Several senior leaders from Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) are set to take center stage at the 67th Annual Fall Conference hosted by the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) on today through Oct. 29 in San Diego.
This conference is tailored for urban school superintendents, school board members, senior school district administrators, and deans of colleges of education. CGCS is a coalition of 78 of the nation’s largest urban public school systems dedicated to improving education for children in inner cities.
IPS presenters include:
- Andrew Strope, Deputy Superintendent, will talk about” Sustaining Impactful Programs after ESSER,” discussing how as federal COVID-19 aid winds down, districts must plan for how to sustain ESSER-funded initiatives that make a meaningful difference for students. He will describe a project the district conducted with Chiefs for Change to gauge the return on investment in IPS’ ESSER-funded programs, including high-dosage tutoring. Strope also will explain how IPS is analyzing impact, implementation, and cost-per-student considerations to support data-driven decision-making.
- Erica Robinson, Executive Director of Schools, will discuss “Support & Accountability: The Best of Both Worlds.” The presentation will review the district’s SST model, which is designed around a support and accountability structure that is unique to school supervision and leader development. This model includes frameworks to advance the work of principals and school leadership teams by adapting principal supervisor and other roles to enhance district/school partnership, responding rapidly to school leaders’ needs, and intentionally designing opportunities to coordinate, differentiate, build capacity, and advance accountability.
- Christina Aden, Chief Human Resources Officer, will focus on “Centering School Staff Retention to Successfully Traverse District Restructuring. She will discuss how the demand for IPS district restructuring emphasized the need to retain, train/develop high-quality, diverse staff via efficient operational staffing execution. This presentation will discuss the tenets of the operational staffing plan executed by the IPS Human Resources team. Leveraging a combination of bargaining agreement flexibility, staffing process restructure, and teacher choice, IPS retained 300 impacted school staff in year one of Rebuilding Stronger.
- Stephannie Bailey, Chief Executive Officer, IPS Foundation, will discuss “Philanthropic Partnerships to Support District Priorities: How Ed Funds Can be Your Most Valuable Partner.“ She will review how there are many different kinds of education funds and will focus on a specific type whose sole purpose is to raise philanthropic funds on behalf of a school district. The presentation also will review how in an uncertain economic climate, having a close partner who can help raise funds for strategic priorities is a vital asset for any major school district.