Running strong school operations requires efficient, scalable systems that we can execute correctly time after time—easier said than done! Consider these common pitfalls:

• You run your systems well, but many of them live in your head. It would be a scramble to turn them over to somebody else if you had to be out unexpectedly.
• Some of your systems feel a little bumpy and “fly by the seat of your pants.” They get done, but they aren’t always totally smooth or consistent.
• You hesitate to delegate processes and tasks because it just feels easier to do it yourself.

Sound familiar? There’s a surprisingly simple tool that can make your systems more efficient, replicable, and consistent: a standard operating procedure. In this session, you’ll:

• Read and discuss a passage from The Checklist Manifesto about the power of standard operating procedures and checklists
• Draft a strong standard operating procedure and receive feedback from a partner
• Explore ways to integrate standard operating procedures into your and your team’s day-to-day work

No matter your role, you’re always delegating when you work in school operations: Maybe you hold teachers and staff members accountable to completing specific tasks, manage a vendor like a custodian or a transportation provider, or manage a team of direct reports. Whatever type of delegation you do, it’s a huge part of our roles, and it’s complex work!

But there are concrete tools and best practices that can help you manage more effectively and get stronger results when leading work through other people. Join us for this session, and you’ll:

• Analyze common pitfalls in a people management case study
• Explore concrete management tools, like MOCHA charts and communication matrices
• Practice giving strong, bite-sized feedback to others

Do you often find yourself struggling to stay on top of a growing list of tasks and emails, unsure how to prioritize, or occasionally dropping balls? You’re not alone—time and task management in school operations roles is uniquely challenging! The good news: the right tools and systems can bring order to the chaos and help you feel more confident, productive, and on top of your work.

In this session, you’ll evaluate and strengthen your personal organization systems by:

• Completing a personal organization self assessment
• Reflecting on your strengths and areas for growth in four specific personal organization domains: email, calendar, tasks management, and weekly planning
• Implementing concrete tools and best practices to strengthen your systems

Working in school operations means that you always have a lot on your plate. During especially busy times of the year, you might be laser-focused on immediate tasks and find that longer-term work sneaks up on you, leaving you scrambling to catch up. But it doesn’t have to feel this way.

At SchoolOps, we believe in making time to save time: the idea that doing a little bit of planning now will pay huge dividends in the future. This session puts that concept into practice by providing you with the guidance you need to create a strong long-term plan for your year—a plan that will allow you to better anticipate upcoming work and more effectively collaborate with your team. In this session you’ll:

• Analyze a case study and identify common long-term planning pitfalls
• Learn how to use SchoolOps’ Operations Annual Scope Tool, as the basis for your long-term plan (no need to start your planning from scratch!)
• Implement best practices to make your long-term plan live in your team’s day-to-day work, so that it doesn’t become another document gathering dust in a folder on your computer

The student recruitment and enrollment landscape has become consistently more challenging, and operations teams are often tasked with driving the bulk of this work. Though we know there’s no single quick fix when it comes to fully enrolling your school, there are concrete tools and best practices that can strengthen your systems and drive stronger enrollment at your school. In this session, you’ll:

• Analyze common student recruitment and enrollment pitfalls through a case study reading and discussion
• Complete a student recruitment and enrollment self-assessment to identify strengths and areas for growth in your systems
• Explore concrete tools—such as a student recruitment and enrollment backwards map and a leads tracker–and plan to implement them in your work

Managing complex, long-term projects means gathering input from many stakeholders, balancing competing priorities, and adjusting as information changes. It’s challenging work, and without strong systems, progress can stall or outcomes can fall short.

But there are concrete project management tools that can help you coordinate stakeholder input, clarify decision-making, and move work forward effectively. 

In this session, we will share project management best practices through the lens of a specific project: creating the school day schedule for a whole school. In this session you’ll:

• Read and discuss an excerpt from The Checklist Manifesto about managing complex projects
• Analyze a case study that highlights common pitfalls in school day scheduling project management
• Explore concrete tools and project management best practices that can apply to any complex project with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities

The experience that visitors have in your main office often shapes their impression of your school: When systems are strong, guests feel welcomed, cared for, and confident in your school’s professionalism. But the main office is a busy place! With so much happening day in and day out, it can be difficult to ensure that front office systems are clear, effective, and always running smoothly.

That’s why this session focuses on identifying and addressing the root causes of front office system challenges. In this session, you’ll:

• Analyze and discuss common front office system pitfalls in a case study
• Use a rubric to evaluate your own front office systems
• Identify pitfalls in your systems, discuss potential solutions, and start to implement concrete next steps that will take your front office systems from good to excellent

Many of us who are great at operations are excellent executors—we get stuff done! But those very same traits that make us great executors sometimes trip us up when it comes to managing people. Maybe we think, “It’s easier if I just do it myself,” or, “I’m not sure my team is ready to own that whole project yet.” We then hold on to work or delegate only smaller tasks.

Overseeing school operations requires monitoring over 20 unique workstreams that we’ve listed in the Operations Responsibilities Bank. And delegating ownership of whole projects and workstreams is essential to strong management (and your own sanity and sustainability in your role), but it’s challenging.  In this session, we’ll share tools and strategies to make it easier. You’ll:

• Learn how to use SchoolOps’ Operations Annual Scope Tool to support stronger delegation of whole projects and workstreams
• Make a plan to delegate a larger operations responsibility to a teammate you manage
• Implement strategies to set your teammate up for success, check on progress, and ensure the work stays on track.

When we think of school operations, the first things that come to mind are often systems, plans, and logistics. But even well-constructed systems grind to a halt if we don’t hold people accountable to using them. Navigating these accountability conversations is just as important as building systems; however, we rarely have the opportunity to practice and receive feedback on this part of our work.

This session provides concrete guidance to help you plan for difficult conversations in a school operations context. In this session, you’ll:

• Use a case study to plan for a difficult conversation focused on a school operations scenario 
• Implement concrete strategies to land your feedback, navigate the other person’s reaction, and move forward with actionable next steps
• Role play a conversation and receive feedback from a partner

Getting the right people in the right seats is crucial to building a high-performing operations team. But designing a clear, equitable process that gives you the information you need to make confident hiring decisions can be challenging. 

You might be wondering: Who has the potential to make an excellent Office Manager, Director of Operations, Enrollment Manager? How do I assess for key operations skills like time and task management? Should I have candidates complete a performance task? What would that look like for an operations role? 

We have guidance to help you answer those questions and more. In this session, you’ll:

• Define the elements of a clear, appropriately scoped operations role that attracts well-matched candidates
• Learn how to create a strong performance task and evaluation rubric, and analyze a sample candidate work submission
• Receive the SchoolOps hiring toolkit, with resources such as an operations interview guide template and much more

Many school staff members view summer as a time to rest and relax, but operations staff are busier than ever, thinking about facilities repairs, purchasing next year’s supplies, enrolling new students, and many, many other tasks that need to happen for a successful school year launch. 

Though an operations summer might never be called relaxing, a little planning can go a long way toward making it more intentional and manageable. 

This session focuses on prioritizing your summer work, communicating priorities with key stakeholders, and creating a strong plan aligned to your priorities. In this session you’ll:

• Compile a complete list of your and your team’s summer tasks–get everything out of your head and written down
• Prioritize those tasks by sorting them into must do, could do, and don’t do buckets
• Build a strong summer work project plan that is clear, comprehensive, and user-friendly
• Get access to project planning templates so that you don’t need to start your plan from scratch