Broad Residency: Utilizing Business Pros to Improve Public Education
June 20, 2008
Hildy Medina--Associate Editor, HispanicBusiness Magazine
|
|
|
|
As public school officials grapple with crowded classrooms, high dropout rates, teacher shortages and low test scores, a privately funded program is aiming to improve education by bringing best business practices into urban school districts across the country.
The concept is the brainchild of Eli Broad, a Los Angeles-based developer and philanthropist who sponsors the Broad Residency in Urban Education. Part of the Broad Foundation, the program trains former investment bankers, business school grads, and other professionals to utilize their best business practices in scholastic settings. Participants are placed in a two-year program where they work closely with superintendents and school administrators in various departments.
The program does not involve in-class teaching, but rather the administration of the district. One of the Broad residents already working for the school district is Monica Santana Rosen, an employee services officer at the district's human resources department.
"This was a perfect opportunity to come into a large urban school district, in a leadership role," says Ms. Rosen, a graduate of the Harvard Business School. Ms. Rosen immediately set out to help streamline various units of the HR division, assisting time-strapped teachers and other school employees with job-related issues. She also helped create an efficient call center.
To help process employee paperwork more efficiently, the HR department began training employees to do various tasks outside their normal job duties. "What we needed across the department was to get away from specialist roles and cross-train our staff," says Ms.Rosen.
The results were immediate. Before the change, for instance, processing a medical leave request would normally take six weeks, now it is completed within two to three business days. "This is really at the heart of the change effort," says Ms. Rosen. "Making our teachers' lives easier so that they don't have to worry whether they can get the correct paychecks and can focus on what they do best."
Running Schools Like Businesses
James Masias, a former director of finance for Qwest Communications, is another Broad resident who is making a difference, bringing best business practices to school. .
"I like the private sector, but as I went through the (Broad program) application process I really started to get interested and I started feeling that I found what I was looking for," says Mr. Masias, who completed his residency in May. "A place where I can apply my financial experience to something I'm passionate about."
Working for the San Diego Unified School District, he found that the decision-making process there moved at a snail's pace. Not enough time was spent on analyzing what works and what doesn't.
He quickly went to work on a deep analysis of the district's IT department and four months later turned in an 80-page report detailing a "laundry list of what to do, where they need to go and what it's going to take to get them there," explains Mr. Masias.
"The biggest thing was how much they spent in technology resources in the past four years," he recalls. "They spent over $27 million, which is phenomenal to me."
While there, Mr. Masias also helped create a new supplier contract for the IT department.
"From my personal experience, if you have a business background, you can really make changes in K12 education," says Mr. Masias. "A lot of people don't see a school district as a business, but I see it as a business, we have finances, operations and marketing, those are the three components of any business and school districts have that."
But can a program like the Broad residency succeed in helping large urban school systems shed years of bad management?
Christopher Steinhauser, the superintendent of the nearly 91,000-student Long Beach Unified School District thinks it can.
"It's a great hybrid model," says Mr. Steinhauser, who has served as a mentor to program residents. "I learn from them, my staff learns from them, they have experience we've never had, so you can move the system forward."
The Broad program often includes training workshops around the country that teach, among other things, union labor relations and public education politics. Participants often land high-level school district positions after graduating from the program.
For more information on the Broad Residency in Urban Education go to www.broadresidency.org
Source: HispanicBusiness.com (c) 2008. All rights reserved.
|
