Staff-Led Structure
What is educator-led?
DREAM Technical Academy uses an educator-led model of leadership. Instead of one principal or director, the school is run by a leadership team of 22 individuals with equal power. The leadership team includes active teachers as well as administrative staff members. In addition, all full-time staff members serve on one committee that supports the coordination of many aspects of the school. These committees are the Personnel & Finance Committee, the Marketing Committee, Curriculum Committee, and the Climate & Operations Committee. This structure ensures that all staff members have voice in the school community and that the people most affected by any big decisions and those working closest with the students are also the people contributing to the decision-making process.
Teacher-led schools are gaining popularity across the country as a way to bring the power of school decision-making to those most affected by the decisions--the teachers. DREAM Technical Academy follows in these footsteps but uses the more inclusive term of staff-led. All staff members are part of educating the students and running the school.
Listed on the Teacher-Powered Inventory of Schools, DREAM is one of more than150 teacher-powered schools across that nation that give autonomy to teachers to run schools. To find out more about this national movement, visit www.teacherpowered.org.
Why educator-led?
The staff at DREAM have a need to be active participants in the decision-making processes of running the school. When their voices are heard, they are more invested in their curricula, their students, and the success of the school. For a school the size of DREAM, it is important to have staff who are invested. Because all staff are members of committees that plan events and school-wide initiatives, everyone is aware of needs and steps up to accomplish tasks.
In a traditional school leadership model, top-down administrators get paid high salaries to make decisions about the school. In an educator-led model, any salary benefits for taking on the leadership role stay with the people who are working with students daily. This model is more cost-effective because it prevents excessive spending on administrative overhead. Because DREAM has active teachers on the leadership team that makes budgetary decisions, this keeps the focus of the budget on the needs of teachers and students, which creates a better alignment between the school’s finances and its values.
One of the greatest advantages of the educator-led model at DREAM is the addition of the staff committees. Being part of a committee helps every full-time staff member feel invested in the DREAM community and connect with peers in ways that help the school move forward. Committees provide a clear and equitable avenue for staff voice in decision-making and have brought forth many positive changes, such as teacher-led PLCs, increased awareness of school-wide events and curriculum, and investment in enrollment and recruitment goals.
An educator-led system gives everyone more equal footing than a traditional model. Because of this, the staff at DREAM, including the leadership team members themselves, have the freedom to take risks, even if they sometimes fail. They know that they are not expected to be perfect, and that the rest of the staff will support them in reflecting on mistakes and making changes for the future. This is how our culture of innovation is sustained - through many attempts at new ideas and the growth that stems from those outcomes.