School District Strategy, Planning, & Innovation
Based on our decades of experience, we deeply understand the difference between a strategic plan that looks impressive and a truly strategic planning process that drives lasting change. We know the research on what works, and we have the expertise to ensure our partner districts don’t replicate common mistakes.
Our Approach to Designing Effective District Strategies
Assess Your District’s Current Resource Use
At the outset of a strategic planning process or a new superintendent’s tenure, we analyze quantitative and qualitative data to assess districtwide staffing and spending patterns (at schools and central office) and their impact on student and teacher experiences. We surface high-priority challenges and opportunities—then help district leaders develop plans to address them.
The Goal: Help you understand your district’s current state and build a bold vision for the future.
Turn Your Strategic Plans Into Action
We identify the critical shifts in resources, policies, and practices needed to successfully implement your district’s strategic vision, including a clear theory of action for how central office supports schools. We do this with excellence and opportunity in mind to support our highest-need students and schools, and we prioritize financial sustainability to ensure the long-term viability of the district’s core priorities.
The Goal: Create action plans for bringing your strategic plan to life.
Redesign Your School Portfolio
We help design school portfolios that deliver on the district’s aspirations for student learning in financially sustainable ways. We analyze opportunities and limitations of your district’s existing portfolio; convene stakeholders to align on a vision for improving student experience; and help make and communicate decisions around the overall number and location of schools, school grade spans, core programming components, and governance models.
The Goal: Intentionally design your district’s portfolio and optimize small schools.
Help You Achieve a High ROI
Our approach to ROI in education integrates spending data with leading indicators, implementation data, and student and teacher outcomes to help leaders assess the impact of ongoing initiatives. We design processes that integrate into key district- and school-level planning processes throughout the year and use data to identify where to shift or scale investments.
The Goal: Ensure you make the most of your investments and maximize student impact.
How We Partner With School Systems
Our special sauce? Our ability to help leaders move from vision to strategy to action by deeply analyzing root causes. We ground our work in research on what it takes to make a difference for students and families, and we anchor our approach in a holistic progress monitoring model that enables continuous improvement. We also help district leaders analyze their current school portfolios to align with student needs, district strategy, and financial context.
“We’ve been asking these questions [around high school redesign] for years, decades even. I’m so proud of how working closely with ERS helped us act on these questions. I don’t know that our district alone would’ve been able to accomplish this work in such record time.”
—Dr. Adrienne Battle, Superintendent of Metro Nashville Public Schools
Strategic Planning in Holyoke Public Schools
The Opportunity
In 2022, Anthony Soto became the new superintendent of HPS and partnered with ERS to design and implement a new strategic plan.
The Planning Process
ERS and HPS brought 45 community stakeholders together to form two groups:
- The advisory committee defined high-level components, including the mission, vision, core values.
- The steering committee defined the district’s theory of action, core priorities, implementation strategies, and initiative maps that outline the district’s ongoing core work.
Our work with these committees underscored the importance of creating a unified understanding of the district’s resource use strengths, challenges, and priorities. And that work started with strategic steps that built toward big changes for the district.
The Results
Superintendent Soto and his team completed an extensive five-month entry-planning process, using classroom visits, focus groups, and surveys to understand the district’s current state and prioritize key focus areas for the strategic plan.
At the end of the planning process, 100% of steering committee members agreed or strongly agreed that they felt good about the initiative maps they created with ERS’ support, and 100% of advisory committee members also felt that the plan sets HPS in the right direction for the next three years.
In the years since, ERS has supported HPS on several projects to help them operationalize the plan, including redesigning elementary and middle school master schedules. As reported by WBUR, after 10 years in state receivership HPS began the 2025-2026 school year back under local control based on progress across a number of dimensions.
“Having ERS as a partner was critical. Their involvement led to a better process overall and gave the superintendent and me the space to engage in strategic planning as learners and listeners, rather than facilitators.”
—Erin Linville, Chief of Strategy and Turnaround, Holyoke Public Schools
Other Strategic Planning Partners
Let’s Work Together
If you need a partner during any step of your strategic planning process, we’re here to help! Fill out the form below to start the conversation.