An Afton Partners Blog
In September 2019, Afton’s Carrie Stewart and Katie Reed had the opportunity to discuss resource allocation as a lever for equity and driving student outcomes with fellows in the Broad Academy and their finance leads through The Broad Center. This group of highly motivated, accomplished education sector professionals are driving excellence and equity on a daily… Continued
Afton has partnered with the Illinois State Board of Education since Summer 2017 in developing and implementing its plan to meet the site-based expenditure reporting requirement of ESSA. Currently in Illinois, as in most states, public education finances are reported at the local education agency (LEA) / school district level. With the implementation of ESSA,… Continued
A growing body of research on the benefits of early childhood education has put public funding for pre-kindergarten (“Pre-K”) in the spotlight across the country. With more total funding and more students served than ever before, it’s an exciting time for Pre-K education in America. Various mechanisms are used to fund Pre-K at the federal,… Continued
School systems we work with here at Afton are increasingly including “autonomy” policies for principals in their strategic plans for academic achievement – meaning giving them more decision making authority. Often, this is in the form of bounded or earned autonomy, wherein principals receive additional decision making authority based on demonstrated readiness. For example, a… Continued
School teams around the country are creating and implementing innovative academic models, bringing a personalized approach to student learning. Afton has engaged with hundreds of schools as they build these plans, encouraging innovative financial thinking alongside. In many competitive public and philanthropic grant programs, one of the rubric components that Afton has used is for… Continued
Afton’s work with public schools around the country has allowed us to surface simple best practices to help school system leaders confidently lead and oversee the fiscal aspects of running a school system. Now, we are sharing what we have learned by developing a diagnostic tool and providing actionable recommendations for each part of the… Continued
For the second consecutive year, Afton’s Scott Milam and Katie Morrison-Reed hosted an expert panel on sustaining innovative public-school models. This panel discussion built upon the discussion from a year prior at iNACOL, as four of the six panelists had previously shared their experiences and thoughts on sustainability on the prior year’s panel. As personalized… Continued
In 2017, Afton worked with the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) to improve the agency’s process to allocate Title I Part A funding to its 400+ LEAs, and Afton shared its learning here. Since this initiative, Afton’s team has delved into federal funding allocation processes and identified common challenges in multiple states across over a… Continued
This is the third installment of Afton’s blog series, “Lessons Learned from the Raising Blended Learners Initiative in Texas,” where we share our experiences, findings, and thought evolution over the course of the RBL initiative. A detailed analysis of sources and uses of funds for the first year of the Raising Blended Learners grant program reveals: Sites plan… Continued
This is the second installment of Afton’s blog series, “Lessons Learned from the Raising Blended Learners Initiative in Texas,” where we share our experiences, findings, and thought evolution over the course of the RBL initiative. After reading this blog, the reader will: Understand the benefit of providing in-person financial workshops to grant applicants Understand how finance involvement in… Continued