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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

No Small Change: Managing Transitions in School Finance Leadership

Transitions in Finance Leadership Can Be Challenging. Here Are Some Ideas. – At any organization, unplanned changes in financial leadership create knowledge gaps that take time to fill. No less is this true at charter management organizations or public school districts. In particular, many CMOs are relatively small organizations with limited finance capacity other than the role of the CFO… Continued

Finding the Right Balance: Autonomy to Promote Equity—and Academic Success

School districts adjust to prevailing circumstances to promote autonomy, responsibility, and positive change – Much of Afton’s work in recent months has been toward providing principals and teachers at schools with discretion over a relatively higher proportion of total district spending. This in turn allows individual schools more flexibility and discretion in allocating resources that at most districts are already strained… Continued

Roadmap to Reform: Promoting Success in Missouri

Education reform strategy suggests departing from current school funding methods, reallocating funds to empower educators and promote academic achievement, say CEE-Trust and Public Impact. Individual urban schools in America are achieving outstanding results for students from low-income communities. But no urban school systems are achieving such results for most children in an entire city. Faced… Continued

A House Divided? Separating Academics & Finance Inhibits Success

Promoting improved student outcomes means finance must join the conversation about academic strategy—and must have the tools to succeed. As debate rages about how best to promote reform in America’s cash-strapped public education system, many consider the first step for school districts and charter management organizations (CMOs) is to funnel as many dollars into the… Continued

Blended Learning: A Better Model For Sustainability?

NEW AFTON STUDY HIGHLIGHTS KEY QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE ANALYSIS Afton Partners recently collaborated with Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) and EDUCAUSE to study the business models and start-up plans of successful NGLC Wave IIIa applicants. The objective of Afton’s study was to identify and analyze significant preliminary trends indicated by the applicants’ proposed breakthrough, blended… Continued

What We Mean By Sustainability

INTEGRATING ACADEMIC AND FINANCIAL DECISION-MAKING CAN IMPROVE OUTCOMES AND STRENGTHEN CAPITAL-RAISING – The academic challenges facing America’s public schools are well documented. They’re equaled by mounting financial ones. Districts nationwide are struggling to align academic planning and strategies with available resources… Continued

For Stronger Schools.

WHY WE FOUNDED AFTON PARTNERS – America’s public schools face a great and daunting challenge: to provide globally competitive educational outcomes for all children enrolled in them, regardless of their socioeconomic background… Continued