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At Work At School

An Afton Partners Blog

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How Districts Can Afford High Quality Schools Despite Enrollment Decline: Defining The Problem

This is the first installment of Afton’s five-part blog series, “How Districts Can Afford High Quality Schools, Despite Enrollment Decline,” aimed at recognizing school district financial challenges associated with enrollment decline and offering some actionable recommendations for school districts facing enrollment loss, with or without charter schools. Earlier this year, The Center on Reinventing Public… Continued

Don’t Leave Money on the Table: Medicaid Reimbursements for School Districts

One of the most persistent themes in post-recession K-12 education has been continually increasing expenses with largely stagnant state and federal revenues. Inevitably this has led to budget deficits and painful cost cutting in many school districts around the country. Typically, school districts do not think about opportunities to maximize revenues, as they have no… Continued

Innovation & Finance: Learnings from Afton’s Work with NGLC Grant Program

Three key takeaways from this blog: Identifying impactful, scalable elements of innovative school models is as important as identifying viable whole school models. If schools show academic success, sustainability follows regardless of the funding environment. The quality, depth and breadth of the leadership team is paramount to ensuring sustainability. “It’s not always about scaling full… Continued

Afton Leads Discussion on New ESSA Financial Transparency Requirements

One key component of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) focuses on fiscal transparency and school-level financial reporting. This shift from current reporting practices requires states and districts to provide per-pupil expenditures of federal, state, and local funds for each individual school. Although the US Department of Education has delayed the effective date of ESSA… Continued

New Report: Finance Trends in K-12 Education

Over five years, Afton’s work has evolved from “nuts and bolts” financial operations support to the kind of work that is truly in line with our vision – aligning financial practices to effective academic strategies in America’s schools. Through our work in states and school districts across the country, we identified eight key trends that… Continued

Financing Personalized Learning: What Can We Learn From First-Generation Adopters?

This paper takes the first systematic look at costs associated with implementing personalized learning schools, how leaders of these schools choose to allocate their funds, and what it might take to make personalized learning financially sustainable on public dollars. Researchers at CRPE, in partnership with Afton Partners, studied 16 charter elementary and secondary schools with a wide range of personalized learning models from across the country… Continued

Putting into Practice: A Conversation with Leading School District Practitioners on Personalized Learning

Afton Partners’ Scott Milam and Katie Morrison-Reed facilitated a conversation with leading practitioners from school districts across the country on best practices to implementing and sustaining innovative personalized learning models at iNACOL’s 2015 Blended and Online Learning Symposium in Orlando, Florida. Through Afton’s work with school districts from coast-to-coast, the team recognized unique innovations happening… Continued

What’s Your Plan? Implementing Innovative and Sustainable Blended Learning School Models

Across the county, skilled educators are implementing truly innovative approaches to teaching and learning. At Afton Partners, we’ve had the privilege to work with over 100 school districts and charter management organizations (CMOs) that have implemented blended learning school models to strengthen individualized curriculum and improve outcomes for students with varying academic abilities… Continued