How Lubbock ISD Used Scheduling to Enable Instructional, Staffing, and Budget Priorities

Developing schedules is one of the most challenging undertakings that school and district leaders do every year. It’s also one of the most important.

School schedules often have significant inefficiencies that impact student experiences and outcomes, like course offerings that don’t align with student needs; mismatches in resources across schools; or inconsistencies in class sizes. This has a disproportionate impact on students with higher needs.

When approached strategically, schedules provide an immense opportunity to address critical priorities with district staffing, budgets, and academic goals. This case study reveals how Lubbock ISD partnered with Timely to use scheduling to make significant progress toward its SY23-24 priorities—even in the face of declining enrollment and the looming ESSER fiscal cliff.

A new scheduling process allowed the district to:

• Improve middle school academic performance by investing in double blocks of ELA and math.
• Increase capacity to better serve students with disabilities by hiring more staff members across grades 6-12 and dedicate additional funding for professional development.
• Efficiently allocate resources across all schools by scheduling more consistent class sizes and teacher loads in middle and high school.

“We can’t ignore the fact our district has gotten smaller over the years. As a result, we are carefully and proactively addressing this reality by adjusting in ways that are respectful and supportive of our hard-working staff and, most of all, strengthens the student experience. And that requires diving into scheduling and staffing.”

• Rick Rodriguez, Chief Operating Officer, Lubbock Independent School District.