Breaking Down Silos: Organizing Support for Schools Through a District Regional Model

Abstract

Boston Public Schools (BPS) is the largest school district in Massachusetts, serving around 49,000 students. While BPS has some of the best schools in the nation, there are systemic and historical factors that have led to widening academic gaps for BPS’ most historically marginalized students. Additionally, in 2020, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) named a disconnect existing within BPS between schools and the central office. With this context, I entered my residency with the guiding question of how the relationship between BPS’ central office and schools can be improved while also improving learning for students in the midst of key transition moments for the district. This capstone describes the work I led, in collaboration with district leaders, to design and implement a regional support model in an effort to increase the level of strategic and coordinated support school leaders experience from the central office. Leveraging research from Central Office Transformation for District-wide Teaching and Learning Improvement (2010) by the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, the regional support model embeds key academic and operational functions from various central office departments, in partnership with regional superintendents, to support each region’s school improvement efforts. In the capstone, I provide a description and analysis of my efforts to reorganize the district around the regional structure and improve the effectiveness of the model during its first year of implementation. I conclude with implications for both BPS and school districts that want to strengthen the relationship between the central office and schools in order to reduce the academic gaps that exist for our country’s most historically marginalized students.