Why Schools Build Multiple Schedule Scenarios

Why Create Scenarios?

We just ran our 300th schedule for this season. And we never thought a school would create over 50 schedules before choosing one, but then a school did.

Behind the scenes, this school was trying to understand 50 different possibilities:

• Different staffing models
• Different ways of handling resource constraints
• Testing “this is how we’ve always done it” constraints and evaluating trade-offs

Rethinking Staffing Constraints

We’ve learnt that staffing is a very compelling use case. Hiring new teachers is more difficult than ever, and one ScheduleX customer has been unable to fill a teacher job opening for 10 months now. They’re using ScheduleX to explore whether they could make the year work without hiring an additional teacher. They’ve tried different staffing models, visualized the impact on course fulfillment, common preps and teaching contracts. They’re going to make it work with the resources they have. And even though cost was not the primary objective, they’ll easily end up saving $50,000-80,000.

Avoiding a $5 Million Investment

Last year, another school was working on the assumption that they don’t have enough rooms. After running multiple schedule scenarios, they discovered that 5-6 rooms were at 50-60% utilization. The result: they don’t need $5M for a new building (just yet!).

Until recently, testing these possibilities was impossible. Schools got one schedule at the end of the summer - take it or leave it. But now, schools can spend less time building schedules and more time understanding them. And the value isn't in having dozens of options. It's in understanding the pros and cons of each one before making a decision.