Differentiated+Staffing

Week Four Assignment, Part 3 – Analysis of Differentiated Staffing on a campus of your choice In the literature, differentiated staffing is described as the practice of removing non-instructional tasks from the to-do list of certified teachers. An example of this would be removing the task of collecting lunch money from the teacher and assigning it to a paraprofessional employee. Over the course of a school year, if this task took a teacher three minutes each day, the reassignment of this task would yield nine hours of additional instructional time. Differentiated staffing could also be applied in creative ways to reduce the amount of staff necessary to implement the curriculum at a campus and simultaneously enhance opportunities. One example would be to redesign the ELA and social studies instructional model to create a humanities course where TEKS from both the ELA and Social Studies curriculum are integrated. This particular example would not reduce the FTE required at a secondary school but it would free up an FTE that could provide additional electives. Another application of this idea is to hire teachers who possess certifications in several areas. These teachers could be used to teach several different courses (or preps). At South Belton Middle School, we currently have a teacher who teaches four sections of art, one section of “Partners PE” (a joint PE class with both regular ed and life-skills PE Students), and one section of dance. Another example is the current idea in Killeen ISD to combine the campus technologist position with the campus librarian position. The old model (before computers) had all the audio-visual equipment managed by the librarian. Eliminating the technologist position at each campus in the district would save the district at least $2.5 million in the first year of implementation. Another idea from Killeen ISD is to realign their special education management. The previous model had a special education facilitator responsible for one or more campuses, scheduling all of the ARDs and helping to facilitate each ARD. The scheduling of the ARDs and the facilitation of the ARDs are now the responsibility of the campus Assistant Principals. This will allow the facilitators to service more campuses and reduce the total number of facilitators employed by the district. It is obvious that if a duty can be reassigned to another employee and the total number of employees can be reduced, the district stands to save a great deal of money that can be spent on instructional supplies or otherwise help enhance the curriculum..

One way our district has saved money is by having an LVN at each elementary campus rather than a nurse. Then one nurse is responsible for supervising four different LVNs. Of course, campuses that have students with severe medical needs still have a full-time nurse. We also utilize our district print shop by allowing our teachers to send things to them to copy rather than teachers spending valuable planning time making copies. To protect administration time, high school principals hire testing coordinators that are supervised by an assistant principal rather than an assistant pricipal being responsible for the organization of assessments.