Operations Institute
Operational effectiveness, efficiency, and compliance are critical to the organizational sustainability that ensures the school is effective in delivering student outcomes. This is why it is critical that charter schools provide comprehensive and rigorous professional development for their operations professionals.
Whether launching the process with a diagnostic of back-office systems or attending our Operations Institute, CharterSource has the in-depth expertise and team of professionals to help your operations professionals build strong systems. Be sure to check out our Operations Institute which offers technical sessions, a compliance feed, and a community engagement platform to share best practices with your peers.
Review our training webinars below. Individual registration provides access to recorded sessions (some were previously live) or upcoming live sessions, templates/resources, and the opportunity to engage in a collaborative learning community for 365 days. Individual coaching is available for an additional fee.
Effective Strategies for Hiring & Retention
Upcoming Live Session!
Join us on Wednesday, April 23rd
9:30 AM - 12:00 PM.
In this interactive workshop, participants will explore the principles of equitable hiring practices and their impact on creating diverse, inclusive, and effective school environments. Through thoughtful discussions and hands-on activities, learners will gain a deep understanding of why it is critical to match the right individuals with the right positions. Participants will engage in reflective exercises to assess and evaluate their school's current hiring process, identifying potential biases and areas for improvement.
Key Takeaways:
- The importance of equitable hiring and its impact on school culture.
- Strategies for evaluating and improving current hiring processes.
- Insights from relevant resources on inclusive recruitment practices.
- A reflective action plan to enhance equitable hiring and staff retention in your school community.
This workshop is ideal for school leaders, HR professionals, and anyone involved in the hiring process who is committed to making their hiring practices more equitable and effective. See full course description below for additional details.
Register today to join us for this valuable conversation.
New Sessions in 2025
Coaching and Conflict Resolution
Unlock the power of transformational coaching in this webinar designed exclusively for charter school operations professionals. This interactive session will delve into the art of conflict resolution and provide you with essential coaching strategies proven to foster positive change within schools.
Join us as we explore various coaching approaches, including confrontational, informative, and prescriptive techniques. You will engage in practical exercises and gain access to a wealth of tools, templates, and resources to enhance your coaching conversations.
By the end of this session, you’ll leave with:
--Enhanced confidence in your ability to navigate challenging discussions
--Practical strategies to implement immediately in your school environment
--A toolkit of resources to facilitate impactful coaching interactions
Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your coaching skill set and help your school thrive.
Dynamic and Strategic Planning
In this session, we will explore how to focus, prioritize, and align our guiding documents to create clarity. We will also demonstrate how to integrate real-world documents like annual reports, strategic plans, and required documentation like the Comprehensive Achievement and Civic Readiness plan into a helpful roadmap.
In this session we will:
- Review guiding documents that inform strategic planning
- Explore manageable strategies to gain stakeholder feedback and input into our school plans
- Demonstrate how we can integrate existing plans into a manageable system
Optimizing Ops with Technology & AI
AI tools are everywhere. But how do we get beyond the hype to leverage these tools effectively? In this session, we will explore real world examples of how generative AI tools can help improve operations within schools. We will demonstrate how different charter schools have gained efficiencies using free AI tools, available right now. Additionally, participants will have opportunities to share their own examples and experiences of how they have benefited from AI.
In this session we will:
- Review existing AI tools and the importance of AI policies for schools
- Demonstrate real world examples of AI benefits for school operations
- Share learning among participants
- Create an action plan for leveraging AI to make operations leaders more efficient with their limited resources
Transforming Data into Meaningful Improvements
Public schools regularly gather significant amounts of data on their schools performance whether operational or academic. Using guidance from the books Leverage Leadership. A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and Street Data. A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan, we will explore how to organize, analyze and take thoughtful equity-based action using the existing data in ways which leads to student success and create a culture of continuous improvement.
Effective Strategies for Hiring & Retention
Live Session April 23, 2025
9:30-12:00
Recording will be available May 5th.
In this interactive workshop, participants will explore the principles of equitable hiring practices and their impact on creating diverse, inclusive, and effective school environments. Through thoughtful discussions and hands-on activities, learners will gain a deep understanding of why it is critical to match the right individuals with the right positions. Participants will engage in reflective exercises to assess and evaluate their school's current hiring process, identifying potential biases and areas for improvement.
Throughout the workshop, learners will read an insightful article and hear from experts who provide valuable perspectives on equitable recruitment and selection strategies. By the end of the session, participants will have developed practical tools and strategies for fostering a more inclusive and fair hiring process within their educational institutions.
As part of the course, participants will post a reflective response to the Community Operations Institute chat board, sharing their insights, action plans, and reflections on how they can apply what they’ve learned to improve hiring practices at their school.
Key Takeaways:
- The importance of equitable hiring and its impact on school culture.
- Strategies for evaluating and improving current hiring processes.
Insights from relevant resources on inclusive recruitment practices. - A reflective action plan to enhance equitable hiring and staff retention in your school community.
This workshop is ideal for school leaders, HR professionals, and anyone involved in the hiring process who is committed to making their hiring practices more equitable and effective.
Balancing Priorities & Compliance in Ops Planning
Live Session May 21, 2025
9:30-12:00
Recording will be available June 2nd
By using resources offered by the Minnesota Department of Education. analyzing charter contracts, relying on our outside financial service providers and reviewing/staying up to date on required policy resources offered through other supporting organizations such as MSBA or MACS, charter directors and their operations teams are able to manage the often overwhelming amount of compliance requirements as a public school. Balancing the priorities through shared leadership and using the tools available makes this critical part of charter school leadership more manageable.
Project Management in Charter School Operations
Live Session June 18, 2025
9:30-12:00
Recording will be available July 2025.
Conducting a Comprehensive School Safety Audit
Live Session July 23, 2025
9:30-12:00
Recording will be available August 4th.
Operations Institute Course Catalog - Available Now
Preparing to Make the Most of Your Summer
Summer project planning is often the “quieter” time to prepare for the upcoming school year. We will cover topics that include school vision & mission, strategic planning directives, compliance/safety, regularly scheduled upkeep, duration of work, time sensitivity, dependencies, risk mitigation, and team member availability.
HR Performance Management
Ensure that the school’s staff and leadership performance is compliant, effective, and efficient. We will discuss key components of HR, management of year-round compliance, essential onboarding tools, HR policy, and compliance requirements, performance management, and planning for what’s next on the horizon.
School Health, Safety, and Emergency Planning
Planning for school health services and safety and emergency planning is a key role of an operations manager. We will focus on how to be compliant, effective, and efficient when planning for your school.
Recruitment; Enrollment/Registration and General State Compliance
We will review the registration, enrollment, and admissions processes and how they fit together as well as how they are different. We will also review the general state compliance as defined by the MN Department of Education including resources for a reporting calendar, guidance on how to organize work and deadlines, and other helpful tools.
Procurement, Purchasing, Vendor Management/Contract Management
Need help with vendor management? We will discuss the components required for a successful procurement process using federal funds and non-federal funds. Guidance includes how to manage organized, compliant, and economical procurement, purchasing, and vendor contracting.
Charter School Finance
Learn how to support the financial process and systems in your schools beyond what a financial services vendor will provide. Topics include defining charter school finance and valuable tools for managing charter school finance. Understand what comprises the role of an operations manager in a charter school.
Navigating Common Operations Pain Points
Learn about how to address common pain points. The key areas of focus are issues relating to facilities such as copy matching, regulating building temperature, and managing common spaces.
Technology and Data Systems
Learn how to support the technological infrastructure and data systems in your school. The key areas of focus include technology infrastructure for students, staff, curriculum, assessments, data platforms, and student information systems.
Elevating School Ops to a 5-Star Rating
Learn key tools to take your school operations systems to a five-star rating. We define the components of an exemplary system and guide you to understanding how to perform a system audit.
Student Transportation
We will provide guidance on supporting an effective, efficient, and compliant transportation system for families. Topics include best practices for school busing, special education transportation, student bus conduct, and lessons learned.
Office Management/Systems
Learn how to organize, maintain, and manage the records, files, processes, procedures, and data of your charter school. Key objectives include defining a vision for the main office, outlining key office management systems, setting goals for key office management systems (while keeping in mind the vision), and understanding how to improve existing office management systems.
Ops System Planning
A well-planned system is the foundation for any successful operations. Led by Operations Institute Instructor, Sara Griffin, the objective of this session is to understand and use tools to prepare and plan school systems. Equally important is to identify when systems need to be changed or altered to better suit the needs of the organization. Together we will review how to plan and enact a systems approach to operations in a charter school.
Operating Ops Teams and Support Structures
Course Description
The purpose of the session is for operations managers to be able to outline their key buckets of work and establish a division of labor and management structures. Equally important is to maintain management structures. Deliverables include a 1:1 and team check-in template.
Managing State and Federal Accounts
Join us for a training led by Kelly Gutierrez, Executive Director of Finance and Operations, at St. Croix Preparatory Academy.
We will discuss how to organize your school's operations team, processes, and calendar to ensure that the school accounts leverage and comply with state and federal funding and expectations. Learn more about best practices for establishing roles and responsibilities of the operations team for the following reports:
- ADM to the State
- Food and Nutrition
- Transportation Funding
- Title Funding
- Lease Aid
- SPED and more...
How to Establish and Manage Employee Records
What is a personnel file and what you should (and shouldn't include)? Former KIPP Director of Operations, Liza Hill, will share key practices and tips for file organization including record retention and how to comply with record-keeping requirements. We will also discuss some key areas of FAQs such as the following:
- Who should be able to access files?
- How should you store files?
- Why is file management so critical?
- And more on recommended policies...
Energy Efficiency Funding Opportunities
With the recently passed clean energy infrastructure legislation - both locally and nationally - MN charter schools have the opportunity to update failing facility structures with beautiful, learner-friendly, physical environments that also lower energy bills. Join Katie Piehl, Founder of Bloomwise Partners, as she shares opportunities you’ve been missing on facility upgrade financing options for charter schools. Programs like the IRA’s noncompetitive Elective Pay Clean Energy Tax Credit offset energy upgrades by 30% or more. Instead of a tax credit, the IRS mails you a check! (Yup, you read that right). We’ll discuss funding opportunities you may not have considered available through the Dept of Energy, IRS, Dept of Transportation, and the EPA. Opportunities to put EV charging stations at your school, solar panels on your rooftop, and new windows, lighting, or insulation to improve indoor air quality. If it saves you on your energy bill, there’s a grant for that.
Operational and Financial Sustainability in Student Transportation
Hear from transportation expert, Carl Allen, CEO of 4Mativ. From his time serving as Director of Transportation of Boston Public Schools to his role as COO/CFO at the Harvest Network of Schools in Minneapolis, Carl has a wealth of knowledge about student transportation. Learn more about adopting a strategic approach to transportation and employing alternate modes to deliver a safe and effective transportation strategy.
Essential Competencies for Charter School Operations
Explore the 10 Essential Competencies that are crucial for success in charter school operations. This session will guide you through the Competency-Based Performance Evaluation Framework, empowering you to assess your own competencies and those of your staff effectively. Gain valuable insights that will help you set targeted goals for continuous improvement and professional development. You’ll also receive a variety of templates and resources to seamlessly integrate these competencies into your daily work.
I rate the Operations Institute a 10! I absolutely loved it. There are additional items I would like to be covered and the opportunity to go even deeper. But being able to connect and learn from really great ops professionals; I always enjoy sharing with others.
Minneapolis Charter School
The Ops Institute is a great service to the community. I will take CharterSource with me wherever I land. I think it is a great resource for charter schools" Julie, Bloomington
Bloomington School