How Shelby County Schools Used ERS’ Budget Hold’em to Put Students at the Center of Budget Decisions

At 3:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in 2020, school leaders from nearly 30 Shelby County schools sat down to play cards. But in that game, there were no kings, queens, or aces in sight. Instead, principals, assistant principals, and other key school staff from across the county gathered for the good of their students.

In most districts, schools receive a set number of staff and a prescribed set of resources to serve their students. These leaders, however, were among the first to pilot a student-based budgeting (SBB) approach, in which schools receive money based on their enrollment and student needs.

To evaluate and select the SBB strategies that were right for their schools, these leaders partnered with ERS for an interactive game of Budget Hold’em for Schools.

Play Budget Hold’em Online

Budget Hold’em: A Game of Transformative Strategies

Under SBB, schools have the flexibility to use their funds to develop a staffing plan and a budget that best fits their context. This process requires early adopters to think about the school budget in an entirely new way—not as an inherited balance sheet that they adjust minimally from year to year, but as a set of longer-term strategic investments chosen to meet the school’s goals.

Based on real data from ERS’ more than 20 years of partnering with districts across the country, Budget Hold’em for Schools is a collaborative exercise in which teams build a strategic hand from 30+ card options. Cards detail investment strategies—all designed to boost student experiences—and savings opportunities. The game enables teams to identify their specific priorities and consider which strategies will help them achieve their goals the best.

Making Strategic Investments and Tradeoffs

Making tradeoffs is a key part of the Hold’em process. While it might be challenging, it helps leaders stick to their priorities and uncover new ways to use resources to address them. Teams from Shelby County discussed various investments and tradeoffs, including:

• Implementing collaborative planning. One team was tempted to add more instructional time to their schedule, but quickly realized this investment wouldn’t serve the high number of rookie teachers at the fictional school. Instead, they invested in more collaborative planning time and support for teacher leaders.
• Targeting a key transition year. The team decided that supporting 6^th grade students during this critical transition period was a key priority, so one team considered adding another ELA teacher to lower class sizes. This strategy would give incoming students more individualized attention to close reading gaps.
• Reworking staffing structures. To support 6^th grade students in a cost-neutral way, one team discussed the possibility of deliberately assigning some of the school’s most effective teachers to that important grade level.

Creative Thinking and New Possibilities

School leaders find that Budget Hold’em for Schools encourages them to consider new possibilities and think through resource use strategies they might otherwise have thought were impossible to implement.

For the Shelby County team, Budget Hold’em gave them a way to envision student-based budgeting in very real terms. How would the model impact student experiences? What needs to happen to make it work effectively? What tradeoffs are necessary? The Shelby team used Hold’em as a vehicle for thinking these questions through—and discovering some strategies they had never even considered. Following the game, the team was more equipped to try new things and engage their community around transformative strategies.

As school teams grapple with their new budgets, they have to navigate many hurdles, including communicating changes to their stakeholders, parents, students, and teachers. Hold’em is an important exercise that brings leaders together on the “why” and the “how” so they can effectively tackle implementation.

Explore All Your Hold’em Options

From targeting a specific need like reimagining the teaching job to exploring broader districtwide strategies, there are endless ways to tackle your district’s hardest challenges with Budget Hold’em.