We are very close to finishing up our annual series of school “Town Halls” where Bill K and other members of the Home Office visit each school to listen to feedback from you all and field questions about the DSST network. We know this is a time commitment on your part so thank you again for the thoughtful questions and concerns we heard across schools. We have also been listening to your thoughts and questions through the mid-year survey and the comments on this blog, At Our Core. While every campus is different and has their own unique needs, we have noticed some common themes from these channels that we thought would be helpful to collectively address in one place. These includes Aurora expansion, changes to DSST’s health insurance coverage, school funding & facilities, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at DSST. We also want to share a couple of celebration points as well as areas for improvement from the mid year survey.
Aurora Expansion
The opening of the new Aurora Science & Tech (AST) was a popular topic at every Town Hall. The new middle school will open this June for a summer orientation in a temporary location shared with the Rocky Mountain Prep Fletcher campus. The founding class of 150 6th graders will start school in August. We are scheduled to open our permanent school on the Anschutz Medical Campus in 2020.
Like many urban districts across the country, Aurora Public School (APS) has faced immense challenges in providing high quality school options to its growing and diverse student population. Aurora has an average SAT score of 892 - Colorado’s lowest average SAT for any district with more than 10,000 students. There is a stunning lack of educational opportunity for students in Aurora and we are excited to partner with APS to begin to tackle this challenge. We are approximately half way through the recruitment season for AST and have over 120 applications for seats.
Hiring teachers for Aurora in an already tight market was a common concern. However, we have found that many teachers are specifically attracted to founding schools. The founding team of DSST @ Noel Campus is a great example. As a network, we aim to only expand with great intentionality, and our staffing at AST will be no exception. If you are interested in exploring a role at AST, please reach out to Caitlin McElhaney (caitlin.mcelhaney@scienceandtech.org) on our talent team!
Insurance Transitions
Some staff members have voiced their frustrations over the change in insurance provider. While this change presented some challenges and was rolled out later than we had hoped, we do believe it was the best option for our organization when taking all factors into consideration. As healthcare costs continue to rise, maintaining our previous insurance option would have been cost-prohibitive and had a significant impact on overall take-home compensation for our team this year and in future years.
In response to some of the feedack on Kaiser, however, we have opened enrollment for a new medical option for those who would like to see a broader range of physicians. If you have not already enrolled, February 15 is the final day! Another benefit that we are prioritizing in the 19-20 year is Mental Health support through our Employee Assistance Program, and we confident that we will be able to provide an increased number of free consultations.
School Funding & Operations Challenges
We heard several questions that could be summarized as: “We see problem X at our school (or across the network)--what are we doing about it?” Examples of “Problem X” might be cafeteria food not being nutritious enough or school facilities being inadequate or poorly maintained. A common element of these problems is that most potential solutions have significant financial implications. While just spending more money by itself is rarely enough to solve a problem, effective solutions often require additional resources to support a different approach. Unfortunately, allocating more funds to one area requires taking funds from somewhere else. It is an understatement to say that school funding continues to be a pain point for educators across Colorado, so allocating our limited resources to produce the best student outcomes requires us to make hard choices every day.
One set of choices concerns large operational needs like food services, transportation, and facilities. DSST pays Denver Public Schools to provide many school operational needs. We are not required to use DPS for these functions, but we do so when we believe it represents the best value. Where the consistency and quality of some DPS services are not always what we want, what DPS charges is less than what it would take to pay a private vendor or to do it ourselves. We previously used other food vendors for lunches, and did not see higher quality despite a much higher price. We also have explored the cost of building and operating our own buildings, but the increased control and autonomy does not justify the significantly higher cost and risk. For all the services provided to DSST by outside parties, either from DPS or other vendors, we strive to regularly monitor and evaluate the value provided to make sure that it represents the best combination of quality and cost. When we identify an opportunity to get more bang for our buck, we make a change.
Another set of choices involve discretionary expenses at schools. We received several questions about why the home office doesn’t provide more money for specific needs at a school, such as sponsoring a club or replacing textbooks. Sometimes this was prompted by staff seeing something paid for at another DSST school and wondering why their school did not receive the same funding. The reality is that these discretionary expenses are just that--the discretion of the school and its leadership team, not the home office. Each school receives discretionary funding to provide equitable resources per student, but how those funds are used is up to the school leader. If you have questions about how your school budgets these funds or ideas on how to use them to make your school environment more effective, you should reach out to your school director.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
While we have dedicated time and resources to sharpening our equity lens and ensuring that we are serving all of our students and staff equitably, we have heard a lot of feedback and concern about how we can improve as a network.
Primarily we have heard concern over our staff reflecting the demographics of our student population. Currently, 39.5% of our total staff, including coaches, subs, and electives teachers, identify as people of color. 25.56% of Home Office staff identify as people of color, as do 32.7% of school based leaders across the network. We are encouraged that last year, diverse team members stayed with the organization at a rate higher than the dominant culture. We continue to be strategic in our hiring process and of course, welcome your referrals! Referrals have been the most effective source of diversifying our teams
Mid-Year Survey Highlights
One of the biggest celebrations that we’d like to highlight from the Mid-Year survey are the wins we’ve seen in coaching, as evidenced by increases in averages to questions like: “My manager/supervisor at work seems to care about me as a person” and “My manager/supervisor at work encourages my growth and development.” Positive trends in response to these questions indicate that the investment in coaching and a commitment to building healthy teams is improving. More importantly, it signals that our leaders are building strong, people-centered relationships with their team members. We are also encouraged by the fact that our people feel like they get to show up at work and do what they do best every day.
We are also happy to report that overall, professional development numbers are really strong, averaging around 5.5 on the Mid-Year Survey with coach satisfaction and clarity on next steps.
As for opportunities for growth, the Mid-Year Survey suggests that, though we have made significant strides in our DEI work, we still have work to do here. As mentioned earlier, we remain committed to our foundational belief in the centrality of human condition in our work, and will continue to apply a DEI lens to our work and practices to ensure that all DSST team members feel deeply known, valued and affirmed for who they are and what they contribute to DSST.
We continue to have lots to do as a network and as leaders. While we are honored to have been named Top Workplace five times in the past 6 years, we also know that it continues to be challenging, particularly in the first year at DSST, for team members to find personal and professional alignment. This has been especially expressed in the Mid-Year Survey, and your feedback is pushing us to tackle some improvements to training and onboarding for next year.
You can always reach out to any member of the Senior Leadership Team with your questions and feedback, as we aim to continuously improve how we serve our students and staff.
Do you have questions or suggestions for Town Halls or the Mid-Year survey? Reach out to mac@scienceandtech.org
Have a suggestion for us? Send us a note anytime.