Celebrate the 96th American Education Week with LEAN Frog as Dave shares the significance of this special week.
At LEAN Frog, we’re thrilled to celebrate the 96th American Education Week!
This year’s theme is: Great Public Schools: A Basic Right and Our Responsibility
The American Education Week also includes “National Education Support Professionals Day.” Our public schools’ hard-working, diverse, and unified team of Support Professionals sustain our local community educational ecosystems by providing invaluable and targeted services daily. They are essential and valued partners in our children’s learning and growing processes and they deserve our respect and appreciation!
Here is a video that defines visually the importance and contributions of Educational Support Professionals:
LEAN Frog – having conducted more than 60 assessments in Alabama public schools’ non-instructional departments – has seen first-hand the diligent work performed by Alabama’s Educational Support Professionals. These dedicated librarians, nurses, custodians, secretaries, classroom aides, cafeteria workers, maintenance workers, bus driver, technology staff, and others do their jobs with skill every day and provide an environment where our students are safe and can learn, grow, and achieve.
LEAN Frog, utilizing our Lean Six Sigma-based proprietary work cycle of ASSESS-IMPROVE-SUSTAIN, interacts closely with Educational Support Professionals. One example was our work with the Madison City Schools (MCS) in Madison, Alabama. MCS was voted as one of the top 1500 public school systems in the nation by Newsweek Magazine and includes some of the best teachers, students, and staff in the country.
Working with the MCS Human Resources and Finance departments, LEAN Frog reviewed a staffing challenge and the MCS on-boarding process. Utilizing a Lean Six Sigma Tool — Value Stream Mapping — LEAN Frog led the staff through an analyzation of the departments’ work practices and, together, recognized process waste and variations. Then, working shoulder to shoulder with these Educational Support Professionals, LEAN Frog identified concrete opportunities for improvement and implemented results-based strategies for continuous improvement. Key results were:
- Eliminating over 50 wasteful process steps
- Saving 25-30 hours per week through improved efficiencies
- Optimizing NextGen database to serve all users
- Identifying opportunities to streamline the use of SearchSoft
As John Jones, Personnel & Title IX Coordinator at Madison City Schools, commented:
“LEAN Frog’s Value Stream Mapping process has allowed Madison City Schools to improve communication, teamwork, and productivity by streamlining our hiring process and created new excitement in the way we do things! They teach you techniques needed to be successful along the way. Great product and an even greater investment!”
For more information about this specific project, go to: https://theleanleap.com/results/improve/
As a former collegiate Education Support Professional — 27 years at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland — I encourage you to join me and my colleagues at LEAN Frog in acknowledging our Educational Support Professionals for the GREAT JOB they do every day in public education!