Are school districts that face a shortage of qualified teacher-leaders simply stuck? For districts using Opportunity Culture strategic staffing models, not anymore. Leaders in Edgecombe and Rockingham county districts, supported by our organizations, are collaborating and expanding the reach of excellent teachers.
Opportunity Culture roles, created by Public Impact, make it possible for schools to have small teaching teams led by a teacher with a record of student success and adult leadership competencies. This Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) role gets a significant pay supplement, made possible by school budget reallocations, and takes formal accountability for the results of all the team’s students.
In Rockingham County, the district prioritized math for the first MCL teams it implemented. But Reidsville High School Principal Erica Blackwell said a search last summer did not lead to the right candidate for a Math 1 team leader.
That didn’t mean her students were stuck, though. Rockingham and Edgecombe are part of a five-district TIP-Opportunity Culture consortium that came together in 2024 to design their strategic staffing models and MCL teams. So when the shortage arose, so did a cross-district opportunity.
In Edgecombe, MCL teams have been in place since 2017, and North Edgecombe High School had a former math teacher leading a five-person ninth grade teaching team. What if that leader took on two more team teachers — who just happened to be nearly three hours and six districts away? That’s the concept Public Impact and TIP suggested based on a design process led by Ashley Williams and Emily Ayscue Hassel: a remotely located MCL educator who could be down the street or states away. We were excited when these districts said yes.
Thus began a semester of intensive planning for working agreements to put the role in place. How would Rockingham, the “importing” district, pay “exporting” Edgecombe? How would the Edgecombe team leader and her Math 1 teachers in both districts find common time for planning and data analysis meetings? How would she find time to meet individually with the Rockingham teachers? How would she use technology to virtually observe and provide feedback for the team teachers, and to model and co-teach? And following the philosophy that everyone needs a coach, who would provide coaching and feedback for the team leader — both schools’ principals?
After reaching agreement on these and a host of other issues, MCL Kenya Raynor and two math team teachers at Reidsville High — a first-year teacher and a 20-year veteran — met in person in early December to being building relationships and establish a working schedule and expectations for working together.
And so it was that in January, these rural districts, which face stiff competition for teachers from surrounding and higher-paying systems, began setting the standard for inter-district talent-sharing.
“I’m grateful to Edgecombe County for permitting this teacher to work with our staff, and I’m excited about the possibilities for my students and the capacity of my staff,” Blackwell says. Long-term, she said she sees how this will grow her own district’s leaders.
“I didn’t know I would be the first one ever,” Raynor says. But she’s undaunted, excited at the opportunity to spread her influence further and help other teachers get away from the “one size fits all” approach she commonly sees in teaching math.
While acknowledging that other principals might worry about giving up a portion of a teacher-leader’s day to another district, North Edgecombe High Principal Roderick Tillery, Sr., sees far more benefits than downsides.
Most MCL team teachers take on an attitude of, “These are no longer just my kids; all the kids on this team are ours.” Remotely-located Multi-Classroom Leadership is that idea writ large for a region or state.
“It’s just not my teacher or my students, it’s ours,” Tillery says. “We’re going to have to look at how we do business differently.”
Amy Pearce, who once led a math MCL team at the high school and is now Edgecombe’s director of federal programs, sees this as a way for the district to get as much as to give. Cross-district collaboration means each district can learn from the others’ practices, and it gives Edgecombe potential to fill a future need. And, she notes, for small districts with small schools, this also provides a longer career path, where team leaders may be able to lead a bigger team — for even more pay — by taking on team members from other districts.
Edgecombe is also testing a remotely-located MCL role within the district, having a team leader from one of its early colleges lead teachers at another early college, with the expectation of using this role between other schools.
What will success look like with this model? In this first semester of using the role, we’re looking at student growth measures, teacher retention, how this helps districts expand their Opportunity Culture models, and educator satisfaction.
We and our Opportunity Culture and TIP staff members celebrate the early promising signs of this collaboration: districts willing to put in the effort to design the many parameters of the role; the ability to overcome the challenges of scheduling, pay structures, and working virtually; the positive response of everyone involved (the team teachers and leader, principals, district leaders, and superintendents); and early positive reactions from other educators in the two high schools.
With this role, we’re moving far beyond just breaking free of one-teacher, one-classroom limitations. Now it can be many-teachers, many-districts, spreading teaching excellence to help each district boost its own leadership pipeline.
