The three primary functions of the Office of Strategy and Performance are:

Strategic Planning

The Office of Strategy and Performance coordinates work across the district to develop and monitor the long term strategic planning needed for the PSB to achieve its four core goals. The office provides support to district and school leaders on the development and rollout of district and school initiatives to ensure effective coordination, communication, alignment with the district goals, and to improve overall implementation. The Office of Strategy and Performance is organizing the district’s review of emergency preparedness procedures, materials and training. The office coordinates and leads the weekly Leadership Team meetings of school principals and senior leadership.

Capital Projects

The Office of Strategy and Performance organizes and manages PSB’s work on major capital projects including the Driscoll, Baldwin, and Pierce School Building Projects. The Special Assistant for Strategy and Performance leads the Feasibility and Schematic Design Phases of the Baldwin and Driscoll projects, organizing both School Building Committees and working directly with the architects, school staff, principals, and the Building Department. OSP also coordinates all communications, public meetings and community engagement related to these building projects. For the Pierce project OSP drafted the successful Statement of Interest submission that the Massachusetts School Building Authority recently approved, inviting Brookline into its Eligibility Period. On the BHS expansion, OSP works with high school leadership on communications and outreach helping to keep families and community members informed of the many changes that will happen at BHS because of the project.

Information Systems and Data Management

A primary function of the Office of Strategy and Performance is to manage student and staff information across eight primary systems that are used for scheduling, enrollment and registration, health, college applications, communications, food services, and library circulation. The work done by staff in the Office of Strategy and Performance to maintain these systems enables essential functions across all schools such as: school enrollment, ensuring students with food allergies are safe, providing report cards and progress reports to families, ensuring the necessary and appropriate supports are provided to students with disabilities, regular and emergency communications with school communities, and the management of library materials.

The proper maintenance and upkeep of the information in these systems enables the PSB to fulfill the reporting requirements of the state and federal government. Without these systems and this work, the PSB would not receive Chapter 70 funding, Medicaid reimbursement, Circuit Breaker reimbursement, or federal funding and grants. Below are a portion of the required data collection requirements from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Members of this team also work with the Office of Teaching and Learning to support teachers, teams of teachers, principals, and coordinators in easily accessing student learning data.

In providing this information, the question, “How are our students doing?” can be asked and investigated from many angles. In the 2018-19 school year, this department supported schools, teachers, and administrators by: providing improved reports for our benchmark literacy assessment reports; providing information about students with chronic absenteeism to all schools; providing information to principals and curriculum coordinators to help them better understand achievement and opportunity gaps that exist in our schools; disaggregating MCAS data by grade level, race/ethnicity, special education status, English language status, and socio-economic level and helping schools understand which students were in need of support; reporting course enrollment, course recommendations, and student discipline organized by race and subgroup; and by investigating structures within our district which have disparate impacts on students by race/ethnicity, special education status and socio-economic level.

While the Office of Strategy and Performance provides this information and more, it is the schools, principals, teachers, coordinators, deans and other staff who decide how to respond to the information.

Family and Community Outreach

This office facilitates the work across the district to include, inform and engage families and community members in the work of our schools and the district. In FY 2019, the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) moved from the Office of Student Services to the Office of Strategy and Performance to reflect OSA’s primary functions of outreach to new PSB families, school registration, and residency verification. PSB FY2020 Public Schools of Brookline 47 reaches out to community members through family and staff newsletters, public meetings, email, the PSB website, social media, our school PTOs, our community partner organizations, and our local newspapers. OSP staff maintains the district website and the Staff Portal which allows easier staff access to vital curriculum, instructional, and administrative documents and keeps school staff informed of news and updates happening across all of our schools.

This office also coordinates and supports outreach related to public meetings, such as the public engagement process for the school building projects and leads our efforts on crisis communications. In FY 2019 two previously existing full-time positions - the planning specialist and the enrollment specialist - that focus on community engagement were consolidated into one full time position.