IT Meetup: Summer Planning and Priority Setting

Hey, Barbara.

Welcome.

Awesome.

We got some people.

We got Stacy coming in.

Good to see you, Barbara.

You too, Ashley.

I hope you got some time off after the conference.

We seem to go full speed ahead.

I took a week of, I'm still slowly getting through emails, but yes, we're getting ready for some new stuff, so that's exciting.

Hey, Stacy.

Welcome.

Hello.

How's it going? Oh, my gosh.

Like the day that won't end.

I kind of feel that.

So y'all, it looks like we're on a little bit smaller group today.

In just a second we could even go around and just introduce ourselves really quick.

But our kind of overarching topic, we're going to be talking about some planning and some things that are coming up.

We have an amazing guest facilitator.

We've got Leslie with us today.

Y'all, Leslie is the CTO at Cardinal Gibbons High School.

And Leslie, I'll let you introduce yourself, and if you don't mind, if we could just start by passing it to the others in the room.

And y'all, if you'll tell everybody who you are, what you do, where you're from.

Sure.

I can do that.

Ironically, my speaker that makes this really easy to do just died today.

I hope you can hear me as I'm trying to troubleshoot my beautiful-- Actually, it's my COVID speaker.

I revived it and brought it out, and it's been doing so well the past few months, and I think it just quit.

But as Ash said, I'm Leslie.

I'm at Cardinal Gibbons in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I was just at the conference, so I certainly recognize some people.

And our enrollment is 912, and we're just over 1,600 kids.

And we are Windows devices, one to one, and I guess that's about it.

And then Ashley sent me an email and was like, "Hey, do you want to do this summer planning thing?" And I said, "Sure, but it's a little late to be summer planning in May, but I'm happy to actually discuss that part of it, too." So, I'm here, and that's who I am.

So on my screen, I have Stacy next, so I'll put you under.

Hello.

I think my mic is giving me issues as well.

Hopefully you can hear me.

Okay.

I'm Stacy Valentine.

I'm in Brooklyn, New York, at the Mary McDowell Friends School.

I'm the chief technology officer here, and we are K to 12 and have about just over 450 students total.

So, small school.

Stacy, can you pick on somebody and call on someone? Oh.

I'll pass it to Karen.

Hi.

I recognize all four of you from the Atlas conference.

I'm Karen Huang.

I work for a company called Edutech Academic Solutions, and we provide ed tech services to independent schools in the Philadelphia area.

Right now, today, I am serving as ed tech coach at Barak Hebrew Academy outside of Philadelphia.

And we are grades six through 12.

Barbara, I think you're the last one.

Well, my colleague Perry is here too, but he's off camera.

Maybe we'll coax him onto being on camera.

Perry and I are from Brandeis Marin, which is a small day school, certainly compared to all of yours, in Northern California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Rafael.

We have 140 students, K8, and just under 40 faculty and staff.

And we're going through everything you guys are going through, but we're also welcoming a new head of school July 1.

And we just found out that our director of finance is leaving at the end of this month.

So some of our planning now includes some transition planning as well.

We knew about the head transition.

We didn't know about the finance transition.

And there's Perry.

Sorry, I was stuffing my face then.

My name is Perry.

I work on the database and IT stuff here at the school.

Awesome.

And welcome, Jeffrey.

We're glad to have you on.

We were just going around the horn and introducing ourselves, who we are, what we do, where we're from.

Do you want to say hello? Oh, you're still muted.

Yeah.

Can you hear me now? Yep.

Yeah.

My name's Jeff Fiedler.

I'm with a company called VisionPoint.

We are a AV integration company.

We work with K through 12 and higher ed.

Anything to do with AV, classroom technology, meeting spaces, conferences, all of that.

Cool.

All right, y'all.

Well, today's meetup is sponsored by Meter, and so we appreciate their support.

So I'm going to turn it back over to Leslie to take us through some discussion questions today.

Okay.

So all my tech is failing, so I think you can hear me based on your heads nodding.

So Ashley and I were talking about this a little while ago, about summer planning, what does that look like? And I was saying my gut reaction wasIf we don't have plans in May, yikes.

But I also want to spin this to us and say, for me, summer planning actually starts with people before projects.

So when I start my summer planning, and I think about it actually probably about January, is when I start asking my team when they think they might be off.

It's not that they have to know their vacations in January.

I realize that can be an aggressive question.

But I start putting it on our meeting agenda to start talking about, "What are you going to do? When do you think you're going to be off?" And I start fishing around the school to see when other key people are going to be out, because what I have planned doesn't always align with when the people I might need available.

So I was curious, does anybody else start that way? No, you start with projects? No.

We actually have everybody's schedule on our calendar, so you can actually just- Right ...

preview that.

And yeah, I don't have any projects.

I usually just do things in advance.

But this year, for instance, I'm starting to do a list of what I'm going to go through so next year.

And I also put things on the calendar, especially if they repeat every year.

Like for instance, we have summer homework that I have to post up on Blackbaud.

So I made a calendar invite to all the teachers who owe me that information, who needs to give it to me.

And so next year, around this time, it'll be on my calendar to email these teachers.

And some of the teachers are even way ahead of me.

It reminded me one teacher already submitted their homework this early, and I already posted it.

So I try to do things quickly, and so that all the small things don't build up and stop me from doing other things.

Also, that brings up an important distinction that I think I didn't address, which is the planning for the recurring task, and which I would say are the operating tasks, right? And then planning for maybe the capital tasks.

Because I think that's how I see-- I bucket those, right? So I think we would argue, you put those things on your calendar.

I know when my SIS rollover is going to be and what is dependent on that, and that is always an annual calendar invite that can happen within a certain window.

But when I get to the capital projects, I start with the people to see, can I really do all the things that I think would be dreamy to achieve in a summer? Or am I going to overtax these people? Or they're not going to be here, and we just can't do it.

So that would be my next question.

Do you push all your capital projects into the summer window? That's such a great question, Leslie.

And I think even furthermore, if fiscal year starts Jan 1, are you putting items that you're buying in May or June that are capital projects in the current fiscal year or next year? So that's a little complicated question.

And I was also going to just ask whether-- I have more questions than answers, but I can give you some answers, too.

But when do you do your tech budgeting cycle? Because for me, writing the budget helps dictate the summer to-do list, especially the capital projects.

And then part three of that is, do you have your software renewals all aligned to this time of year, or do they happen all-- And is there a way to get them aligned? And what is the best time to have them all crop up? So, multi-part response.

One of the reasons I'm here is to learn about how people plan their summer projects and implement their summer projects.

This is my first year working in an independent school, so I've never had a downtime or a summer to do things.

We usually just are on 10 all the time.

But what I did is just before spring break, I sat down with all the division heads to get an idea of what their summers look like, if they're doing-- Sometimes we have summer programs or one-off things that are going on.

We're doing a big ISP migration this summer.

So that's my big summer project.

So that was number one, following Leslie's lead, just dealing with the people.

Who's around, what's going on, if there's summer school, things like that.

And I've just been walking around in the dark since then trying to figure out what the best solution for that is.

But right now, that's how we planned it.

We're implementing a new FM system rollout in our middle school, so I'm doing that.

We know middle school is dark from the day after school ends, so we're doing that super early, get that out the way.

And then working around my team's vacation schedule, which I had them do.

They had the month of April to figure out what their summer vacations would be so that I can figure out where to plug things in.

And so I've been doing this little Jenga game with it.

So that's how we do that.

In terms of your question, Barbara, with your software and your payment cycles.

So when I started, we had a ton of apps that we use, and they're all like-...

different days and all these things.

So I put them all in a spreadsheet and worked with all the vendors to get prorated cycles so that slowly we are all going to be at the beginning of our fiscal year.

So I've got probably about 75% of our apps that are starting for July 1.

And so we ended up paying a little bit more to do a 14-month contract or a 16-month contract or whatever, so that now we're getting right up on July 1, so that everything will be at the same time renewal.

Because I'm like, "Nobody has time to be chasing all these things down." So that's how we did that.

Congratulations.

I think you may have instituted world peace because you got it all aligned.

That was the missing factor, getting all those contracts to be July 1.

Yeah, that's the nightmare of what- In year one, y'all.

In year one.

Rock star, Stacie.

We're getting there.

We're getting there.

Stacie, did your business office prefer that? Yeah.

So we're in the transition from cash to accrual accounting, so that's been a really interesting- Oh ...

alignment while also co-terming.

So for years, they would miscalculate when I was spending because they just averaged it every month.

And every year I was like, "That's not how tech this works." Mm-hmm.

And they're like, "Well, you're so under budget." I was like, "I promise you, by the end of June, I will not be under budget." I do not.

It's so false.

So I'm curious, what do your business offices prefer? Because that was a real challenge for me for a long time, that it was like every year we're having the same conversation.

Like, I'm going to spend a lot in this very small window.

Yeah.

They actually suggested that.

They actually implemented that.

I guess they had been implementing it, but tech hadn't been doing it.

So when they suggested it, I was like, "Okay." Failed accounting, by the way, in grad school.

But I was like, "All right.

If you say it's the best way to do it, let's go for it." And for most of the vendors, they're pretty understanding.

Of course, they want your money, so they'll go ahead and restructure your contracts anyway.

I think it also depends on your school fiscal years.

I just heard someone say it's January is their fiscal year.

Mm-hmm.

Mine is July 1st, so we spend everything by June 30th.

Mm-hmm.

So even all the leasing contract for devices, I get it by June 30th.

And even overspending, my finance director will be saying, "Put it by June 30th of this year." So I think that really helps if you- And Ling, do you count that, the stuff you're buying this June, are you calling that a '25, '26 expense? And I know it's capital, not operating.

Yeah.

It is cap, but- But are you budgeting for it in your '25, '26 budget- Mm-hmm ...

or your '26, '27 budget? '25, '26.

So this year, if I spend it before June 30th, it'll be my '25, '26 budget.

Yeah.

So that should really help whatever you do.

And that helps when you are signing the lease, the contract, whatever that you're trying to- Yeah.

We do it the same way, too, but when they're looking at the budget, they think I haven't spent my budget yet, and it's like, no, no, no, it's just May, June is- Just this way.

Yeah ...

when we go shopping.

Yeah.

And when we even signed the lease for the Apple computer, it's the same thing.

I say, "Can you make it deliver..." And also, there's another trick of that, too.

There is something interesting about the financial statement.

If you signed it, it's about the machine deliver by.

So when I first joined, one thing I was being warned about is you have to receive the machine by that date, by June 30.

Otherwise, the auditor will look suspicious, will flag the school.

So not only you signed it, but also physically received it, that you sign it off.

So that was one thing that I'm very mindful of, sign it around June 1st or something, late May, and then receive the device before June 30th.

So that actually brings up an interesting point I think sometimes that we run into, is how have you adjusted your purchasing cycles to accommodate rules that you didn't know existed for you, right? So we buy Lenovo, and they don't invoice until it ships, and the definition of when it ships widely varies.

Because Lenovo's definition, I think, is once we receive it through customs.

There's all these different kind of moments, so I have adjusted some purchasing cycles, as well as learned a lot about net 30 on invoices to bridge the fiscal year.

So how has any of those kind of accounting rules, to be accurate, which are things that I didn't know I had to know before this job, how have those impacted your purchasing and planning cycles? And furthermore, when are your budgets approved so you actually know what you can afford to buy? Yeah.

I think in that case, I would plan it in cycle.

Depends on how big your school is.

So by now, the way that the machine stabilize in my school, I know that I'm rotating every grade level, that they get new machine every year.

So that's become a number.

And I work with the account manager.

They're really flexible in a sense that if you just tell them what you need, especially...

I don't know about Lenovo, but Apple is the same way.

They have the invoice date once you signed it that day, and then the shipment date is different.

So you just ask them, "This is what you need." Usually, they're pretty good.

And I think the trick is to do it ahead of time.

Yeah.

Because of the tariff and things, they are backlogging.

We want to buy the MacBook Neo this year, and they're six weeks out.

So I was so glad that I signed the contract already, so I can get it in by June 15th.So, and then another funny thing is that I don't want the AppleCare to kick in yet.

So I was like, "Hey, what do I do to have it later?" Because if I activate it now, then I would- Yeah ...

be able to cover the whole school year.

So the account manager was able to bend and was like, "Oh, okay.

Maybe you can just activate it on June 30th." And I was like, "Okay, that works." So- True ...

just plan early in that sense.

Yeah.

But I think those are really notable things for people to think about when planning, because sometimes when you're dodging one problem, you have other ones that you don't realize.

So when you're avoiding the tariffs, and you're trying to buy early or the memory increases- Yeah ...

you have the warranty problem, and you have to work with the vendor to- Mm-hmm ...

establish what an education warranty looks like and add another six months.

My computers have been sitting, actually, in a closet since January.

I've never had computers this early.

But that same computer that I bought in December was over $100 more per device a month later.

Mm-hmm.

So it's really impacted my budgeting cycle.

That money was allocated for this '25, '26 year- Mm ...

but if we don't have a flexible business office, they weren't expecting that spend to happen in December, right? Well, actually, January.

But that was spend that normally would've been projected for March.

Well, for me at least, when that happened, I also communicate early with the finance director, because purchasing the Neil wasn't expected.

Right.

And I just told her that ahead of time, and she was figuring it out with me.

She said, "Well, if you need to increase it, if you have a reason to justify," she was able to also work around with the number.

So I was able to get a few grand more this year because of the carrot.

So I think most people are really...

It's nicer when you give them a heads up time, as soon as you find out.

Like you heard about this- Right ...

thing.

Maybe after today's conversation, it's like, "I heard about this.

This is what's going to happen." And let- Right ...

them know what they can do and give it to them, and see if they can work the number with you, so.

I agree, but I'll say the flip of that is from being at Atlas and talking to a lot of different people, not everybody has either that cash flow- Right ...

or the flexibility or understanding relationship with a CFO or head of school to pivot.

I know that I'm in a good situation to be able to pivot, but how do we plan for that if that's not our situation? How do we make our value heard? Because at the end of the day, there are schools right now that are trying to order devices and can't get them.

Yeah, it was AI.

That's right, Perry.

I heard that was a ton.

So which one is it, AI or is it the tariffs? Last year was tariffs.

This year's AI.

It's- Oh, okay ...

yeah.

It'll be- There are always things, something so I can never...

When you- Yeah ...

you all said that, I was like, are they just giving us - They are.

And they can.

Yeah.

The first year when I joined, it was right after COVID, so the director before me purchased a lot of computer, and then after COVID, the kids took it home and cannot really use those computer right now, I have a lot of shortage.

One way was that some of the parents were able to help.

So if that ever happened and you don't have a lot of cash flow, maybe it's to just ask the community.

That was how I survived the post-COVID- Right ...

situation.

Their parents who worked at Apple would say, "Okay, I can give you 20...

Donating 20 computer." So that was a way to solve within my community.

That's how I reach out to first the head of school and the CFO and then the parents for help.

Barbara, I think you had three questions in one, and before I pivot, I want to make sure that, before I move us to another...

I wanted to make sure we cover them, actually.

I think we might have covered them.

Oh my gosh, I have more now, because I don't remember.

But I'm also thinking about the vendors in particular, and at a small school, you don't often have a designated vendor, or they change a lot.

When you're bigger and you're buying more every year, they tend to give you a person.

But the other thing I'm having trouble getting on a timely basis is things that expire annually.

For example, our Adobe licenses or Microsoft, if I'm doing that annually.

And I know Adobe is going to need to renew in August, so I'll start talking to my vendor in May or June about, "Hey, can we get a quote?" And there's just this lag time often- Yeah ...

because there's a third party Adobe rep or Microsoft rep or Google rep, and it just bogs it down, and there's been some nail-biter years where are we going to get renewed in time or- Mm ...

stuff going to expire.

So any thoughts about that topic? New topic, sorry.

I keep adding- Yeah.

Well, I can give some of what I learned early on, and it is regional, but I imagine it exists in other parts of the country.

I had come out of a school district, so I was used to large purchasing power, so moving into independent schools was actually very confusing for me in the beginning.

And while I understand I'm a large school in independent world, I'm small compared to a district, right? So that was a very hard pivot to figure out, and what I've discovered is there are purchasing consortiums.

So in the Southeast, I joined MSBO because what it's allowing me to do, it gave me the two things, not just the large purchasing power, which is impactful for pricing, but when those reps are unresponsive, I have another person to put on that task.

So if I'm working with CDW and they're not responding with my Adobe licensing, I can reach out to my MSBO rep as well, and that's actually their job, is the partner relationshipAnd I could put them on it instead of my time of chasing and chasing and chasing.

So that's been very helpful.

And I've also become probably one of the few people who target vendors at conferences because I want the face time to be like, "You didn't respond to me, and this is who this is." It's me.

I'm a human, and I need that because I think that that's valuable that they see we're real people on the other side.

And I think that ultimately that relationship builds, and you start to get a better response regardless of size.

Yeah.

Thank you for mentioning that, Leslie.

And Ashley, I will just say to you, the vendor face time in the exhibit hall is almost as valuable to all of us out in the field as the sessions are.

The sessions are- Yeah ...

amazing, but that time with vendors, we all wheel and deal and make those relationships and hear about new things.

It's so key to that conference really.

Yeah.

Right.

So I think that it does exist regionally.

I think California has something, too.

I just don't know what it- Yeah ...

I don't know what to call theirs.

I think it's called CITE, C-I-T-E, is ours.

Yeah.

It's worth it, has been my experience, because the pricing's better, but having a network of people that can advocate or that's its own list serve, I think it just provides that other voice so that you're not against the wire because you're not buying enough.

And I also think it's okay to call vendors out on that, which I often do.

Just because I don't buy enough doesn't mean I'm not of value, doesn't mean my students aren't of the same value.

And I think it's okay to remind them of that because in the end, that's what we're trying to serve.

Barbara, don't you always remind the vendors that you know other schools, you're in contact, we're a small group, but also a big group because we know a lot of people.

We're in contact with a lot of people.

All the time.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

That's my- That's a superpower.

Yeah.

I will only talk to you if 20 other people from this list serve said I should.

And if one person said I shouldn't, I probably will never call you.

And if you do right by me, we will talk good things about you.

100%.

Right.

The power of this community and figuring that out is much stronger than any vendor pitch.

So I already forgot.

I got so excited about the other stuff.

I was like, which thing was I about to ask them? What constraints are put on you that is actually outside of the tech team that change your summer plans? Can you repeat that? Sorry.

I'm asking what constraints in your schools are actually put on you that ultimately change your summer plans that are maybe outside of your tech team, right? You're like, "We're going to do these three projects.

We know what we're doing.

We know everyone's vacations.

We have the funds.

We're ready to go." And then I know I heard someone say summer programs, but what pivots, what happens, what curve balls happen at schools that force us to decide, are we going to execute this planned project, or are we going to have to move it? Facilities, construction.

Yeah.

Number one.

Full disclosure about my colleague Perry here, he's a project manager by career before being at a school.

So he's got all kinds of great habits.

That's my secret superpower here.

But he's often derailed from his very on schedule stuff by decisions being just people being in the same room having to decide or finish last minute changes to the schedule or last minute changes to the handbook or summer forms or all those things.

He's often left waiting, waiting, waiting for other humans.

More communication.

Sometimes things change, and they don't let me know.

So, by the time I find out, sometimes it's late, sometimes it's early, so...

Some of the things that we have to do this summer were because last summer when I started, we were told last minute that there would be like 30 days we couldn't access the upper school because they were redoing all the floors and electrical, whatever.

So we just had to, last minute, just totally scrap a project.

So I'll have the joy of doing it this summer.

So facilities, definitely number one.

Mm-hmm.

I wish it was different here.

But I cannot tell you how many times we've planned a project and walked in to find the floor freshly waxed, even though we asked for that calendar like 72 times.

And I'm like, "I guess we won't be in that hall today." We have a camp that uses all of our classrooms.

It's not our camp, but they use our- Oh ...

entire facility, so we're squished off to a little thing, and then we have to do all of our facilities projects at the end of the summer and any kind of tech installs.

So that's tricky.

Wow.

That's tricky.

That's really tricky.

I'm going to ask a sort of different question.

What projects do you think, tech projects, schools schedule for the summer that actually are a mistake in the summer? Did you ask if it's a mistake? Well, I think that there are, and maybe we should talk about what some of the common things are that we do in the summer.

But I think that there are projects that we always say are summer projects for tech, and my question is, of those, which are actually mistakes and maybe shouldn't be summer projects? Policy and handbook updates.

Yes.

Right.

Why does that have to happen in the summer? I'm going to say website launches.

I actually think launching a website in August and September is generally actually not the best plan.

And not just for internal resources, but I think because the vendors are taxed as well.

So I think that's something we sometimes don't factor.

It might be good in our school cycle, but that means that everyone else thinks the same thing.

Which means the vendors only have so many resources to put on your projects, and it's not their best work.

So I guess my next question is, what do you think you could move that you hadn't considered when considering a vendor constraint? Yeah.

I often, if I'm launching any kind of a new tool or platform, decide I'm going to get to know it over the summer and then I'll roll it out in the fall.

It never is a good time to do that.

I would rather do it with teachers sometime during the school year.

Hey, Charles.

We are currently trying to identify what end up being summer IT projects that we think actually maybe they should be elsewhere in the year.

Right.

That's a novel idea.

I love it.

So I pitched website launches actually, which maybe sometimes are columns.

I get that structure can be somewhat different, but part of what I was also saying is that I think an underestimated variable is vendor capacity.

They only have so many people to work on each of these projects.

Yeah.

And what could we get better work out of them as partners if we just moved to January? Yeah.

I love the idea because I know I'm certainly in New York, I'm competing with the same two or three people for every AV project in the city- Right ...

and the one guy that we all use for them, so that's always a fun one.

And plus, just trying to buy stuff.

I don't know how many of you all are trying to source Chromebooks and MacBook Neos and all the other fun stuff right now, but we're all buying at the same time.

Right.

Supply chain certainly isn't ramping up to meet our needs.

Yeah.

We did talk about that a little earlier, and then some of the challenges that come with that, of course, which are warranties and negotiating that to kick off at different times and everything that comes downhill.

Is there anything on your current summer list that you'd think, "What would happen if I move this?" Hmm.

That's a great question.

Other than maybe you would get to the beach more often or something.

I was going to say, you're threatening me with a good time right now.

Right.

I don't know.

I have this anxiety about moving a project to spring break or winter break out of fear that if something goes wrong, there's no leeway, there's no padding on either side to- Right ...

fix or test.

You're blowing my mind a little bit because I never thought of it, but I'm like, "Oh, there are things that we could probably do with very little to no impact on needing that." If it's a one-day rollout, for example, you still have the five days before and after to look at it.

So I never thought of that, but- Right ...

the anxiety is creeping up while I'm thinking about it.

Yeah, for sure.

We're installing some new copiers in a week or two that I really wanted to do over the summer, and it seemed like too much of an interruption, but the ones we're retiring are getting too-- They're limping too much.

It's time.

So I pushed that timeline up.

We'll see if that was good timing or stupid timing.

That timing, we just replaced it out, or you don't want to do that over the summer because the teacher cannot really test and print.

You don't want them to swarm at you or yell at you coming back to the summer, and they cannot print.

So now is a good time to do it.

You better get it done now, so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We replaced about 60 printers over the spring break, and it wasn't fun the first week back from spring break, but it was a lot better than dealing with the September run of everything else plus 900 drivers and everything else being taken care of.

Well, selfishly, we're about to make that error.

So if anybody has worked with Uvio and has good feedback, let me know because they're my top contender right now.

But I think we have a contract up in September and then another one up in a few years, and I want to get out of that business and consolidate to one.

And I think we're going to have to make the error of doing it over the summer and people coming back and maybe not printing all at once.

And I wish we didn't.But why can't you do projectors throughout the year where AV installs? I think, I know we, like I say here, we do a fair amount of those over breaks.

Yeah.

Like the winter and the spring breaks.

I think, the challenging thing is in the middle of the year is, especially when you're making a transition from one tech to a different.

So if you're going from a projector to an IWB, that is a shift for the teachers that feels like you're pulling the rug out from them and all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, I planned for all this.

Now I got to figure out how to learn this." Those types of things, I think for me the biggest struggle is just finding the PD time to actually get time with faculty to try these things.

And it's criminally small here.

I'm sure you all deal with the same thing of just not-- There's so much cool stuff to run out and try out and implement, but there's never time to train on anything.

Yeah.

No, it's fair.

I think what I'm trying to also help address is sort of the cognitive load on this one department because we have created this, well, to make everyone else's life better, we're going to do it all in the summer.

Right.

And then everyone's going to return at once, and everyone's going to have needs at the same time.

Plus, we need to now find out if those magical projects actually worked well.

And I think it's a lot.

And I think it's okay for us to start identifying, is it as important as we once thought to do some of those things in the summer? And what can I realistically either spread out in the year or just move to a different time to protect my team, to protect myself? My team starts the year dead, as I imagine all of you do.

It's not a great way to actually start a school year.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to help us find that capacity.

Yeah.

It's always a little hard when everyone comes back nice, fresh, and rejuvenated and- Yeah ...

you're kind of crawling to the finish line there.

Can I ask a database part of that question? Yeah, please.

Anybody successfully moved the planning of the master schedule to earlier in the spring, as opposed to over the summer? We've managed to get ours to early June, but it used to be in early August, so thank God we at least got a little lead time, but it'd be so great if it were by the time everybody starts to leave done.

And then the other one is, we've kind of instituted that no major report card changes can be done any shorter of a window than call it a semester.

Sometimes- Yeah ...

it doesn't always happen.

But, just to get it right and launched, it's too much pressure on the tech team if they don't have enough lead time.

So I can tell you, we do course registration in-- We actually pushed it from February, I think, into March.

So kids are picking courses.

Our ninth graders are picking the week that they accept us because the ninth grade schedule is pretty set minus two choices.

Right? It's some data.

You look at it, you're like, "This is the math you're in, this is the science you're in, and you can go to art or art." They don't have as much choice.

So we do that part, and then we actually don't roll our SIS until the master schedule is pretty built.

And it's partially because of a technical issue in the SIS that once you roll it, it's a lot more work to manually adjust those.

But by early July, I would say, we have our schedule pretty completed.

So it's not fully before teachers go, but we've been pushing those-- We've been playing with those lines, trying to figure out the magic cut because part of what happens is the fiscal roll for the fiscal roll, the SIS roll, and vacations are all the same week.

Right? So when do your students register? It's small, and it's K-8, so we register them.

There's little choices, but part of the slowdown is we divide kids into sections for language and math, and getting those sections built by the teachers before they leave for summer, or administrators, is like pulling hen's teeth.

We also tend to do a lot of summer admissions, so all those new kids need to be placed with advisors in language and math as well.

So.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

But Perry, I'm not remembering.

Do you do the rollover of Blackbaud first or finish the master schedule first? I do the rollover for Blackbaud first.

But usually Blackbaud has everything in it too.

And then we use that SchoolCal, and it actually brings a lot of things into the calendar.

So, it's kind of automatic.

We try to automate a lot of things.

We use Clever, so that helps a lot.

There's no more uploading spreadsheets to update the student's name and things like that, so.

Yeah.

We're experimenting- Yeah ...

with Schedule X this year to see how that goes.

How is it? I don't know yet.

We kind of got it- Oh ...

right at the tail end, so it's just like, "Well, we can accept you for May." It was like, "Fine.

We'll take it, whatever we can do," just because it's we're N through 12, and so-Really up until about two years ago, we didn't have schedules until literally the first day of school, and then they would start add/drop period.

So realistically- Yeah ...

the whole month of September was just a pain as a teacher because kids are coming in and out of your classes, things are moving around, whatever.

So we've now moved it to where we'll have schedules in students' hands by the beginning of August.

They can work with their deans over the summers for any add/drop, and then literally start of school year, that's your class.

And if you want to drop it after a week, you can.

There'll be a W on your transcript.

But that's kind of the only, outside of a quick re-leveling or anything like that, then there's really no more moving around.

So I'm hopeful that the Schedule X piece will allow us to kind of be a lot more mindful then about some of the opportunities we have about gender balance, diversity balance in classrooms, ensuring that kids are kind of having a more balanced day.

We will see.

Yeah.

I'm hopeful.

Well, I will tie all of our conversations together and say that one is one that I'm hoping to try, and my plan is actually to do that in mid-spring with them because they are a vendor that I think will be overtaxed in the summer.

Yes.

Right? But would be really valuable, so can I have kids register and solve that problem in the spring when hopefully their workload is actually lighter, and we could actually know schedules a whole lot sooner, which would allow me to roster everything a whole lot sooner.

Yeah.

Do you use summer to set team goals for the remaining school year? Yeah.

We typically do it at our retreat at the end of the summer.

I couldn't hear you.

I'm sorry, but I think it's my speaker problem.

Oh.

Sorry, I also have a sore throat.

We typically do a team retreat in August, and that's usually when we go over like, we have a three-year roadmap.

So we're on year two coming up, and we review it and see if we're on track and kind of set our goals for the year.

I'd love to say that I did that.

Yeah.

Same.

But I'm going to actually answer that with a question of like, how do you all manage vacation times when you have three people with four weeks of vacation each in a two-month span? It's almost like, "Cool, we'll see each other at the end of June, and I'll see you guys again at the end of August, and hopefully we'll just catch up on Slack throughout." Yep.

No, I think summer's a real problem for scheduling, and we push so many things in this like summer's going to be magical, and we're going to get all this stuff done, and then the school year starts and we're like, "Oh." And yeah.

And I'm sure the same for you all.

That's also when the security department wants to do all their upgrades, which are all tech-based now.

Facilities wants to do their upgrades, half of which are going to be tech-based now.

So whether it's access control cameras, the gunshot detectors, whatever is all over the place.

Yeah, it feels like it's not even a tech problem of scheduling.

It's literally everybody trying to do everything at the same time in this two-month window, and we get to support all of it.

Yeah.

Do you get- Now I'm just complaining.

What? I said now I'm just complaining, sorry.

It's okay.

Well, something I'm facing this year, so I'm curious if other people get to the same joy, but do you get to sort of take advantage of a capital project that's like...

So we're doing a renovation, and we're happening to do it in an area that really has been in dire need of an additional IDF for years.

So I'm trying to roll into that project.

But do you get that opportunity at your schools, or does it happen too late or without you? I can say for me, thankfully, I'm far more a part of that process now, any capital improvements pieces, than was in the past.

In the past, it was kind of like the architects designed it, we started building it, now figure out where to put your stuff.

Now it's a lot more proactive.

Yeah.

Yes.

I can neither confirm nor deny that I ordered three times as many APs as I actually need for the space because I could roll it into that budget as opposed to taking it out of my budget.

So yes, certainly take advantage of those opportunities to kind of get in.

I think I've probably added about five IDFs over the years, and just from different buildings going up or even athletic facilities.

New baseball field? Great.

Throw a switch in there.

Pull some fiber, do all these things.

That makes sense.

So going- And- Oh, sorry, Barbara, you go ahead.

Yeah, I was just going to say, and projects that have happened over the summer while a bunch of us were gone have notoriously gone awry.

I'm thinking of our security gate that has video and audio that just never worked right for an entire year, and every time people would complain about it, we would remind them that that happened while the tech staff wasn't here.

So, I think being noisy also about your involvement is helpful, but without whining.

I don't know.

I'm learning.

So going back just a minute ago, you guys were talking about the roles and responsibilities and kind of meeting with the team over the summer.

Atlas is currently going through a leadership change, but something that we've done for the past several summers, and I really like i ...

is we take anchor charts, and we put them all around the room.

We all get together and have just a retreat, a staff meeting, and we go through, and we list out what are all the things that we need to get done in the next year.

And we list out all the projects and all the things that we have to accomplish, things with the strategic plan, all of it.

And then we go around, and regardless of what your title is, we assign and we talk through who does it make sense to have as a primary owner driving this project, and this is key, who's the secondary? And so we have this piece that works really, really well, and it's interesting because we've actually completely redefined roles and job positions.

So I feel like we've had a lot of good people at Atlas, but there's a metaphor where it's talking about not just having the right people on the bus, but the right people in the right seats.

And you all, we've had some misalignment, me included.

When I first joined Atlas, my role was not aligned to my skillset of what I was passionate about, what my background was.

I had a doctorate in something else, and yet I was over here doing this thing.

So anyway, getting the right people on the bus in the right seats.

That's my two cents for you today.

Ashley, I couldn't support that more.

I feel like I'm walking-- I think I want to get that tattooed, "Right people, right seats," because that's actually all the work I'm doing right now, and nothing feels like it involves technology at all, actually.

It's restructuring, realigning teams, and making some very hard reflective decisions of just because we like people, just because they like being at the place, are they in the right seat? Are they in the right seat for you to get this work done? So what I would say to this group is exactly that, is and I don't know what your team sizes look like or what you work with, but do you have the right people in the right seats for you to be the best at your work, or is that work maybe you need to do this summer? Yeah, that's what we talked about a lot at the Birds of a Feather- Yes ...

meetup at Atlas, the CIO, CTO one, and Stacy, you were very out there with your challenges around this issue.

You don't have to share right now, but I think you got a lot of support in that conversation, and I think it's something we all could relate to.

Oh, we also talked a lot about feedback.

When is the best time for feedback and goal setting as well.

Right.

I actually wanted to get over to you, Stacy, that day because I felt you so strongly, but I was in a different group that also went really well, so I never made it to your section.

But I think a lot of us are working on that right now, and I would say that that actually belongs in summer planning, too, or going into summer planning.

To have an effective summer, you need the right people.

You need the...

Right? To speak on that, actually, as a result of that Birds of a Feather meeting that we did, we have a leadership retreat every year with our senior leadership team, just lock us in a room all day for whatever.

And that is actually going to be one of the sessions that we'll be working on this year as leaders as to how do we identify those very things, and then how do you have those difficult conversations and provide that level of difficult feedback so that you can then be having people in those right seats on the right bus.

And then if they're not on the right seats or even on the right bus, how do you have those conversations, and what does that look like? Because I told them I will not have another year like that.

So, that's actually a commitment from our senior team to address a lot of those things.

So thank you, Atlas.

Hey, you all.

I'm glad to hear that those Birds of a Feather were useful because that was a pilot, so good stuff.

Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, unfortunately, I wasn't at that one.

I was talking with the Revna guys.

But the tech piece isn't the hard part.

The human piece is so much more difficult, and I think I'm noticing more there's a nice piece where it feels like tech departments are being taken more seriously, more integral to the organization, and you see that with different titles, compensation, whatever.

But as a result, I think, I hate to say it, but there's been a bit of having to cut some dead weight, and some people, like you said, that aren't on the right bus.

I'll be the first to admit, I've had so many difficult conversations with Claude in advance of actually talking to the person, because the prep work of just being able to navigate some of these challenges that are going to come up in the conversation first.

Then when I actually had to have the difficult conversation with the person, it's like I already had it.

There was a nice level of practice there.

So definitely the prep work with the leadership team I think is critical.

But yeah, don't go through my chat history because there's been a lot of evaluative conversations in there, including having to terminate somebody.

Yeah.

I really just want to say I fully support all of that.

It's something I've spent a lot of time working on and learning in the past year, and my biggest takeaway from that is that the mistake we often make is keeping the wrong people in the wrong seats out of what I would call misguided kindness.

And it's actually at our own cost, and it's what's going to make this summer harder.

It's going to make that year-- We have to do that part up front, and I'm saying this as someone who's about to go into something very terrible for a summer and significantly probably understaff herself, because the long-term outcome will be better for the school.

Stacy, I mean, sorry, not Stacy, Leslie, to double down on that, yes, not only for the school, but also for your team.

Yes.

Because I've been in the situation where I didn't address it early enough, and I had repercussions where it affected others on the team, and I lost good people because I didn't take care of the hard problem early.

Yes.

And that was a difficult lesson to learn.

And yeah, it is difficult, and I don't think we're talking-- We're starting to, but I think collectively we're not talking about it enough because we are so worried about ordering computers and moving data, and we're so worried about that stuff.

But really, some of that stuff actually would be a lot easier if the right people were in the right seats on the right bus going in the right direction together.

So I think that has value in this conversation.

Because some of your summer challenge is actually maybe tied to people as well, which I don't think we got into probably enough today.

Well, you all, I think that that's a pretty good note to start wrapping us up.

If there's anyone that has any last burning things, we can get to it.

But we are getting close to the top of the hour, and I think, Leslie, you've done an amazing job guiding us through this.

Thank you.

Being that I really actually didn't know what I was walking into.

This is it.

Everybody gets problems.

It's fun colleagues.

Right.

So thanks, Ashley, for asking me.

Yeah, of course.

Thank all of you for taking time out of your very busy schedules to come and to be with us.

I thought it was a great conversation today.

I really appreciate it.

You all stay in touch.

Let me know what you need and what Atlas can do for you.

But we appreciate you being here, and hope you have a great day and a great summer..