What I Heard in Ohio and Colorado

The room in Hamilton, Ohio at the ICAA conference was set for about 75 district leaders. Only about half came. Though at first it felt a bit disappointing, I've stopped counting that as a loss, because the half who came stayed for the whole conversation, and it was a great one.

Much of the day was about AI. Todd Yohey, who co-led the conference with Joseph Huang, set the tone early: AI can make us faster and smarter, but humans still must make the final decisions in many realms of the educational process when supporting students, and that has to be non-negotiable. Section 504, the Office for Civil Rights, IDEA, Title VI, Title VII, Title IX: those are legal decisions about real students and real staff. If we simply allow AI to take the lead in all of these areas, the consequences could be drastic and dire. I was glad to hear it said so explicitly, because it's the rule we’ve adopted in building PULSE: the software does the gathering and the math; a person confirms every decision.

I spent most of my time in Ohio with district finance and IT leaders from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Texas. Their budgets look a lot like the ones I've managed, with some real differences. But one thing came up in every conversation: no district has one consistent, complete place for its administrative data. Staffing lives in one system, service minutes in another, budget in a spreadsheet. So every staffing or budget decision starts with weeks of pulling the pieces together, and by the time the picture is assembled, the decision is late.

The Colorado BOCES Association quarterly summit told me the same story from a different angle. A gas leak at home sent me back early (fortunately everyone is safe), so I missed the meeting sessions. But I did get one dinner with over 10 BOCES leaders, and it was one of the most supportive, down-to-earth rooms I've been in. They're working through new state requirements for Section 504, including a named coordinator, annual staff training and a grievance process, on top of IDEA compliance, plus a state complaint system that may or may not get funded. Unfortunately, it’s just one more example of the state of public education: more duties without the budget for more people.

One conversation in Ohio has stayed with me since my return. A former Indiana school finance director, now teaching at the university level, told me that on paper, many small Indiana districts would be better off sharing services through a countywide or regional agency. But in practice, culture wins over finance and “on paper” logistics: small districts want to compete, be the best and run their own show.

He's right, and it's exactly why regional agencies matter. A BOCES or an educational service center is how small districts share a speech-language pathologist or a school psychologist without giving up who they are. But that shared provider's week is the hardest one to see. She drives between five districts, sits in meetings for all of them, and shows up in each district's caseload count as a fraction of a person. Nobody adds the fractions back into one week. That's the work I want to keep doing: one honest picture of each provider's week, across every district they serve.

If your data lives in too many places, start by measuring how much that costs you. The PULSE Readiness Diagnostic is a free, five-minute self-check for directors. It shows where your district loses the most time: assembling data, finding staffing capacity you already pay for, or turning need into evidence a board will act on. You get your results right away.

Take the Readiness Diagnostic

Thank you to Todd Yohey and Joseph Huang for leading ICAA, and to everyone in Ohio and Durango for the welcome. I hope I get to come back.

I hope the school year continues to run smoothly and sustainably for you.

~Eric