Budget Hold’em Workshops for Districts and Schools
Budget Hold’em is more than a game. It’s an interactive exploration of how to make the most of every dollar to accelerate student learning.
What happens when district leaders play Budget Hold’em? Hear it from them firsthand.
Learn new ways of thinking about budgeting, center your district’s or school’s core strategies, and examine what priorities are most important to your team—and yes, do so all through an engaging gamified workshop.
About Our Budget Hold’em Workshops
Join the 15,000+ education leaders across the country who have played Budget Hold’em! In our two-hour workshop, ERS facilitators will help you work in small teams to:
- Choose from 30+ investment and reduction cards crafted using real district and school data and scenarios from our more than 20 years working with school systems nationwide
- Think through budget tradeoffs in relation to your district or school’s priorities
- Better understand the impact of budget decisions on student experiences
- Spark dynamic conversations about transforming critical systems in your district or state
“The game was awesome! Every school leader who is responsible for budgets should do this. It was great to connect with colleagues and see how our values emerged in the decisions.”
— High School Principal in New York City
In addition to 1:1 workshops with district and school teams, our Hold’em workshops are also popular sessions at conferences and convenings held by states and/or professional associations.
Our ERS experts bring their decades of experience working in school systems across the country to help guide the discussion, tease out key insights, and pinpoint takeaways.
Want to take your game to another level? Customize your Budget Hold’em workshop with bespoke investment and reduction cards tailored to your district, school, or state context. Your teams will use (and take home) custom card decks that include your:
- Logo and branding
- Size, spending levels, staffing ratios, and class sizes
- Context-specific investment or reduction strategies
Choose Your Strategy: 3 Ways to Play
Are you looking to shift systemic structures throughout your district or state? Boost instructional quality at your school? Home in on your teachers’ specific needs? We’ve developed multiple editions of Budget Hold’em games designed to meet your strategic goals.
Our original Budget Hold’em for Districts game includes 30+ cards, each with a specific investment strategy drawn from our more than 20 years working with districts nationwide.
Explore different strategies, each with different budget implications, for how to:
- Organize time and staffing to accelerate learning in critical areas
- Increase teachers’ professional learning and collaboration opportunities
- Create student-driven learning experiences to prepare students for postsecondary success
Learn more about our workshops for districts.
Work alongside our budget experts to think through strategies for both managing limited budgets and ensuring students and teachers get the resources they need within your school’s unique context.
We offer two versions:
- Budget Hold’em for Elementary Schools, which covers instructional strategies for accelerating early learning in high-priority areas like math and ELA.
- Budget Hold’em for High Schools, which includes resource shifts to improve high school student outcomes, experiences, and opportunities.
Learn more about our workshops for schools.
Let our teaching job specialists guide you through strategic considerations for making your district’s teaching job more dynamic, rewarding, and sustainable.
You’ll engage in a robust discussion about critical factors that impact the teaching job, including:
- Class and group sizes
- Schedule designs
- Where, when, and how learning happens
- Teaming structures and educator assignments
- Compensation models
Learn more about our Teaching Job Hold’em workshops!
Ready to get started?
What Education Leaders Are Saying About Our Workshops
“The session presented a whole new way to think about budgeting.”
— Massachusetts Association of School Business Officials
“This session provided us with real-time, hands-on application of work we can influence and implement in our districts.”
— Michigan Continuous Improvement Facilitators
Facilitate Your Own Budget Hold’em Workshop
Want to DIY your Budget Hold’em Workshop? All of our Budget Hold’em card decks—for Districts, for Schools, and for the Teaching Job—are available for purchase with fast shipping, so you can play any time that’s right for your team. Just grab your colleagues and get ready to make strategic choices that could lead to big gains.
- Give your team a screen break with 30+ printed cards
- Amplify the game’s impact by working through challenges as a team
- Use our optional facilitator’s guide, scoresheets, and tips to stay on track
More Hold’em Possibilities
Not ready for a workshop yet? Explore our Budget Hold’em games for free online. Get started in seconds, then save and share your hand to collaborate with colleagues!