Education Resource Strategies is excited to announce that Jess O’Connor has been promoted to the role of Partner. 

As leader of ERS’ School Design Practice Area, Jess brings a deep understanding of the resource shifts schools need to make to implement strategies that improve student outcomes, and the conditions necessary to scale and sustain those strategies across the system. 

“Redesigning outdated school structures—like one-size-fits-all schedules and isolated teachers who are serving a wide range of needs—requires strong leadership, conviction, and courage,” said O’Connor. “As I step into the role of Partner at ERS, I’m privileged to continue helping system leaders lay out a path for making ambitious change possible. The really exciting, impactful work is in these ‘Do Now’ and ‘Build Toward’ moves that can improve educational access and outcomes for students.” 

Since joining ERS in 2015, she’s worked with over 20 large metropolitan districts—including Tulsa Public Schools, Baltimore City Schools, Oakland Unified School District, Chicago Public Schools, and Boston Public Schools—to assess their resource conditions and redesign schedules and staffing plans to improve student and teacher experiences. She helped launch ERS’s inaugural School Design Summit in 2017, bringing together district leaders to assess their system’s conditions and create action plans to scale high-impact school designs in their district. She has also supported leaders in JeffCo Public Schools, Shelby County (Memphis), Albuquerque, Prince William County, and others to implement new structures and policies that support strategic school designs, including designing student-centered funding systems and evolving policies around class size, seat time, and collaborative planning. 

“Jess has become a trusted advisor to the senior district leaders she supports. Not only does she help them make smarter decisions and design better change efforts, but her commitment to helping them succeed as professionals stands out. It’s a unique strength,” said Jonathan Travers, ERS President and Managing Partner of Consulting. “At a time when our district partners are being asked to do more with less, Jess has the know-how and experience to help them rise to the challenge and do right by their students and communities.” 

Jess has also worked directly in schools, getting to know exactly what it looks like to experience day-to-day operations in a variety of school contexts. Early in her career, she launched a tutoring program at Project Pride, a dropout prevent program in rural Virginia, reorganizing students’ schedules to accelerate learning while balancing out-of-school demands. At a growing charter network organization, she oversaw operations and systems development across five schools and supported the design and launch of a new competency-based high school that became Rhode Island’s highest-ranked public charter school. 

Jess holds an M.A. in Urban Education Policy from Brown University and a B.A. in Economics from Washington & Lee University.