6th grade, where elementary certifications are more flexible.
Rainbow Teaming allows some students to take a core class with a teacher outside their primary team. This can help schools balance class sizes or create options such as honors classes while keeping the larger team structure intact.
Schools can use these approaches selectively. Most teachers and students may remain within traditional teams while just a few assignments cross team, grade, or subject boundaries. That added flexibility can make it much easier to adjust staffing as enrollment changes and control costs.
Using Teaching Assignments More Intentionally
Teaming is only one part of the staffing equation. Another important question is how teachers spend instructional time.
Legacy middle school staffing practices often mean that middle school teachers teach a smaller portion of the day than their elementary or high school counterparts. It is most common, for example, to see a middle school core teacher assigned only four classes, even though they contractually could teach five, the same expectation regularly placed on their non-core colleagues in middle school and teachers in high school. This “extra” fifth period for many core teachers is inconsistently used: for supervision duties, to manage a flex block, or sometimes for an additional planning period. This ad hoc approach leads to hidden inequities and puts further pressure on the middle school staffing model.
Using that time more intentionally can create significant instructional capacity without adding staff. Depending on a school's needs, a teacher might use an additional teaching period to:
Expand Instructional Reach: Teachers can be scheduled to teach an additional class in their core subject area, which lowers class sizes or creates new course sections (e.g., an additional math class to serve accelerated students). This ensures more students benefit from certified content-area instruction without requiring new hires.
Broaden Student Options: When teachers use the “extra” period to teach electives or exploratory courses, schools can dramatically expand offerings without increasing staff.
Targeted Academic Interventions: Instead of scattered hallway duties, teachers can lead structured intervention blocks during the “extra” period. These might include small-group math recovery, reading acceleration, or a writing intervention class. This creates built-in capacity for Tier 2 interventions that many schools currently struggle to resource.
This is one place where staffing decisions connect directly to the other shifts we have discussed throughout this series. Additional teacher capacity can help schools provide the intervention students need, expand the choices available to them, or create new opportunities for academic challenge.
Staff Exploratory Programs with Greater Precision
Core teachers are not the only opportunity for greater staffing flexibility. Art, music, physical education, world language, and other exploratory programs can also be challenging to staff precisely.
The number of sections a school needs does not always translate neatly into full-time positions. A school might need 2.5 PE teachers or 0.8 of a music teacher, for example. Course length matters, too: offering a course by quarter, trimester, or semester can significantly change how much teacher capacity is needed.
Districts can respond by sharing teachers across schools, using part-time positions, adjusting course schedules, or finding additional ways to use a teacher’s expertise. This kind of precision staffing can preserve strong exploratory programs while freeing capacity for priorities such as intervention, additional electives, advanced courses, or instructional coaching.
Central Office Has an Important Role to Play
These changes can be difficult for an individual school to make on its own. Principals understandably want to protect the staff and resources available to their students, particularly when future enrollment is uncertain.
Central office leaders can see the larger picture. By looking across schools at enrollment, staffing, class sizes, teacher workloads, and student needs, they can help identify opportunities to use resources differently and make solutions possible—such as shared staffing—that individual schools cannot easily implement on their own.
This work is most effective when district leaders establish clear staffing expectations and partner with principals to develop models that fit each school’s enrollment and priorities.
Building a More Flexible Middle School Model
The goals behind teaming—strong relationships, teacher collaboration, and a more personalized experience for young adolescents—remain important. More flexible teaming and staffing can preserve those benefits while giving schools greater ability to respond to changing enrollment, student needs, and financial realities.
Multi-grade, multi-subject, and rainbow teaming, more intentional teaching assignments, and precision staffing all give districts additional ways to make the most of the people and resources they already have. The capacity created can then be directed toward stronger core instruction, targeted intervention, and more engaging opportunities for students.
Other posts in this series:
PART I - Why It’s Time to Rethink the Traditional Middle School Model
PART II - Shift #1: Raise Achievement by Making Core Instruction Core to the Schedule
PART III - Shift #2: Make High-Quality Intervention a Non-Negotiable Part of the School Day
PART IV - Shift #3: Deepen Student Engagement Through Voice, Choice, and Meaningful Challenge
PART V - Shift #4: Operate Middle Schools More Cost-Effectively by Rethinking Teaming and Staffing
PART VII - Tools and Next Steps for Designing Middle Schools for a New Generation
LEARN MORECost-Effective Alternatives to Traditional Middle School Teaming
How to staff and team middle schools differently so that individual schools can identify hundreds of thousands in savings
About the Author
David James is a former teacher and middle school administrator who serves as an advisor to school and district leaders. He and his team have helped more than 100 middle schools across the nation better serve a new generation of students and educators. He is co-author of the book, It's Time for Strategic Scheduling: How to Design Smarter K-12 Schedules That Are Great for Students, Staff, and the Budget. He also leads the Secondary Scheduling Academy, an accelerated hands-on training program for school and district leadership teams to enhance capacity for strategic scheduling, build buy-in for changes, and design effective, best practice-aligned schedules that are better for students, teachers, and the budget.