One of the biggest challenges we hear around here as it relates to staff time and focus on priorities is coverage. We all know what happens when someone is out sick or off campus. Covering that person’s work and role can really throw off everyone else’s plans! While some school sites are lucky enough to have permanent subs or swing staff, that is not the norm for everyone. In our recent work with Alpha Public Schools, we learned about their systematic approach to solving this challenge. Enter the ANT Squad!
The leadership team at Alpha shares the why: “At Alpha, we operate as One Team with One Purpose, and when our schools need us, we show up for them. ANT (Alpha Network Team) Coverage Squads help create a healthy and thriving environment for our students and our staff. They do this by ensuring our sites can always effectively fill supervision needs that cannot be met by school staff. In addition, they are one of the many ways we live out our purpose as Alpha Network Team members – to support our schools.”
“We will aim to run Squads in a way that supports schools when they need it most, simplifies coverage assignments, equitably distributes the workload, and ensures our students have consistent adults visible and committed to their success – all while partnering with school leaders to ensure ANT staff are being called in only as a last resort.”
ANT Coverage Squads started during the era of coming back from COVID with its many different out-of-office needs. The ANT Squads support lunch supervision, recess supervision, arrival, and departure duties. Each school site has a protocol for when to request coverage and a sheet for what support looks like for squad members. The ANT Squads have captains who receive the requests via trackers and ensure whoever is pre-assigned to cover that time when needed is ready to go. They have a system and communication process for making requests, covering shifts, and communicating within squads and with the assigned school site. The ANT Squad’s goal is to ensure their schools have a healthy and thriving environment while also ensuring the back office can be successful in all the other day-to-day management needs.
Oh my goodness, I love this so much. It is such a model of teamwork, planning, and supporting those who are on the front lines of schools. And, of course, all ideas like this are great in THEORY, but I’m always curious about the mechanics of the whole thing in PRACTICE! Alpha has processes in place to set up, maintain, and even evaluate the ANT Squads. Let’s start with the power of clear expectations and scenarios.
And once you have the expectations laid out, it helps to make it tangible by applying those expectations to an actual scenario that could come up. Here’s a great one in the image below.
Chris Kang, acting CEO of Alpha Public Schools, said, “Staff, especially at the school sites, have really appreciated the additional supports and connections.”
What I love about the ANT Squad is not only the solution-orientation for a common school-based challenge, but the intentionality of creation of a system, documentation of the processes, and anticipation of challenges. And they even have steps in place to evaluate and tweak this system as needed! Are there any systems in your context that could apply this same process?
