In late January, a colleague and I from The Center for Effective School Operations (CESO) sat down with a superintendent and his executive cabinet to discuss a potential reorganization. Their situation will sound familiar to many of you: district enrollment trending slightly downward while expenses continue to rise.

This is often the moment when districts feel pressure to “find a number” (5%, 10%, sometimes more) and begin cutting. Positions are reduced and budgets are trimmed across the board. Decisions are made quickly in the name of being leaner, cheaper, and more efficient, without diving deep into the district’s strategic plan. 

During our 20 years of serving more than 500 clients, CESO has seen the same thing time and again: going cheaper often becomes more expensive over time.

Strategic Focus Requires Leadership

When financial pressure hits, the instinct is to shrink; however, just going cheaper and cutting a budget without aligning with your strategic plan creates long-term consequences.

Focus. We recommend adjusting the focus of your lens. Your strategic plan cannot prioritize everything; it demands leadership and choices. These choices should be guided by quantitative analysis, not just qualitative, emotional factors.

Consider this simple example. A full-time employee is typically budgeted at 2,080 hours per year. Once you subtract holidays, vacation, sick leave, and other time away, the actual hours worked drop closer to 1,738 hours, or roughly 34 hours per week. Recent research suggests the average employee is productive for only 2 hours and 53 minutes daily, or about 12.65 hours per week.

Pause on that distinction: productivity and accountability are not the same. Accountability often becomes a superficial distraction that creates confusion and inefficiency within organizations. In contrast, productivity is what ultimately drives measurable accomplishment and defines true success. When we begin measuring productivity instead of merely enforcing accountability, the conversation changes.

Helping Districts Work Smarter, Not Harder

Efforts to optimize operations often conflict with the drive to reduce expenses.

Measuring productivity, and truly understanding it, may require an upfront investment; over time, that investment reduces financial strain because you are aligning resources with outcomes, not simply reducing line items.

For example, CESO serves as the Transportation Department for about 15 school districts, ranging in size from 2,600 to more than 14,000 students. We manage every aspect of the department including fractional leadership, routing logistics and compliance, and the overall family experience.

We measure productivity in these three core areas and evaluate success using the Net Promoter Score framework. For our district partners, savings are realized not just by counting hours worked (FTE’s), but by improving systems, increasing efficiency, and assuming responsibility for retention-related costs. In other words, districts gain measurable outcomes, not more oversight of daily activity.

CESO can apply this same approach across virtually every area of a district’s operations, and it’s always customized to fit specific needs. From payroll and accounting to HR, technology, marketing, and branding, we apply the same thoughtful analysis and productivity focus to every area.

Transforming District Operations for Short-Term and Long-Term Results

The superintendent we met with wasn’t really asking how and where to make cuts in his district. He was asking how to maximize operations in the district so that, over time, costs would decrease as efficiency and effectiveness increased together.

That distinction matters. Maximization looks like:

• Strengthening and integrating technology systems

• Documenting processes for current and future staff

• Freeing leadership to focus on high-impact implementation

• Bringing in outside expertise when necessary to accelerate progress

• Continuously refining systems to get better
  
  
  

Again, this is done not through blunt cuts, but through smarter alignment with your strategic plan and reducing total spending on true priorities. 

From Cost-Cutting to Growth: How Focusing on Your People Drives Success

Yes, going cheap is an option. But going cheap can be expensive. What if the better option is retaining highly productive humans and equipping them to execute your strategic priorities well?

What if you deeply understood the cost of productivity and how it compares to the hidden costs of constant oversight and control? What if you created space to think strategically about maximizing rather than minimizing? 

We are in the business of educating the next generation. Let’s own it. People are our biggest investment. If we’re a humanity-centered organization, then rethinking how we operate today, with clarity and courage, is how we shape a stronger future. A growth mindset will help you stop fixating on budget cuts and start focusing on maximizing outcomes. 

Ryan Stromberg
CESO President